Scanner Could Let You 'Rip' Books

clipped from www.technovelgy.com Scanner Could Let You 'Rip' Books A prototype device uses a high-speed camera to record the pages that are revealed when you flip through a book, and then uses special software to digitize the book's contents. By using a high-speed camera that shoots at 500 frames per second, lab workers Takashi Nakashima and Yoshihiro Watanabe can scan a 200-page book in under a minute. You just hold the book under the camera and flip through the pages as if shuffling a deck of cards. The camera records the images and uses processing power to turn the odd-shaped pictures into flat, rectangular pages on which regular OCR (optical character recognition) can be performed. If this device could be commercialized, it would let you 'rip' a book in the same sense as you can rip a CD, digitizing its contents for easy storage on your computer. described with book-torturing glee by Vernor Vinge in his excellent 2006 novel Rainbows End

70 of the Best Free and Open Source Games for download – Part 1 (of 3)

clipped from www.redferret.net 70 of the Best Free and Open Source Games for download – Part 1 (of 3) VDrift. Cross platform driving game with a neat physics engine and really playable AI and decent graphics. You’ll need a steering wheel to get the best out of it of course.     Hedgewars is a lovely looking little turn based game which feels a little like the classic Worms title of yesteryear. Splatting hedgehogs may seem unnecessarily cruel, but it can be cartoony fun too it seems.     FreeOrion. Space, the final frontier…ah sorry, wrong game. Anyway this is a turn based space empire game where you get to conquer the universe and beyond. This space stuff looks pretty complex from over here.     Command & Conquer Classic. THE RTS game of the age. Fast, furious and completely addictive. Now transferred from the commercial to freeware world as a marketing tactic. [Part II here….what classically beautiful and massively successful – iconic even – game now lives again as an online freebie?] [Part III here..]

Thieves Steal Entire House

clipped from www.nbclosangeles.com Thieves Steal Entire House in Mojave Statewide Homes offers $1,000 reward The model home, measuring 11 feet wide by 50 feet long by 16 feet tall, was stolen last month from outside a housing company's Kern County office. The home was valued at $45,000, "and our insurance may not cover it until it is found," Murray said  Anyone with information about the theft was asked to contact the Kern County Sheriff's Office at 661-824-7130. "We are offering a $1,000 reward for the information leading to the recovery of the home," Murray said. "The home was set on piers and whomever stole it, took the piers and all," said Statewide Homes spokeswoman Sheri L. Murray in an e-mail.