...or is this a case of somebody crossing the border to get INTO Mexico?
Meanwhile, a New Hampshire Sherriff is charging illegal immigrants with trespassing. Why? Every time his department finds one (and he finds himself running into a LOT of them), he finds they're not here legally and calls the INS- the INS says "sorry, we don't have time to pick them up." So they're part of a revolving door.
That revolving door runs off tax dollars. Guess what? Illegal immigrants don't pay a dime in taxes (not even sales in NH) and he's having to spend an increasing amount of time dealing with them. So he and the DA decided to throw them in jail and charge them $50 a pop, and wouldn't you know- a bunch of "immigrant rights" activists threw a hissy fit.
'other nations' discomfort with the U.S. as the world's only superpower, unafraid of taking unilateral action
I love this bit of political spin (and I'm American)- nothing like ignoring all those pesky countries with nukes (and armed forces big enough to "project" their power anywhere in the world.) I thought the term "superpower" really wasn't used anymore, since size doesn't really matter in a lot of ways.
It's a "white elephant" issue if I ever saw one...
After budgets cuts led to the layoff of engineers and scientists at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a US Senate committee has approved a $3 billion dollar subsidy to assist Americans in their difficult transition to digital television in 2009.
If you read the linked slashdot story- 300 engineers were laid off.
Sorry, but this irritates the bejeezus out of me when people make a big deal over a bunch of government employees getting fired. Corporations fire 10,000 people over a couple days (to avoid legislation written to protect factory workers from massive firings) and it barely makes a story 10 pages back in the WSJ, but some base closure committee decides an airbase with 15 fighter jets isn't necessary- and it's all over every regional newspaper, the governor and senators leap into action...
They produce light efficiently (not THAT efficiently) but don't produce that much light compared to a very simple single-bulb HID or fluorescent tube (by the way, which tube are you basing that "3x" on? T12, T10, or T8? Because T8's are MUCH more efficient that T12's). It takes a HUGE number of LEDs to replace ONE T8 fluorescent tube- and that tube costs a few dollars tops, because it is very easy to make. Right now, a single Luxeon white LED sells in 100-1000 unit quantities for well over $10-20, and produces 1-5W. A T8 bulb will produce 30-40W, and costs RETAIL about $5.
They require new reflector designs and light spreaders, since they are a VERY small point source. A lot of work goes into making light sources produce even, smooth lighting that won't generate harsh shadows- point sources make this job a real bitch. Point source also means that despite relatively low heat output the heat is very localized, and that means PCBs must also be heat spreaders, complicating assembly/design/manufacture further. You can't just toss them on a PCB. Companies like Luxeon now sell them on little PCBs with the necessary spreader etc, but now you're not just talking about buying an LED, you're buying a whole assembly for your product...$$$.
Related- while they have a long life before failure, most of the high-output LEDs drop in light output very significantly, within a year or two of continuous operation 10-20 degrees above room temperature. VERY few LED manufacturers disclose this upfront- and virtually ALL the companies hawking LED products fail to mention this nice little caveat. Furthermore, just because the LED is rated to, say, 100,000 hours- doesn't mean it won't burn out because the company that made the device it is part of didn't botch the job on current+voltage regulation, heat dissipation, etc.
I know everyone thinks they are the second coming of Christ, and they do have some wonderful applications (like traffic signals and car brake lights)...but they're not the end-all be-all.
Folks, this whole thing has been rehashed a thousand times. It's very simple.
The United States is very, very big. It has a population density nowhere NEAR Korea and Japan, the posterchildren of "supermegaultra internet to the door".
You can afford to run fiber, switchgear, etc if you get a lot of customers for your effort. Japan is 145843 square miles and 127M people; New York state is a THIRD of that alone (54471 sq miles) and has 19M people.
Let's think that through- Japan has about half the US population, yet is only about 3 times bigger than NY state.
PS:I had to post this from home via an SSH tunnel because I've been "downmodded too much". I have mod points, but I can't post from work. Funny that. Can't get more than a form-reply from "Robert Rozeboom", either...which consisted of: "You have been downmodded too many times and are in timeout for a bit."
Why are there so many nice hackers in the world? Willing to spend their time finding exploits, post them, and even a "safe" example. Do they take pride in helping the surfing community?
Maybe some, but I suspect it has more to do with ego, pride, and vanity; the same reason virus authors do it. Hackers, good and bad, love showing and/or proving to the world how smart they are.
I suspect a fair number of "white hats" also do it to try and get noticed, like high school athletes. Posting to a security mailing list with an impressive vulnerability discovery is like getting the touchdown with 5 seconds to go in front of the coach from that big college...
Rasmussen is working on a number of AJAX applications that provide a rich desktop-like interface to the end-user from within the Web browser.
Too bad the only thing going for Google maps is that it is pretty (antialiased graphics, map can be as large as you want) and lets you pan. That's really the ONLY thing that is innovative about it- not even the "use google maps for displaying stuff from your site" is innovative; Yahoo and Mapquest have been doing this for years.
You cannot save addresses (such as your home address).
You cannot change the route or set preferences (ie avoid toll roads etc).
You can't see traffic or construction information.
You cannot do multi-point routes. Ie go from your house to Jane's house and then to the movie theater. Laughable, except that's something people want to do quite a bit.
Interstate numbers and road names are not shown nearly enough. Except for major highways, Google uses uncommon, unmarked road names. For example- headed into Tufts University, you take Route 2 to Route 16, and that is how they are marked on the streets. But Google Maps refers to it as "route 2 to Concord Turnpike to Alewife Brook Parkway. 99% of people in Boston would have no idea where "Concord Turnpike" is; 95% of them don't call Route 16 anything but "16", and it's not MARKED anything but "16"!
Local search is almost worthless. It only finds addresses which are on websites (was it too much effort to buy a yellow pages directory database?) and when you do a search and specify "in the map area below", it promptly COMPLETELY ignores you and shows you have a effing STATE.
Printing prints a LOW RESOLUTION version of the big map. Great, so I can tell I'm going from somewhere in the middle of Massachusetts, to somewhere in the middle of Boston, via the mass turnpike. Wonderful.
Funny thing, but MS Streets has NONE of these problems- it's not perfect, but it is FAR superior to Google Maps in useability and features people need; it has a nice way of compressing the map into a page, it's high resolution, saves addresses, does a near PERFECT job of finding "what's within the radius circle I draw", and it uses both route numbers and the uncommon road names. Nothing sets Google Maps apart from its web-based cousins, either- except for the basic map display. It certainly hasn't revolutionized online maps.
What about Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc? All of which are falling all over themselves to serve the Chinese market?
Falling over themselves so fast and hard, they're perfectly happy to turn over the names of political dissidents and censor web results so the Great Firewall of China doesn't stick out like a sore thumb? Seems pretty "evil" to me.
Always amazes me that Slashdotters get all up in arms about filtering at their school or work, scream blue bloody murder about censorship...but when Google filters for a whole country, nobody gives a damn.
I remember, but can't cite, an article or study that pretty much shows the odds of people staying together are pretty much the same in marriages where couples fall in love (e.g., in the United States), or in arranged marriages (many cultures), even in arranged marriages where the betrothed are extremely young (sometimes as young as 12 or 13), and even in arranged marriages with large age disparities.
I'd suspect that it has to do with people recognizing the inherent good and worth (no, not financially) in another human being, and respecting them. When you respect your significant other / spouse...even if you're different people, you make compromises and such, and the relationship survives.
Good for them. For once they truly seem fair and balanced.
"Seem" being the operative word. It's more like they got caught. Are you going to tell me with a straight face that Fox News didn't do the slightest checking on the guy's background? That editors were so incompetent, they did not check for conflicts of interest so simple they can be summed up in one line? Please. Even at Fox News, these people are professional journalists and editors. I don't buy the "whoops, silly us" excuse...the amount of incompetence required would be staggering. Sorry, this was willfull.
Worse, they were caught doing something their audience wouldn't really stand for; a corporate scandal. Call me crazy, but if Fox reported John Kerry was a space alien during the election and then it was later "discovered" that the source was a republican party staffer- Fox would do little more than shrug, because half their audience wouldn't care, and the other half would still think Kerry was an alien.
Cop says "Do everything you can (legally of course) to recover the cash. If talking doesn't work, THEN we'll file in a legal criminal complaint and it'll go to court. Because if you go to court and she simply agrees to pay, you look like the dumbass.
A dumbass who has his $2,000.
The cop said that because the court system is overloaded, nobody gives a crap, and they're hoping you just go away. The theory goes that you'll get worn out doing the "everything you can" bit, and by the time it comes to filing a claim in small claims court (which is where you might want to consider going, but I'm not a lawyer, so do your homework), you'll be too exasperated.
The proper course of action is a registered letter that is polite; ask for the money. Wait a week or two. Then send a registered letter which says (basically) "I sent you a registed letter which was signed for on X/Y/ZZZZ by ___, which asked for the money you owe me. You did not reply. You have until _/_/___ to give me my money back, or I take you to court to recover the money." Give a reasonable time period. Photocopy both letters before they're sent.
Then you sue them in small claims court. Why this quick? Because once you have a judgement, you get costs of filing plus costs of recouping the funds, PLUS assistance (I believe) from the Sherriff in recouping funds (if necessary, seizure of assets!) because it's a court order. Best part? If they don't show up- judgement in your favor, automatically.
If you go to a lot of effort or money to recoup the money before filing the case, you're much less likely to get it back. Folks- courts really aren't nearly as big a deal as they sound. Civil and small claims court are where these matters are SUPPOSED to get settled!
Uh, no offense guys- but that's something I wouldn't put on my resume. Slashcode has seen near zero feature additions, is widely known to have some of the worst perl code ever written, is grossly underdocumented...
and current Director of Architecture for MySQL AB, comments: "InnoDB is GPL, so once again the beauty of the open source market is at play: there is no lock in, and we can continue to develop Innodb as we see fit.
You can, sure. But who has been putting the majority of development time into InnoDB? MySQL, or Innobase? If it's Innobase, and Oracle says to Innobase, "walk away from this", you're screwed. "Open Source" doesn't mean "if the primary supporter walks away, the project keeps going."
The largest database vendor in the world just confirmed that the market for open source databases exists."
Um...no, they didn't. They thought buying Innobase made business sense, so they did it. Inferring "OMG Oracle thinks we're cool!" is, well, quite the stretch. For all we know, Oracle could be handing out pinkslips as we speak, or folding Innobase talent into Oracle...who knows.
That should nip the "MySQL is a replacement for Oracle under all circumstances" posts that always appear whenever MySQL is discussed on slashdot
That's something of a straw man argument; I don't see sort of comments modded very high, probably because plenty of mods have had to deal with mysql in the business world, and the rest have seen enough critical commentary over the last few years to know not to drink the kool-aid.
I saw lots of posts modded high mentioning all of MySQL's various critical flaws, as well as a number of posts mentioning PostgreSQL is better (a number explaining for non-DBAs why, say, things like transactions are important), maybe how the author moved to PostgreSQL and likes it better...but I can't ever remember having seen a single post saying "I used PostgreSQL and went to MySQL", except by people with the vocabulary and English skills of a 16 year old, think transactions are for wussies, are impressed at how fast MySQL handles simple queries on small datasets, and like that they don't have to worry about case sensitivity in their queries.
The most poignant comment I saw said that while everyone else had forged ahead, MySQL was just catching up to "state of the art" half a decade ago or more. We're not really talking luxury features- more "features a proper database should have".
I don't have the link to the story handy, but it was just yesterday, I believe. I strongly encourage anyone who hasn't read that thread to do so now.
Because text messages are transmitted on the same signal that is used to set up voice calls
Ah. So that's why it costs an insane amount of money to send a text message (well, that and a text message may mean "no phone call to bill for".)
Also- can anyone explain why data is still so damn expensive? I have a data capable phone w/bluetooth, I travel a fair bit...but I don't ever use the data service, because it's so incredibly expensive. 2-8MB runs you almost as much as the voice service does!
Seems like they could make a lot of people happy if they made data more affordable. I guess we'll have to wait for one of the providers to start competing on that front, instead of buying each other up?:-)
By the time a man reacts, the sniper could have fled, or worse, fired another shot at him.
What if the robot is shot? Even presuming it had a gun it could rotate and fire back nearly instantaneously, if a supersonic round was used, the robot would be lying in pieces on the ground before it picked up sound waves from anything. If the detection system was optical-based, it MIGHT have a chance...
Sometimes, I just lay the phone down and say nothing or cut a big fart or hold the phone down and get my cat to meow. I've used airhorns, the alarm clocks on Dark Side of the Moon, police whistles and tape recordings of me talking about something.
My coworker, when we got a call obviously from a Sales Dweeb ("I'd like to talk to the person in charge of your IT purchasing decisions"), would respond- "Ooooh! Hang on a sec, you want to talk to Bob. He just stepped away from his desk for a sec, but he said he'd be RIGHT BACK, would you hold for a bit?"
He'd then put the person on hold, and sit there grinning typing away while Sales Dweeb lost time down the drain. I forget what his record was for the person kept on hold the longest.
Kirsten Dunst confirmed rumors to Zap2it that Thomas Haden Church will play Sandman and Topher Grace is Venom
That should read, "Kirsten Dunst was told by the movie's publicity firm to accidentally confirm..."
Folks- the only thing actors do independently is get arrested for DUI or drug posession. Everything else, they're told to do by their publicist or the publicist for the movie/studio.
The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels.
Huh. How'd they do that?
I hope they didn't do it in the same way the Russian army taught dogs to drop satchel charges under German tanks. You see, they used Russian tanks to train them. So when they got into battle with the Germans, what did the dogs do when given live, armed satchel charges? Delivered them right under Russian tanks, of course. That plan was rather quickly abandoned.
The US Army hasn't faired much better; they armed bats with incendiary devices- the plan was that, release from a plane over Japan, they'd find refuged in building overhangs and whanot. They were kept calm by refridgeration. So during one of the trial runs (incidentally, the first trial run with live ammo), some genius decides they need a picture of the bats. It's pitch dark, so the photographer uses a flash. Which not only wakes up the bats, but startles them as well...
but how is it living and intelligent? because it's got colored lights that change colors?
That was good enough for Color Kinetics, a company formed by a bunch of MIT braniacs. They've managed to patent out to wazoo devices that have multicolored LEDs that mix/change colors. Something that takes a uC, 3 channels of D/A, and a little simple math.
And yes, they've been aggressively threatening/sueing to defend said patents. And yes, they're taking advantage of the resulting monopoly- a color kinetics floodlight will set you back $1k or more.
Slashdot Mirror
Meanwhile, a New Hampshire Sherriff is charging illegal immigrants with trespassing. Why? Every time his department finds one (and he finds himself running into a LOT of them), he finds they're not here legally and calls the INS- the INS says "sorry, we don't have time to pick them up." So they're part of a revolving door.
That revolving door runs off tax dollars. Guess what? Illegal immigrants don't pay a dime in taxes (not even sales in NH) and he's having to spend an increasing amount of time dealing with them. So he and the DA decided to throw them in jail and charge them $50 a pop, and wouldn't you know- a bunch of "immigrant rights" activists threw a hissy fit.
I love this bit of political spin (and I'm American)- nothing like ignoring all those pesky countries with nukes (and armed forces big enough to "project" their power anywhere in the world.) I thought the term "superpower" really wasn't used anymore, since size doesn't really matter in a lot of ways.
It's a "white elephant" issue if I ever saw one...
If you read the linked slashdot story- 300 engineers were laid off.
Sorry, but this irritates the bejeezus out of me when people make a big deal over a bunch of government employees getting fired. Corporations fire 10,000 people over a couple days (to avoid legislation written to protect factory workers from massive firings) and it barely makes a story 10 pages back in the WSJ, but some base closure committee decides an airbase with 15 fighter jets isn't necessary- and it's all over every regional newspaper, the governor and senators leap into action...
No- many things are holding back LEDs.
I know everyone thinks they are the second coming of Christ, and they do have some wonderful applications (like traffic signals and car brake lights)...but they're not the end-all be-all.
Eh, just read a different columnist. I'm a big fan of Bob Qwerty, he seems to have his head screwed on right.
*runs for cover*
The United States is very, very big. It has a population density nowhere NEAR Korea and Japan, the posterchildren of "supermegaultra internet to the door".
You can afford to run fiber, switchgear, etc if you get a lot of customers for your effort. Japan is 145843 square miles and 127M people; New York state is a THIRD of that alone (54471 sq miles) and has 19M people.
Let's think that through- Japan has about half the US population, yet is only about 3 times bigger than NY state.
PS:I had to post this from home via an SSH tunnel because I've been "downmodded too much". I have mod points, but I can't post from work. Funny that. Can't get more than a form-reply from "Robert Rozeboom", either...which consisted of: "You have been downmodded too many times and are in timeout for a bit."
Maybe some, but I suspect it has more to do with ego, pride, and vanity; the same reason virus authors do it. Hackers, good and bad, love showing and/or proving to the world how smart they are.
I suspect a fair number of "white hats" also do it to try and get noticed, like high school athletes. Posting to a security mailing list with an impressive vulnerability discovery is like getting the touchdown with 5 seconds to go in front of the coach from that big college...
Too bad the only thing going for Google maps is that it is pretty (antialiased graphics, map can be as large as you want) and lets you pan. That's really the ONLY thing that is innovative about it- not even the "use google maps for displaying stuff from your site" is innovative; Yahoo and Mapquest have been doing this for years.
Funny thing, but MS Streets has NONE of these problems- it's not perfect, but it is FAR superior to Google Maps in useability and features people need; it has a nice way of compressing the map into a page, it's high resolution, saves addresses, does a near PERFECT job of finding "what's within the radius circle I draw", and it uses both route numbers and the uncommon road names. Nothing sets Google Maps apart from its web-based cousins, either- except for the basic map display. It certainly hasn't revolutionized online maps.
What about Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc? All of which are falling all over themselves to serve the Chinese market?
Falling over themselves so fast and hard, they're perfectly happy to turn over the names of political dissidents and censor web results so the Great Firewall of China doesn't stick out like a sore thumb? Seems pretty "evil" to me.
Always amazes me that Slashdotters get all up in arms about filtering at their school or work, scream blue bloody murder about censorship...but when Google filters for a whole country, nobody gives a damn.
I'd suspect that it has to do with people recognizing the inherent good and worth (no, not financially) in another human being, and respecting them. When you respect your significant other / spouse...even if you're different people, you make compromises and such, and the relationship survives.
"Seem" being the operative word. It's more like they got caught. Are you going to tell me with a straight face that Fox News didn't do the slightest checking on the guy's background? That editors were so incompetent, they did not check for conflicts of interest so simple they can be summed up in one line? Please. Even at Fox News, these people are professional journalists and editors. I don't buy the "whoops, silly us" excuse...the amount of incompetence required would be staggering. Sorry, this was willfull.
Worse, they were caught doing something their audience wouldn't really stand for; a corporate scandal. Call me crazy, but if Fox reported John Kerry was a space alien during the election and then it was later "discovered" that the source was a republican party staffer- Fox would do little more than shrug, because half their audience wouldn't care, and the other half would still think Kerry was an alien.
Didn't use wireless, didn't bring any Ogg-Vorbis. Lame.
*ducks, runs for cover*
What is with people and the itchy "troll" triggerfingers? Call me crazy, but I haven't modded a post "troll" in years.
Yay!
In the last 12 years, IBM has received 29,021 patents--more than any other company or individual in the world
Oooo, patents BAD! EVIL! BAD EVIL!
Wait, so do we like them or not? Aaaaaaa! [Head implodes]
A dumbass who has his $2,000.
The cop said that because the court system is overloaded, nobody gives a crap, and they're hoping you just go away. The theory goes that you'll get worn out doing the "everything you can" bit, and by the time it comes to filing a claim in small claims court (which is where you might want to consider going, but I'm not a lawyer, so do your homework), you'll be too exasperated.
The proper course of action is a registered letter that is polite; ask for the money. Wait a week or two. Then send a registered letter which says (basically) "I sent you a registed letter which was signed for on X/Y/ZZZZ by ___, which asked for the money you owe me. You did not reply. You have until _/_/___ to give me my money back, or I take you to court to recover the money." Give a reasonable time period. Photocopy both letters before they're sent.
Then you sue them in small claims court. Why this quick? Because once you have a judgement, you get costs of filing plus costs of recouping the funds, PLUS assistance (I believe) from the Sherriff in recouping funds (if necessary, seizure of assets!) because it's a court order. Best part? If they don't show up- judgement in your favor, automatically.
If you go to a lot of effort or money to recoup the money before filing the case, you're much less likely to get it back. Folks- courts really aren't nearly as big a deal as they sound. Civil and small claims court are where these matters are SUPPOSED to get settled!
Uh, no offense guys- but that's something I wouldn't put on my resume. Slashcode has seen near zero feature additions, is widely known to have some of the worst perl code ever written, is grossly underdocumented...
and current Director of Architecture for MySQL AB, comments: "InnoDB is GPL, so once again the beauty of the open source market is at play: there is no lock in, and we can continue to develop Innodb as we see fit.
You can, sure. But who has been putting the majority of development time into InnoDB? MySQL, or Innobase? If it's Innobase, and Oracle says to Innobase, "walk away from this", you're screwed. "Open Source" doesn't mean "if the primary supporter walks away, the project keeps going."
The largest database vendor in the world just confirmed that the market for open source databases exists."
Um...no, they didn't. They thought buying Innobase made business sense, so they did it. Inferring "OMG Oracle thinks we're cool!" is, well, quite the stretch. For all we know, Oracle could be handing out pinkslips as we speak, or folding Innobase talent into Oracle...who knows.
That's something of a straw man argument; I don't see sort of comments modded very high, probably because plenty of mods have had to deal with mysql in the business world, and the rest have seen enough critical commentary over the last few years to know not to drink the kool-aid.
I saw lots of posts modded high mentioning all of MySQL's various critical flaws, as well as a number of posts mentioning PostgreSQL is better (a number explaining for non-DBAs why, say, things like transactions are important), maybe how the author moved to PostgreSQL and likes it better...but I can't ever remember having seen a single post saying "I used PostgreSQL and went to MySQL", except by people with the vocabulary and English skills of a 16 year old, think transactions are for wussies, are impressed at how fast MySQL handles simple queries on small datasets, and like that they don't have to worry about case sensitivity in their queries.
The most poignant comment I saw said that while everyone else had forged ahead, MySQL was just catching up to "state of the art" half a decade ago or more. We're not really talking luxury features- more "features a proper database should have".
I don't have the link to the story handy, but it was just yesterday, I believe. I strongly encourage anyone who hasn't read that thread to do so now.
Ah. So that's why it costs an insane amount of money to send a text message (well, that and a text message may mean "no phone call to bill for".)
Also- can anyone explain why data is still so damn expensive? I have a data capable phone w/bluetooth, I travel a fair bit...but I don't ever use the data service, because it's so incredibly expensive. 2-8MB runs you almost as much as the voice service does!
Seems like they could make a lot of people happy if they made data more affordable. I guess we'll have to wait for one of the providers to start competing on that front, instead of buying each other up? :-)
What if the robot is shot? Even presuming it had a gun it could rotate and fire back nearly instantaneously, if a supersonic round was used, the robot would be lying in pieces on the ground before it picked up sound waves from anything. If the detection system was optical-based, it MIGHT have a chance...
Sadly, only for members of the ACM. You can't even register for access unless you're a member.
My coworker, when we got a call obviously from a Sales Dweeb ("I'd like to talk to the person in charge of your IT purchasing decisions"), would respond- "Ooooh! Hang on a sec, you want to talk to Bob. He just stepped away from his desk for a sec, but he said he'd be RIGHT BACK, would you hold for a bit?"
He'd then put the person on hold, and sit there grinning typing away while Sales Dweeb lost time down the drain. I forget what his record was for the person kept on hold the longest.
That should read, "Kirsten Dunst was told by the movie's publicity firm to accidentally confirm..."
Folks- the only thing actors do independently is get arrested for DUI or drug posession. Everything else, they're told to do by their publicist or the publicist for the movie/studio.
Huh. How'd they do that?
I hope they didn't do it in the same way the Russian army taught dogs to drop satchel charges under German tanks. You see, they used Russian tanks to train them. So when they got into battle with the Germans, what did the dogs do when given live, armed satchel charges? Delivered them right under Russian tanks, of course. That plan was rather quickly abandoned.
The US Army hasn't faired much better; they armed bats with incendiary devices- the plan was that, release from a plane over Japan, they'd find refuged in building overhangs and whanot. They were kept calm by refridgeration. So during one of the trial runs (incidentally, the first trial run with live ammo), some genius decides they need a picture of the bats. It's pitch dark, so the photographer uses a flash. Which not only wakes up the bats, but startles them as well...
...and as they say, "hilarity ensued."
Good thing it wasn't a AlTi 15", where the screen had a lot of problems and Apple did a recall.
That was good enough for Color Kinetics, a company formed by a bunch of MIT braniacs. They've managed to patent out to wazoo devices that have multicolored LEDs that mix/change colors. Something that takes a uC, 3 channels of D/A, and a little simple math.
And yes, they've been aggressively threatening/sueing to defend said patents. And yes, they're taking advantage of the resulting monopoly- a color kinetics floodlight will set you back $1k or more.