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Quote: it could do some of the same things a Kinect does.
Turns them into a paper weight?
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TTFN - Kent
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Kent Sharkey wrote: any regular 2D camera
Yeah, by dismantle it and rebuild it with new/different parts...so it's not that regular 2D camera anymore...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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The next major version of Microsoft Windows — called “Threshold” — isn’t set to come out until next spring. But that has not stopped the company from testing out some very touchy-feely tag lines for it. You had me at, "The world doesn’t need another operating system".
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From the people who brought you the "I'm Sexy and I Know It" Surface Pro 3 parody, comes...
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... asking whether it was possible to power the diminutive Raspberry Pi™ computer from a solar panel. ... I can wholeheartedly say "Yes!" to the question, because I've done it-- very successfully.
So what do you do with an off-the-grid computer?
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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Oh please. I can run my laptop on my 160W panel with power to spare.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: my 160W panel
So that's at least 1m², right? (That's for a pretty high efficiency panel. The new ones on my home are about 180W/panel and about 1.4m².)
And how big is the inverter?
Isn't one of the points of the Raspberry Pi to be small?
Dr. John Silzel's panel is a little less than 0.5m² and about 30W/m². (Not very efficient, but cheap to manufacture, apparently.)
So, his solution is smaller, portable (easily? He does propose that smaller panels can work), and provides enough power to charge a battery for night operation.
And it is pretty much "homebrew", which seems to be another characteristic mindset of the Pi aficionados. 
Disclaimer: Dr. John Silzel is a friend of mine. We have worked together in the past.
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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Matt T Heffron wrote: The new ones on my home are about 180W/panel and about 1.4m².)
Yeah, mine is an old panel, probably 10 years old by now.
Matt T Heffron wrote: Isn't one of the points of the Raspberry Pi to be small?
You bring up some great points. I stand corrected. 
Marc
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If you’re interested in moving to product management in the future, here are three critical steps to make the transition. Cerebrotomy not included
With apologies to bright product managers for maintaining the stereotype
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In a class at the company’s internal training program, the so-called Apple University, the instructor likened the 11 lithographs that make up Picasso’s “The Bull” to the way Apple builds its smartphones and other devices. The idea: Apple designers strive for simplicity just as Picasso eliminated details to create a great work of art. "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler"
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From analyzing the way you walk to your heartbeat, these futuristic authentication systems could be here soon. Until these authentication methods get hacked, that is
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Er, yeah.
If someone manages to crack your password, you change your password.
If someone manages to fake your biometrics/whatever, you... um... get a different body?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Microsoft announces a new dumb phone, known as Nokia 130, which it calls "the most affordable mobile phone with video and music player". Why does that phone have so many buttons?
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I ask myself, if someone want a phone, why one buys a "video and music player"...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Wow. Must be an exceptionally slow news day.  This makes the InfoWorthless article I snarked on below look good. Like the Android + Bing phone that came out a month or two ago; this is part of the production queue MS ended up with when they acquired Nokia's phone business. MS's opinion of the value of that part of the package was made clear when they announced that they were winding down the part of the business with the last new products coming out in ~6 months and all of them being discontinued in ~18mo; with the 12k people working on them slated for layoffs. The PR is standard marketing BS; notable if anything only for being in English and on the main page when it's clearly something that will only sell in the developing world. (When you live on a dollar/day, cost trumps everything even if being able to check for what markets are offering the best prices/etc will make the phone pay for itself.)
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: Must be an exceptionally slow news day.
Slow news day, week, month. There's hardly been anything happening. All the iFolk are doing nothing but iterating on rumours of the next iPhone, and Microsoft seems to busy laying people off to do anything noteworthy.
I could (and do) go on, but shorter version: if you know of any worthwhile news sources or items, please do let me know.
TTFN - Kent
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If I find any, I will.
In the mean time, The Insider should have a minimum quality floor; not a fixed length if it means forwarding crap on slow days.
#NecroticEquineFlagellation
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Wow. Amazing how the world changed. Now something that is essentially just a phone gets called "dumb phone" while at the same time so-called "smart phones" are anything but a phone (ok, you can use it to make phone calls, but I don't see many people do that, they all walk down the street staring at and touching the screen rather than holding it up to the ear.)
Why not call a phone a phone, and this "smart phone" thingy something else... let's say... a "pocket computer"... or "communicator" (OK, maybe that's too much Star Trek and might piss some people off). Or just "dumb PC" while we're at dumb vs. smart versions of technology.
"Nokia 130 is a dumb phone for dumb phone buyers. That means it stays true to the core of the dumb phone by offering lots of standby time (up to 36 days in single-SIM trim and up to 26 days in dual-SIM trim), physical buttons, and externals which appear to be typical of old Nokia phones (meaning, durable). It also has a 1.8-inch color screen, a storage expansion slot, Bluetooth, USB, FM Radio, LED flash (works as a flashlight), and can play music for up to 46 hours or videos for up to 16 hours."
OK, to someone like me who uses a phone for making phone calls and maybe send some SMS (I'm a weirdo, I know), these specs sound pretty appealing. One month of battery life! Now that's what I call efficient. Although I think it's quite offensive to speak of "dumb buyers" when people don't care about more features and like to have a phone that is not a power-wasting hog.
...and at least dumb phones don't try to dumb their users. 
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Microsoft is touting three key reasons as to why Windows 8.1 is "better." The company doesn't explicitly tell us what or who the operating system is being compared to, but you can easily venture a guess that Microsoft is comparing Windows 8.1 to older versions of Windows, including Windows 8. Behold the PROGRESS!
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Countless posts on Stack Overflow are vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. Along with several other users, I always raise this when it shows up – this is something that really just shouldn’t happen these days. When Jon Skeet speaks. People listen.
Hopefully
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Kent Sharkey wrote: When Jon Skeet speaks. People listen.
You kidding right? Even god would add an eleventh commandment, people still will write SQL by concatenating strings...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Yeah, thus the "hopefully" on that, but ... yeah. Never gonna happen. 
TTFN - Kent
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And some people insist in "filtering" techniques, like e.g. sql injection in asp.net C#[^] who even links to a WTFy blog, and won't accept an answer which tells them the correct way. "NO, I WANT A CLASS ..."
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I have a printed copy of Bobby Tables hanging on my cube wall right next to this one[^]
His point is well taken, but I have to ask - if someone can contaminate your process with a custom Culture object, then isn't SQL injection the least of your concerns?
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