I just got back from Siggraph, and I had a chance to try the system out. Indeed it did seem to be one of the most popular things to check out at Siggraph. I suppose it helped that as soon as people experienced it, they often busted out laughing.
Anyway, the experience consisted of putting on these modified headphones (speakers were removed; electrodes were added behind the ears), wearing the remote-control pack, and waiting for someone to twist the joystick. When that happened, it felt like the floor was being tilted under you, and you wanted to lean to one side or another (depending upon the joystick action).
With the electrode placement as is, it only controls your left-right sense of balance. I asked and they suggested that a differently-placed pair of electrodes could control forward-back, but it's not as effective.
The electrodes tingle a bit when the current is applied. A fried who tried it found this uncomfortable. Someone else said it produced a strange taste in their mouth.
Another demo showed you a video of a racing game, and the electrode current was synchronized to the left and right turns, making you "fall" towards the outside of the turns. Kind of interesting, but the effect was not really powerful enough as the car movement would have you believe.
The final demo just played music and synchronized the electrode current to the music beat, making you move back and forth with the music. This one really just had me leaning my head mostly.
As the demoer pointed out, the sensation is only suggestive, not controlling. It is possible to ignore it if you concentrate. But it does feel very "natural" (like I said, it feels like the floor is being tilted under you).
It's a cool gadget. Main issue now is that there have been no long-term studies of applying this kind of electrical stimulation. Like everything else, I can't help but think that it's somehow not good for you in excess.
He isn't so much cooling his apartment as he is redistributing the heat. The goal I suppose is to be cool in the living room, not the kitchen. So he's essentially taking the "cold" from the kitchen and moving it to the living room.
Yes, he's creating more heat in the kitchen, but he's not sitting there, so that's not of greatest importance.
Yes, it's not very efficient, but the goal was ultimate cheapness, no efficiency.
He should perhaps just get a little aquarium pump and pipe the water from a coil inside his fridge to the coil behind the fan in a closed loop. Then find a way to duct the fridge hot air outside, and now the fridge is an AC unit.
Only potential problem is that the inside of the fridge may become too warm for food storage if you keep removing the "cool" from it.
Having become so enamored with IBM PPC processors while developing the XBOX360, Microsoft has decided to switch future Windows development over to this platform.
I've tried both the 3M Renaissance vertical mouse and the pistol mouse. The 3M wins because you can rest your hand on the base. The pistol mouse loses because you can't do that (and still use the trigger).
I'm using the 3M mouse, and have found it to eliminate my wrist pain. The only drawback is the lack of a good scrolling input. I've seen another vertical mouse that might solve this problem too. It's more of a regular design, just tilted 90 degrees to the right along the longitudinal axis.
You can bet that Microsoft's PPC CPU will have a longer instruction pipeline (doing more steps to process each instruction, but doing less work in each step) in order to reach the higher clock speed. It's like the Pentium 4, where clock-for-clock it's slower than the Pentium 3 (or Pentium M).
Just because its clock speed is higher doesn't mean it's "better". Because of the pipeline change, it MUST run faster just in order to keep up.
Of course longer pipelines have their penalties as well: mispredicted branches hurt more, and scheduling becomes more complex.
My internet connection dies every month or so. Often, just resetting the cable modem fixes it. Sometimes it's an area-wide problem that lasts a few hours or more.
I've purchased a new cable modem, but it still requires resetting now and again.
With this kind of reliability, I'm not ready to go to VOIP. When's the last time your landline was down?
Or they can use a method similar to the cameras on racing cars: Just place a roll of clear film over the panels. As the film over the panels gets dirty, just roll out some fresh clean film.
Alternately, instead of a roll, you can use a few sheets, and provide a mechanism to peel off dirty sheets. Perhaps tiny rockets or maybe grappling hooks attached to a corner?:-)
Again, the idea of manufacturers always "taking a loss on the hardware" is a vast oversimplification.
Initially, most game hardware is sold at a loss. However, massive cost-reduction is going on throughout the life of the console. In addition, so is price-cutting. At certain times in a console's life, it is sold at a loss, and at other times, it's sold at a profit. The final picture is never clear until all the chips are counted.
Wow, if US game companies put so much effort and resources into making a GAME work correctly, imagine how much effort and resources they'll put into making the ELECTION work correctly!
Actually, the size of ATX machines has been an issue for me. I liked the small minitower AT machines that you used to be able to find. With ATX, that form factor is no longer possible; you have to go to microATX to get small cases (which is actually not a problem anymore, now that motherboards have most ports built in).
Personally, I have no trouble working on small cases. I don't like huge noisy boxes (or even small noisy boxes).
There seems to be very little about BTX that's actually much different from ATX. There's no reason you couldn't have a well-designed ATX case that works as well as a BTX case. I suppose all Intel is really doing is tightening down the spec even more, in order to pin down the processor location for better cooling. Beyond that, it's mostly a mirror-image of ATX.
The microATX case that Anandtech looks at does not appear to be a very well designed one in terms of cooling. Rather, it seems like the designer just went for the "more fans must be better" approach.
I don't know why Anandtech bothered measuring the full-ATX HTPC case (with a microATX MB); it's such a rare item, few people will benefit from seeing the results.
The light source for a projector needs to be as close to a "point" source as possible. This is (part of) the reason that bulbs for modern projectors are so expensive; there's actually quite a bit of sophisticated engineering to make that much light come from so small a volume. The other reason is that Philips patented the technology (UHP), and they're currently the only manufacturer, I believe.
Slashdot Mirror
So finding the "best" news will be a tough job.
You mean that they basically copied airplane RC "radios", which people had attached to computers long before Nintendo dreamed of 3D?
I just got back from Siggraph, and I had a chance to try the system out. Indeed it did seem to be one of the most popular things to check out at Siggraph. I suppose it helped that as soon as people experienced it, they often busted out laughing.
Anyway, the experience consisted of putting on these modified headphones (speakers were removed; electrodes were added behind the ears), wearing the remote-control pack, and waiting for someone to twist the joystick. When that happened, it felt like the floor was being tilted under you, and you wanted to lean to one side or another (depending upon the joystick action).
With the electrode placement as is, it only controls your left-right sense of balance. I asked and they suggested that a differently-placed pair of electrodes could control forward-back, but it's not as effective.
The electrodes tingle a bit when the current is applied. A fried who tried it found this uncomfortable. Someone else said it produced a strange taste in their mouth.
Another demo showed you a video of a racing game, and the electrode current was synchronized to the left and right turns, making you "fall" towards the outside of the turns. Kind of interesting, but the effect was not really powerful enough as the car movement would have you believe.
The final demo just played music and synchronized the electrode current to the music beat, making you move back and forth with the music. This one really just had me leaning my head mostly.
As the demoer pointed out, the sensation is only suggestive, not controlling. It is possible to ignore it if you concentrate. But it does feel very "natural" (like I said, it feels like the floor is being tilted under you).
It's a cool gadget. Main issue now is that there have been no long-term studies of applying this kind of electrical stimulation. Like everything else, I can't help but think that it's somehow not good for you in excess.
> She can only sit though at present...
Hey, she only needs to sit and look alive to be very useful -- so long as she can do her sitting in a car, in the HOV lane!
I guess it might be an issue if she's sitting around in your parked car all the time. She'd need to be able to hide, too.
And it might also be a problem if lots of people start to do this with the same model android.
Is there an alternate tracker available anywhere? This one seems to be down.
All hail the power of Slashdot!
Here's one way to do it, based upon time-of-flight for a light pulse:
t ml
http://www.3dvsystems.com/technology/technology.h
I believe the previous common number of lights was TWO.
Check his build log. He has had several HD failures.
I'd recommend he put some space between his drives.
He isn't so much cooling his apartment as he is redistributing the heat. The goal I suppose is to be cool in the living room, not the kitchen. So he's essentially taking the "cold" from the kitchen and moving it to the living room.
Yes, he's creating more heat in the kitchen, but he's not sitting there, so that's not of greatest importance.
Yes, it's not very efficient, but the goal was ultimate cheapness, no efficiency.
He should perhaps just get a little aquarium pump and pipe the water from a coil inside his fridge to the coil behind the fan in a closed loop. Then find a way to duct the fridge hot air outside, and now the fridge is an AC unit.
Only potential problem is that the inside of the fridge may become too warm for food storage if you keep removing the "cool" from it.
Having become so enamored with IBM PPC processors while developing the XBOX360, Microsoft has decided to switch future Windows development over to this platform.
Okay, maybe not, but it'd be a hoot.
No no no. You need to put POINTS behind each of your numbers!
Like this:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
You have hit the nail on the head!
I've tried both the 3M Renaissance vertical mouse and the pistol mouse. The 3M wins because you can rest your hand on the base. The pistol mouse loses because you can't do that (and still use the trigger).
I'm using the 3M mouse, and have found it to eliminate my wrist pain. The only drawback is the lack of a good scrolling input. I've seen another vertical mouse that might solve this problem too. It's more of a regular design, just tilted 90 degrees to the right along the longitudinal axis.
You can bet that Microsoft's PPC CPU will have a longer instruction pipeline (doing more steps to process each instruction, but doing less work in each step) in order to reach the higher clock speed. It's like the Pentium 4, where clock-for-clock it's slower than the Pentium 3 (or Pentium M).
Just because its clock speed is higher doesn't mean it's "better". Because of the pipeline change, it MUST run faster just in order to keep up.
Of course longer pipelines have their penalties as well: mispredicted branches hurt more, and scheduling becomes more complex.
Wow! And the landing gear isn't even fully down yet!
> I imagine it would just be a simple task for most slashdotters to patch their kernels...
/. laugh I've had in a while!
We have a winner!
Best
I'm inclined to agree with the last paragraph of the above hypothesis. I think it's the presence of air outside the balloon that makes the difference.
My internet connection dies every month or so. Often, just resetting the cable modem fixes it. Sometimes it's an area-wide problem that lasts a few hours or more.
I've purchased a new cable modem, but it still requires resetting now and again.
With this kind of reliability, I'm not ready to go to VOIP. When's the last time your landline was down?
You missed the details.
He didn't modify the Mini case at all, so that he can completely undo the setup and still have a pristine Mini.
In addition, he didn't want to burden the Mini power supply to power two 3.5" 7200 RPM drives.
And of course, he wanted a Mac, not a PC box.
Then you buy the $10 PS/2 -> USB adapter from Frys.
Or they can use a method similar to the cameras on racing cars: Just place a roll of clear film over the panels. As the film over the panels gets dirty, just roll out some fresh clean film.
:-)
Alternately, instead of a roll, you can use a few sheets, and provide a mechanism to peel off dirty sheets. Perhaps tiny rockets or maybe grappling hooks attached to a corner?
No problem; just put an appropriate warning label on the bike.
Again, the idea of manufacturers always "taking a loss on the hardware" is a vast oversimplification.
Initially, most game hardware is sold at a loss. However, massive cost-reduction is going on throughout the life of the console. In addition, so is price-cutting. At certain times in a console's life, it is sold at a loss, and at other times, it's sold at a profit. The final picture is never clear until all the chips are counted.
Wow, if US game companies put so much effort and resources into making a GAME work correctly, imagine how much effort and resources they'll put into making the ELECTION work correctly!
Actually, the size of ATX machines has been an issue for me. I liked the small minitower AT machines that you used to be able to find. With ATX, that form factor is no longer possible; you have to go to microATX to get small cases (which is actually not a problem anymore, now that motherboards have most ports built in).
Personally, I have no trouble working on small cases. I don't like huge noisy boxes (or even small noisy boxes).
There seems to be very little about BTX that's actually much different from ATX. There's no reason you couldn't have a well-designed ATX case that works as well as a BTX case. I suppose all Intel is really doing is tightening down the spec even more, in order to pin down the processor location for better cooling. Beyond that, it's mostly a mirror-image of ATX.
The microATX case that Anandtech looks at does not appear to be a very well designed one in terms of cooling. Rather, it seems like the designer just went for the "more fans must be better" approach.
I don't know why Anandtech bothered measuring the full-ATX HTPC case (with a microATX MB); it's such a rare item, few people will benefit from seeing the results.
The light source for a projector needs to be as close to a "point" source as possible. This is (part of) the reason that bulbs for modern projectors are so expensive; there's actually quite a bit of sophisticated engineering to make that much light come from so small a volume. The other reason is that Philips patented the technology (UHP), and they're currently the only manufacturer, I believe.