Totally valid gripe. I didn't want to have to submit this embed, but couldn't find a better non-live version... Just did more digging and did find a better one. Embed replaced. Still not perfect, but not so annoying.

>> ^Stormsinger:

I'm really torn on this one, I love this song, but... The video is really pretty bad. Half a dozen stills, one rather nifty 20 second clip, and one ever-present credit (with no credit at all for the music). Feels almost like trying to steal the credit for the only real work here.
I'll upvote just for the song, I guess.

I'm really torn on this one, I love this song, but... The video is really pretty bad. Half a dozen stills, one rather nifty 20 second clip, and one ever-present credit (with no credit at all for the music). Feels almost like trying to steal the credit for the only real work here.

I'll upvote just for the song, I guess.

nifty.

>> ^westy:

An actual good and lagitimate use for the ipad !
Just needs to be made more sturdy and allot cheeper and u have a good toy for young kids.

If the I pad was 1/4th its price then it would be a pritty nifty toy/gadget however at its current price its a waist of money that can be spent on far more usfull devices.
Its mental to me that people spend £800 and more on iphones. and seem to think its good value because its "free" on a £35 a month contract for 2 years. I mean £35 a month ! lol i guess its for the same sort of people that like designer clothes.
Strangely becuse Ipad has become so ubicutoise and has such a large market people start developing good software for it and in the end you have good software on the device forcing people to buy something thats overpriced to access it.


Now I know why you can't spell. It's not lysdexia, you're just dumb.

£35 a month is great value for a connected media device.

>> ^Yogi:

It's amazing how perceptive, funny, and intelligent Brian Williams can be...and yet still I couldn't watch his program without stabbing forks in my eyes. How can you be this way and not see that your own network...your own show is soo full of shit?


I think he's like this because of the people that surround him; how could you not be. I would also try to make many a joke that they don't understand unless they look up a turn of phrase--on their iPad (a glorified non-cellphone/unless you really need/want to spend that much money on one-"buggy and slow"-device).

Yes, I've used my Dad's. It certainly has some nifty features (which have all been invented or used already), but since it's Apple and it has the name i"x", it must be a game changing, revolutionary, cutting edge, never crashes, solves: world hunger, bi-polar, cancer, Fox News, heralds baby Jesus's return to Earth in North Western Missouri; and it has a shelf/I'm mean battery life of 30.62 days--or so I've heard.

It was semi-slow (that wasn't very surprising); slow in two departments: switching and starting between and new apps or processes. Second, the Wi-Fi connection was flaky (either not downloading or when downloading, even including the occasional burst speeds, it averaged 22 KBps (as I say below it should at least be going 100-200 KBps [this is still incredibly slow], as his connection has a download rate of 1.2-1.5 MBps). I'll play with that a bit more (as I think it may have been the wireless router as he has a 14-Megabit connection).

The games were fun and a few of the apps were great. But, I'd rather have a lightweight fully functional notebook PC with a 16:9 screen, atleast 720p, and a fully customizable network adapter. ...And to be blunt, I'd much rather have Windows 7 or even Vista (fully patched), as both have great functionality and support plus their 64-Bit support is great. Plus I can put in a full Blu-Ray drive that comes with PowerDVD.

Better applications, better games and support. Yes, this is an anti-apple rant as I think all of their once "highly revered" features: functionality, non-crashing, no hacking (hah!), graphical editing applications (which is a "contract" feature), sound editing applications (same as the last), and it's "ease-of-use" (which is now a completely moot point). Apple is still successful, because they find niche products that do well; like the Nintendo DS. The iPod (although the screens break a bit to early, my only complaint) and the iPhone are great products and fill a gap in a niche market. The iPad does the same thing, but from what I've tried it needed another year (plus some spec changes like a 16:9 screen going up to 720p (which is HD not this stupid licensing agreement so they can use the logo on a nice, but NOT HD screen (I think it's XGA or 1024x768), a connection port that could handle a multitude of devices: usb, 1394, ethernet, gamepads, speakers, etc I know it does some of this already, especially in the bluetooth department.

But, I feel that it should have come with the large flash/ssd drive, cell phone features (which they do have, it just costs an arm and a leg), more functionality for the "touch pen" (some mouse-like buttons etc...), FLASH & FULL browser SUPPORT (not having flash, plus other regular features "kills it" in a lot of ways)--Apple has to have their money/way though; I don't think they've got any clue when they shoot themselves in the foot), and a slightly faster (or duo-core) processor to help the experience feel more smooth; they have a: "1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed chip" were as a Intel Atom that has an nVidia extension may have been a better choice (I'm not to sure about battery usage for these guys, but from the devices it was used in it wasn't too bad).

So in the end (damn this was WAY longer than expected) I think they should have refined it for another year. Got some REAL user feedback; give it to people that don't work for the ass-kissing mainstream Apple press-core (yes, I'm talking about the likes of Engadget). Then, actually work on their gripes! People already seem willing to pay an arm and a leg for their stuff, so if the price goes up one-hundred, don't worry all your loyal'ii will still buy it. Anyway...this didn't happen, so I was left feeling underwhelmed by it and would instead by a nice laptop.

BTW, Brian Williams is the shit!

/This post may seem anti=Apple and in a lot of ways it is, but I would like them to make a good tablet (or awesome tablet--if they'd pull their collective heads out of their asses). It seems to me that any company, right now, that takes some time and makes a fast, reliable, easy-to-use, with 720p (and lots of video/codecs support)...will destroy Apple's iPad longterm (right now I just see Android tablets, but the ones I've seen are underwhelming).

//If someone has seen a good tablet coming out that has some of the features that I'm talking about, please throw in a reply.

These cups probably have like 30x the manufacturing cost of a regular plastic cup; Seems like a shit idea to me.

Looks nifty, though.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

I wonder if you could paint the whole face, wire the mask up with soft circuits and then connect to an arduino or something similar to run a programmed animation loop. I suppose you could make the animation random but still symmetrical pretty easily, actually. It's just a matter of whether the soft circuits themselves generate enough heat or if something will need to be added.


Well that thermochromic ink is pretty nifty (with the fabric/acrylic ink base). It's been around awhile--like "Mood Rings", but like @blankfist says, "It's Awesome!", due to the application an idea this guy used (now I've got to see if "Rorschach" in the movie uses anything like this or just flat-out uninspired CGI). Imagine using a wider or more controlled version of the thermochromic ink with something like meta-materials; that will come out soon enough (the neater stuff is military only here in the US I would assume). It was found recently that the meta-material molecules set themselves up automatically into Möbius symmetrical setups or "M.C. Escher" topology. If you combine the paint (if possible) afterward, I'll bet you'll be able to get some literally eye-popping effects. Maybe just not the type the military would want. Especially, if you can adhere the "ink finish / lacquer" to the inner portion of the (typically, meta-materials are aiming for "see-through" optics--which is why the topology and structure is very interesting) meta-material.

Really off-topic after this:

Using what @xxovercastxx said, adhering it (maybe with multiple type of thermochromic inks--giving it a far wider chromatic range, at varying temperatures) internally and using the meta-material you might be able to go from invisible to Abrams Tank to Porsche. You'd have to insulate the inner layer somehow to give you very fine control over the temperature or perhaps you could just flat out use electricity to change the colors. I'd imagine changing a thermochromic ink from reacting to temperature to electricity (or hell, anything kinetic: sonic waves, magnetism, etc...) wouldn't be very hard as they are closely related in the first place. You could essentially use light if the inks are responsive enough and it doesn't require a "non-stop" wave of photons; if you could make it behave like a switch that would be perfect. Then throw in some nano-technology with atomic manipulation and you'd have something incredible.

Hell, I wouldn't put something like that one the battlefield; it'd be a damned work of art! Plus, it'd probably cost more than a full-wing of F-22s just to develop; but the stuff that would come out of a development project like that would benefit humanity for a long time.

<sarcasm>Nah, let's just keep building more military.</sarcasm> At least, I know a lot of scientists try to use our addiction to the "military-industrial-complex" as a way to GET some key technological advances made. NASA does the same thing, but they tend to be better at it per dollar spent.

Möbius Symmetry link goes here.

PS: I like to include M.C. Escher (painter--think Inception as well as August Möbius (mathematician; and famous for his Möbius Strip topology of a a finite(?) two dimensional plane twisted at one end (pick a corner ) then connect it to the opposite side (make sure "top" meets "bottom"). Adding electronics I'm sure will be, if not already, worked on heavily. Especially, as I said in military type technologies (cloaking armor, etc...) But, with these you could--with enough precision make an Abrams Tank look like an Edsel. Although shooting it will kill that effect fairly quick (although I'm sure mitigation of visual anomalies will greatly depend on angle-of-view and distance) --

"Hey! That Edsel has four and one-half wheels! Ford is outrageous; why would we by this lemon!?!" His cousin responds right after;

"Bob! I got no idea whatever your sayin!?!" "It clearly has four wheels on my side!!!". "I thought Edsels were black?"

Another off-topic bit about "Edsel(s)":
Not the doo-wop group (although, the group is related to the real "Edsel"; they changed their name after the Edsel came out to capitalize on the name recognition from: "The Essos") that my dictionary keeps telling me it is; "Edsels <--with the "s" is misspelled according to the THREE combined English dictionaries. WTF? Typically I try to only misspell when I'm doing something as above in the first sentence by "Bob", "sayin" is part of my colloquialisms for them. I know, I tried hard for that "50's" feel... Yes, this is also so far off topic that I should just blog it. Can one of the admins throw a gadget in for us to use in our posts--like this, to count the topic changes. Perhaps a grammar-Nazi™ one!. Done!

P.S.- I didn't check for continuity logic or reading comprehension (and at this length, it's always needed--as it can sound like buck-shot mentally). Take as is. That reminds me: I should make a "colloquialism" English dictionary add-on for Firefox with auto conversion and "by decade" setups. It'd be fun (there's probably one around already ).

Merry Christmas everybody.
Also, the mask rocks! I also added one-helluva-edit after thinking about it; it seemed worth the trouble to bring up.
So hopefully you read it and didn't feel like I was wasting your time. Long posts are like that.

>> ^Nebosuke:

Nifty song... and I haven't even played Portal 1 yet. (I don't have a Windows computer that can run it...)


Um, console and Mac ports exist. Computer is preferred.

apps: aldiko (book reader)
barcode scanner (in addition to google goggles)
buzz feed
camera 360(nifty fx)
dictionary.com
foursquare
last.fm
pandora
groove shark
flixster movies(reviews and such)
Adobe PDF viewer
Reddit is Fun
Shazam (music search)
StumbleUpon
Thinking Space (Mind Mapper)
Tv.com (streaming shows)
Zedge (ringtones and wallpapers)

Edit: If you're running froyo (ver 2.2),don't use an task killer...they use up more battery life then they save and just create a giant
cluster fuck....

I've got a Sony Ericsson X10. I'm not too sure how similar the two phones are, but I believe they share the same app marketplace.

There's a couple that I'd recommend, they seem useless but actually have their purposes. First and foremost (as sad as this is) there's a Tricorder app in the style of Next Gen. What I use it for (other then nerding out) is it's got a decent wifi signal detector that gives you the names and strength of access points, aswell as a few other nifty things.

Track ID if you don't already have it is nifty, And (not sure if this is exclusive to my phone or not) Google Goggles. You essentially take a picture, the phone scans it, and google comes up with a result (if it finds something). Particularily useful for scanning things like movie posters, or book covers.

and lastly, just because it's something I enjoy, I have "Tune in radio", it streams radio over the web, so you can get your stations no matter where you are. (Walking for instance, although using it without being connected to a wireless hub'll cost you)

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

5 days to make one part seems slightly impractical for main stream application. Very cool none the less. Perhaps with some gene modifications on their mycelium they could get faster yieldings. Gl with that yall, sounds nifty.


How long do you think it takes to grow plants or feed cows to make a steak? Last I heard there was no shortage of either.

The five days thing is a non-issue unless you need constant just-in-time production of custom parts. Even then you could simply account for the five day lag in your operations by designing new parts five days in advance.

Of course, you'd have to beware of planning things too much in advance, lest you come up with quinquennial plans. Oh noes, communism! Still, thinking in advance instead of just "making shit right fucking now whatever the cost" can't be a bad thing.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

5 days to make one part seems slightly impractical for main stream application. Very cool none the less. Perhaps with some gene modifications on their mycelium they could get faster yieldings. Gl with that yall, sounds nifty.


that's just 5 days for the process to take place , it does not affect production time really as what you do is you would set up say 3,000 parts in 1 day and then you just have to wait 5 days for them to cure and they are ready.

pretty much the same way as sum-one would have to wait 5 days for delivery , or for example with stamping it can take a day or so for the stamp to be made before productoin can start.

if you are an industrial packager , a 5 day wate time on say a 10,000 10 million part order is totally negligible.

once production has started and you have filled the 5 day cure buffer then production speed of x product would be excaltly the same as other productoin processes as well

5 days to make one part seems slightly impractical for main stream application. Very cool none the less. Perhaps with some gene modifications on their mycelium they could get faster yieldings. Gl with that yall, sounds nifty.

nifty stuff.

Since you're running a server anyway, have you considered things you can do with it when not at home? I mean things like Torrentflux, if you're into torrents, IRC shell, file storage for remote access, serving your media files outside your home (Knots2 is a mighty nice application for on-the-fly transcoding of media to be served over the Internet)... I suppose you're running Windows on that, so I can't say how much of this is easily done without installing some Linux distro, but if you have the time to mess around with it, there's a lot of pretty nifty stuff you can do.

Recently I've been toying with the idea of setting up a one-time-pad system for logging into webmail etc. from public computers that might be infested with keyloggers: Just create a webpage on the home server that asks for a random number from a pregenerated list and passes your login credentials to the webmail provider if you provide the correct number.