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out of the box thinking

value generators

I made a simulated prototype of a fast/simple algorithm, which was 100x (IIRC) faster than random wandering in my tests. A bit of information is here.

It requires that the robot know its position rather accurately, but if it's a hobby you could use differential GPS (which would add too much to the cost of a low-end commercial robot). You might look into localisation via wifi.

It was the Germans who first grasped the psychological implications of bombing a civilian population. Using mostly zeppelins in the early years, they instilled fear and panic in the people by flying over their cities. This became a regular practice and made the Germans seem much more powerful and omnipresent in the minds of their enemies.

As others have pointed out this is a new solution to a classic computer graphics problem. The first technique I know of to automatically reduce the poly count of meshes, while preserving the overall appearance was Garland and Heckbert's QSLIM algorithm. This was first published in SIGGRAPH 97. Or actually, hmmm, no, it looks like Hoppe's work on mesh optimization came a good bit earlier (1993).

Anyway, it's a pretty old problem in graphics. The USC press release that prompted this slashdot story is simply advertising Cohen-Steiner, Alliez, and Desbrun's paper which will appear at SIGGRAPH 2004 later this summer. That's all it is. They have a new way to do automatic poly reduction. Now it could be that it's vastly superior to anything else that's been done in the area, but even if so, this isn't likely to cause any revolutions. Why? Because the existing poly reduction algorithms already work pretty well. They work well enough that they're already in production use (as others have pointed out there are plugins for most major 3D packages already, and most game engines have had "continuous level of detail" systems for a good long while). So at best this is going to make life easier for some 3D content creators who won't have to do so much hand-tweaking of LODs (levels-of-detail, aka "optimized" meshes). So don't expect to see any huge changes in the games you play or movies or whatever because of this. Mesh optimization/LOD techniques are already being used pretty much everywhere it make sense to do so.

But here's an idea for all you Karma Whores out there: go to the list of papers on the SIGGRAPH 2004 web site (or go to Tim Rowley's easier to browse version of the list), pick something that looks interesting, and send the story to slashdot! There's at least 50 more slashdot stories there just waiting to burst! Happy hunting! There's enough Karma for everyone, so don't be greedy now.

The actual paper can be dowloaded from here.

-jim

I go to USC, and they give us a pretty good deal with our email accounts, or at least they did. Right now I have a max mailbox size of 73MB. In my three years of attending school I only have used about 50MB for 1000 emails stored, both sent and received. Obviously I don't keep every email around, especially if it has an attachment, but this system has worked quite well.

Beginning September 1, the school will automatically delete any message older than 180 days, but still have a max mailbox size of 73MB! You can read about this upcoming change here. I don't use these old emails every day, maybe 4 times a month, but it is nice to be able to access them from any computer that I use without storing them on my personal computer to avoid deletion. Last summer the school installed the web-based Sun iPlanet, yet now you have to backup emails offline and won't be able to access them them from anywhere, as seems the purpose of iPlanet.

I have tried to stop this from taking place by emailing our computer infrastructure group, they claim this is the doing of our VP. If the school gives us such a large mailbox, shouldn't it be up to the user to keep it under the limit without automatic deletion? Even if every student paid a dollar at the start of their school career, it would pay for this small amount of hard drive space, as well as multiple RAID and non-RAID backups. With these large free email accounts available (yahoo, google...) why is my school doing this? Do you have advice on how to approach the school to stop this policy, and what is your school's policy on email limits (amount, size, automatic deletion)?

Thanks

I go to USC, and they give us a pretty good deal with our email accounts, or at least they did. Right now I have a max mailbox size of 73MB. In my three years of attending school I only have about 50MB used, with about 1000 emails stored, both sent and received. Obviously I don't keep every email around, especially if it has an attachment, but this system has worked quite well.

Beginning September 1, the school will automatically delete any message older than 180 days, but still have a max mailbox size of 73MB! You can read about this upcoming change here. I don't use these old emails every day, maybe 4 times a month, but it is nice to be able to access them from any computer that I use without storing them on my personal computer to avoid deletion. The school installed this web-based Sun iPlanet server last year, basically killing pine, so why should we not be able to access old emails using their web interface?

I have tried to stop this from taking place by emailing our computer infrastructure group, they claim this is the doing of our VP. If the school gives us such a large mailbox, shouldn't it be up to the user to keep it under the limit without automatic deletion? Even if every student paid a dollar at the start of their school career, it would pay for this small amount of hard drive space, as well as multiple RAID and non-RAID backups. With these large free email accounts available (yahoo, google...) why is my school doing this? Do you have advice on how to approach the school to stop this policy, and what is your school's policy on email limits (amount, size, automatic deletion)?

Maybe I should make this into an ask /.

Thanks

Some problems are very hard to reproduce in a computer...
Artificial Intelligence is the same.

You missed the key point there. You don't need to puzzle out intellegence at all to do a brute force emulation! You simply scan/duplicate all of the neurons and synapes of a living intelligent brain and do a raw low level emulation.

Sound like sci-fi? We've already emulated a mouse hippocampus!

"Our current chip has 18 dynamic neuron synapses, and it behaves just like a network of real biological neurons in the hippocampus," Granacki said. "When the chip receives real electrical signals as inputs, it processes them and sends out exactly the same signals that a real neuron would send."
Berger's ultimate goal is to make a computer chip that can be connected to human brain tissue and take over a cognitive function that has been destroyed
Refference Link

We just tossed the hard AI problem out the window! We are left with the "easy" tasks of scanning a brain and supplying the raw RAM and gigaflops to do a dumb-emulation. ("Easy" in the sense of non-baffling basic engineering over a few decades.)

If you can replace brain tissue with a silicon chip to repair destroyed function, then there's no reason you can't accellerate that chip.

Things like that will be possible faster than it seems. Saying it may be possible in a hundred years sounds reasonable, right? But it's natural to think in terms of today's rate of change. The rate of change is itself accellerating and not running out any time soon. Given today's rate of change, all of the 1900's produced about 25 or 30 years worth of progress. We will actually produce a 100 years worth of todays rate of change in the next 25 or 30 years.

Of course I don't expect to get "downloaded" as soon as the crude capability exists. That's the sort of thing you want to go through rather extensive refinment and testing before you even try it on a human subject, much less make it available for "common consumer availability".

Advanced nanotech is coming in a similar timescale.

Given a little health luck and/or a modest improvements in longevity, I think I have a shot at seeing one or both of these techs mature. Stick around a while and there will definitly be additional increases in longevity. Anything beyond that turns into fast forward sci-fi right off the scale. The exponential growth can clearly continue a few decades, and any sort of mind-machine interface easily runs that exponential into some sort of singularity.

An interesting point to note is that Moore's law was first applied to integrated circuits in 1965, but computation speed per dollar has been actually been supra-exponential back through 1900. Through electromechanical devices, relays, vaccum tubes, transistors, and now integrated circuits. Graph here. Each horizontal line is multiplier of 100.

Oh, and as for the less 'lucky' portion of the human race, that in no way holds back progress in the more advanced areas. Actually globalization will merely increase the rate of change even more. Huge swaths of the earths population, such as in India and China, are taking short cuts and catching up using known tech. They are increasingly making their own contributions to total progress. Plus a brilliant person in the poorest part of the world can access almost the sum total of human knowledge and make contributions if the village has internet access. A child in Kenya can read scientific papers published the day before.

-

Like your other respondant implied, I'm sure the ACLU would love to get cases where they're defending painters of apples and kittens and sad-faced clowns. The EFF would love to get "Ashcroft vs. Widows and Orphans Programming, Inc.". The government isn't that stupid- it'll send the worst looking cases first, to try to remove any public sympathy.

Look at this dude!

Splendid

To learn how to write your chosen language, check out the University web sites for your language. For example USC has an excellent Mandarin links area USC Chinese Language program , mostly pointing to free stuff. Fortunately, many Chinese teachers in the US have started using the Integrated Chineses Program ICP , an amazingly easy way to learn Chinese, if you do the homework. As the man in the parent post says, "dedication and commitment" are required.

I am having such fun that I have enrolled in evening Mandarin classes at GMU which does use ICP. It's my new way of gaming, learning how to read, write and speak Chinese.

Have fun, Lao Xuesheng (Old Student)

ps. I am not sure but there may be a Integrated Japanese Program, USC Japanese Language Center. I found it at the " USC Japanese Dept. page . Have fun.

To learn how to write your chosen language, check out the University web sites for your language. For example USC has an excellent Mandarin links area USC Chinese Language program , mostly pointing to free stuff. Fortunately, many Chinese teachers in the US have started using the Integrated Chineses Program ICP , an amazingly easy way to learn Chinese, if you do the homework. As the man in the parent post says, "dedication and commitment" are required.

I am having such fun that I have enrolled in evening Mandarin classes at GMU which does use ICP. It's my new way of gaming, learning how to read, write and speak Chinese.

Have fun, Lao Xuesheng (Old Student)

ps. I am not sure but there may be a Integrated Japanese Program, USC Japanese Language Center. I found it at the " USC Japanese Dept. page . Have fun.

To learn how to write your chosen language, check out the University web sites for your language. For example USC has an excellent Mandarin links area USC Chinese Language program , mostly pointing to free stuff. Fortunately, many Chinese teachers in the US have started using the Integrated Chineses Program ICP , an amazingly easy way to learn Chinese, if you do the homework. As the man in the parent post says, "dedication and commitment" are required.

I am having such fun that I have enrolled in evening Mandarin classes at GMU which does use ICP. It's my new way of gaming, learning how to read, write and speak Chinese.

Have fun, Lao Xuesheng (Old Student)

ps. I am not sure but there may be a Integrated Japanese Program, USC Japanese Language Center. I found it at the " USC Japanese Dept. page . Have fun.

Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6918:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The Last Hour would not come before the Euphrates uncovers a mountain of gold, for which people would fight. Ninety-nine out of each one hundred would die but every man amongst them would say that perhaps he would be the one who would be saved (and thus possess this gold).

Glad to see other people have actually read the Koran instead of bullshiting about its contents. I'm not religious out of spite with Catholoicism, but I have read most of the world's religious texts and feel more astute for it.

1. Don't bother communicating to people who aren't willing to devote at least a solid hour to listening before they know anything else about you.
   
2. Don't type anything out. Especially, don't provide a simple 3 paragraphs of text on what you have don't and what you plan next.
3. Instead, read out the whole thing in a huge single audio file. Do record this into a single 47 megabyte ogg vorbis file.
   
4. Do encode the file at more than 75k/s, even though 20k/s is more than enough for speech.
   
5. Don't allow any skilled future audio-techs from that cinema school to record you. Instead, do it yourself- and remember to blow across the microphone on every other sentence.
   
6. Do spend at least 15 minutes to start off detailing the history of every game mod you've played or worked on, before ever mentioning the supposed topic at hand.
   
7. Don't even think about posting your script online. Why, then people could read it in only 4-8 minutes, and miss the subtlties measured intonation.
   
8. Do post a sign on the frontpage reading "Beware of Leopard".

1. 
   The goth class, maybe I can give them special powers for all the tattoos they get.... mystics and sorcerors are going to use real magic behind the scenes to make things happen. ...
   
   Lets face it- the consequences to Columbine were not available before Columbine... there were no videogames about it... and I think if people had the opportunity to learn what these kids go through, cuz we're gonna show it, we're gonna show this ...
   
   The premise in Doom For Columbine is the idea that demons or some evil force are preying on our students in... these demons communicating back and forth on how they're gonna corrupt souls, and that figures a lot into this game

> What's it about?

Download the 80min presentation for USC Cinema-Television. Many of the concepts for the project are detailed in that seminar audio. This is an anti-violent project dedicated at tackling some pretty difficult content, from the perspective of an outcast.

> "Doom for Columbine" doesn't immediately strike me as an appropriate name.

I think it fits, as the project is about Columbine and the project is dedicated to the victims.

I am in no way trolling here. The parent is addressing an issue that I have never found a straight answer to. In High School I was told that the earth was in fact warming up due to the burning of fossil fuels, polution, ect. I asked the question "Why did climate changes occur before human industrialization?" I never got an answer.

Now I am in college and still my question still has not been answered completely.

There are theories that deep ocean currents and them changing is the cause of global warming. I honestly don't know. What scientists do agree on is that major temperature changes have occured in earth's history without the effects of modern industrialization.

I personally believe that global warming exists however I still don't know how much humans are involved in the process.

Low-Rate TCP-Targeted Denial of Service Attacks
(The Shrew vs. the Mice and Elephants)
A short response

It is probably not possible to walk unassisted, but with assitance or support you can walk by having the legs perform automatic routines. (A little bit like toy robots.)

The people behind the Bion project have discussed this application.

All his caps would be worthless.

Static Generator

Just found the AVATAR's site on Google. The heli chassis used is a Bergen Industrial Twin. Looks like I was a bit off: 22 inches high (stock, the AVATAR's skids obviously add a few inches), 59 inches long, and 810mm (2.66 feet) long blades.

And apparently they're iBOT cameras, not Quickcams. Not that anyone cared.

Fortunately, JPL has been working on the MSL for quite some time. "Long-term" implies years; MSL - in addition to solar power - will utilize two small nuclear cores, which are currently under design. And "long-term" leads to a need for a WELL-DESIGNED software infrastructure. For this reason, the work on the Mission Data System has been intense. The decision on which of the competing MDS implementations to use is scheduled for 2005. One of the possible implementations is real-time Java.

Whats funny is that the computer science technical program that I'm currently in, the MSCS with a specialization in Multimedia and Creative Technologies, is no longer even mentioned as an option on the USC Computer Science graduate program page. However, it is still mentioned in the CS Program Brochure

I think that the department is transitioning the programs over to new requirements, moving the Multimedia and Creative technologies MS degree to something called the Master of Science in Integrated Media Systems. Maybe having something to do with the creation of this new Masters of Fine Arts.

I should check my usc email... (probably just a bunch of colloquium spam! :-))

Whats funny is that the computer science technical program that I'm currently in, the MSCS with a specialization in Multimedia and Creative Technologies, is no longer even mentioned as an option on the USC Computer Science graduate program page. However, it is still mentioned in the CS Program Brochure

I think that the department is transitioning the programs over to new requirements, moving the Multimedia and Creative technologies MS degree to something called the Master of Science in Integrated Media Systems. Maybe having something to do with the creation of this new Masters of Fine Arts.

I should check my usc email... (probably just a bunch of colloquium spam! :-))

Whats funny is that the computer science technical program that I'm currently in, the MSCS with a specialization in Multimedia and Creative Technologies, is no longer even mentioned as an option on the USC Computer Science graduate program page. However, it is still mentioned in the CS Program Brochure

I think that the department is transitioning the programs over to new requirements, moving the Multimedia and Creative technologies MS degree to something called the Master of Science in Integrated Media Systems. Maybe having something to do with the creation of this new Masters of Fine Arts.

I should check my usc email... (probably just a bunch of colloquium spam! :-))

I'm surprised that this is being offered through the school of Cinema and Television, and further surprised to hear that USC's Anthony Borquez has nothing to do with it. From what I understand, he was pretty active in bringing game development to USC's curriculum, going so far as to establish a minor degree in game development to the USC School of Engineering. Regardless of what the degree will get those who obtain it, (somewhere else in these comments, I believe someone mentioned french fries), I think this is the first step in the right direction.

Remember that Computer Science was once a tiny, poorly-regarded field within EE. It'll take some well-respected work (and maybe a change in title) before a Bachelor of XYZZY in Game Development means anything positive.

It looks like it is going to get much cheaper soon. They are talking about constructing an entire home in one day. This article doesn't mention it, but they plan to be able to do full construction, including plumbing, electric, paint, and wallpaper eventually. More info is avilable from Khoshnevis's home page.

If you go to the technical paper, take a look at figures 5 and 8. Now a quote from page 3 of the same paper: Utility Conduits: As shown in Figure 5 utility conduits may be built into the walls of a building structure precisely as dictated by the CAD data. Sample sections made with CC and filled with concrete as shown in Figure 8 demonstrate this possibility.

Extruded doesn't mean it has to be curved.

There is even a few animations of it doing a straight wall.

Extruded doesn't mean it has to be curved.

There is even a few animations of it doing a straight wall.

The summary of the study can be found at USC here.

That's probably why NASA already have the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter scheduled for launch in 2009. This is still being spec'ed out but optical links, which are currently described as testing\Proof of concept and primary Ka-Band capabilities (once proven in MRO below) are both in plan right now.

Next year's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has significantly better telecoms relaying capability than the existing Odyssey\MGS orbiters - 6Mbits/sec using Ka-band. This goes with some major upgrades to the DSN as this currently has 10Mbit/sec limitations for telecoms at Mars distances AFAIK. This JPL presentation has lots of detail on the near term\medium term plans and proposals and where the IPN fits in. This indicates that the bandwidth of optical links to mars would be in the 30-300Mbps range.

It's called Buzzword Bingo!
Or google for "buzzword bingo".

And expanding on buzzword betting pool: Buzzword Bingo

On a semi-related note, read Cringely's column on the evil that is a Powerpoint 'stack'.

Hey guys, I am using this model of visual attention distributed at http://iLab.usc.edu for a class paper. The program is designed to objectively simulate how your brain decides what will attract your eyes. Here is the result at http://www.geocities.com/nerd1876/janet.jpg -- not quite the first thing you would look at (the program checked first several other bright and flashing objects, shown by the yellow circles), but was still found very quickly by the software. Couldn't help staring at it, my brain did not give me a choice!

While I'm sure aerogel has many pracitcal uses (trying not to fall asleep here), the "cool" factor is also very high. I've seen some of her samples, and everything the article says is correct. It's so light it feels like the wind could take it; in fact, if you drop it in water, I think it dissolves. Since the material is so expensive, it's obviously something you don't want to do, since every last piece is precious.

While we're all attuned to the utilitarian value of materials like this, it's always neat to see what people outside of engineering can do with them.

What, you've never seen this guy?

• The Place (old-school)
• Calcaxy
• Dross
• Form
• Telegarden
• Splat
• TV Collographe
• SITO

Speaking of which, take a look at this Axel F midi archive! Someone's gone to a bit too much effort collecting them me thinks.

I'm not sure what got the whole MOD thing into my head, but now I can't shake it. I'm messing about with MadTracker and am reminiscing at ModArchive.com! :D

• "We are glad we chose Linux," adds Woodward, "Since it has enabled us to bring a feature rich product to market quickly by leveraging the excellent work of the Linux development community.

• BINGO!

I was thinking of This guy.

While I agree it's a lousy proposal, it's your post that is riddled with problems.

House and Senate; they're not gonna let a "Piss Christ" (remember Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, the NEA, etc etc) become Public Domain

The House and Senate can't prevent Piss Christ from becoming public domain. The constitution REQUIRES it to become public domain after a "limited time". The artist is also perfectly free to release it to the public domain immediately simply by saying so.

>All of the material produced by these workers would be placed in the public domain
Because you say so?

No. First of all it MUST become public domain one way or another. Secondly if you RTFA you'd see that "these workers" reffers to people who have specificly granted permission for their works to be released to the public domain without the usual X-year delay.

Copyright is about ownership

No it isn't. Check the constitution, copyright is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". Copyright is a government policy for the purpose of giving people an incentive to create and to get those works into the public domain. The constitution states that copyright protections may only exist for a LIMITED time. That means the constitution REQUIRES all works to become public domain. The originally intended duration was 14 years, with a possiblity to request a single 14 year renewal if the creator was still alive.

Copyright exists to promote more creation in order to get more works into the public domain. Copyright is not a property right. For one thing property rights never expire.

-

Was it this or this or this perhaps?

This guy doesn't look much like Mel Gibson. But if he says he's surrounded by beautiful women I guess he must have something going for him.

I'm certain no one will see this.

Try TGIF. The program does take a little getting use to but I've used it, and it does work.

I go to University of Southern California, and our incompetent IT department (ISD) decided that the best way to combat the worm was to block hosts detected on the network sending out constant requests to TCP ports 135, 139, etc. What I'll never understand is why they didn't just shutdown the damn ports in the first place. It's not like these are essential (or even reasonable) ports for students to have open. Instead, our network got swamped because the people contracting the virus would only get booted after the virus delivered its payload to many other computers. It's tough to laugh about Windows users getting viruses from behind your Mac when your precious high-speed connection is getting swamped by their virulent traffic. And worse, being a CS major and general computer geek, of course they ask me how to fix everything.

Apparently, Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern California used his DNA based computer to solve the travelling salesman problem by exploiting the predictability of how DNA interacts. "Adleman used his computer to solve the classic "traveling salesman" mathematical problem -- how a salesman can visit a given number of cities without passing through any city twice -- by exploiting the predictability of how DNA interacts. Adleman assigned each of seven cities a different strip of DNA, 20 molecules long, then dropped them into a stew of millions of more strips of DNA that naturally bonded with the "cities." That generated thousands of random paths, in much the same way that a computer can sift through random numbers to break a code. From this hodgepodge of connected DNA, Adleman eventually extracted a satisfactory solution -- a strand that led directly from the first city to the last, without retracing any steps. DNA computing was born".

Apparently, a single gram of DNA can store as much information as a trillion CDs.

Apparently, Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern California used his DNA based computer to solve the travelling salesman problem by exploiting the predictability of how DNA interacts. "Adleman used his computer to solve the classic "traveling salesman" mathematical problem -- how a salesman can visit a given number of cities without passing through any city twice -- by exploiting the predictability of how DNA interacts. Adleman assigned each of seven cities a different strip of DNA, 20 molecules long, then dropped them into a stew of millions of more strips of DNA that naturally bonded with the "cities." That generated thousands of random paths, in much the same way that a computer can sift through random numbers to break a code. From this hodgepodge of connected DNA, Adleman eventually extracted a satisfactory solution -- a strand that led directly from the first city to the last, without retracing any steps. DNA computing was born".

Apparently, a single gram of DNA can store as much information as a trillion CDs.