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Just so you know, I’m not making light of warfare — it’s just that virtual training like this, while valuable, does remind one simultaneously of Modern Warfare and Ender’s Game . Of course, as this article notes , the current generation of potential soldiers has grown up in a digital age and expects a little Xbox with their ammo box. Training has, since the introduction of America’s Army in 2002 (remember, everyone thought it was going to suck, and it really didn’t at all), incorporated more and more virtual or simulated training, though admittedly the technology used is decidedly last-generation still. But when you can save a million rounds of ammo by having your recruits shooting pixelated guys in a 360-degree combat room like this one, the benefits are clear. I wish we didn’t have to send 19-year-olds into a war zone, but every advantage we can give them is helpful. And for the record, if I had to have someone watching my back while bullets whiz past, I wouldn’t mind if it was one of my old Counter-Strike clanmates.

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360-degree virtual combat room is like Iraq: The Arcade Game

Gunnar Optiks , makers of advanced lenses to ease eye strain for computer users, is teaming up with Carl Zeiss to bring a whole new class of “optics” to you. Not a whole lot of details at this point, other than Zeiss coatings and tints “will be used on the Gunnar Optiks lenses to change the lenses to suit specific digital viewing environments.” Maybe this means a new line of clear lenses, suitable for use in color-sensitive environments like graphic design, are coming soon. Via SlashGear .

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Gunnar Optiks joining forces with Carl Zeiss to make new lenses

Exciting news about Apple’s iTunes LP : apparently it’s a bit of a bust! The fine folks at GigaOM had the foresight to talk to people in the music industry to ask them, six months on, how’s iTunes LP doing? Not so great, is the answer . What went wrong? The first shocking revelation: iTunes LP wasn’t really Apple’s idea in the first place. Makes sense: why would Apple, which all but created the idea of a legal, digital music store, based on selling individual songs (read: not albums) all of a sudden be all, “Hey, albums are cool again. Buy them, and at a huge premium, too. Rather, iTunes LP was pushed by the same record labels that complained enough to get Apple to change from an all-99 cents pricing policy to a flexible pricing policy in exchange for DRM-free music. What happened? A couple things, maybe. One, maybe, after years of getting used to cherry picking what songs they wanted to buy, people are just done with the concept of the album. Not everyone who buys music from iTunes is so into music that they’ll make 1,000-word blog posts defending the album—they just want the latest Lady Gaga song. These people have no interest in full-length albums anymore. Another reason: iTunes LP albums are expensive, both to buy and to create. One source told GigaOM that an iTunes LP album cost something like $50,000-$60,000 to create, and $20ish to buy. And what are you getting, a couple of photos and videos that you may well have found on the band’s Web site? And then there’s not too many iTunes LP albums to begin with! Apple’s probably not too concerned. Again, this whole iTunes LP adventure wasn’t its idea to begin with, so Steve Jobs is probably like, “Whatever, dude, it’s all about the iPad. Don’t talk to me, jerk.” There’s a larger issue, and that’s if the album is dead or not. There was a digital music thing here in New York a few weeks ago, but I was busy playing soccer with the guy from Univision . Questions like “Is the album dead?” were probably debated there. C’est la vie.

See the rest here:
The rise and fall of iTunes LP (cue dramatic music)

You guys, I’m freaking out about how cool these things could be. A recent skyscraper concept competition yielded some really interesting designs , among them this utterly amazing concept , which they inexplicably call a “water-scraper” instead of the decidedly more euphonious “seascraper,” as I have dubbed it. Think of it: a partially self-contained structure floating in calm seas, growing food, harvesting wave energy, and providing a home for… well, not that many people, but more than a few. Wrap your mind around it! It’s glorious! It’s beautiful! It’s quite possibly green! And once you got your sea-legs, it’d be just like living in any other arcology . Oh, there aren’t any yet? Well maybe that’s because they didn’t think to build them at sea! Clearly these are idealized, and likely fail to account for a number of factors like storage space for food and products, waste management, and that sort of thing, but I see no reason why there shouldn’t be a cluster of these things (as they indeed suggest), each one specializing in this or that. Really at this point I’m just laying the foundation for the sci-fi novella I’m going to have to write on account of all the imagineering going on in my head following this post. Want so bad. [via Inhabitat ]

See more here:
Inverted, ocean-bound “seascrapers”: aqua-communes for the future?

I don’t know how I missed this a few years ago but did you know there was a fully-featured Last Starfighter videogame made for a documentary on the film. With all this talk of Tron I wanted to check out the other major CG-infused release from my childhood and after watching it (Don’t. You will be disappointed. It’s not as good as you remember it.) I found this site from RogueSynapse. It doesn’t appear to work under Win7, however. TLS was one of the first movies to use rendered space ships in a battle, a major step forward. Considering Return of the Jedi still used stop-motion special effects, the fact they stuck in CG animations is a milestone in sci-fi. I think the that the game was made for a small featurette called “Crossing the Frontier: Making the Last Starfighter” that may or may not appear on the Blu-Ray version of the movie. The chronology here is all very murky.

Follow this link:
Did you know there was a Last Starfighter video game?

I don’t know how I missed this a few years ago but did you know there was a fully-featured Last Starfighter videogame made for a documentary on the film. With all this talk of Tron I wanted to check out the other major CG-infused release from my childhood and after watching it (Don’t. You will be disappointed. It’s not as good as you remember it.) I found this site from RogueSynapse. It doesn’t appear to work under Win7, however. TLS was one of the first movies to use rendered space ships in a battle, a major step forward. Considering Return of the Jedi still used stop-motion special effects, the fact they stuck in CG animations is a milestone in sci-fi. I think the that the game was made for a small featurette called “Crossing the Frontier: Making the Last Starfighter” that may or may not appear on the Blu-Ray version of the movie. The chronology here is all very murky.

Read more:
Did you know there was a Last Starfighter video game?

IBM’s Open Collaborative Research is working on ways to get mobile Internet to the aged and illiterate all over the world. The initial research is happening in Japan and India and will be used to plan future endeavors including open source platforms for information sharing. Japan was chosen because of its high number of older folks and India chosen because, despite recent impressive advances, many citizens are still illiterate. The research will include creating new user interfaces that use images rather than text. “This collaborative research programme will result in critical insights to the accessibility requirements of the elderly people with little or no education in developing nations,” IBM Research Director (India) and Chief Technologist (IBM India/South Asia) Manish Gupta said. Generally I’m down on electronic solutions to problems of education. However, by giving some of the most important educators on the planet – grandparents and parents – more and better tools via PCWorld

Original post:
IBM researching ways to help the aged, illiterate

IBM’s Open Collaborative Research is working on ways to get mobile Internet to the aged and illiterate all over the world. The initial research is happening in Japan and India and will be used to plan future endeavors including open source platforms for information sharing. Japan was chosen because of its high number of older folks and India chosen because, despite recent impressive advances, many citizens are still illiterate. The research will include creating new user interfaces that use images rather than text. “This collaborative research programme will result in critical insights to the accessibility requirements of the elderly people with little or no education in developing nations,” IBM Research Director (India) and Chief Technologist (IBM India/South Asia) Manish Gupta said. Generally I’m down on electronic solutions to problems of education. However, by giving some of the most important educators on the planet – grandparents and parents – more and better tools via PCWorld

View original post here:
IBM researching ways to help the aged, illiterate

We told you back in November that MSI had a new notebook coming, and now they are finally here: MSI’s new Wind12 U230 machines are now available for purchase online, and they look tasty. There are two different version of the Wind12, the U230-033, and the U230-040. Both versions come standard with 2GB of DDR2, a 6 cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium. The ATI Radeon HD 3200 is also standard, as is a 1.3 megapixel webcam, HDMI port, and 3 USB 2.0 ports. The U230-033 has an Athlon Neo MV-40 and a 250GB SATA drive, and the U230-040 has a Athlon X2 L335 and a 320GB SATA drive. The Wind12 also features a 12.1″ LCD (at 1366

We told you back in November that MSI had a new notebook coming, and now they are finally here: MSI’s new Wind12 U230 machines are now available for purchase online, and they look tasty. There are two different version of the Wind12, the U230-033, and the U230-040. Both versions come standard with 2GB of DDR2, a 6 cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium. The ATI Radeon HD 3200 is also standard, as is a 1.3 megapixel webcam, HDMI port, and 3 USB 2.0 ports. The U230-033 has an Athlon Neo MV-40 and a 250GB SATA drive, and the U230-040 has a Athlon X2 L335 and a 320GB SATA drive. The Wind12 also features a 12.1″ LCD (at 1366