Recent Posts

4201

Living Room / Re: When children design laptops

« Last post by app103 on November 22, 2007, 06:24 PM »

The sad thing is: that's got more UI inputs than most off-the-shelf devices from Dell.  "Stylus area"?  Whoa.  And not only that, there's two of them -- for lefties and righties.  Assuming I'm not just leaping to conclusions...?

Make'em in black and I can see adults hauling these around for the price.

-Ralf Maximus (November 21, 2007, 05:55 PM)

You mean 3...don't forget the one under the center arrow. 

And they don't need to be black for 'adults' to want one...Apple proved that a long time ago. 

4202

Living Room / Re: Best and Worst Consumer Electronics, 2007

« Last post by app103 on November 22, 2007, 06:30 AM »

I almost didn't notice this whole part of the story (with the complete list) till I found it in my rss feeds:

http://images.busine...st_tech/index_01.htm

4203

Living Room / Re: Gender Genie!

« Last post by app103 on November 22, 2007, 05:30 AM »

It's not so much the actual content of the passage and whether it is about people or things that makes the results male or female, but how you reference them.

This blog post is a good example, and is about people, but the results say that my writing is definitely male:

Female Score: 520
Male Score: 822

I entered only my text in the Gender Genie, and didn't include the quote in the beginning of the post (made by a male).

This isn't the first time my writing has been labeled as 'male'...even Microsoft's demographics predictor has labeled my blog as being male oriented:



But this whole idea that males use certain words more than females, and the fact that I tend think, speak & write with a more male style, myself (according to this Gender Genie), might explain why I have a 'femininity radar' that goes off when talking to women and why I find the most woman quite 'irritating' to listen to.

And it is a 'gift' I have of detecting the gender of people in chatrooms, even when they have a gender neutral username, having said nothing that would give away their gender.

Often times I am the only one that can correctly identify the gender of someone, and quite quickly. For example, there was someone that was a regular in my chatroom that everyone thought and assumed was a guy (this person may have even told people this), with me being the only one that was picking up feminine 'vibes'. We eventually found out (after 2 years) it was a woman, and I was right all along. I pegged her for a woman within about the first 10 minutes of talking to her...something irritated me.

I am thinking that I may have a 'Gender Genie' built into my brain on some unconscious level that may be based on a similar keywords list, that I am unaware of.

^{The Gender Genie thinks the author of this post is: male!}

4204

Living Room / The 20 Worst Venture Capital Investments of All Time

« Last post by app103 on November 22, 2007, 01:20 AM »

Some things were just never meant to be, but that doesn't mean that investors won't pile millions of dollars upon a bad idea — or even a good idea gone bad. Whether they crashed and burned or sucked investors dry, these ventures just didn't work out. Check out our graveyard of dreams and money to get a look at VC (venture-capital) investments that just weren't wise.

http://www.insidecrm...-investments-111907/

4205

Living Room / Hey, Zaine...your Holodeck is almost ready!

« Last post by app103 on November 22, 2007, 01:05 AM »

This 360-degree ultra-high-definition military simulator allows you to drive a Humvee and fire real weapons with absolute precision, including machine guns and rocket launchers, anywhere you want. The 10-projector system achieves a perfectly seamless panorama thanks to Mersive's Sol system; a calibration, warping and sub-pixel image blending technology that may jump from military sims to your living room in the near future. Sol can get any number of projectors and project a single huge image over a surface of any shape and size. We talked with Mersive about how it works and how this may work for game enthusiasts.

http://gizmodo.com/g...ep-closer-325237.php

4206

Living Room / Recycling: Old Typewriters = New Humans

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 11:02 PM »

Jeremy Mayer is quite an artist...

I disassemble typewriters and then reassemble them into full-scale human figures, sometimes encasing them in clear casting resin. I do not solder, weld, or glue; the process is entirely cold, mechanical assembly. I also do charcoal drawings based on ideas about biotech and nanotech.

http://www.saatchi-g..._profile//23860.html

more pics

4207

Living Room / Odd Little Stars

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 08:18 PM »

It seems as though every time astronomers point their telescopes at the night sky, some weird new finding forces them to revamp their theories. And so it is with nine newly discovered white dwarfs. The stars defy their expected chemical makeup and by rights shouldn't even exist. An explanation could open up a new branch of astronomy.

http://sciencenow.sc...ent/full/2007/1121/1

4208

General Software Discussion / Re: Programmer Wanted for Project

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 01:30 PM »

wv is a library which allows access to Microsoft Word files. It can load and parse Word 2000, 97, 95 and 6 file formats. (These are the file formats known internally as Word 9, 8, 7 and 6.) There is some support for reading earlier formats as well: Word 2 docs are converted to plaintext.

wv compiles and works under most operating systems. Although most development is carried out with Linux, wv should work on BSD, Solaris, OS/2, AIX, OSF1, and even (with varying levels of success) AmigaOS VMS. The GnuWin32 project maintains a port for Windows, and it is required to compile and work on all of AbiWord's supported platforms, of which there are a lot.

http://wvware.sourceforge.net/

free...open source 

4209

Living Room / What can you do with a PhD in robotics?

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 12:54 PM »

Write a book, of course!

Daniel H. Wilson discusses his book "How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips On Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion".  (time: 44:16)

http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=IcA8STwMHn8

^{/me waits for mouser to get his PhD and write a book.} 

4210

Living Room / TED announces their 2008 winners

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 10:04 AM »

The TED Prize was introduced in 2005, and it is unlike any other award. Although the winners receive a prize of $100,000 each, the real prize is that they are granted a WISH. "A wish to change the world." There are no formal restrictions on the wish. We ask our winners to think big and to be creative. The goal is that it creates an incredible sense of excitement and common purpose. It inspires the TED community, and all those who hear about the wish, to offer their help in making the wish come true.

Three winners are chosen each year. They could be anyone with world-changing potential: inventors or entrepreneurs, designers or artists, visionaries or mavericks, story-tellers or persuaders. But they must be people who the judges believe have the ability to inspire others to do something great for the world.

http://blog.ted.com/.../announcing_2008.php

4211

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com Yearly Fundraiser for 2007 - Advice Requested Please

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 08:25 AM »

Maybe not so much that this is where all the money donated will go to specifically, but to check off areas of interest that you would like to see improved/added.

More of a donate/survey combo, with the items getting the most votes being made a higher priority, maybe.

That way if there isn't enough donations to pay for all the dreams, then the lowest ranked ones could be delayed till there is enough to cover them.

At the very least you will find out what the members really want and what is important to them.

4212

General Software Discussion / Re: Which MP3 tagger do you use?

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 08:09 AM »

What are the advantages of tagging?

-CleverCat (November 21, 2007, 01:26 AM)

Some things require tags in order to work properly, such as the Last.fm service. And some MP3 CD players (like mine) rely on tags to let you know what you are listening to, searching for songs, and allowing you to set up playlists.

Also, there is more than just artist/album/track/title that can go in a tag, such as genre, lyrics, year, composer, url of artist's homepage (or where you downloaded it from), original artist (if it is a cover tune), copyright holder (if it is different than the artist), comments (or a tiny bit of related trivia, or a list of all the members of a band).

You could never include all that info in the file name...it would be much too long.

People that are true music freaks will research all this stuff and add the info to every track they have. Then they will never wonder about it later because it's all in the tags in case they can't remember...or if they have software that can utilize the tags they have added. It is particularly useful with software that allows you to search your collection and gives results based on tag info.

So let's say for example you want to make a play list of all songs by and related to John Lennon and you do a search of your collection (provided you have an application or player that supports all tags and your files are fully tagged with all data).

You would get as your results...

• all songs by him specifically
  
• all Beatles songs if you put his name as a band member in the comments
  
• all songs that are covers of his songs by other artists
  
• all songs that mention his name in the lyrics
  
• all songs he wrote the lyrics for but never performed himself
  
• all songs he composed the music for but maybe didn't perform
  
• all Julian Lennon songs if you added that he was the son of John Lennon in the comments tag
  
• all Yoko Ono songs if you added that she was his wife in the comments tag
  
• etc, etc, etc.

4213

Living Room / Re: Man uses Wii Calendar Function to Catch His Cheating Wife

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 07:14 AM »

I wonder how many cheating spouses just changed their minds about wanting a wii for Giftmas...and how many that suspect their spouses of cheating, suddenly want to buy a wii for them.

4214

Living Room / Re: How good are you at spotting spyware, spam & phishing traps?

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 06:53 AM »

That was how I did it too, 7 out of 8 on the spyware one.

4215

Living Room / How good are you at spotting spyware, spam & phishing traps?

« Last post by app103 on November 21, 2007, 06:18 AM »

Mcafee has 2 little quizzes to test your abilities to spot websites with unsafe downloads and those that will share your email address with spammers.

These quizzes are based on real sites.

Using whatever methods you normally use, take the 2 quizzes and see how good you really are at protecting yourself.

Spyware Quiz (average score: 59%)

Spam Quiz (average score: 55%)

And there is one additional phishing quiz, similar in nature to the 2 by McAfee, using real emails samples, but the links are disabled and you can't hover to see the real target.

Phishing Quiz

4216

Living Room / Virtual Eve: first in human computer interaction

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 11:32 PM »

The near-human performance of a virtual teacher called Eve created by Massey researchers has drawn the attention of scientists across the computing world.
Eve is what is known in the information sciences as an intelligent or affective tutoring system that can adapt its response to the emotional state of people by interaction through a computer system.

The system “Easy with Eve” is thought to be the first of its type.

The ability of virtual Eve to alter her presentation according to the reaction of the child facing her at the keyboard has been hailed as an exciting development in the $25 billion e-learning market.

http://www.physorg.c...m/news114704050.html

4217

Living Room / When children design laptops

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 11:27 PM »

When I saw Amy Tiemann’s blog post on CNET two months ago about a children’s “laptop club,” I asked her to send me some samples. Many permission slips later, a package arrived in the mail bursting with construction paper—a wonderfully crafty collection of laptops designed by seven- to nine-year-olds in North Carolina that are both heartwarmingly personal and frighteningly tied to pop culture. A close study reveals keyboard buttons assigned to “Barbie.com,” “best friends” next to “friends,” “HP [Harry Potter] trivia,” and “werd games” as well as “rily werd games.” I asked Tiemann to explain a little bit about the program, where it came from and what it says about how children (girls in particular) think about computers these days. There are also interviews excerpted below that I conducted with some of the laptops’ designers.

http://www.themornin...ies/the_laptop_club/

4218

Living Room / Infringement Nation: we are all mega-crooks

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 11:17 PM »

John Tehranian's paper, "Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap," from a forthcoming symposium issue of the Utah Law Review on "Fixing Copyright," is a great, tight little essay on the way that the growing gap between what technology allows us to do and what copyright tells us not to do is turning us all into mega-crooks. Just by doing the normal, everyday stuff -- chatting with friends, sharing the moments of our lives -- we commit billions of dollars' worth of infringements...

How Much Do You Infringe On A Daily Basis?

http://www.boingboin...ingement-nation.html

4219

Living Room / 'Smart Closet' Tells You What To Wear

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 11:08 PM »

If you've ever stood in front of your closet trying to figure out what to wear for an important meeting, a new high-tech wardrobe invention might be just the thing for you.

The "smart wardrobe" keeps track of when you wore an item, where you wore it, and can even tell you when your clothes need to be dry-cleaned.

Developed by Australian researchers, the garment gizmo is being touted as a dress-for-success solution that could give busy people the edge to get ahead.

"The wardrobe can tell you that you have a meeting this morning with Joe Bloggs, that you have worn the same shirt the last three times you met him and that maybe you should wear something else or he will think you only have one shirt," says Prof. Bruce Thomas, director of the wearable computer laboratory at the University of South Australia.

http://www.businesse...cfm/newsID/16674.cfm

4220

Living Room / Re: Gender Genie!

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 01:12 PM »

After reading the pdf and another article about it, I see that I was right about the 'people vs things' idea.

^{I should have read both before posting.} 

4221

Living Room / Re: Gender Genie!

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 12:38 PM »

What it is doing is counting the instances of certain keywords it considers 'masculine' and 'feminine'. It is ignoring the rest of the text.

I fail to see how any writing that contains a high amount of a word like 'the' is more likely to be written by a man, than some writing that has a higher amount of a word like 'and'.

This is how they break down the word usage:

Feminine Keywords	Masculine Keywords
with	around
if	what
not	more
where	are
be	as
when	who
your	below
her	is
we	these
should	the
she	a
and	at
me	it
myself	many
hers	said
was	above
	to

Note that almost half of the words they consider feminine, are used when referring to people.

To me, their list seems to imply that they think women tend to write more about people, and men tend to write more about objects, how many of them, and where they are. 

Well, that's obvious, right?  You're a dude.  I mean, everyone knows chicks can't program.

:-)

-Ralf Maximus (November 20, 2007, 11:44 AM)

Who said I can program? 

4222

Living Room / Re: Breaking News: Multiple Universes Exist!

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 10:50 AM »

Note that this being a work of mathematics, nothing has been really proven.  But if validated, it lays an excellent foundation for experimentation, and finally, building the Time Travel device of my dreams.  I'm coming to kill you, great-great-grandfather!

-Ralf Maximus (November 20, 2007, 09:53 AM)

I would hate to shatter someone's dreams, but the type of time travel you imply is probably not possible.

If it were possible, we would know it was already, from the evidence of people from the future doing it and traveling to our time or earlier. How could we not know about it going on? As humans, we are bound to blab our secrets when we shouldn't, so some time traveler would have spilled the beans about it. It's our nature. We screw things up.

The fact we have no proof in our current time that there are time travelers in the future that have visited the past, leads me to believe one of 3 things are true:

A. Time travel, of the type you imply, isn't possible.
B. Humans become extinct before they discover how to do it.
C. The evidence of time travelers is being hidden in the biggest global conspiracy/cover-up of all time.

C is a bit far fetched, because like I said...we can't keep secrets that well.
B...I don't want to think about, even if it is true...so I'll just believe in A.

Of course a 4th possibility could be true:

D. People will someday figure out how to travel to the future but never how to travel to the past. (but then that would mean one-way tickets, we would have no proof that it worked since the traveler could never come back and tell us, and we would assume it just messed up and killed him, and abandon the project before anybody else got hurt.)

4223

Living Room / Re: Gender Genie!

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 10:10 AM »

I ran a lot of my longer blog posts through this just to see what it would say. It seems to think I am male, most of the time. 

4224

General Software Discussion / Re: Which MP3 tagger do you use?

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 06:54 AM »

I wonder how many are aware that you can quick edit a tag in Explorer for an .mp3 file by right clicking and going to properties, and then on the 'Summary' tab, clicking 'Advanced', and then clicking what you want to add or change, then hitting 'Apply' when done.

4225

Living Room / Re: About Rudeness in Forums

« Last post by app103 on November 20, 2007, 06:39 AM »

The civility of this community is a breath of fresh air. 

Although I do enjoy a certain free speech forum that is more or less an unmoderated "almost anything goes" free-for-all of nastiness, taboo topics (politics, religion, etc), insults, blood-guts-and-gore, adult humor, and seriously off-color sarcasm, too. Most threads there are not family friendly or safe for work or suitable for most humans, so I won't post the link here. They call their equivalent to our 'Living Room', 'The Cesspool'. 

I guess I go between extremes and am lucky to have a place as an outlet for both sides of my nature...the nice (here) and the not-so-nice (there).

Yeah, most of you are lucky enough never to have seen my 'dark side'.