The problem with your bankcards is that their magnetic coding wears off as it is used.
These are optical codes which are printed on the cards, and I'm guessing the reason they need so many cards is that most of the space is there for redundancy- kind of like how CDs have redundant tracks in case on of them gets scratched up. They shouldn't have the same problem, although you probably wouldn't want to carry them around in your wallet.
Yeah, but those were pretty useless because all they did was play back. This one actually allows you to record, which it then digitizes.
Still not that useful, but if you were trying to record a seminar/interview or something and were just going to convert it to MP3 anyway, this'd be the easiest way to go.
Maybe you should read the patent first. None of the things mentioned in the patent are in any way depicted in any of these examples. The creater only claims it to be an improvement of previous devices, not an entirely new concept.
He never claimed the concept was new. He refers to the Twiddler on the site, for example. It's just that it has several improvements that none, not even yours, have had to date.
It does not need to be supported by your fingers to hold it, but rather hooks over your hand. It uses the middle part of your fingers to type as well as the tips. It requires barely any movement to press a key, reducing strain on the hand.
For these improvements he got a patent. Not the concept of a one-handed keyboard.
I've been using a Speedpad for a while now, and for many games I would never go back. But for any that require more than 14 buttons (and there are quite a few) it just doesn't cut it. Sure it's got rudimentary chording, but unfortunately that tends to get in the way in many situations. Some games are unplayable with it. Others work wonderfully.
And unfortunately it's got many of the same problems that normal keyboards have when you press too many buttons at once...
It technically should prevent RSIs, seeing as it leaves your hand in its natural position, and is designed so it hooks over your hand, making it so your fingers don't have to support the weight of the device (unlike similar products on the market today). Read, the page. And the patent.
HDTVs are often letterbox size (and if you're going to pay that much, you might as well get one that is) but not all of them are. The difference between HD and normal TV is that the image is digital and doesn't degrade as easy, the image is a higher resolution, and it doesn't use interlacing (it looks nicer up close).
Get a special DVD player and it decodes DVDs at a higher quality for HDTVs.
Without the FCC there'd be no regulations on the use of public airwaves and electrical interference, and you wouldn't be able to recieve radio or television stations anyway seeing as everyone and their brother Jim would be trying to transmit to the same frequencies.
Heck, if they wanted to create a regulation that all TVs have to be shielded from TV signals they could...:P
If they're small enough to fit on a floppy disk, why not just send them as email attachments? That is presuming your school has student email accounts of course...
Not all sites use cookies. Not all sites have user accounts. You'd be surprised at the number of sites that only have one person that ever accesses their data. If you think banks and e-commerce are the only sites on the web that worry about defacement then you're very wrong.
And with the CD-Rom trick, would you store the configuration files on the CD as well? If not, then couldn't a defacer simply change those configs to serve their files off of the hard drive? If the web server is incapable of being written to, period, then RAM disks would be the only way they could do anything. Restart the machine and you're up and running good as new. None of the configs have been changed.
It's odd how sometimes mods become more popular than the original games. Try playing Tribes 1. Dozens of Renegades servers. Dozens of Annihilation servers. Dozens of Ultra servers. Maybe one dozen base servers.
How many people play Counter-Strike each day? Compare that to how many people play vanilla Half-Life.
The best mods are those that aren't even recognizable as the original games. A great example is Thievery UT, which turns Unreal Tournament into a multi-player version of Thief: The Dark Project. (It's unfortunately Windows only, but the dev team has offered to share the code with those who want to port it...)
Unfortunately Sturgeon's Law applies to Mods... 90% of them are crud.
I believe by "Enron Style Auditing" they mean not letting anyone look at how they came up with the results.
The issue is that a business unrelated to the government is running the machines that are keeping count, and not letting anybody know how the numbers were collected/catalogued.
Oh no, that's not suspicious at all. They're just whining because nobody can prove to them that they lost...
What, you think that products are priced proportionally to how much they cost to make? They're priced by how much someone wants them, not how much it costs the company.
Take music for example. CDs cost more than cassette tapes in stores, yet cost the labels significantly less to make. It all has to do with demand- who would buy something less convenient, lower quality, and more expensive?
Remember when 4x was fast? At least then you could buy a CD-Rom drive that didn't sound like the neighbors are mowing their lawn...
Who needs force feedback controllers? I've got a laptop with a high speed CD-Rom drive... good for simulating such vibrations as a car engine or a small earthquake!
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The problem with your bankcards is that their magnetic coding wears off as it is used.
These are optical codes which are printed on the cards, and I'm guessing the reason they need so many cards is that most of the space is there for redundancy- kind of like how CDs have redundant tracks in case on of them gets scratched up. They shouldn't have the same problem, although you probably wouldn't want to carry them around in your wallet.
Jedi Outcast was made by Raven Software, not LucasArts. LucasArts just published it.
The article says that the gyroscope drains batteries rather quickly... thus the optical part.
Air motion is activated using a button on the bottom, either temporary or locking it in place. It only works when you want it to.
Yeah, but those were pretty useless because all they did was play back. This one actually allows you to record, which it then digitizes. Still not that useful, but if you were trying to record a seminar/interview or something and were just going to convert it to MP3 anyway, this'd be the easiest way to go.
Those don't record using a tape recorder. This one does. That's what's new.
Maybe you should read the patent first. None of the things mentioned in the patent are in any way depicted in any of these examples. The creater only claims it to be an improvement of previous devices, not an entirely new concept.
Yet another person who didn't read the site...
He never claimed the concept was new. He refers to the Twiddler on the site, for example. It's just that it has several improvements that none, not even yours, have had to date.
It does not need to be supported by your fingers to hold it, but rather hooks over your hand. It uses the middle part of your fingers to type as well as the tips. It requires barely any movement to press a key, reducing strain on the hand.
For these improvements he got a patent. Not the concept of a one-handed keyboard.
I've been using a Speedpad for a while now, and for many games I would never go back. But for any that require more than 14 buttons (and there are quite a few) it just doesn't cut it. Sure it's got rudimentary chording, but unfortunately that tends to get in the way in many situations. Some games are unplayable with it. Others work wonderfully.
And unfortunately it's got many of the same problems that normal keyboards have when you press too many buttons at once...
A decent product, but it could be much better.
...for being one of the few people on /. that seem to read the links anymore... now if only the rest of the people would do the same...
It technically should prevent RSIs, seeing as it leaves your hand in its natural position, and is designed so it hooks over your hand, making it so your fingers don't have to support the weight of the device (unlike similar products on the market today). Read, the page. And the patent.
HDTVs are often letterbox size (and if you're going to pay that much, you might as well get one that is) but not all of them are. The difference between HD and normal TV is that the image is digital and doesn't degrade as easy, the image is a higher resolution, and it doesn't use interlacing (it looks nicer up close).
Get a special DVD player and it decodes DVDs at a higher quality for HDTVs.
You've never heard of the FCC?
:P
Without the FCC there'd be no regulations on the use of public airwaves and electrical interference, and you wouldn't be able to recieve radio or television stations anyway seeing as everyone and their brother Jim would be trying to transmit to the same frequencies.
Heck, if they wanted to create a regulation that all TVs have to be shielded from TV signals they could...
If they're small enough to fit on a floppy disk, why not just send them as email attachments? That is presuming your school has student email accounts of course...
Frankly I think Real Ultimate Power is getting kind of old. But maybe that's because I've got friends that make references to it every five minutes...
Microsoft already "bought them out".
If you mean by the fact that recipes can't be patented or copyrighted, yes I suppose they are.
;P
But hey, this is Slashdot- it would have never been posted if it didn't include the words "open source" somewhere in the article...
Why do you need an entire cookbook to write "A bag of chips and a frozen pizza?"
In all seriousness, I don't know how useful this'd be, but I'd print out a copy just for the heck of it...
Not all sites use cookies. Not all sites have user accounts. You'd be surprised at the number of sites that only have one person that ever accesses their data. If you think banks and e-commerce are the only sites on the web that worry about defacement then you're very wrong.
And with the CD-Rom trick, would you store the configuration files on the CD as well? If not, then couldn't a defacer simply change those configs to serve their files off of the hard drive? If the web server is incapable of being written to, period, then RAM disks would be the only way they could do anything. Restart the machine and you're up and running good as new. None of the configs have been changed.
It's odd how sometimes mods become more popular than the original games. Try playing Tribes 1. Dozens of Renegades servers. Dozens of Annihilation servers. Dozens of Ultra servers. Maybe one dozen base servers.
How many people play Counter-Strike each day? Compare that to how many people play vanilla Half-Life.
The best mods are those that aren't even recognizable as the original games. A great example is Thievery UT, which turns Unreal Tournament into a multi-player version of Thief: The Dark Project. (It's unfortunately Windows only, but the dev team has offered to share the code with those who want to port it...)
Unfortunately Sturgeon's Law applies to Mods... 90% of them are crud.
Yeah... I kind of figure that was obvious with the use of the word "devices"...
You paid $80 to save about 20 seconds recording a cd? Is your time really worth $14,400/hr?
Whoa... you might want to rethink that logic.
Unless where you're from CR-Rs are single-use disposable devices...
I believe by "Enron Style Auditing" they mean not letting anyone look at how they came up with the results.
The issue is that a business unrelated to the government is running the machines that are keeping count, and not letting anybody know how the numbers were collected/catalogued.
Oh no, that's not suspicious at all. They're just whining because nobody can prove to them that they lost...
What, you think that products are priced proportionally to how much they cost to make? They're priced by how much someone wants them, not how much it costs the company.
Take music for example. CDs cost more than cassette tapes in stores, yet cost the labels significantly less to make. It all has to do with demand- who would buy something less convenient, lower quality, and more expensive?
Welcome to capitalism my friend.
Remember when 4x was fast? At least then you could buy a CD-Rom drive that didn't sound like the neighbors are mowing their lawn...
Who needs force feedback controllers? I've got a laptop with a high speed CD-Rom drive... good for simulating such vibrations as a car engine or a small earthquake!