Hadron Collider Injunction Sought – Head Crab Fears

With the construction complete on CERNs Large Hadron Collider, two men have sought an injuction in a Hawaiian court to prevent them flicking the switch, out of safety concerns. The two major concerns are the possibility of creating small scale black holes that could suck up the earth, or the creation of strangelets that could theoretically convert us all into matter straight out of a Kurt Vonnegut novel (or possibly “Plan 9 From Outer Space”). Though the chances of either of these senarious actually playing out is essentially zero, it…

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Net Neutrality Perfect Storm, eh! – Updated

For some time, net neutrality has been below the radar for most Canadians. Sure, we’ve read about what’s going on in the US, but many of the regulations governing internet backbones and content delivery are different up here. For example, Canadian law charges a piracy tax on writeable media such as CDs, to offset piracy. In the past couple of weeks we’ve seen a perfect storm brewing regarding net neutrality in our home and native land. Here’s a quick breakdown… Bell Canada is required to sell DSL lines wholesale to…

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The PS3’s Number One Flaw Fixed, Sold Out

It would have been cheap as sin to include an infrared sensor in the PS3, but Sony opted not to include it. Until now, PS3 owners have had to control their Blu Ray movie playback using the game controller, even if the rest of their home theatre setup was being managed by a remote that cost more than the PS3 itself. The other option was to add dongles, or buy the PS3 specific Bluetooth remote control, both pretty inelegant solutions, and still meant you had to get up off the…

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World’s Earliest Known Audio Recording

Researchers have found what very well could be the first known audio recording, a 10 clip of “Au clair de la lune” made on April 9th, 1860 by French inventor douard-Leon Scott de Martinville on a device called the phonautograph. The phonautograph records sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by soot from an oil lamp. This recording precedes Thomas Edison’s first known recording by 17 years. Firstsounds.com has links to the recording in mp3 format, plus other phonautograph recordings.

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Nine Ways Yahoo! Has Already Eviscerated Itself Better Than Microsoft Ever Could

1. Previewing a next generation beta mail interface that looks and moves like 300 lb. ass. Google walked an artful line with its first iteration of Gmail, introducing responsive AJAX code without sacrificing too much time in preload. It’s a line that Yahoo! blundered right over as if it were never even there. Google saw what Yahoo! didn’t — just because new tools give us the ability to recreate a desktop application within a browser, doesn’t necessarily mean we should. There is a way to make smart choices about how…

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on the (un)importance of technology

ED NOTE: this article originally appeared on The Laroquod Experiment website. You can find examples of Paul’s work and commentary there. Welcome aboard! As the demo clips previously posted further down this page reveal, I was originally trained to shoot on film. But most anything I do these days is on Digital Video. What technical enhancements do I use to disguise or compensate for this? (There are a lot out there that claim to do just that.) Is unadorned DV really worthy of capturing quality work? I’ve heard independent filmmakers…

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Holiday Wrap

Holiday Wrap – A funny movie is a click awaySeason’s Greetings everyone!Just wanted post this holiday animation we at valis.net produced. Since this is rgbfilter, I think it’s worth mentioning the tools we used to make the animation work. Audio – Logic by eMagic Animation – Newtek Lightwave Editing – Newtek SpeedEDIT / VT5 So have a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! In 2008, we’ll be officially kicking rgbfilter.com into high gear, so stay tuned.

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Nuendo 4 Released – Press Release

From the Nuendo 4 Press Release: Steinberg is proud to present the latest version of its award-winning Nuendo audio production environment. The Nuendo 4 Advanced Audio and Post Production System enhances audio production for audio post, studio production and live recording with new tools to accelerate workflows, boost creativity and save valuable production time. Among the new features are a world-class automation system, new VST3 plug-ins, the MediaBay file management system, new audio post editing commands, routing and recording enhancements and much more. NOV 30th Vancouver Film School in the…

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Institutions of Higher Earning?

Top Democratic leaders have introduced a new bill that would essentially force universities to sign up to paid music services, or face losing federal financial aid including that for students who don’t use a computer. The proposal is buried in a 700+ page spending and financial aid bill. They also have the option of using technology based deterrents to prevent illegal downloading, and would suffer the same consequences if they fail to implement such measures. This amounts to little more than an extortion racket, and it’s not surprising that the…

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Wacom Announces new Cintiq 12WX

I’ve always been a fan of Wacom tablets. There’s really no better input device for uses such as Photoshop or ZBrush, and now they’ve introduced their newest – the Cintiq 12WX. It features a hi-resolution 12 inch wide screen display, and 1024 levels of sensitivity. From the press release: Pressure-sensitivity with 1,024 levels Create natural-looking pen, brush, and eraser strokes. Tilt Sensitivity Tilt your input device in either direction and create natural-looking pen, brush, and eraser strokes. Rotation Sensitivity Some input devices can be rotated along their axis and with…

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