Sony is out of touch with the market. This thing wouldn't last a week in
my kids hands. Toys should survive normal usage and the Go looks fragile . I think
clamshell designs are more durable, and keep the screens from being broken or
scratched when they're dropped out of the car onto concrete. Will it come in a pretty pink?.
I think Sony is trying for the upscale, male geek, with lots of money. I'll pass.
In Nelson's Voice: Ha Ha.
I was laid off from NCAR early this year after making noise about; 1 Sending DOD developed software to China, 2; Exposing unsecured DOD data and systems to the Internet and 3; Billing the US
Army for developing systems for the French Navy.
I wrote e-mails, I visited managers. I was a trouble maker, so, after 18 years of service, they said there was no longer any work for me at NCAR.
I can still obtain access to live, sensitive data from Army bases and the Pentagon through NCAR web sites. Investigators, Auditors, please look me up. I'm using the same ID I've used for 35 years. I'd be happy to expose the wide open holes I know about as long as the law is on my side.
I worked as a engineer for NCAR, building and installing high-tech weather systems for the FAA (AWRP) for over a decade in the mid-90's-00's.
I found the FAA leadership is filled with bunches of Republican partisan hacks who spent their time telling AL Gore Jokes in their technical meetings rather than getting things done. It literally takes them 10 or more years to get technology to their employees in the trenches. (officially). Because of upper mgt incompetence, the local level tech is a free-for-all, running in the closet. When I installed our sanctioned equipment in the Long Island FAA TRACON, I found a shift supervisor had brought his old PC in and got an AOL account so that the "super secure war room" could see what the weather was like outside as they managed 40% of the air traffic in the US. The FAA literally watches the weather channel with the sound off and competes with all the every day Joes for Nexrad images on accu weather. One of our (NCAR) systems under rigid performance evaluation at the FAA Technical Center (NJ) kept "hanging" several times per week, and we received poor evaluations and threats of funding cuts. I finally discovered that the reason for the failures was one of their staff had opened a shell terminal, ran Mosaic (remember that) and went porn surfing.(up our dedicated 64kbps line back to NCAR in Boulder and out through our.edu POP). The FAA has lots of ad-hoc systems installed everywhere. Can anyone say "Pass your USB key over here Bob - Ya gotta watch this".
Maybe Obama's administration will clean the rot out of the FAA. I lost any hope many years ago.
Is what I installed in my Colorado home, in place of a real fireplace. We lose power for days at a time every decade or so, often during the worst and coldest weather. I chose a gas fireplace which requires no electricity to operate and is designed to dump most of its heat into the room.
The gas fireplace, gas range, and gas hot water heater keep us warm, comfortably fed and clean during extended power outages and are useful otherwise.
The fireplace I installed has a convective loop heat exchanger/chamber surrounding the fire box and most of the heat flows into the room. When the power's on, it has an optional blower that improves its efficiency to over 80%. My wife really likes having a lit fireplace. Animals and humans alike gather around and bake them selves to their toasty delight, regardless of the presence of electricity.
About a billion people in China watched their governments extensive efforts try to improve the air quality and environment in Bejing for the Olympics. Based on what CCTV9 news is reporting, there's a huge increase in the public's awareness of and interest in environmental issues within China.
Back in my Vaxen days some users used to program their VT200 terminals so they could login with one key press. Ahh, those were the good 'ol days. Now people don't even know what the "break" key is for. Noobs.:-)
I've never found a keyboard that didn't have nose
hair trapped in it. Anyone who has access to your keyboard can have your DNA and a time history of substance use.
I'd say forensic keyboard analysis is a gold mine.:)
what's the tactile typing response on those advance touchscreen keyboards of the future
Simple. Like the Wiimote when it points at a button on the screen, the touchscreen will "thump"
using an inertial device when the pressure threshold is reached and the keystroke is registered. It's very effective.
However, I hate finger prints and smudges on my
screen. Using a stylus for long periods gives me cramps. IMO, This is the fundimental flaw with touchscreen technology.
The need for keyboards with separate, physical keys will be around for a long time.
So, Hatch a been caught distributing "stolen" IP.
At $750 per infraction, I would presume Hatch owes Milonic Solutions a large bundle of cash. Hatch distrubutd this IP to everyone who visited his site.
This seems like it would make a great example for illustrating the problems with this new proposal.
If people understood they could find themselves a criminal for visiting a Senator's web site, perhaps more reasonable IP laws will come of it.
I'm a day 1 G1G1 donor and my XO had the dreaded sticky control key
about 45 days after purchase. I tried cleaning underneath the membrane
with no luck, so I remapped the sticky key, but soon other keys
started to stick. One of the ideas presented on the olpc wiki was to replace the
original keyboard with an ultra-mini, after-market USB keyboard [http://www.instructables.com] mounted internally.
Since I have basic shop skills and know how to solder I did just
that, spending about $35 for the keyboard and about 4 hours making the
modifications. I couldn't be happier with this modification. The action
of real keys doubles the usability of the XO, especially for people like
me who have big, clumsy hands. I used to dread having to enter enter
text on the old keyboard. The new mini keyboard is a joy to use and I
can type in my normal style and rate. Highly recommended if you are up
to the task.
I'm personally quite disappointed in both the OLPC manufacturers as well as the
response by some of the G1G1 donors. The faulty XO-1 keyboard may be the downfall of the
whole project and all we in the US can do is whine, and hope a factory in China can
fix the problem.
I fully disassembled my original XO keyboard and found the sticky key
problem is clearly a design flaw in the way the two membranes are held
apart. The bottom membrane has a serpentine array of traces which are
exposed to contacts attached to the upper membrane and are arranged in small groups under each key. The top membrane has small circular contacts,
with clusters of 2 -17 contacts under each key Separating the membranes,
and holding the contacts apart from the traces below, is a pattern
of rubbery glue, printed into linear traces between key rows and small diamond shaped
dots internal to the rectangular groupings of contacts above. Most keys have an array of 4 contact dots with a 2mm, diamond
shaped spot of glue directly between all 4 contacts. However the Ctrl,
both Hand and Alt keys as well as the ] key have 6 contact dots with
only 2 super tiny dots of glue to hold the membranes apart. Apparently these keys
are the ones which stick the most often. For these keys, the designer placed the center pair
of contacts in the group of 6, directly over a trace below with little separating
glue. The only possible repair would be to separate the membranes and place additional dots of glue over the traces on the sticky keys. OLPC need to come clean about this mistake and build a better, more robust keyboard and make them available to all XO-1 owners.
(PS. This message was entered on my hacked XO, under Opera)
Dig a bit deeper (geekcorp.org front page) and you'll find Wayan Vota left Geekcorps Sept 13 2007 "to direct an online microenterprise mentoring program". "Wayan Vota says he "... develops unique, successful marketing campaigns and engaging, authoritative online content for multiple distribution channels." (wayan.com)
2006: Wayan registers olpctalks.com. Wayback shows it reporting unbiased OLPC news.
Wayan registers olpcnews.com in Aug 2007
Wayan quits Geekcorps in Sept 2007 to start a new job as "editor of the OLPCNews blog"
His new site is now a OLPC bad news site. WTF? Executive to blog editor. Yeah. Right.
Perhaps the truth is spreading.
Watermarks might be just the thing to let DVR's distinguish Show from commercial.
Even if Tivo wouldn't build this in, a small standalone device could listen for the watermarks
and send pause and record commands via the IR remote interface.
Paciolan, Inc., a leading provider of online ticketing technology, has chosen IBM eServer(TM) p650 systems to increase ticket sale processing speed. Following completion of a thorough benchmark analysis, IBM has projected that Paciolan's clients will have the ability to process more than 100,000 tickets per hour.
Channel 4 (CBS) in Denver has also had this to say:
The Rockies did say it was blocking some IP addresses due to suspicious or malicious activity.
100,000 tickets per hour is about 28 tickets per second. I'd imagine they got tens of thousands of hits in the
first few seconds after they opened the sale.
As someone who has a 52"HD TV and has both the GameCube and the Wii, I can assure everyone that
the Wii's graphics are better than the GC. The Wii provides a very clean 480p signal from it's
component output. I have GC games that turn on more effects when played on the Wii, so Gamecube
games actually may look and run even better on the Wii. Nintendo's current hardware is very compact,
quiet, and uses little energy, unlike other consoles I own. I find the graphics a Wii or a GC produce
are far from "terrible", and often are more pleasant than the graphics produced by higher resolution systems,
especially PC's.
The administration claims they're wiretapping only the terrorists and their contacts. The known facts are perfectly consistent with the government's explanations. So what reason does anybody have to doubt these claims?
I think most people don't realize, that in aggregate, you are better off without health insurance
Wow. Perhaps you are trolling, but if not maybe this will literally save your life.
My wife works in health care. People without insurance go without care unless ones life
is in immediate danger. Cancers go untreated, limbs do not get re-attached, faces do not get re-constructed,
chronic conditions go untreated. The stories she brings home are heart breaking, and tragic.
If health insurance continues to creep up in price, I simply won't pay and I will take my chances
One question. Who will pay when you need life saving treatment, and you can't afford it?
My wife deals with people who expect her and her clinic to work for free, just because they
have a "need". Often they drive better cars, and make more money than her, but expect service for free. She's been mistreated so often by patients with unreasonable expectations, I'm bitter.
Why should my family suffer when you refuse to pay for your own life saving treatment? When someone treats you (for ethical reasons), and you go bankrupt, they lose. Clinics close, people
go without. One car accident, one bacterial infection, one lump is all it will take to make your happy life turn tragic. You think you're losing out at $20/mo for health coverage? What a fool you are.
That's why I use paper punch tape. I have some software I wrote in 1975 sitting safely in a shoe box.
It is a tad slow to decode done by hand, but it's Safe!
Watch a pianist play a complex piece. Now try to imagine trying to communicate the information necessary to duplicate the performance
via a Brain-Computer interface. Unless the interface can rival the complexity and capacity
of our brains connections to our hands, it will never be able to outperform the manipulation of things with our fingers. Although typing or playing a piano is a learned skill, evolution has
pre-wired our brains to make these amazing feats possible.
I can easily imagine a brain interface having hundreds of inputs, but unless we can find a way to
attach them to specific nerves, performing specific functions, control will always be clumsy. Our brain is really not that good at
re-wiring our physical control circuitry. It does happen, but the degree of control is much less that what was originally
hard-wired in.
Brain-Computer interfacing is more likely to provide comparable capabilities by connecting to the body's peripheral nervous system, not to
the brain itself. I see the possibilities of wiring into the nerves of a severed limb, but until we can design and grow biological structures,
all we're going to get is very simple, slow and limited interfaces.
Is most games are purchased at Walmart or other stores where the staff are completely clueless about their
stock of games. People are forced to use popularity, or familiarity as a way to decide what to purchase.
This one reason why re-hashes and Movie or Cartoon character games are often good sellers regardless of how good the game actually is.
Another problem is almost all game reviews are authored by 20-something males. I have found they have great difficulty reviewing games intended for young kids or even older, more "casual" gamers such as myself (I have been home video gaming ever since the original Pong). Their reviews sometimes read like a heavy metal fan sent to review a Barney on Ice show.
I am lucky to have a local used game shop nearby which allows us to test games before buying. They also know their stuff and can make good recommendations. IMO, the best games for kids have some appeal for adults so they will play along with the kids at least one or twice. I've had great fun hanging out with my kids, playing Putt Putt goes to the Moon when they were 3-4, Zelda, Mario Kart etc. when they were 5-7, Jet Force Gemini, etc, when they
were 8-10, then Metroid Prime and now Halo 2, Trauma Center, Brain Age and Wii Bowling. Learning is great, but the whole point of gaming is really all about having fun, hanging out with family and friends and being entertained.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony is out of touch with the market. This thing wouldn't last a week in my kids hands. Toys should survive normal usage and the Go looks fragile . I think clamshell designs are more durable, and keep the screens from being broken or scratched when they're dropped out of the car onto concrete. Will it come in a pretty pink?. I think Sony is trying for the upscale, male geek, with lots of money. I'll pass.
In Nelson's Voice: Ha Ha. I was laid off from NCAR early this year after making noise about; 1 Sending DOD developed software to China, 2; Exposing unsecured DOD data and systems to the Internet and 3; Billing the US Army for developing systems for the French Navy. I wrote e-mails, I visited managers. I was a trouble maker, so, after 18 years of service, they said there was no longer any work for me at NCAR. I can still obtain access to live, sensitive data from Army bases and the Pentagon through NCAR web sites. Investigators, Auditors, please look me up. I'm using the same ID I've used for 35 years. I'd be happy to expose the wide open holes I know about as long as the law is on my side.
I worked as a engineer for NCAR, building and installing high-tech weather systems for the FAA (AWRP) for over a decade in the mid-90's-00's. I found the FAA leadership is filled with bunches of Republican partisan hacks who spent their time telling AL Gore Jokes in their technical meetings rather than getting things done. It literally takes them 10 or more years to get technology to their employees in the trenches. (officially). Because of upper mgt incompetence, the local level tech is a free-for-all, running in the closet. When I installed our sanctioned equipment in the Long Island FAA TRACON, I found a shift supervisor had brought his old PC in and got an AOL account so that the "super secure war room" could see what the weather was like outside as they managed 40% of the air traffic in the US. The FAA literally watches the weather channel with the sound off and competes with all the every day Joes for Nexrad images on accu weather. One of our (NCAR) systems under rigid performance evaluation at the FAA Technical Center (NJ) kept "hanging" several times per week, and we received poor evaluations and threats of funding cuts. I finally discovered that the reason for the failures was one of their staff had opened a shell terminal, ran Mosaic (remember that) and went porn surfing.(up our dedicated 64kbps line back to NCAR in Boulder and out through our .edu POP). The FAA has lots of ad-hoc systems installed everywhere. Can anyone say "Pass your USB key over here Bob - Ya gotta watch this".
Maybe Obama's administration will clean the rot out of the FAA. I lost any hope many years ago.
The gas fireplace, gas range, and gas hot water heater keep us warm, comfortably fed and clean during extended power outages and are useful otherwise. The fireplace I installed has a convective loop heat exchanger/chamber surrounding the fire box and most of the heat flows into the room. When the power's on, it has an optional blower that improves its efficiency to over 80%. My wife really likes having a lit fireplace. Animals and humans alike gather around and bake them selves to their toasty delight, regardless of the presence of electricity.
I'm betting the Chinese aren't doing an environmental impact study.
You'd lose your bet: See: http://english.gov.cn/special/2006-07/02/content_325285.htm
About a billion people in China watched their governments extensive efforts try to improve the air quality and environment in Bejing for the Olympics. Based on what CCTV9 news is reporting, there's a huge increase in the public's awareness of and interest in environmental issues within China.
Back in my Vaxen days some users used to program their VT200 terminals so they could login with one key press. Ahh, those were the good 'ol days. Now people don't even know what the "break" key is for. Noobs. :-)
I'd say forensic keyboard analysis is a gold mine. :)
Simple. Like the Wiimote when it points at a button on the screen, the touchscreen will "thump" using an inertial device when the pressure threshold is reached and the keystroke is registered. It's very effective.
However, I hate finger prints and smudges on my screen. Using a stylus for long periods gives me cramps. IMO, This is the fundimental flaw with touchscreen technology.
The need for keyboards with separate, physical keys will be around for a long time.
This seems like it would make a great example for illustrating the problems with this new proposal. If people understood they could find themselves a criminal for visiting a Senator's web site, perhaps more reasonable IP laws will come of it.
2. Extraordinary rendition!
TFA says BT purchased the adverts for the charities. It was not clear if they informed the charities beforehand.
TFA says BT purchased the ads they replaced. The Charities got free advertisements if they were not replaced.
Since I have basic shop skills and know how to solder I did just that, spending about $35 for the keyboard and about 4 hours making the modifications. I couldn't be happier with this modification. The action of real keys doubles the usability of the XO, especially for people like me who have big, clumsy hands. I used to dread having to enter enter text on the old keyboard. The new mini keyboard is a joy to use and I can type in my normal style and rate. Highly recommended if you are up to the task.
I'm personally quite disappointed in both the OLPC manufacturers as well as the response by some of the G1G1 donors. The faulty XO-1 keyboard may be the downfall of the whole project and all we in the US can do is whine, and hope a factory in China can fix the problem.
I fully disassembled my original XO keyboard and found the sticky key problem is clearly a design flaw in the way the two membranes are held apart. The bottom membrane has a serpentine array of traces which are exposed to contacts attached to the upper membrane and are arranged in small groups under each key. The top membrane has small circular contacts, with clusters of 2 -17 contacts under each key Separating the membranes, and holding the contacts apart from the traces below, is a pattern of rubbery glue, printed into linear traces between key rows and small diamond shaped dots internal to the rectangular groupings of contacts above. Most keys have an array of 4 contact dots with a 2mm, diamond shaped spot of glue directly between all 4 contacts. However the Ctrl, both Hand and Alt keys as well as the ] key have 6 contact dots with only 2 super tiny dots of glue to hold the membranes apart. Apparently these keys are the ones which stick the most often. For these keys, the designer placed the center pair of contacts in the group of 6, directly over a trace below with little separating glue. The only possible repair would be to separate the membranes and place additional dots of glue over the traces on the sticky keys. OLPC need to come clean about this mistake and build a better, more robust keyboard and make them available to all XO-1 owners.
(PS. This message was entered on my hacked XO, under Opera)
There may be flaws in your secret plans, Lumpy. USPS are using Gamma Ray Irradiation systems. http://www.sfowler.com/investigations/Mail%20Irradiation.htm
I use a secret, tiny pocket in my lead lined microfiber codpiece. We exchange in the locker room at the gym.
Nobody is the wiser. Shhh!
2006: Wayan registers olpctalks.com. Wayback shows it reporting unbiased OLPC news.
Wayan registers olpcnews.com in Aug 2007
Wayan quits Geekcorps in Sept 2007 to start a new job as "editor of the OLPCNews blog"
His new site is now a OLPC bad news site. WTF? Executive to blog editor. Yeah. Right.
Perhaps the truth is spreading.
Watermarks might be just the thing to let DVR's distinguish Show from commercial. Even if Tivo wouldn't build this in, a small standalone device could listen for the watermarks and send pause and record commands via the IR remote interface.
"[W]ith the Purist Audio A.C. power cord, the sound was always a bit smoother and sweeter and sibilants always cleaner and seemingly not exaggerated plus not having an extended "time-tail" added. http://www.enjoythemusic.com/Magazine/equipment/1001/wireworld.htm
I don't know about you, but I can't stand sour sibilants and extended time-tails in my 60 cycle hum.
This was discovered when some of these special drives were accidentally shipped to customers.
See http://www.answers.com/topic/miniscribe for more details.
Paciolan, Inc., a leading provider of online ticketing technology, has chosen IBM eServer(TM) p650 systems to increase ticket sale processing speed. Following completion of a thorough benchmark analysis, IBM has projected that Paciolan's clients will have the ability to process more than 100,000 tickets per hour.
Channel 4 (CBS) in Denver has also had this to say: The Rockies did say it was blocking some IP addresses due to suspicious or malicious activity.
100,000 tickets per hour is about 28 tickets per second. I'd imagine they got tens of thousands of hits in the first few seconds after they opened the sale.
As someone who has a 52"HD TV and has both the GameCube and the Wii, I can assure everyone that the Wii's graphics are better than the GC. The Wii provides a very clean 480p signal from it's component output. I have GC games that turn on more effects when played on the Wii, so Gamecube games actually may look and run even better on the Wii. Nintendo's current hardware is very compact, quiet, and uses little energy, unlike other consoles I own. I find the graphics a Wii or a GC produce are far from "terrible", and often are more pleasant than the graphics produced by higher resolution systems, especially PC's.
The US government's historical use of "Plausible deniability" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability to cover their illegal and evil actions.
Wow. Perhaps you are trolling, but if not maybe this will literally save your life.
My wife works in health care. People without insurance go without care unless ones life is in immediate danger. Cancers go untreated, limbs do not get re-attached, faces do not get re-constructed, chronic conditions go untreated. The stories she brings home are heart breaking, and tragic.
If health insurance continues to creep up in price, I simply won't pay and I will take my chances
One question. Who will pay when you need life saving treatment, and you can't afford it?
My wife deals with people who expect her and her clinic to work for free, just because they have a "need". Often they drive better cars, and make more money than her, but expect service for free. She's been mistreated so often by patients with unreasonable expectations, I'm bitter. Why should my family suffer when you refuse to pay for your own life saving treatment? When someone treats you (for ethical reasons), and you go bankrupt, they lose. Clinics close, people go without. One car accident, one bacterial infection, one lump is all it will take to make your happy life turn tragic. You think you're losing out at $20/mo for health coverage? What a fool you are.
That's why I use paper punch tape. I have some software I wrote in 1975 sitting safely in a shoe box. It is a tad slow to decode done by hand, but it's Safe!
I can easily imagine a brain interface having hundreds of inputs, but unless we can find a way to attach them to specific nerves, performing specific functions, control will always be clumsy. Our brain is really not that good at re-wiring our physical control circuitry. It does happen, but the degree of control is much less that what was originally hard-wired in.
Brain-Computer interfacing is more likely to provide comparable capabilities by connecting to the body's peripheral nervous system, not to the brain itself. I see the possibilities of wiring into the nerves of a severed limb, but until we can design and grow biological structures, all we're going to get is very simple, slow and limited interfaces.
Another problem is almost all game reviews are authored by 20-something males. I have found they have great difficulty reviewing games intended for young kids or even older, more "casual" gamers such as myself (I have been home video gaming ever since the original Pong). Their reviews sometimes read like a heavy metal fan sent to review a Barney on Ice show.
I am lucky to have a local used game shop nearby which allows us to test games before buying. They also know their stuff and can make good recommendations. IMO, the best games for kids have some appeal for adults so they will play along with the kids at least one or twice. I've had great fun hanging out with my kids, playing Putt Putt goes to the Moon when they were 3-4, Zelda, Mario Kart etc. when they were 5-7, Jet Force Gemini, etc, when they were 8-10, then Metroid Prime and now Halo 2, Trauma Center, Brain Age and Wii Bowling. Learning is great, but the whole point of gaming is really all about having fun, hanging out with family and friends and being entertained.