mattnyc99 - Slashdot User

Submission + - One More Thing for Apple Stores: Food? (esquire.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @11:10AM

mattnyc99 writes: Esquire raises an interesting question on iPhone 5 day: What if Apple stores had cafes? From an analyst cited in the article: "In line with the Genius Bar concept, I could see them taking a part of the store and making it a café atmosphere where customers could interact with technology in a relaxed environment."

Submission + - What Happens After the Super-Hero Movie Bubble? (esquire.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @06:02PM

mattnyc99 writes: In the wake of a not-that-exciting Comic-Con come some (perhaps premature) reports on the so-called "Death of Superheroes" — what one financial group calls "the top of the (comic book) character remonetization cycle." In response, Esquire.com's Paul Schrodt has an interesting look down Hollywood geek road. From the article: "What happens after The Avengers, or Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie — after we've seen all there is to see of the best comic-book blockbusters ever made?"

Submission + - Are Fake Geeks Dooming Real Ones? (esquire.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Monday June 27, 2011 @04:59PM

mattnyc99 writes: In the wake of the Best Buy "geek" trademarking and Miss USA calling herself "a huge history geek," writer (and self-proclaimed geek) Eryn Green has an interesting piece for Esquire on how so-called "geek chic" is pervading the culture so much that no one appreciates an actual geek anymore. From the article: "The difference between brains and beauty is that you're more or less born into good looks — entitled, if you will. Intelligence? That takes work. If the hallmark of real geekiness — of America — is determination, then we seem too determined to have an entitlement problem."

Submission + - The Future of the Most Important Human Brain Ever (esquire.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Monday October 25, 2010 @05:44PM

mattnyc99 writes: About a year ago, we watched live as neuroanatomist Jacopo Annese sliced the brain of Memento-style patient Henry Molaison (aka H.M.) into 2,401 pieces. Since even before then, writer Luke Dittrich — whose grandfather happened to be the surgeon to accidentally slice open the H.M. skull in the first place — has been tracking Annese and a new revolution in brain science for Esquire. From the article: "If Korbinian Brodmann created the mind's Rand McNally, Jacopo Annese is creating its Google Maps... With his Brain Observatory, Annese is setting out to create not the world's largest but the world's most useful collection of brains... For the first time, we'll be able to meaningfully and easily compare large numbers of brains, perhaps finally understanding why one brain might be less empathetic or better at calculus or likelier to develop Alzheimer's than another. The Brain Observatory promises to revolutionize our understanding of how these three-pound hunks of tissue inside our skulls do what they do, which means, of course, that it promises to revolutionize our understanding of ourselves."

Submission + - Why NASA's New Video Game Totally Misses the Point (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by longacre on Tuesday August 03, 2010 @04:52PM

longacre writes: Erik Sofge trudges through NASA’s latest free video game, which he finds tedious, uninspiring and misguiding: "Moonbase Alpha is a demo, of sorts, for NASA's more ambitious upcoming game, Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond, which will feature more destinations, and hopefully less welding. The European Space Agency is developing a similar game, set on the Jovian Moon, Europa. But Moonbase Alpha proves that as a recruiting campaign, or even as an educational tool, the astronaut simulation game is a lost cause. Unless NASA plans to veer into science fiction and populate its virtual moons, asteroids and planets with hostile species, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to suffer through another minute of pretending to weld power cables back into place, while thousands of miles away, the most advanced explorers ever built are hurtling toward asteroids and dwarf planets and into the heart of the sun. Even if it was possible to build an astronaut game that's both exciting and realistic, why bother? It will be more than a decade before humans even attempt another trip outside of Earth's orbit. If NASA wants to inspire the next generation of astronauts and engineers, its games should focus on the real winners of the space race—the robots."

Submission + - Sonic Skydive's Real Aim: Help Astronauts Survive (esquire.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Wednesday July 14, 2010 @02:50PM

mattnyc99 writes: Earlier this year came reports that Felix Baumgartner (the daredevil who flew across the English Channel) would be attempting to jump from a balloon at least 120,000 feet altitude, break the sound barrier, and live. Now comes a big investigative story from Esquire's issue on achieving the impossible, which details the former NASA team dedicated to making sure Baumgartner's Stratos project will instruct the future safety of manned space flight (including Jonathan Clark, the husband of an astronaut who died in the Columbia disaster). From the article (which also includes pics and video shot by the amateur space photographer we've discussed here before): "that's also precisely what makes Stratos great. It's more like Mercury than the shuttle: They're taking risks, making things up as they go along. But they're also doing important work, potentially groundbreaking work. They're doing what NASA no longer has the balls to do. Hell, he'd do it for free. He is doing it for free. Stratos only picks up his travel expenses. Clark looks at his friend, shrugs. 'This is new space.'"

Submission + - Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video (nycaviation.com) 1

Submitted by longacre on Monday February 01, 2010 @12:47AM

longacre writes: An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available.

Avatar Soars Into $1-Billion Territory 782

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday January 04, 2010 @10:33AM from the but-what-did-he-do-to-that-dragon dept.

Suki I writes " Avatar soars into $1-billion territory. 'Strong foreign ticket sales help make the science-fiction movie the fifth in history to pass the watermark. ... One of the riskiest movies of all times is now officially one of the most successful at the box office. When Avatar opened, its solid but far from stellar results left 20th Century Fox uncertain about whether the $430 million that it and two financing partners had invested to produce and market the 3-D film would pay off.'" Given that the big alternatives were Sherlock Holmes or Alvin & the Chipmunks, I think the winner was clear.

Submission + - Air Force Planning New Drone Fleet for Pakistan (esquire.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @12:04PM

mattnyc99 writes: With tensions high on the border, a new commander in Afghanistan, and complaints of civilian deaths from robotic U.S. strikes in Pakistan raising anti-American sentiment, the Air Force is sketching out concepts for new robotic hitmen, reports Esquire.com. Among the new drones (which are all very small) are the Suburb Warrior (loaded with four or five mini missiles for semi-urban environments), the Sniper targeting system ("that can lock on to multiple targets, allowing a single drone pilot to coordinate the attacks of a squadron of robots"), and a backup fleet of flying buggies that act as suicide-bomber snipers. From the article: "Picking through the dozens of systems in this briefing, many of which will be flight-tested within five years, there's a clear set of goals: build smaller, even microscopic drones with smaller weapons that can hunt in swarms and engage targets in the close quarters of urban battlefields. And hunt as soon as possible."

Submission + - A Full-Blown Map-Based Location-Aware Mobile World

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @05:23PM

mattnyc99 writes: Two weeks after the launch of Google Latitude, your inbox is probably full of requests and privacy advocates probably have even more concerns than they did at first. But some tech pundits are already seeing the bigger picture of a digital lifestyle based around the always-on, GPS-based mobile map. The NYT's always reliable John Markoff, who called for a new Internet on Sunday, has a great piece in today's Science Times about the map as metaphor for a time when "future systems will probably begin to blur the boundaries between the display and the real world." Over at Esquire.com's Tech Therapist, Erik Sofge talks to the geek behind Latitude and offers a similar reality check. From the article: "Latitude will be precisely as annoying as e-mail and social networking sites and cell phones themselves — and just as useful. What won't stop Latitude, or the wider rollout of location-based tracking, is bitching about it. These are juggernauts of free, culture-reorienting technology. And you and me, we are but posts on the massive Facebook profile of history."

Why Your Pop-Up Blocker Doesn't Work Anymore 653

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday February 05, 2009 @10:59AM from the hate-them-so-much dept.

An anonymous reader writes "If you've noticed that pop-up ad windows seem to have made an unwelcome return into your life, it's because they're not using the same easily blockable technology as before. The Adimpact system uses DHTML to annoy you, and there's no immediate prospect of a solution."

Submission + - Remembering NASA Disasters with Eye Toward Future

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Tuesday January 27, 2009 @11:28AM

mattnyc99 writes: This next week marks the anniversary of three sad days in NASA's history: three astronauts died in a capsule fire testing for Apollo 1 exactly 42 years ago today, then the Challenger went down 23 years ago tomorrow, followed by the Columbia disaster six years ago this Super Bowl Sunday. Amidst all this sadness, though, too many average Americans take our space program for granted. Amidst reconsiderations of NASA priorities from the Obama camp as the Shuttle nears retirement, then, the brilliant writer Chris Jones offers a great first-hand account in the new issue of Esquire — an impassioned argument against the impending end of our manned space program. In which camp do you fall: mourner or rocketeer?

Apple Awarded Patent For iPhone Interface 449

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 27, 2009 @01:09AM from the can't-touch-that dept.

Toe, The writes "Apple's 358-page patent application for their iPhone interface entitled Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics has been approved after more than two years of review by the US Patent Office. Apple's claims include: 'A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.' As Apple seems eager to defend their intellectual property, what will this mean to other touch developers?"

Submission + - Mad Scientist Brings Back Dead with 'Deanimation' (esquire.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @11:47AM

mattnyc99 writes: The brilliant writer Tom Junod has a jaw-dropping profile of MacArthur genius Marc Roth in Esquire's annual Best and Brightest roundup, detailing how this gonzo DNA scientist (who also figured out how to correctly diagnose lupus) went from watching his infant daughter die to literally reincarnating animals. Inspired by NOVA and funded by DARPA, Roth has developed a serum for major biotech startup Ikaria that successfully accomplished "suspended animation" — the closest we've ever come to simulating near-death experiences and then coming back to life. From the article: "We don't know what life is, anyway. Not really. We just know what life does--it burns oxygen. It's a process of combustion. We're all just slow-burning candles, making our way through our allotment of precious O2 until it becomes our toxin, until we burn out, until we get old and die. But we live on 21 percent oxygen, just as we live at 37 degrees. They're related. Decrease the oxygen to 5 percent, we die. But, look, the concentration of oxygen in the blood that runs through our capillaries is only 2 or 3 percent. We're almost dead already! So what if we turn down the candle's need for oxygen? What if we dim the candle so much that we don't even have the energy to die?"

Submission + - Inside Dean Kamen's Seceded Island of Geekery (esquire.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Monday November 24, 2008 @01:20PM

mattnyc99 writes: The new issue of Esquire has a long, in-depth, intricate profile of Dean Kamen and his quest to invent a better world. Earlier this month, we discussed Kamen's Sterling-electric car, but this piece goes into much more detail about how that engine works—he got the original idea from the upmodded Henry Ford artifact in the basement of his insane island lab—and about how his inventions often go overlooked, including the Slingshot water purifer that Stephen Colbert made famous but that no one has actually bought yet. Quoting: "To get the Slingshot to the 20 percent of the world that doesn't have electricity, Kamen came up with the idea of splitting it in half. Leaving the Stirling aside, he would try to develop a market for his distiller in parts of the developing world that have electricity but not reliable clean water. 'There are five hundred thousand little stores in Mexico,' he says. 'If we can put one of these in 10 percent of them, that's enough to put it in production.' That may be the killer app for the distiller."

So is this guy all hype with overpriced devices, or is time for someone to take his genius (Segway aside) to the mass market?

Slashdot Top Deals