Digital Solecism

itnews.com.au reports a new study published that reports that playing some games can reduce stress and violent tendency levels.

The sample size is small, but consisted of 292 people between the ages of 12 and 83. Essentially the study found that after playing the game (World of Warcraft) people felt more relaxed as opposed to more violent. I guess running around killing things helps blow off steam as opposed to turning you into a serial killer. Who knew?

Of course, one has to take it with a grain of salt. After all, not only is the sample size tiny, but the article doesn’t even have a true reference to the study.

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It is quite an odd name, isn’t it?

But whether or not you know the term, you probably know what it is without realizing it. There have been rumors of it for a long time, and there has been a lot of talk lately about the Sprint “Airave” which unfortunately is only available in limited markets.

So what is it exactly?
Well, in simple terms, it turns your home internet connection into a cell phone repeater. I would like to stress that this is not the same as T-Mobile and similar wifi phones, this is not a wifi connection. FemToCell devices actually broadcast cellular signals over short distances, and route the calls over the internet (which is pretty much how many cell phone calls work anyways, just they use big old towers as opposed to tiny things in your home).

Sounds pretty cool, huh? Furthermore, they tend to be cheap. The Airwave only costs a few dollars a month if you have Sprint. Furthermore, it will cut down on your costs. Using Sprint again as an example, they provide unlimited calling for all calls made on your Airave.

Or if you live in the back hills of Virginia and thanks to a lack of Analog you now get no cell service.. you can get service once again!

(Click for larger version)

Either way, in the next couple years it will become far more common, even though there’s a rather large amount of issues it has to work through. Look for the Sprint Airave coming soon and for the other carriers to follow suit. It might be in your home, or that giant building that no one gets reception in might suddenly have multiple FemToCell units and everyone will be happy.

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Click on the picture below and take a good look at it:

Not bad at all for a piece of computer generated art, eh? I guess this goes to show just how far things are coming. It was created by an artist named Max Edwin Wahyudi of Indonesia and he has a tutorial of it over on CGArena that shows exactly how he did it using various composites of her plus his own additions.

Before it started looking all beautifu, it looked like this:

 

And this guy turns it into something that looks like that original pic above. I just find it completely fascinating how easily some people do stuff like this.

 

I makes me wonder, however, how long before all of our celebrities are completely computer generated. Find some great models, make complete full body CG versions of them, then use any voice and body actors they want and they can get a full movie done. Sure, the technology isn’t there right now to make it all look and act completely lifelike. But I’m sure we all saw Beowolf and what they did with Angelie Jolie there. How many years before every actor/actress becomes a perfect bodied piece of computer generated art?

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