General Computer Stuff

MIT’s Cute Robot

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I came across this article and the robot is too cute not to pass along. The purpose of the robot is to get information from people. It is a novel approach.

An article about it and the video can be found here: Robot Video Journalist

Too Cute - You must hear the voice.

While the bot is cute you only get the full affect when you hear its voice. Check it out.

I thought it interesting that some people would abuse the robot. They did not provide stats on the number of helpful verses abusive. But, it is probably hard to know. They determined abuse by acceleration sensors in the bot. The video shows one deliberate kick. But, how many of the events were deliberate or accidental is not addressed. Poor little bot…

Google Chrome Download Problem

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If you are one of the people using Google’s Chrome browser, you may have noticed a problem when downloading files. Those of us that save downloads to specific folders, depending on type of download, are seeing the file name as unconfirmed#####.crdownload. When attempting to download a Second Life viewer latest version it becomes an annoying problem. I had a hard time tracking down the problem and finding the solution, thus this article.

Chromium Issue Tracker

The latest-links for Second Life viewers do not provide a readable file name in Chrome 17. Version numbering is part of the file name and how one tells which version is in the latest queue.  There are no other hints to the version number. Fortunately the correct file replaces the crdownload name after the download. The annoyance is in having to download a file to find out it is a file previously downloaded.

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How To get a Faster Second Life

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Several people in the forums are asking how to get better Frames per Second rates and why their computer is so slow running SL. Several are asking about upgrading their computer for Christmas or getting a new one. So, I decided to write a HOW TO specific to Second Life so I could avoid repetitive forum posts…

Speed Hump? - Image by TheDarkThing - Flickr

Even if you never want to open the computer’s case, this information will help you know what to have your computer tech upgrade for you.

First consider what we are working with, other games have better graphics and performance than Second Life. When comparing SL with other games, one is wise to remember that most things in the SL world are made by novice content creators. Render efficiency is not foremost in their design goals and that shows in SL frame rates. Take a look at: Typical Second Life Frame Rate Performance by Graphics Card/GPU. The page was last updated in August 2011. It shows an nVidia 470 getting about 45 FPS.

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Google Chrome No Disk Error

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For months I’ve been fighting with this error in my Chrome Internet browser. Several times I’ve searched for a fix or explanation without any luck. Today Google Search came up with an answer. \o/

The fix is not as elegant as I would like. It also reveals a lot about the workings of Chrome. The most negative part of this fix is the lost of the browser history. You can try the fix in two stages to see if you can keep your history. OR… read through the entire article here and try the alternate fix near the end.

The Fix

  1. Close Chrome
  2. Open your Task Manager. You can right click on empty background in the bottom tool bar and select Task Manager.
  3. Select the Processes tab.
  4. Click the column heading name Image Name to sort the display on names.
  5. Kill any processes named chrome.exe. Right-click the process and select kill. You get an ‘are you sure?’ You are.
  6. This is the end of the first step. Launch Chrome and see if this has fixed the problem. Often you’ll hear the solution as Reboot the computer. Rebooting kills this process. Manually killing it is much faster and easier.

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Microsoft’s Win8 Secure Boot

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Since most of my readers are Windows people this is an issue worth bring up. It seems Microsoft wants to build in a feature named Secure Boot. It will be an integral part of the coming Windows 8. It sounds like a good reason to upgrade to Windows 7 and hold off Win8 as long as possible.

Booting

Everything seems to have a boot process. Booting takes time and is prone to root kit attacks. Microsoft is looking at redoing the boot process. With this rethink they are including phones, tablets, pads, laptops, and desktops.

What will all the rethinking look like to the end user? They have a cool video, about a minute long.

The Challenges

Think about how the process might work on phones, pads, and tablets. All seems pretty straight forward, until you think about when a device has problems. If you’re on a smart phone you do not want to see Press F1 when there is some problem. So, using a similar process across a wide range of devices can get complex.

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Facial Recognition

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By: jez atkinson @ Flickr

If you live in the USA you are likely seeing news reports of the new Facial Recognition tools the police are getting. For about US$3,000 per unit they get a smart phone thing that will take a picture and compare it to the a law enforcement database and provide an ID for the person in question. It is nearly instant ID.

What is not being covered is the fact that this technology is being made available to smart phone developers via an API. That means we are going to see the same ability appearing in apps.

ReadWriteWeb is reporting that the Apple is making facial recognition part of the iOS 5 operating system. No surprise as RWW was predicting this would happen back in January. The new facial detection tools were recently found on Apple’s Developer website.

Get more information here: Facial Recognition Comes to iOS 5 via New Developer Tools

This means that within 6 months to a year there will be a flood of these apps. Privacy advocates are going nuts. They are all worried about what law enforcement will do with the technology. One reported plan use is to post the face of a belligerent drunk police have been called to remove to all establishments that serve alcohol in the area. However, with this new tech I can see bar and restaurant owners doing this on their own.

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