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Comment other (Score 1) 151

Predominantly MP3. But CD and vinyl as well. I still have ability to play cassettes and have some, but it has been many years, whereas MP3 has been played nearly daily, CD within the week and vinyl several times a year.

Submission + - Khan Academy Seeks Patents on Learning Computer Programming, Social Programming

theodp writes: When it announced its brand new Computer Science platform in August 2012, Khan Academy explained it drew inspiration from both Bret Victor and GitHub (SlideShare). Still, that didn't stop Khan Academy from eventually seeking patents on its apparently Victor-inspired Methods and Systems for Learning Computer Programming and GitHub-inspired Systems and Methods for Social Programming, applications for which were quietly disclosed by the USPTO earlier this year. Silicon Valley legal powerhouse Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which provides a pro bono team of 20+ to assist billionaire-backed Khan Academy with its legal needs, filed provisional patent applications for KA in August 2013 — provisional applications can be filed up to 12 months following an inventor's public disclosure of the invention — giving it another 12 months before formal claims had to be filed (KA's non-provisional applications were filed in August 2014).

Comment Re:What do you vote for? (Score 1) 551

This is a troll, right?

There are legislative bodies at both a federal (House of Representatives and Senate), State (same except in Nebraska) and local levels, with varying terms of office (typically 2 years for house, longer 4-6 years for Senate). State and local executive bodies, sometimes local judges, various other executive branch positions at the state and local level. And ballot initiatives.

So I'm voting for congress (house), state assembly (lower branch of state legislature), County supervisor, Water district board and 6 state wide and a couple of county wide initiatives tomorrow.

I did phone banking to get out the vote for a few senate races that look to be key ones for the 2015-2016 US Congress.

Comment I went with IAU, but here's my definition anyway (Score 1) 454

Seasons are defined by the length of diurnal periods and the direction of the change:
Winter - Daylight period is increasing, lower than night period (lowest amount of daylight)
Spring - equal diurnal periods, daylight increasing
Summer - Daylight period is decreasing (greatest amount of daylight)
Autumn - equal periods, daylight decreasing

Comment Re:Um... (Score 3, Informative) 162

PLATO was born in 1960. By 1973 it had grown to the point that it enabled social networking of sorts - online games as well as its ostensible purpose for computer aided instruction.

I remember PLATO terminals in the university library when I was first using computers - they were big amber plasma screens that did pretty good graphics for the time. Beat punched cards and green bar paper as far as user interface hands down. It was a lot nicer than the dumb terminals that were starting to be available for coding.

Comment Re:Cities aren't 'normal' (Score 1) 515

Some of us don't live in the UK.

Laws governing city charters vary according by state (both nation state - eg US, Lithuania, and subdivision state, eg Vermont, California, Jalisco, Aguascalientes).

In the US the name "city" also has a federal meaning - Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas as defined by the Census typically are called cities by their inhabitants regardless of their legal status.

Image

Bike Projector Makes Lane For Rider 856

hh4m writes "Whether it's San Francisco, New York, or any bicyclistic city in between, you're destined to witness biker after biker dancing with danger, especially at night when visibility is uncomfortably low. Alex Tee and Evan Gant's LightLane device was recently just a concept but is soon to enter reality as a much-needed visual declaration of personal biking space. With a dire shortage of dedicated lanes, LightLane provides urban cyclists with a solution that adapts to them and any route they make take. The compact projector mounts easily to the rear of a bike frame and projects a bike lane-inspired linear pattern that provides great visibility and a familiarity that helps catch a driver's attention."

Comment Re:This has happened before and it will happen aga (Score 2, Informative) 165

It actually has gone back in forth between specialized graphics systems and graphics done via special purpose hardware. Sutherland observed on this and called it the Cycle of Reincarnation"

Great "chip technology"? Um, cpus and gpus are both chips, ad general purpose computing does get done on gpus, see CUDA for example. Reminds me of the move to vector systems in the 90s although that used multiple cpu/fpu units on boards rather than single chips.

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