This is EXACTLY what it does. The "more images for this article" section at the given link has a flowchart of the process...it's just a reboot and suspend.
Why on earth in OS X is the menu bar for any given application not attached to the application itself? Why is it fixed to the top of the screen, detached from the very thing it controls?
It's called "FItts' Law." The edge-of-screen menu is a much easier target to access. This has been covered to death before. Who wrote this article? A million monkeys with typewriters?
Bah. The iPod display is almost certainly fake. While they may have inserted an actual NCD into the case of the thing, it's not interfacing with the iPod's own display controller. If you follow the link to the ExtremeTech article, you'll see two views of the iPod (taken at different times - one has a second iPod set in front)...both show the track supposedly playing (triangle at top left), yet both show the time at 0:00 (very unlikely coincidence). Also, what is that segmented bar? I don't think it corresponds to anything the actual iPod UI would display. Am I wrong here?
The bulk of the heat of orbital reentry stems from the tangiental velocity (motion 'parallel' to the ground) that's necessary to maintain orbit in the first place. The suborbital flights lack this component...conceptually we can think of them as flying straight up and dropping straight down (in reality there's some downrange distance, but it's modest, obviously, compared to an orbital flight)...so the only heat to be dissipated is from the craft's nearly unimpeded downward acceleration in the uppermost atmosphere as it drops into progressively thicker air.
Terminal velocity will vary with each vehicle design and flight plan, but in all cases will be less than the tangiental velocity of an orbiting craft.
It will be toasty no doubt, but not so much as to require the use of exotic materials (thermal tiles as on the Shuttle, etc.)
You may have seen a gizmo called a "TeleZapper" advertised on late-night TV, which purports to scare telemarketers away. Understanding its operation requires just a little familiarity with telemarketing technology, which I'll attempt to distill here: the telemarketing firm has a system called an "autodialer" which works sequentially through a list of phone numbers in a marketing database. After dialing a number, the system listens for one of three things: a person's voice, in which case the system then either plays a prerecorded sales pitch or connects an unfortunate person working as an automaton to deliver an "interactive" sales pitch (this is why sometimes you answer your phone and get a pause followed by a telemarketer asking "Hello?" even though you're the one answering the phone); a fax tone, in which case the system might either deliver a fax advertisement, or remove the phone number from the database and move on to the next in the list; or it might hear what's called a "SIT tone," which is that series of three ascending beeps you hear when you've dialed a disconnected number...such numbers are of course of no value to the telemarketing firm, so upon hearing this, the system will delete the number from the database and move on. What the TeleZapper does is intercept incoming calls, play a SIT tone, then (if they don't disconnect, as an autodialer would) put the call through to your actual telephone. I've heard one can achieve much of the same effect simply by putting the SIT tone at the start of their answering machine message...I had a WAV file of the tone on my computer somewhere, and just never got around to doing that.
Anyway, with the bulk of the techno-babble out of the way...
It was around noon on a Saturday that I received one of those delightful prerecorded sales calls. But this one was different. Normally, telemarketers block their phone number from Caller ID, so if one subscribes to that service they'll only see "Unknown" when such a call arrives. For some reason, this one didn't...my phone displayed the number from which the autodialer was working. That's odd.
Normally I'd shrug and go back to whatever I was doing. But I was just getting over the flu, stuck at home on a rainy Saturday, bored to tears. I just had to try something. Something evil.
I selected the "Call Log" option on my phone, which brought up the last incoming number...the autodialer...then pressed "Dial." Of course, the number was busy...the autodialer was inflicting its annoying sales pitch on someone else at the moment, and would be doing that all day. And even if it wasn't, the autodialer isn't programmed to answer an incoming call. But...but...if I could time my call just right, I'd finish dialing just as the autodialer is picking up to make its next call. As I said, I'm stuck at home, nothing to do...so...hang up, redial, busy. Hang up, redial, busy. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then, after only about a minute of this...hang up, redial, sound of autodialer trying to dial the next number in its database! I managed to intercept it!
Like a dog that finally catches up with the rabbit, I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it now. I cleared my throat. Since this wasn't a SIT tone, nor a fax beep, the autodialer interpreted this as a voice "answering" the phone and delivered its prerecorded sales pitch. Feh.
When it got to the end of the recording, it then attempted to drop the line and dial the next number. However, in another one of those phone technicalities, this won't work because I had initiated the call; only I can drop the line. Due to the chance timing, the autodialer had answered my call. So I'm still connected to the autodialer, and hear it try to dial the next number, blissfully unaware that it doesn't even have a dial tone.
So I try another experiment. Though I'm still a bit scratchy with a sore throat, I whistle my best approximation of the ascending SIT tone. And immediately, the autodialer tries to drop the line and proceed with an
Some of the thin Canon models (n656U, n1220U, LiDE 20, etc.) are overall about the same size as a PowerBook, and they draw their power from the USB port; no need for a wall wart. No OSX drivers for the earlier models though...poke around Canon's site for details on what's compatible.
Scanning is slow though...I have to agree with others suggesting just using a digital camera of sufficient resolution.
Pixar did a few VERY brief Luxo shorts for, if memory serves me right, Sesame Street. I only remember "Light and Heavy" and "Surprise," but there may have been others.
If one has the budget, check out 80/20, or "The Industrial Erector Set" as they like to call it. I've seen this used for everything from simple workbenches to one-off conveyors and robots. Stronger, more adaptable, and better looking than Metro shelving.
It can be quite pricey though. The trick is to check out various surplus and metal scrap places for materials, or even pre-built units that can be adapted. There's also some off-brands of the same idea that may be cheaper, such as Bosch.
Baby pajamas could be fashioned with a cellphone, so anxious parents could call home from the theater to listen to their infant's breathing, check his heart rate or even sing a lullaby.
English translation:
Rather than being involved in their childrens' development and well-being, yuppie parents can simply rely even further on technology to be their babysitter. And as if their cell phones ringing during a movie wasn't bad enough, now they can be annoying at a whole new level by singing in the theatre!
You know...I'm really sick of hearing that phrase in conjunction with Babylon 5. It's never a "planned 5-year story" or "fully preconceived" or any other such term, no...always a "story arc." Like a story *line* just won't cut it, nope, two dimensions are better than one. And how is it that this is exclusive, B5-specific jargon? You'll never hear mention of the Star Wars story arc, for instance.
Try it some time...mention the Babylon 5 "story line" (rather than arc) to a foaming-at-the-mouth B5 fanboy and watch as they actually correct you. It's fun!
Now I just need to talk myself into spending the cash on a Wind Cheetah trike.
Have a look at the WizWheelz TerraTrike (www.wizwheelz.com). About a grand less than the Windcheetah and in some ways better laid out, IMHO (never been real fond of the Windcheetah's crotch joystick, for example).
(And no, I'm not affiliated in any way...I just think they make a really nice trike for the money.)
In this day and age of eroding rights and Protecting the Children(tm) and fear of stepping on the other guy's toes, this monument is indescribably brilliant. I'm amazed the city council had the stones to approve it. Every community should be so bold.
They mention raising "private funds" to build the thing, but unfortunately aren't real clear about how one goes about making a contribution.
Quit yer bitching. For several years, you were getting the equivalent of several t1s for $40 a month, rather than $4000 a month. Now, you're still getting a t1-worth of download bandwidth for that price. Still much better than $1k/mo, non?
About a year, which yes, was very cool. Then began the gradual de-featuring of the service, which is the part that has me peeved. I really don't think the limits they started imposing were motivated so much by technology as by marketing...sort of a bait-and-switch scheme to get users (now fat and happy with their static IP's and server priveleges) to upgrade to the company's "premium" business cable service (with those same features still intact) for considerably more money. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.
And if I had a T1 with billing pro-rated for downtime, and reliability was as bad as the cable service, it probably would work out to about the same $40/month. (humor)
Of course it's really a matter of one's local providers, but in my experience DSL has been the lesser of two evils...so far.
A few years back I subscribed to one of the first cable modem services. $40/month got you a 10 Mbps symmetrical connection (not a typo), fixed IP address, and a simple policy with regard to running servers: they won't provide tech support for this, but as long as the content is legal, knock yourself out. Service was phenomenal...was up and running three days after ordering, and outages were few and far between (perhaps 1 hour every 3-4 months).
This was too good to be true. Literally.
First, after about a year, the upload bandwidth was capped at 128 Kbps. So servers got real slow.
Then the server policy was changed. Legal content or not, servers were no longer allowed. I continued to run one anyway (not like a huge pr0n site or anything...just a portfolio and resume'), but knew it was just a matter of time before they'd throw a fit about that.
Then came the end of static IPs. Of course these change only infrequently under DHCP, but it's still a f--kwith, and it was largely just the principle of the thing, how the services offered kept eroding like this.
Over the course of all this (about four years) quality of service gradually declined, and costs went up. By the time I canceled, outages...sometimes big ones...were occurring every week or two. And now there's talk of a 20% rate hike.
Recently switched to DSL. Yes, it took forever to get installed. And yeah, bandwidth is limited to 386K down/128K up. But their server policy is sweet and simple and identical to what the cable provider originally promised: fixed IP, run any server you like as long as the content is legal. Uptime has been okayish...certainly better than cable was at the end, but not the amazing months-between-outages of the early-on cable service. Regardless...with a server policy like that, and the price, I'm keeping it.
Call me bitter, but I figure it's only a matter of time before they pull the same stunts as the cable people, picking away services one by one. Fortunately, there's a whole assortment of DSL providers to choose from, and if this one turns to The Dark Side, there's a good chance another will pick up the slack.
A third option has popped up here which looks interesting: Sprint Broadband, 10 Mbps symmetrical, comparable pricing, and wireless to boot. Looks really intriguing, but having just switched to DSL, I didn't want to dick around with it yet. I'd be curious to hear impressions from anyone who has the service...what's their policy with servers and IPs? How's the uptime?
Seems like you can't have your cake and eat it too. I can run my server now, but I do miss that cable bandwidth. If I had money pouring out my butt, I'd get *two* broadband services for speed and redundancy. Nexlan makes a somewhat affordable load-balancing router for this sort of thing...others will surely follow.
Naive question here: would we even know there are only 30,000 genes without having mapped the human genome? If not, I fail to see what sort of point they're trying to make.
The robot demo was done using Maya (this was reported a few months back in Computer Graphics World or 3D Artist, I forget which). They just applied certain design constraints (such as only using point light sources) in an effort to approximate the XBox capabilities. Maybe I'm just too anal-retentive, but I think it's kind of shifty that they didn't declare more prominently that this was a totally rigged and pre-rendered demo.
Of course, having seen some of the early stuff being done on the GeForce 3 (from which the XBox graphics are derived), I have little doubt that the final hardware could pull something off pretty close to the demo, but still...
Its not nearly as hard to push as the article makes it out, unless you're running over stick or cans or something.
Never fails to shock people when I tell them I use a reel mower. "Ohmigod! But those are so hard to push around!" is pretty much the universal response.
I think most folks have some memory of a rusty contraption in their parents' garage, and assume this is just the way these things work. Far from it in reality...a properly-maintained reel mower can be pushed along with finger pressure, and in general is easier to maneuver than most gas monstrosities (and easier to feed, and not as scary, etc.). But this is starting to sound like a religious rant. I just wish more people would realize that not every problem needs to be solved by throwing some big gas engine at it.
It seems that Slashdot editors wear this as some sort of badge ("we won't conform", "content instead of grammar/spelling") but, alas, this really makes Slashdot look like a bunch of asses in the final analysis.
Amen. While I honestly couldn't care less about the spelling/grammar of the user comments (it's an open forum, with fair representation for all regardless of education or familiarity with the language), the volume and magnitude of spelling errors that pass through editing for the stories themselves represent an appalling mockery of journalism. The content is key, of course, but spelling is every bit as important a matter of polish and presentation as, say, the design of a page for legibility. Misspelled words are distracting and may present an amateurish image, undermining the real message, whereas clarity through proper spelling will serve to reinforce that message. You'd think they could at least afford to hire a real editor.
Of course the standard response aimed at Spelling Nazis is that "English is a living language," and that the Internet will bring about profound changes, altering the very nature of how the language is used. The implication is that poor spellers are trailblazers, exempt from the seemingly arbitrary rules of spelling or grammar, boldly leading us into the future. That they are too "s00per 133t" to be bothered with such petty matters of the physical world; somehow better for their pathetic grasp of the language. I've seen it time and time again here. "Go learn Latin," they say.
Agreed, English is a living language, and the Internet will play a major role in its evolution, it's true....
But if you're so hip and 'net savvy, why not lead by example and profoundly change your God-awful spelling rather than expecting the whole world to sink to your level of ineptitude? Your "eliteness" is only a cover-up for your own sloth.
Er...to clarify...this wouldn't be a projected system...the image would be viewed on the 'scope screen, not on the wall.
For projection, it's a simple matter at that point to swap out the 'scope for a set of X/Y scanners to deflect a beam, as the required signals are largely the same (keeping in mind that the latter have a finine 'scan rate' and may need to be fed slower). But I'm cheap and can't afford all that gear, whereas I've already got a 'scope lying around...the concept could at least be tested there, then turned over to somebody with suitable projection equipment.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember reading about Moller's Skycar in Popular Science when I was a kid...about 30 years ago. It's a pretty well-documented fraud now.
This is EXACTLY what it does. The "more images for this article" section at the given link has a flowchart of the process...it's just a reboot and suspend.
Why on earth in OS X is the menu bar for any given application not attached to the application itself? Why is it fixed to the top of the screen, detached from the very thing it controls?
It's called "FItts' Law." The edge-of-screen menu is a much easier target to access. This has been covered to death before. Who wrote this article? A million monkeys with typewriters?
Bah. The iPod display is almost certainly fake. While they may have inserted an actual NCD into the case of the thing, it's not interfacing with the iPod's own display controller. If you follow the link to the ExtremeTech article, you'll see two views of the iPod (taken at different times - one has a second iPod set in front)...both show the track supposedly playing (triangle at top left), yet both show the time at 0:00 (very unlikely coincidence). Also, what is that segmented bar? I don't think it corresponds to anything the actual iPod UI would display. Am I wrong here?
The bulk of the heat of orbital reentry stems from the tangiental velocity (motion 'parallel' to the ground) that's necessary to maintain orbit in the first place. The suborbital flights lack this component...conceptually we can think of them as flying straight up and dropping straight down (in reality there's some downrange distance, but it's modest, obviously, compared to an orbital flight)...so the only heat to be dissipated is from the craft's nearly unimpeded downward acceleration in the uppermost atmosphere as it drops into progressively thicker air.
Terminal velocity will vary with each vehicle design and flight plan, but in all cases will be less than the tangiental velocity of an orbiting craft.
It will be toasty no doubt, but not so much as to require the use of exotic materials (thermal tiles as on the Shuttle, etc.)
This happened about two years ago:
You may have seen a gizmo called a "TeleZapper" advertised on late-night TV, which purports to scare telemarketers away. Understanding its operation requires just a little familiarity with telemarketing technology, which I'll attempt to distill here: the telemarketing firm has a system called an "autodialer" which works sequentially through a list of phone numbers in a marketing database. After dialing a number, the system listens for one of three things: a person's voice, in which case the system then either plays a prerecorded sales pitch or connects an unfortunate person working as an automaton to deliver an "interactive" sales pitch (this is why sometimes you answer your phone and get a pause followed by a telemarketer asking "Hello?" even though you're the one answering the phone); a fax tone, in which case the system might either deliver a fax advertisement, or remove the phone number from the database and move on to the next in the list; or it might hear what's called a "SIT tone," which is that series of three ascending beeps you hear when you've dialed a disconnected number...such numbers are of course of no value to the telemarketing firm, so upon hearing this, the system will delete the number from the database and move on. What the TeleZapper does is intercept incoming calls, play a SIT tone, then (if they don't disconnect, as an autodialer would) put the call through to your actual telephone. I've heard one can achieve much of the same effect simply by putting the SIT tone at the start of their answering machine message...I had a WAV file of the tone on my computer somewhere, and just never got around to doing that.
Anyway, with the bulk of the techno-babble out of the way...
It was around noon on a Saturday that I received one of those delightful prerecorded sales calls. But this one was different. Normally, telemarketers block their phone number from Caller ID, so if one subscribes to that service they'll only see "Unknown" when such a call arrives. For some reason, this one didn't...my phone displayed the number from which the autodialer was working. That's odd.
Normally I'd shrug and go back to whatever I was doing. But I was just getting over the flu, stuck at home on a rainy Saturday, bored to tears. I just had to try something. Something evil.
I selected the "Call Log" option on my phone, which brought up the last incoming number...the autodialer...then pressed "Dial." Of course, the number was busy...the autodialer was inflicting its annoying sales pitch on someone else at the moment, and would be doing that all day. And even if it wasn't, the autodialer isn't programmed to answer an incoming call. But...but...if I could time my call just right, I'd finish dialing just as the autodialer is picking up to make its next call. As I said, I'm stuck at home, nothing to do...so...hang up, redial, busy. Hang up, redial, busy. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then, after only about a minute of this...hang up, redial, sound of autodialer trying to dial the next number in its database! I managed to intercept it!
Like a dog that finally catches up with the rabbit, I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it now. I cleared my throat. Since this wasn't a SIT tone, nor a fax beep, the autodialer interpreted this as a voice "answering" the phone and delivered its prerecorded sales pitch. Feh.
When it got to the end of the recording, it then attempted to drop the line and dial the next number. However, in another one of those phone technicalities, this won't work because I had initiated the call; only I can drop the line. Due to the chance timing, the autodialer had answered my call. So I'm still connected to the autodialer, and hear it try to dial the next number, blissfully unaware that it doesn't even have a dial tone.
So I try another experiment. Though I'm still a bit scratchy with a sore throat, I whistle my best approximation of the ascending SIT tone. And immediately, the autodialer tries to drop the line and proceed with an
Some of the thin Canon models (n656U, n1220U, LiDE 20, etc.) are overall about the same size as a PowerBook, and they draw their power from the USB port; no need for a wall wart. No OSX drivers for the earlier models though...poke around Canon's site for details on what's compatible.
Scanning is slow though...I have to agree with others suggesting just using a digital camera of sufficient resolution.
Not the most flattering use of the word "but." As if to say most crippled people are drooling idiots or something?
How about Steve Ballmer and his Wet Armpit Stains?
Pixar did a few VERY brief Luxo shorts for, if memory serves me right, Sesame Street. I only remember "Light and Heavy" and "Surprise," but there may have been others.
If one has the budget, check out 80/20, or "The Industrial Erector Set" as they like to call it. I've seen this used for everything from simple workbenches to one-off conveyors and robots. Stronger, more adaptable, and better looking than Metro shelving.
It can be quite pricey though. The trick is to check out various surplus and metal scrap places for materials, or even pre-built units that can be adapted. There's also some off-brands of the same idea that may be cheaper, such as Bosch.
Baby pajamas could be fashioned with a cellphone, so anxious parents could call home from the theater to listen to their infant's breathing, check his heart rate or even sing a lullaby.
English translation:
Rather than being involved in their childrens' development and well-being, yuppie parents can simply rely even further on technology to be their babysitter. And as if their cell phones ringing during a movie wasn't bad enough, now they can be annoying at a whole new level by singing in the theatre!
That's it. I'm never going outside again.
The new iMacs all just have a CD-RW drive...no DVD or combo drive in ANY model. Bit of a disappointment there.
You know...I'm really sick of hearing that phrase in conjunction with Babylon 5. It's never a "planned 5-year story" or "fully preconceived" or any other such term, no...always a "story arc." Like a story *line* just won't cut it, nope, two dimensions are better than one. And how is it that this is exclusive, B5-specific jargon? You'll never hear mention of the Star Wars story arc, for instance.
Try it some time...mention the Babylon 5 "story line" (rather than arc) to a foaming-at-the-mouth B5 fanboy and watch as they actually correct you. It's fun!
Have a look at the WizWheelz TerraTrike (www.wizwheelz.com). About a grand less than the Windcheetah and in some ways better laid out, IMHO (never been real fond of the Windcheetah's crotch joystick, for example).
(And no, I'm not affiliated in any way...I just think they make a really nice trike for the money.)
They mention raising "private funds" to build the thing, but unfortunately aren't real clear about how one goes about making a contribution.
About a year, which yes, was very cool. Then began the gradual de-featuring of the service, which is the part that has me peeved. I really don't think the limits they started imposing were motivated so much by technology as by marketing...sort of a bait-and-switch scheme to get users (now fat and happy with their static IP's and server priveleges) to upgrade to the company's "premium" business cable service (with those same features still intact) for considerably more money. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.
And if I had a T1 with billing pro-rated for downtime, and reliability was as bad as the cable service, it probably would work out to about the same $40/month. (humor)
Of course it's really a matter of one's local providers, but in my experience DSL has been the lesser of two evils...so far.
A few years back I subscribed to one of the first cable modem services. $40/month got you a 10 Mbps symmetrical connection (not a typo), fixed IP address, and a simple policy with regard to running servers: they won't provide tech support for this, but as long as the content is legal, knock yourself out. Service was phenomenal...was up and running three days after ordering, and outages were few and far between (perhaps 1 hour every 3-4 months).
This was too good to be true. Literally.
First, after about a year, the upload bandwidth was capped at 128 Kbps. So servers got real slow.
Then the server policy was changed. Legal content or not, servers were no longer allowed. I continued to run one anyway (not like a huge pr0n site or anything...just a portfolio and resume'), but knew it was just a matter of time before they'd throw a fit about that.
Then came the end of static IPs. Of course these change only infrequently under DHCP, but it's still a f--kwith, and it was largely just the principle of the thing, how the services offered kept eroding like this.
Over the course of all this (about four years) quality of service gradually declined, and costs went up. By the time I canceled, outages...sometimes big ones...were occurring every week or two. And now there's talk of a 20% rate hike.
Recently switched to DSL. Yes, it took forever to get installed. And yeah, bandwidth is limited to 386K down/128K up. But their server policy is sweet and simple and identical to what the cable provider originally promised: fixed IP, run any server you like as long as the content is legal. Uptime has been okayish...certainly better than cable was at the end, but not the amazing months-between-outages of the early-on cable service. Regardless...with a server policy like that, and the price, I'm keeping it.
Call me bitter, but I figure it's only a matter of time before they pull the same stunts as the cable people, picking away services one by one. Fortunately, there's a whole assortment of DSL providers to choose from, and if this one turns to The Dark Side, there's a good chance another will pick up the slack.
A third option has popped up here which looks interesting: Sprint Broadband, 10 Mbps symmetrical, comparable pricing, and wireless to boot. Looks really intriguing, but having just switched to DSL, I didn't want to dick around with it yet. I'd be curious to hear impressions from anyone who has the service...what's their policy with servers and IPs? How's the uptime?
Seems like you can't have your cake and eat it too. I can run my server now, but I do miss that cable bandwidth. If I had money pouring out my butt, I'd get *two* broadband services for speed and redundancy. Nexlan makes a somewhat affordable load-balancing router for this sort of thing...others will surely follow.
Naive question here: would we even know there are only 30,000 genes without having mapped the human genome? If not, I fail to see what sort of point they're trying to make.
The robot demo was done using Maya (this was reported a few months back in Computer Graphics World or 3D Artist, I forget which). They just applied certain design constraints (such as only using point light sources) in an effort to approximate the XBox capabilities. Maybe I'm just too anal-retentive, but I think it's kind of shifty that they didn't declare more prominently that this was a totally rigged and pre-rendered demo.
Of course, having seen some of the early stuff being done on the GeForce 3 (from which the XBox graphics are derived), I have little doubt that the final hardware could pull something off pretty close to the demo, but still...
Or do they just post their immediate knee-jerk response to whatever they THINK the article is about? DUH, people!
Never fails to shock people when I tell them I use a reel mower. "Ohmigod! But those are so hard to push around!" is pretty much the universal response.
I think most folks have some memory of a rusty contraption in their parents' garage, and assume this is just the way these things work. Far from it in reality...a properly-maintained reel mower can be pushed along with finger pressure, and in general is easier to maneuver than most gas monstrosities (and easier to feed, and not as scary, etc.). But this is starting to sound like a religious rant. I just wish more people would realize that not every problem needs to be solved by throwing some big gas engine at it.
Does anyone else find this exceedingly comical? What's next...talk of h4x0r d00dz on CNN?
It seems that Slashdot editors wear this as some sort of badge ("we won't conform", "content instead of grammar/spelling") but, alas, this really makes Slashdot look like a bunch of asses in the final analysis.
Amen. While I honestly couldn't care less about the spelling/grammar of the user comments (it's an open forum, with fair representation for all regardless of education or familiarity with the language), the volume and magnitude of spelling errors that pass through editing for the stories themselves represent an appalling mockery of journalism. The content is key, of course, but spelling is every bit as important a matter of polish and presentation as, say, the design of a page for legibility. Misspelled words are distracting and may present an amateurish image, undermining the real message, whereas clarity through proper spelling will serve to reinforce that message. You'd think they could at least afford to hire a real editor.
Of course the standard response aimed at Spelling Nazis is that "English is a living language," and that the Internet will bring about profound changes, altering the very nature of how the language is used. The implication is that poor spellers are trailblazers, exempt from the seemingly arbitrary rules of spelling or grammar, boldly leading us into the future. That they are too "s00per 133t" to be bothered with such petty matters of the physical world; somehow better for their pathetic grasp of the language. I've seen it time and time again here. "Go learn Latin," they say.
Agreed, English is a living language, and the Internet will play a major role in its evolution, it's true....
But if you're so hip and 'net savvy, why not lead by example and profoundly change your God-awful spelling rather than expecting the whole world to sink to your level of ineptitude? Your "eliteness" is only a cover-up for your own sloth.
Rant off. Thank you.
Er...to clarify...this wouldn't be a projected system...the image would be viewed on the 'scope screen, not on the wall.
For projection, it's a simple matter at that point to swap out the 'scope for a set of X/Y scanners to deflect a beam, as the required signals are largely the same (keeping in mind that the latter have a finine 'scan rate' and may need to be fed slower). But I'm cheap and can't afford all that gear, whereas I've already got a 'scope lying around...the concept could at least be tested there, then turned over to somebody with suitable projection equipment.