Star Trek LCARS Home Panel

Needless to say... want.

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DIY Guass Gun

The article refers to the home-built weapon as a coil gun, but I think that most of my readers are used to referring to this kind of weapon as a Gauss gun, a la Traveller. I did notice that we don't see in the video (after the jump) how long it takes to charge up the capacitors or how many shots the batteries are good for... then again this guy built the thing himself.

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Telcos = Greedy Bastards = No Surprise

Here's a couple of interesting articles on how telecom companies are focusing on milking customers for short term, Wall Street appeasing gains rather than investing and keeping pace with the rest of the civilized world.

This article is really the core of the discussion, the second article mostly references the first but brings up at least one other good point.

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Lightsaber Laser

Wicked Lasers has come out with a 1W blue laser housed in what looks like a lightsaber hilt. This $200 toy is "extremely dangerous", capable of causing instant permanent retina damage and burning your skin off.

While the geek part of me wants one, I'd almost be afraid to turn the thing on.

More in an article on io9.

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iPad - $600 Cat Toy?

I have to admit that iPads are kind of neat. I played with using one for a work dashboard the other night and suggested to my district boss the company should expense one for me to use for that purpose.

He suggested I should wait until after work to drink.

The trouble is, for me an iPad isn't $600 worth of neat. There is a lot it can't do, and those are things I would need such a device to be able to do.

However, other people have found uses for their iPads. One I stumbled across on Geekologie. The video is after the jump.

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Gamer View On Net Neutrality

Right now Comcast's fat cats are high fiving each other over the courts finding that the FCC can't force net neutrality under current regulation. A chunk of that is because the FCC classifies broadband as lightly regulated. Before Comcast and their ilk celebrate too much, they need to remember that the FCC could reclassify broadband as a higher regulated category.

Meanwhile, here is an interesting article from Massively.com.

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How Will iPad Change Comics?

It looks like Disney/Marvel is already working on cashing in on the iPad craze. It offers a free app that let's people download and read comics on their iPad for $1.99 per issue, a significant reduction from the usual $3 - $4 cover price. And the best part for Marvel is the save printing costs and don't have to give a cut to Diamond (which has an effective distribution monopoly) or retailers.

While this option won't satisfy collectors and old fogeys like me that like to have a physical book to read, it would be crazy not to see how this could totally change the shape of things for comic book fans.

When enough people adopt e-comics (or should I say iComics) to be profitable, there is little incentive for the publishers to maintain the traditional model, with which they have struggled to be profitable. All they would have to do is have to comics also readable on conventional computers and e-readers such as Kindle to ensure that most of their readers would migrate from dead-tree format to the much more profitable electronic model.

Enjoy your local comic book stores while you can, kiddies.

Oh, and here's an article that talks about the Marvel/Disney app for iPad.

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Pumpkin-Spider Robot

I have to agree with the author of the article where I found this, the Pumpkin-Spider would be an awesome way to dispense trick-or-treat candy... except for all of the accident-stained costumes and angry parents due to terrified kids.

Then again, I still chuckle at the memory of "it's okay honey, he's a nice Grim Reaper."

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The Future Of D&D

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Visual Story TAs on Vimeo.

I can already predict the biggest stumbling block (after cost)... players would rather roll their own dice than virtual dice. What it needs is a scanning surface to could roll on that would recognize the surface of the die in contact with the surface and use that to determine which face of the die is on top.

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China Could Have the World By Its Rare-Earth Balls

After putting its competitors out of business, China is the sole supplier for a wide range of rare earth minerals used in high tech devices. Now it is contemplating plans to cut off other countries.

Why does this remind me of Wal-Mart?

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How long until the holodeck?

The holodeck just got a step closer as Japanese scientists are pioneering touchable holograms.


Check out the rest on Geekologie.

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Skittle Bombs vs. Zombies

I think the government and the media is just preparing the public for the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse, also known as Z Day. Why else are zombies so popular?

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Another one bites the dust

So I took my ailing PC to the Nerd Herd after I couldn't get the gorram video card to work right. After a couple of hours of fiddling with it, the tech told me:

1) I needed a new power supply as the old one didn't put out enough juice to fire the card when it was running in anything other than barebones video.
2) The card was conflicting with the firewire card.
3) My hard drive cried itself to sleep at night and didn't have long left.

His recommendation was that the machine was not worth sinking the money into it. I had them back up my docs and setting to my protable hard drive and took the machine home to yank the card so I can return it. Since he didn't catch the hard drive problem right off the bat, he didn't charge me anything for the time he spent trying to get it to work.


Now I'll need to re-arrange the den and move Chronovore (my gaming pc) to the main desk. I may yank out the small desk and add another book case, because I can never have too many bookcases. Plus it would be better than adding a minifridge.

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Hating ATI

So I'm still dealing with the videocard issue with my "main" pc. I picked up a new card, an ATI HD 2400 Pro AGP because it was the only AGP card we had. I figured it would be a snap. I've installed multiple ATI cards over the years with no problems.

Yeah, not so much. The card isn't the problem, it's the software. One of the drivers locks the system up on reboot. And this is using their hotfix, running a disk clean up after uninstalling the old drivers and manually going into the directories to make sure the old ATI software got cleared out.

Grr. If I can't figure it out in a week I'll return the damned thing and get a different brand at another store. I guess it's silly to expect something to work out of the box.


Oh yeah... in Ozzistan ATI would be hammered for selling false goods. Evidently they know their AGP cards and software is jacked up.

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Technical Issues

My workhorse PC is acting up, hence posting might be a bit sparse. I'm trying to find out if it is a video card issue (relatively easy to fix even for me... I installed the existing card) or if the computer is in its death throes. It's something like 8 years old and has been through 1 hard drive already.

If it is dying then I have to see if I can transplant its drive to this PC, my gaming computer, or if I need to just back stuff up. I've already copied the folders for my current games in case of a catastrophic failure.

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Global Warming isn't new

While researching for my marvel 1941 campaign I stumbled across Modern Mechanix, one of a multitude of interesting sites that look at how we used to view technology and the future.

Ths article caught my eye. Looks like in the late 50's some people were blaming atomic bombs for changing climate and this article refutes that theory.


Maybe Al Gore should read it?

Now don't get me wrong, I think we should avoid polluting where possible. But I'm not going to live on a compost heap in a hippie commune eating organic grass-trimming to do so. I'm in favor of hybrid cars and wind energy. One of the negative side effects of gas prices going down is that the sales of hybrids plummeted and SUVs rose again.

But I also tire of the self-righteousness of many in the Green Movement, not to mention the hypocrisy (is that a hybrid jet, Al?). The climate is changing, but it is not all due to us. I think we should do what we can to mitigate our impact, but I'm not going to become Amish. But I won't join those who hate eco-friendly ideas just because they come from the left. And we need to get off the oil. We won't because the oil companies have too much money in Washington, so they don't care if we are beholden to foreign powers for 70% of our oil because we pay them for the other 30%. Highest profiting company? Exxon. Bet they don't want to see us go solar/wind/nuclear.

And yes, in Ozzistan we'd use nuclear power, along with green means. Nuclear power is safe enough. Hybrid cars until full electric becomes practical. Improved recycling, nature preserves, green buffers, reduced industrial emissions all would play a part in Ozzistan's ecological policy.

What the hell did I start off talking about?

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Flying Car in 2011?

You can see the news article here.

The problem I see is that you still need an airport to fly. Called me spoiled, but I want my flying car to be vtol. :)

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Marvel Comics on iTunes?

While they won't be phasing out hard copy comics any time soon, Marvel will begin selling their In-Motion comics on iTunes. You can check out an article here.

Of course my question is whether or not these In-Motion comics will be part of mainline continuity?

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DTV delay passes House

Looks like the Mommy-crats managed to keep the DTV measure alive and now less than two weeks from the transition date, it will be pushed back.

I hope every broadcaster in the country flips Congress the bird and pulls the analog plug on the 17th. Plus who pays for the use of all those frequencies that have already been sold? I'm guessing us taxpayers... which of course is why the cost doesn't bother taxes, from what we've seen the past couple of weeks Democrats seem to think taxes are optional.

Anyway, check out the article here, I'm going to go kill some liberal bleeding-heart hobbits with my warg.

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House rejects DTV delay

The Republicans managed to keep the DTV transition from passing in the House. You can check out the story here.

I was pleasantly surprised after the Senate Republicans just rolled over.

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