Slashdot Mirror

this guy disagrees with you.

Here's an example of Google's index having a recent comment that not in Bing's:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28103727@N04/4983499474/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Maybe you have heard about this site called flickr ?

It's possible to do HDR correctly, too. See e.g. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmdrcord/4973996377/sizes/o/in/pool-89888984@N00/. You cannot take a shot like this without HDR + tone mapping because the amount of light in the wall with direct sunlight is way too high compared to shadows under collapsed roof. I consider HDR similar to digital sharpening algorithms: it's possible that using the technique improves the image quality but more often than not, beginners use it way too much.

Time Magazine reports ...

It was BookTwo that originated this story because that's written by the guy who put the book together (which was picked up by a blog which was picked up by The Awl which was picked up by Time's NewsFeed). Of course, we are talking about Time here. I found the images of what's actually inside very interesting but I would bet that the guy who used some simple code to create the Creative Commons work is probably the only person to tender cash for a physical copy.

Here's another complete rewrite reducing the whole article to:

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Iraq War, eh???
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All your oil are belong to U.S.
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Stup up stoopid Americans

But you know what's really interesting? When Bridle compiled this used their lexer to transform the XML, he kept the IP address in the upper right of each edit. So the above edit's IP address is forever in print: 68.162.123.240 Of course if you had used a username to make an edit, that was put in place of the IP address.

This whole thing reminds me of the time lapse video done of the Virginia Tech shootings. Creative stuff you can do with Wikipedia.

HDRI done badly is a terribly thing, I agree. But when you see it used subtly, like in this image of New York City at night or to bring out the colors of a scene in manner reminiscent of Impressionist painting like this sunrise shot you start to see the potential. It's not something to be slapped indiscriminately on every shot you take; unfortunately, a lot of what you see on the Web is just that.

Really? I thought this one was done quite well: http://www.flickr.com/photos/d5kshots/4975115941/in/pool-hdr#/photos/d5kshots/4975115941/in/pool-89888984@N00/

[quote]Flickr http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/pool/ [flickr.com]. They give much better and proper example of HDR.[/quote] Everything looks like clown puke. Yeah okay.

HDR looks so unreal even if at times aesthetically pleasing. Their "more real" filter didn't do the scene much justice too.
Was the guy supposed to look that way?

The video was not very good at all, so I'm not sure why it is a big deal. The video of the guy was more HDR than any other part, though it was very strange.

Take a look at some of the HDR photos on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/pool/. They give much better and proper example of HDR.

The results are beautiful, in my opinion. HDR looks great when done with restraint. I've even used HDR for work a few times, such as this "portrait of a truck" for a haulage company:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meejahor/2073616479/sizes/z/

There's a slight mix-up in the video captions though. Where the captions say underexposed and overexposed, they've got the terms the wrong way round. Probably just a language barrier thing, though, as it's a Russian team.

You mean like this?

Here's the best iPad stand.

And yeah, iPad combines the worst properties of a netbook and a handheld, _plus_ lacking a keyboard. Me not wants.

WARNING

If you leave this unattended...
...you may get this result.

WARNING

If you leave this unattended...
...you may get this result.

Sometimes I just want a simple meal.

Well, there's always this.

Not true! This drive was run over by a car and the chip (containing the only copy of someones PHD thesis) was broken off. It was later soldered back on ad the data was successfully removed. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3417/4566207262_201cbabeaf_b.jpg

Pinball Fantasies is the best software pinball game that I've ever played. Stones'n'Bones kept me busy for weeks in all its 320x400 pixel glory, scrolling with silky smoothness on a 386 CPU, and awesome tracker music that never got old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Fantasies

Some brazilian guy is currently building a full size replica of the "Party Land" table. It looks pretty good already!

Prior art.

The best example of the lack of copyright is the fashion industry. There is no copyright. Everything you can see on the street or in the store you can copy free and sell it. But are we lacking of fashion? Hell no, the fashion industry is the most creative industry and there are no shortcomings of profits either. Don't believe me: http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

Only 5% of all book authors and musicians are actually making money off of copyright. At least 95% of book authors are not selling over 5000 copies of their works, the music bands are just getting 1% of each CD sales. Just watch The Surprising History of Copyright and What It Means For... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI

Another example is Metallica. They made $22.8 million from shows and only $1.6 million from album sales. The price for the album is $22.99 (or something I made a quick search) that should be $6.8 million. Even a big band like Metallica makes only 24% profit of a CD sale. Image how much a no name band is making (from http://timothyblee.com/2010/03/02/album-sales-a-trivial-fraction-of-metallicas-revenue/). And of course I like this image http://wussuphater.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/picture-1.png

Sorry, but only the 5% of the most red and most famous artists and book authors are making money from copyright. Anybody else makes no money from it. Copyright was never intended to help or protect the creator. It was historically a law to help publishers and still remains the law to help publisher. Why do you think it's called "copy right", because it protects the right of the publisher to make a copy of your work and to profit from it. The creator have the right to make a copy of his work already, you don't need a law for it.

Another argument, Creative Commons started in 2001. After only 2 years there were already approximately 1 million licenses under a CC license. After 7 years there are estimated 130 million CC licensed works. Here is my graph of their history Here is my prediction of CC works to the year 2015, by then we will have 7.6 billions works under CC.

The best example of the lack of copyright is the fashion industry. There is no copyright. Everything you can see on the street or in the store you can copy free and sell it. But are we lacking of fashion? Hell no, the fashion industry is the most creative industry and there are no shortcomings of profits either. Don't believe me: http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

Only 5% of all book authors and musicians are actually making money off of copyright. At least 95% of book authors are not selling over 5000 copies of their works, the music bands are just getting 1% of each CD sales. Just watch The Surprising History of Copyright and What It Means For... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI

Another example is Metallica. They made $22.8 million from shows and only $1.6 million from album sales. The price for the album is $22.99 (or something I made a quick search) that should be $6.8 million. Even a big band like Metallica makes only 24% profit of a CD sale. Image how much a no name band is making (from http://timothyblee.com/2010/03/02/album-sales-a-trivial-fraction-of-metallicas-revenue/). And of course I like this image http://wussuphater.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/picture-1.png

Sorry, but only the 5% of the most red and most famous artists and book authors are making money from copyright. Anybody else makes no money from it. Copyright was never intended to help or protect the creator. It was historically a law to help publishers and still remains the law to help publisher. Why do you think it's called "copy right", because it protects the right of the publisher to make a copy of your work and to profit from it. The creator have the right to make a copy of his work already, you don't need a law for it.

Another argument, Creative Commons started in 2001. After only 2 years there were already approximately 1 million licenses under a CC license. After 7 years there are estimated 130 million CC licensed works. Here is my graph of their history Here is my prediction of CC works to the year 2015, by then we will have 7.6 billions works under CC.

Compare W7 to something like this, Enlightenment wins hands down.

That desktop background is giving me a headache.

Clearly you have no grasp of user friendliness.

Popularity has nothing to do with quality. For instance, McDonalds, Taylor Swift, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Um, I have no idea who Taylor Swift is, and I heard of Jay leno. Never watched his shows.
You seem to make a confusion between what's popular in the US and what's globally popular. But I got your idea. However, again you seem to misunderstand the difference between quality that makes you think and quality that makes life easy.
Either you are in the business to make tools for smart, tech-savvy people (see Linux) or you are in the business for the general population (See Microsoft). Depends how do you want to measure success, I guess.

Compare W7 to something like this, Enlightenment wins hands down.

That thing is ugly as hell.
1. Fonts are ugly.
2. Windows title bar text is almost unreadable.
3. Top-left window: has 2 panes instead of tabs.
4. Middle Window: why on Earth would you care what the HDDs full names are? Why would you put the Temp folder as Favorite?
5. All windows: the menu button and the close/maximize/minimze buttons are reversed, compared to Windows. This is a major issue for a Windows user who is interested in switching.
6. The gizmo on the lower right side looks like a patch of some sort and the text on it is barely readable.
7. I don't care about desktops depictions/thumbnails on the left, I only care where my open programs are. A list of open programs (similar to Windows Taskbar) is a lot more helpful then going through 6 desktops in my quest for the "You-Name-It" program that I remember to have had open somewhere.

All of these in just one screenshot. And I looked at it for like 2 minutes.

Tell you what. Get a few screenshots of default desktops that appear right after an OS finishes installing. Say, for Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000, Ubuntu, RHEL, Slackware, Debian, MacOS X, Solaris, etc., etc

Sure, if you compare mostly server distros to desktop windows you'll see the trend you expect. Throw in stuff like Mint, or Ubuntu Studio, and you'll see different results.

You pick anything you'd like, man, I just threw some random examples. :)

If it looks like Windows but can't run Windows apps, it's just a crappy crippled version of Windows. If it looks different from Windows, then people start getting interested. Showing off the advanced theming and other window manager functions (virtual desktops) is a great way of getting people interested in trying something different.

I bloody hate Virtual Desktops. Why do they even exist? I'm serious... I don't get it. What's their advantage?

Compare W7 to something like this

I find windows 7 to be a bit more handsome than that, with the various OS X's better still. On the other hand with a bit of theming, a Compiz desktop could be better than either, and there is certainly a great deal more choice. Personally I find clean-looks/clear-looks to be the nicest widget theme for GNU. It seems that the various Linux/Floss communities have managed to attract great developers, but very few artists.

Roughly 2% of computer users might agree with you. The others don't.
OK, I just threw in some numbers, but the reality remains: a much larger percentage of people prefer Windows-like Desktop Manager looks over the (wide area of) available Linux Desktop manager(s).

Popularity has nothing to do with quality. For instance, McDonalds, Taylor Swift, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

If you simply go ahead and say "Because they don't know any better" - then you already lost the war with Windows.

There is no war with Windows. The only goal is to make the best operating system possible.

Not once did they take into consideration that maybe, and I say maybe Windows Desktop manager simply looks better. More polish, better paint, nicer fonts (oh yes, that again!), ease of use, perhaps a mix of all the above, can't really say.

Sure they did. Which is why they created Compiz. It's also why every window manager or desktop environment out there has extensive theming abilities. Compare W7 to something like this, Enlightenment wins hands down.

Out of all this pile of computer users, a very low percentage are technical enough or interested enough to care about the Linux Window Manager's superiority. Roughly, they don't give a rat's ass on that.

There's a phrase for this, "casting pearls before swine".

And Linux window managers rarely provide "the pretty" - they provide the "not unbearably ugly" interface instead.

That's simply not the case. I've had numerous comments, from artsy female types even, about how nice my Cthulhain themed Fluxbox desktop looks. Now they'd never be able to use it, but it's certainly not ugly.

Tell you what. Get a few screenshots of default desktops that appear right after an OS finishes installing. Say, for Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000, Ubuntu, RHEL, Slackware, Debian, MacOS X, Solaris, etc., etc

Sure, if you compare mostly server distros to desktop windows you'll see the trend you expect. Throw in stuff like Mint, or Ubuntu Studio, and you'll see different results.

I'd say a Windows 7-like interface will only bring advantages to Linux. Maybe convince some undecided people to switch? Maybe convince me to use my now retired secondary desktop for basic tasks (browsing, music, movies) and give my gaming rig a rest every now and then?

If it looks like Windows but can't run Windows apps, it's just a crappy crippled version of Windows. If it looks different from Windows, then people start getting interested. Showing off the advanced theming and other window manager functions (virtual desktops) is a great way of getting people interested in trying something different.

from the link: "using 30-year-old or older machines."
from the fine article: "First released in 1981; discontinued in 1994 using 30-year-old or older machines."

I recently (three weekends ago) fired up my Commodore PET 2001 (a *genuine* pre-1980 computer) and have been writing a Forth for it. It's really a lot of fun, and I'm finding that 30 years experience in various high-level languages has improved my "6502 assembler golf" game a lot. It's very incomplete, but the inner interpreter mostly works. Feel free to throw down on it here

Charlie

And pictures here and hell of a lot more here...

And pictures here and hell of a lot more here...

5. Buy Nvidia, and have an on-board graphics card that isn't terrible.

6. Buy AMD. Twice. Getting ATI in the process. Twice.

7. Buy Analog Devices and make a play for the low-powered market.

8. Actually bring Canoe Lake to market.

9. Send everyone in the United States two stuffed Intel Bunnies.

I don't know why anyone would put any real data into a service like Facebook.

Because most people have no understanding about what the consequences might be. Apart from the first year or so online, I have used an alias especially to separate real life and online things. Basically because I know people will drag stuff out of context.

And most Slashdotters keep vaguely handwaving about 'consequences' without ever really actually enumerating any. It's become a fear word like 'terrorism' or 'think of the children'. If you need an alias to separate your words from yourself, I suspect the problem is you can your communications skills - not 'people'.[1]
 

I had an facebook account just to see what it was and got even to the point of having 100 people as 'friends'. Basically people I have no idea of what to say to in real life. So I had no idea why I had them as 'friends'. I guess the number of people on your list is like a pissing contest.

In other words, you added people you don't really know as friends - and this it's somehow Facebook's fault that you don't have any actual people you'd want to talk to.
 

Anyway: there was only one other person who did not use her own name and that was because she was stalked by her ex and she would want to use her own name. And yes a real name IS real data. And all the other information that people put out there is amazing.

And here you invoke the equivalent of 'think of the children' again.
 

Just ask one of these people to go to a complete stranger in a pub or on the street and tell them the information they just hared with the world and they will think you are crazy or they are natural attention whores.

Which is utterly irrelevant to Facebook, as unless you are crazy or a natural attention whore, the people in your friends list aren't complete strangers.

[1]What I've posted to my facebook in the last 24 hours:

- A link to a story about an amazing rescue performed the USN (they flew a helicopter under a bridge and into a narrow canyon to medivac an injured hiker).
- A wry comment on looking through the house for something only to find it right where it should have been in the first place. ("Don't you have when you're looking for something, and when you find it: a) it was right where it should have been and you swore it wasn't..., and b) you've walked past/looked right at it half a dozen times?")
- A link to a picture I took back in March, but just now got around to processing and putting up on Flickr. (And a pretty good picture if I do say so myself.)

I can see how there's going to be serious consequences for sharing that, and how people can take it out of context, etc... etc...

Or not.

Nah, it's not what you think. I wired the building myself (it used to be a church, so it was basically an empty box when we bought it), and what I like to do is run one breaker, via one heavy line, to one outlet, lighting system or utility. I use multiple sub-boxes like this one to route power to everything, plus there is a generator and a set of special lines for stuff that I don't want to lose power - like the furnace, our food refrigeration, and our fish tanks. The way it works out is that the total load is low, but the capacity at any one point is high. The 50's are in the obvious places: central air, electric range, one in the shop, one for the home theater, that sort of thing.

This way, first, every outlet is capable of a full load if I want to plug a table saw or an air compressor, for instance, into a kitchen outlet. Even the GFA outlets are 20 amp. You never have to worry about the toaster being on plus the pizza oven blowing a breaker, either; each box has a calculated power budget for what's assigned to it, plus a decent margin. There's a benefit in terms of almost no star connections / wire nuts in internal wall boxes, either, because every line just goes from the breaker to the destination. There are a few exceptions; if ceiling lamps for a room consist of more than one fixture, then yes, I had to break the line, and also, light switches do it, but overall the building has a lot of wire and comparatively few splices and connections. That's worth some peace of mind to me.

From a monitoring point of view, since everything has its own line, if I watch them, I'll be able to spot anything unusual fairly easily, because (for instance) the toaster load never appears on the kitchen island line, and the stereo, fishtanks, etc. all have their own dedicated lines. That's also part of why I did it, but I've yet to implement the monitoring. Been kind of hoping to find some inexpensive commercial AC current sensors so I don't have to make them by hand, but so far, they're pretty dear. I'm in no rush, though -- lots more to do, this whole "build a house interior yourself" thing turned out to be a bit of a challenge. We're re-doing all the old gnarly casement windows in double-paned stained glass right now and want to have that done before it gets too cold for window sealants to set properly, and then... well, there's plenty more work where that came from. :)

Nah, it's not what you think. I wired the building myself (it used to be a church, so it was basically an empty box when we bought it), and what I like to do is run one breaker, via one heavy line, to one outlet, lighting system or utility. I use multiple sub-boxes like this one to route power to everything, plus there is a generator and a set of special lines for stuff that I don't want to lose power - like the furnace, our food refrigeration, and our fish tanks. The way it works out is that the total load is low, but the capacity at any one point is high. The 50's are in the obvious places: central air, electric range, one in the shop, one for the home theater, that sort of thing.

This way, first, every outlet is capable of a full load if I want to plug a table saw or an air compressor, for instance, into a kitchen outlet. Even the GFA outlets are 20 amp. You never have to worry about the toaster being on plus the pizza oven blowing a breaker, either; each box has a calculated power budget for what's assigned to it, plus a decent margin. There's a benefit in terms of almost no star connections / wire nuts in internal wall boxes, either, because every line just goes from the breaker to the destination. There are a few exceptions; if ceiling lamps for a room consist of more than one fixture, then yes, I had to break the line, and also, light switches do it, but overall the building has a lot of wire and comparatively few splices and connections. That's worth some peace of mind to me.

From a monitoring point of view, since everything has its own line, if I watch them, I'll be able to spot anything unusual fairly easily, because (for instance) the toaster load never appears on the kitchen island line, and the stereo, fishtanks, etc. all have their own dedicated lines. That's also part of why I did it, but I've yet to implement the monitoring. Been kind of hoping to find some inexpensive commercial AC current sensors so I don't have to make them by hand, but so far, they're pretty dear. I'm in no rush, though -- lots more to do, this whole "build a house interior yourself" thing turned out to be a bit of a challenge. We're re-doing all the old gnarly casement windows in double-paned stained glass right now and want to have that done before it gets too cold for window sealants to set properly, and then... well, there's plenty more work where that came from. :)

It's just an idea I have, was thinking of using it in conjunction with my PD meter generation python library to snoop on what's happening in my house. I have almost eighty, 20-amp circuits, plus a few 50's; be interesting to have a way to watch them, end up with a big panel like this one (different project, but you can see how the meters are multi-use, etc.)

Given drivers for the A/d units, Apache, and python - all that needs to be done is build a bunch of current sensors, and that looks to be easy, if somewhat tedious.

It's just an idea I have, was thinking of using it in conjunction with my PD meter generation python library to snoop on what's happening in my house. I have almost eighty, 20-amp circuits, plus a few 50's; be interesting to have a way to watch them, end up with a big panel like this one (different project, but you can see how the meters are multi-use, etc.)

Given drivers for the A/d units, Apache, and python - all that needs to be done is build a bunch of current sensors, and that looks to be easy, if somewhat tedious.

Here is a shot of a SheevaPlug dmesg screenshot.

I also have a Mini2440, which is a bit easier to access its GPIO, serial port, etc.

But SheevaPlug ships with Python, which is awesome!

This is how they have been building them around here for the last few decades. Clearly it works.

There are no kangaroos in Austria.

Is that a joke? See: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/89/207682680_b1bbabf6d9.jpg and http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/2862066384_7fedacb107.jpg?v=0

Is that a joke? See: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/89/207682680_b1bbabf6d9.jpg and http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/2862066384_7fedacb107.jpg?v=0

Pirating != Stealing

And for those who continue to confuse the two, I find this handy guide to be beneficial.

(and it's on Flickr to boot! :)

'Course Apple Stuff is way overpriced for what you get and you can get stuff with most of the same features at Dell or Tiger Direct. Only S'heeple hipsters with flat caps, handlebar mustaches and pennyfarthing bikes buy Apple stuff and they don't even turn it on. They just pose outside of coffee shops, trying to look cool and have more sex than Android developers.

Indeed, I should have made myself clearer, when I said that global illumination isn't particularly visible, I'm only talking about when the direct light is exposed correctly, as is usually the case when you're looking at an environment illuminated by a flash (or a flash-light that's close to the camera :) ) . However when the direct light is overexposed, for example a room lit by a window, then the indirect is very important.

Just imagine what the the headline "Android phones can now maintain battery capacity at greater than 80% after an average day of use" would create.

The handset design might have to change a little to accomodate the bigger batteries, but it seems perfectly doable.

The Engadget site don't work on my Linux Firefox, but the official site work: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasarobonaut/show/

Yeah and their knees are too sharp. They are all way below my standards!
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4018/4314087003_a4f4e2127a.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3462/3347447337_7cf8a6e171.jpg

The only people in the US that will be able to see it live in Alaska

Nope. I generally do pretty well here in NE Montana.

This shot, and this one, are aurora photos from the CME event last week.

The only people in the US that will be able to see it live in Alaska

Nope. I generally do pretty well here in NE Montana.

This shot, and this one, are aurora photos from the CME event last week.

The only people in the US that will be able to see it live in Alaska

Nope. I generally do pretty well here in NE Montana.

This shot, and this one, are aurora photos from the CME event last week.

Girls won't kiss a guy, but they'll strip down to their seksay unmentionables?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/linus/sets/428974/

REFUTED!

Them there ladies appreciate geeks, nerds AND dorks. However, there might be some pre-req that you're good at PvP; I've heard that ladies hate guys that wantonly lose quarters to pimple faced peers.

The link to the artist's Flickr page is shown in the article summary, but it's handy to view with HiveMind, which shows a slew of large thumbs per page and default sorts by "interestingness".