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The new PS3 and Wii have motion-sensing controllers. This got my inner geek going:
When you wave around the new Nintendo controller, two tiny, flat pieces of silicon inside it, each weighing about a millionth of a gram, flex against silicon springs that hold them in place.
The movements are minute, or to put it another way, they're on the scale of 10 to 100 hydrogen atoms stacked side by side.
But these tiny movements can be measured with incredible accuracy. A charge is applied between the moving pieces of silicon and two nearby sensors. Faint fluctuations in that charge, as small as that of 10 electrons, are picked up by a chip that translates it into an understanding of how the controller is moving.
The two moving weights, which fit together on an area less than a millimeter square, have different roles. One has two sets of springs, which allow it to move from side to side and back and forth. The other weight is a flat piece anchored almost like trampoline. It senses vertical movement. This way, the chip can distinguish motion in all three dimensions of space.
I'm not sure if I want one, but it's cool that this technology is out there and is so cheap. Apparantly the motion-sensing chips cost about $1 per axis.
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I'm planning on getting a a Wii because it's actually at a reasonable price point. I want to get a PS3, but I don't think it's really worth it until I also spend the money to upgrade the Plasma TV from an EDTV model to an HDTV model. Then I can kinda justify it with the fact that it is also a blu-ray DVD player. Kristin, of course, will just roll her eyes at me about all of this.
I'm trying to work out if it's Time Warner or a dying TiVo that's messing with my recordings--are streams of mega-pixellation on the picture any indicator of, say, corrupted files?
I'd figure there'd be some sort of integrity check that would error out and not try and display the recording, but it's not a sort of cable reception error I've seen before, and I'd rather not make a cable guy appointment if I don't really have to.
Also, a pain in the neck to replicate for servicemen...unless the TiVo recording counts.
It may be worth it to clear out the aging episodes as much as possible -- the pixiliation might be the result of mondo-fragmented files.
My Tivo went through a phase like that, but I'm pretty sure it was TWC's fault, because it wasn't happening on every channel.
My computer is acting weird. When I try to shut a browser window, it won't shut, and that window freezes. The only way I can shut it is with Ctrl+Alt+Delete, which shuts every browser window, even when I only choose one. Everything else with the computer is working fine. Any suggestions for a fix?
Dump all the browser history & cache?
Dump all the browser history & cache?
I just tried that and restarted the computer. It didn't work. I have also run ad-aware a number of times.
Firefox/Firefly filk: [link]
Does a G4 iBook have a separate battery that maintains the clock? or is that based on the regular battery?
