"In its 3.0 incarnation, Pages still lacks autosave (come on Apple, even TextEdit has had this for years!), and it still has no idea whether it wants to be a word processor or a layout program when it grows up. It also still can’t do footnotes and endnotes in the same document, so some of the annoyances that plagued previous versions haven’t gone away. But the new Pages version does have a killer new feature that makes the upgrade worth it for freelance writers around the world: a running word count at the bottom left of the document window. (2661 and counting! Too bad Ars doesn’t pay by the word.)"
—

Rain check on taking that look at iWork as planned.

Ars reviews iWork ‘09: fourth time’s a charm? - Ars Technica

(via beingrandom)

Using any Office suite on Mac OS X is hell.

5 Reasons Why Terminator Salvation Sucks

Spoilers!

  1. Sony Vaio: Resistance Edition, i.e. technology far superior anything we’ve seen in the flash-forwards in the previous movies. I mean, isn’t humanity supposed to outnumbered and on the brink of extinction? Wouldn’t a military base be an easy target for Skynet? Also, 14 years have passed since the planet was nuked, but they still have helicopters, jets, high-tech equipment, ammunition, laboratories, and the equipment and skill to perform heart transplants?
  2. Common, and if that’s not enough: Common with sunglasses at night.
  3. GUIs that can be interacted with by humans at Skynet. Well, GUIs at Skynet in general.
  4. The fact that Skynet are trying to kill John Connor and Kyle Reese before they have any idea who they are and what they will do.
  5. Terminators with headbands.
This is how Project Natal works

The test system was an ordinary Xbox 360, connected to small PC and camera that simulates the final Natal rig. There are two cameras—one RGB, for face recognition and display video, and one infrared, for tracking movement and depth. Why infrared? The eye doesn’t see infrared light. And when you combine an infrared camera with an infrared emitter (also part of Natal), a room is flooded with a spectrum of invisible light that works in the dark.

http://gizmodo.com/5277954/testing-project-natal-we-touched-the-intangible

The 3D sensor itself is a pretty incredible piece of equipment providing detailed 3D information about the environment similar to very expensive laser range finding systems but at a tiny fraction of the cost. Depth cameras provide you with a point cloud of the surface of objects that is fairly insensitive to various lighting conditions allowing you to do things that are simply impossible with a normal camera.

But once you have the 3D information, you then have to interpret that cloud of points as “people”. This is where the researcher jaws stay dropped. The human tracking algorithms that the teams have developed are well ahead of the state of the art in computer vision in this domain. The sophistication and performance of the algorithms rival or exceed anything that I’ve seen in academic research, never mind a consumer product. At times, working on this project has felt like a miniature “Manhattan project” with developers and researchers from around the world coming together to make this happen.

http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2009/06/project-natal.html

Simply Amazing.

Batman: Arkham Asylum looks amazing, added to wishlist.

Sigh.

Sigh.

beingrandom: inky: (via imfish & mrmt) This really sums up everything. So sad.

beingrandom:

inky:

(via imfish & mrmt)

This really sums up everything. So sad.

beingrandom: szymon: Dotz cable straps and identifiers Since when do cables look that identical? I mean, that would be a start, bring on the cute identifiers later.

beingrandom:

szymon:

Dotz cable straps and identifiers

Since when do cables look that identical? I mean, that would be a start, bring on the cute identifiers later.

"Apparently the first Transformers movie took up an ‘astounding 15 terabytes’; the new one required 140 terabytes."
— Michael Bay on Transformers 2 and IMAX resolutions.
True-Friend-O-Meter

beingrandom:

gesteves:

Our senior year of college, my friend Meg, changed her birthday on Facebook from the correct date of July 13th to an incorrect date some random day in March.

She then waited to see who would write on her wall or send her a message wishing her a Happy Birthday on the wrong date. Anyone who did was instantly unfriended.

Oh man, I’m so doing this.

inky: Only about 28% of the world’s total road distance carries traffic on the left (blue), with 72% on the right (red), according to Wikipedia. I had no idea we left-siders were so outnumbered. I wonder if this is merely a coincidence: Today, only four European countries drive on the left: Cyprus, Ireland, Malta and the United Kingdom. None shares a physical border with a country that drives on the right and all were once part of the British Empire. I’ve always thought there was something odd about right-hand traffic, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I read this: Research in 1969 by J. J. Leeming showed countries driving on the left have a lower collision rate than countries driving on the right. It has been suggested this is partly because humans are more commonly right-eye dominant than left-eye dominant. Interesting. Sweden also had left-side driving from 1736 until 1955. The country shares several physical borders with countries that drive on the right, Norway for example, and this did lead to some confusion. :) The changeover took place on a Sunday morning at 5am on September 3, 1967, which was known in Swedish as Dagen H (H-Day), the ‘H’ standing for Högertrafik or right-hand traffic. Since Swedish cars were left-hand drive, experts had suggested that changing to driving on the right would reduce accidents, because drivers would have a better view of the road ahead. Indeed, fatal car-to-car and car-to-pedestrian accidents did drop sharply as a result. This was likely due to drivers initially being more careful since accident rates soon returned to nearly the same as earlier. I would also think that, if one is sitting on the left, head-on collisions would be less fatal, since one is further away from the point of impact.

inky:

Only about 28% of the world’s total road distance carries traffic on the left (blue), with 72% on the right (red), according to Wikipedia. I had no idea we left-siders were so outnumbered.

I wonder if this is merely a coincidence:

Today, only four European countries drive on the left: Cyprus, Ireland, Malta and the United Kingdom. None shares a physical border with a country that drives on the right and all were once part of the British Empire.

I’ve always thought there was something odd about right-hand traffic, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I read this:

Research in 1969 by J. J. Leeming showed countries driving on the left have a lower collision rate than countries driving on the right. It has been suggested this is partly because humans are more commonly right-eye dominant than left-eye dominant.

Interesting. Sweden also had left-side driving from 1736 until 1955. The country shares several physical borders with countries that drive on the right, Norway for example, and this did lead to some confusion. :)

The changeover took place on a Sunday morning at 5am on September 3, 1967, which was known in Swedish as Dagen H (H-Day), the ‘H’ standing for Högertrafik or right-hand traffic.

Since Swedish cars were left-hand drive, experts had suggested that changing to driving on the right would reduce accidents, because drivers would have a better view of the road ahead. Indeed, fatal car-to-car and car-to-pedestrian accidents did drop sharply as a result. This was likely due to drivers initially being more careful since accident rates soon returned to nearly the same as earlier.

I would also think that, if one is sitting on the left, head-on collisions would be less fatal, since one is further away from the point of impact.

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Themed by: Hunson