Slashdot Mirror
Control Lightshow Over Dublin Sky From A Webpage
nev4 writes "Ireland is celebrating their EU presidency for 2004 with an interactive lightshow over Dublin. The project, Vectorial Elevation, allows people to control the 22 searchlights (154,000 watts, can be seen for a 15km radius) shining over Dublin by submitting a design on the project's website. The designs are queued and a new design is displayed every 14 seconds from dusk to dawn (GMT +1). You can see an aerial view of the city and the current design via live webcam or browse snapshots of previous designs. The tool for submitting deisgns also contains a 3D model of the city that you can pan around or "walk-through". Once you submit your design, you can opt to receive an e-mail when it is being displayed; when I submitted mine there was no one in the queue, so it was displayed immediately."
...and you have the first lifesize Missile Commander game.
First Post!
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
No way this will abused at all... I look forward to seeing goatse in all its glory displayed over Dublin.
Residents of Ireland reported seeing lights representing penises and men bending over with apparent gaping holes in the rear over the skies of Dublin. More on this as it becomes available.
The local In-House Astronomer at Univ of Dublin must love this thing...
"We are celebrating our EU presidency for 2004, and all we got is our web cam Slashdotted."
Poor fellows.AFAIK this will be the first example of a city-wide slashdot effect. Should be good times.
So if you would stop pointing it at my flat, that would be appreciated.
An annoyed Dublin resident.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
This week's crossword puzzle prize is a brand new set of crayons.
Can I project my phone number so whole legions hot irish girls will call me, wanting hot passion?
Hate me!
And I can say they're pretty amazing - the range is much more than 15km (I saw them visiting a friend from Leixlip over 25km away). They make this city beautiful - The messages were uncensored initially, but then the authorities smartned up - to an extent! :) Try submitting something in a different language..
This is not a pleasant sight if you are interested in preserving the night sky.
Once again the environment suffers to satisfy the vanity of politicians.
The night sky should be dark as this allows wildlife to not be disturbed, we save energy reducing CO2 emmissions and the next generation of kids might just get interested in astronomy and science in general.
http://www.dark-skies.org/
Aside from this - yes of course its pretty - but I'd like it to be limited up to 12 midnight, and only use sodium light which can be filtered out.
Clear dark and steady skies
Torcuill
www.aberdeenastro.btinternet.co.uk
Can somebody say Bat-signal?
while true ; do echo this is my sig; done
Wait until the spammers find out. Then you'll see on the sky:
MAKE MONEY FAST!
URGENT BUISNESS PROPOSAL
Buy \/IAGRA!
And the next spam message will not say any more "AS SEEN ON NATIONAL TV", but "AS SEEN ON NATIONAL SKY".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"All your searchlights are belong to us"
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
In order to avoid the impending slashdot effect, Dublin moved the website to its new home: http://www.DriveOurCityInsane.com/ Apparently the lights are just the first feature. In the future they're going to incorporate music that viewers can upload and play across the city, voice synthesizers to read off posted comments and various other things guaranteed to drive residents nuts. Apparently they got the idea from some guy from the midwest's home project.
Let me explain for the clueless: The guy is saying that readers of slashdot, on seeing the story, will RTFA and then proceed to make their own lightshows. And being slashdotters, what kinds of lightshows will they create?
Ones saying
First Post!
... of course.
Dumb mods ...
Mine would have to be:
(up arrow) (up arrow) (down arrow) (down arrow) (left arrow) (right arrow) (left arrow) (right arrow) B A Start
IANAL, but I play one on
when I submitted mine there was no one in the queue, so it was displayed immediately.
betcha this will change alot while servers will be suffering the slashdot effect !
Doh !
Can you write darksky with those lights?
Now countless civilians will be scarred for life and will declare unceasing war on the website Slashdot for creating such a horrible debacle!
"when I submitted mine there was no one in the queue, so it was displayed immediately." well, hello, you just submitted it to slashdot, guess this will not happen again any time soon....
What is really cool is the 3D model at http://www4.alzado.net/edparticipar.html Could you set this up with Doom or some similar game? I could then reproduce a trip from the Burger King near O'Connell bridge across to the Centra - which I do on the occasional Friday night. Of course in this version I could shoot the person who grabs a taxi I flagged etc. Pow-Pow (Various Gun sounds!!)
Vote No to European Constitution
Let me guess - you're British!
Personally I think the rest of Europe should have a vote to chuck Britain out of the EU. Britain just holds the rest of the EU back.
why?
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams! Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games, on buses, and milk cartons, and t-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree.
Yeah - I was guessing the same nationality when I saw that post.
Personally I think the rest of Europe should have a vote to chuck Britain out of the EU. Britain just holds the rest of the EU back
Im pretty sure that it was Britain that held it together in the early stages.
If it wasnt for Britain the would be no EU at all
There's no fscking way I'm flying Ryanair into Dublin for the forseeable future then! Dive Dive Dive.
AT&ROFLMAO
Could some sensitive clod convert these to American Units please ? What does 15km and 154000 watts mean in miles and libraries of congress ?
Before going ahead and spending an hour creating your masterpiece, wouldn't it be a good idea that you first check to see what the conditions are like?
Right now in Toronto (Eastern Daylight Savings Time) it is 11:30 AM and in Dublin it is 4:27:56 PM IST (Irish Standard Time?).
It might be a good idea to wait a few hours before submitting your project, designed to be intuitively obvious to any extraterrestrial beings that there is intelligent life on Earth...
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Yes there would... ...but it might have been even less democratic.
And founded a bit earlier, say, 1939-42 ish
Another version of the original which took place in Mexico for the millennium by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
This guy does get up to some really interesting stuff.
why?
I expect because he is a Brit.
You wouldn't believe how biased the press in the UK is with regards to anything European. It really is sad. Most of the British do not have access to impartial information about Europe. And it's not just the "red-top" newspapers, it's so called "quality" papers such as The Times and The Telegraph. They only ever print negative stories about anything European, and some things are so distorted that they amount to lies and propoganda.
I find it a real shame because I genuinely used to believe that Britain jouralists had a strong sense of integrity and impartiality. Not any more.
(I'm British too but I travel a lot in Europe and my business involves trade between different EU countries.)
The Irish presidency is now handling the software patent issue. After the EU Commission proposal got blasted by the Parliament (thanks Parliament!), Ireland has now put forth a "compromise" that's even more pro-swpat than the original Commission one. So why not remind them of the main anti-software-patent organization and the 300'000 signatures by spelling "FFII" across the Dublin sky?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
> Let me guess - you're British!
I'm Irish actually.
If you're going to chuck a country out of the EU for blocking European 'progress', then where will it end? I wouldn't be surprised if Britain isn't the only big country to say 'No'. The French only voted 50.5 to 49.5 for the Euro currency.
The EU is incredibly currupt, financially and morally. They should get their house in order, and prove they deserve our respect before making the EU anything other than a trade bloc.
Europeans everywhere - read the small print before voting.
Also, even Tony Blair will tell you a 'No' vote doesn't mean Britain would have the leave the EU. There are a few countries, such as Norway and Switzerland, who are in the free trade area, but they don't sign up to all the other nonsense.
Just add some Leprechauns to kill in the 3D street model.
if i (a so called mick) am drunk 24 hours a day, how come i only see them at night!
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
when I submitted mine there was no one in the queue, so it was displayed immediately
Is it just me, or does it seem like they are opening themselves up to trouble by not having some sort of screening program in place for the designs? How long before a giant, vector graphic representation of the goatse.cx guy is seen floating over Dublin?
Mechanik
They're not celebrating the presidency. They're celebrating the EU enlargement.
D
Your phone number in lights over a major city. Even if some hot irish girls try to call you they won't be able to get through with all the pervs and crazies tying up the line.
On a less public spirited note, please give it a try and post some of the calls you get on here for our amusement.
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
Too bad Albert Speer isn't still alive. He knew how to arrange a searchlight light show!
Rich
I'm Irish actually.
From the Republic of Ireland? If so then you should know better. You have a great economy at the moment. A lot of that is due to your membership of the European Union. You have hugely successful companies like Ryanair which only exist because of the opening up of the European market and relaxation of rules.
Look how membership of the EU has helped your country over the past decade, compared to how the relationship you had with Britain has helped you.
Europeans everywhere - read the small print before voting.
I have read the new European constitution. I expect a lot of the people who are saying "no" to it haven't.
Parent just got modded -1 Flamebait.
I bet if he said "Vote No to GWB" he'd get modded Funny or Insightful.
If I had mod points, I'd have voted Funny
http://www.darksky.org/
http://spaceweather.com/
True, but you gotta love the subtle understatement of doing it at noon on a sunny day.
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
> From the Republic of Ireland? If so then you should know better. You have a great economy at the moment
My point exactly. I'm all for more trade. I'm all for the free movement of goods, capital and labour.
I'm happy that the Republic of Ireland is now a net contributor to the EU, which will help Eastern Europe develop as much as we have recently.
But the point of a Constitution is to create a new country. This includes throwing out many of the rights and freedoms of a 'freeborn Englishman' (which the Irish inherited) built up since Magna Carta.
It is important for everyone to realise that this is nothing to do with economics, but about winding up many sovereign states with centuries of history.
Surely its celebrating the accession of 10 new EU members (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus on May 1st) swelling us to the largest organised group of people on the earth after India and China?
I'm sure our country isn't so egotistic to celebrate a usual (even if rare) event such as the EU presidency.
Could someone fix the posting?
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
But the point of a Constitution is to create a new country.
Not true in this case.
It is important for everyone to realise that this is nothing to do with economics
Again, not true. It has everything to do with economics. The point of the consistution is to simplify and bring together many currently existing rules. The change from rotating presidency to fixed-term presidency, for instance, will be great for the economy of Europe, because it we won't have a president with two jobs any more. Do you think it would be good for the US economy if the president changed every six months?
I have often suspected that British policy towards the EU is to try to very hard to get kicked out. Nobody under 30 in this country actually knows how many ounces there are in a pound, pounds in a stone, or inches in a foot, or pints in a gallon -- but it took the British government -- the same government that actually did most of the hard work in creating the SI system -- until the year 2000 just to allow shops to sell goods by the kilo, which coincidentally was the date which we had agreed -- back in the 1960s -- finally to phase out the use of pounds and ounces. You aren't telling me that was an oversight. You can't just miss for nearly 40 years the fact that it was illegal to sell a kilo of tomatoes {and people have been busted for using SI measurements} while knowing that sooner or later it would be illegal to sell 2lb4oz of tomatoes. That was very obviously a deliberate attempt to piss somebody off.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
> I find it a real shame because I genuinely used
> to believe that Britain jouralists had a strong
> sense of integrity and impartiality. Not any more.
You must be a "Sun" reader.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
The articles does say that is runs from dusk till dawn...
Currently, there is a 10 hour wait, and it's 5pm here. The lights won't start until sometime after 9 when it's dark enough to see the lights.
Incidently, you get emailed a link to a webpage so that you can see you design from 4 different cameras.
T.
I have often suspected that British policy towards the EU is to try to very hard to get kicked out.
Personally I think the UK's relationship with the USA is at the heart of the UK's actions in the EU.
Some in the administration of the USA have said quite clearly that their policy towards the EU is one of divide and rule. We have seen this working quite clearly recently, when Blair put a lot of effort into developing a relationship with Spain and used that to divide Europe about the Iraq war.
The USA does not want a strong, united Europe. They like the fact that the UK is always half-in, half-out, because it means that Europe is less united an weaker. Quite what the UK gets out of it I don't know, but the relationship between the UK and USA has always been somewhat murkey, even to us Brits.
...make an image of liquor-smelling PUKE surrounded by a cloud of noxious cigarette smoke? That would be perfect for dublin. Personally, I won't waste any of my time on it.
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
Isn't this similar to the blinkenlights project?
What an apalling waste of energy. Just think of all the Guinness that could be brewed with that much electricity!
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
Er, no. Britain wasn't even a member until 1973, fifteen years after it was founded.
You must be a "Sun" reader.
No. My upbringing was one of "aspiring middle-class", so I used to believe that being an Englishman meant being honest and having integrity. A working-class Sun reader probably won't be so naieve.
5) Kicking the shit out of you for propogating stereo types. Kicking the shit out of you and all your descendents if you are Irish and wrote that.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
No it isn't. Lots of organisations have constitutions. A constitution is just a formal document specifying the rules and principles on which the organisation is based.
This includes throwing out many of the rights and freedoms of a 'freeborn Englishman' (which the Irish inherited) built up since Magna Carta.
The Irish didn't 'inherit' anything of the sort. Irish subjects of the Queen under the Union had considerably less rights and freedoms than their English counterparts. The rights and freedom they now have were won in the course of decades of political and violent agitation during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries.
and we in the west of ireland have not even got street lights. :)
How in the fuck can that last message be modded Overrated when IT WAS NEVER RATED IN THE FIRST PLACE?!
Then it got modded Offtopic?! It's completely Ontopic! You can submit a message/picture to be displayed by the lights during the show, and I posted what I wanted displayed. How in the fuck is that Offtopic? And how can a negatively modded post be Overrated?
Maybe it wasn't funny, but I shouldn't get punished for that. Hopefully those fucktard mods will get smacked down in metamoderation and their points taken away (if that is even how things work).
Asshats.
P.S.
THIS post is offtopic, but it isn't overrated. The parent post was neither offtopic nor overrated.
IANAL, but I play one on
This includes throwing out many of the rights and freedoms of a 'freeborn Englishman' (which the Irish inherited) built up since Magna Carta.
Fake Irishman alert!!!
But the point of a Constitution is to create a new country.
OFCOURSE IT IS. I want to know what the EU actually is. What's the point? It's to create a single federal country - like the US. Otherwise, why not just keep it a free-trade agreement? Why does it have to have a parliament, a national anthem, a flag, an army, a currency - Nope, doesn't sound like a country at all!
Personally I think the rest of Europe should have a vote to chuck Britain out of the EU. Britain just holds the rest of the EU back.
Holds the EU back!? Hah! I'd like to see the EU without British money, now that'd be funny.
Actually, it shows one of the fundamental flaws within the EU. How can you get 25 countries to agree to eachother all the time? You can't!
So how on earth are we going to get this to work, there's simply too much diversity, and Europe isn't ready.
Given the irish attempts to force through EU software patents
I was out and about on Saturday night and it's really cool. The actual designs aren't great but it's pretty mad the way they all change around every 14 seconds. It's kinda like that 20th century fox thing that you see before a film 8) O'Connell Street's getting to be bit crazy, first big pole is stuck in the middle of it and now this. I wonder what other ingenious ways they're gonna waste money...
I have to admit it makes an impressive sight. My apartment is only 200 hundred yards from O'Connell St. The patterns have been getting more intricate in the last 2 nights as users have gotten more adventurous.
Many are getting all the spotlights to shine on one narrow band of "The Spire". It then shines like a lighthouse right into the apartment.
Expect some good viewing tonight as cloud cover is 100%.
Just you're average nitpicker.
Ranger Park the Park Ranger: It should say top quality exercycle for sale, and could you put top quality in bold? You can't...o.k., whatever.
Guy goes into a newsagent's and says:
Give me the Sun.
And something to read while you're at it.
Yet, somehow, the 50 states within the USA seem to manage just fine.
And if you don't think the US is diverse, get a clue. They have staggeringly different economies, cultures and customs.
"Nobody"? I'm 22, and know "how many ounces there are in a pound, pounds in a stone, or inches in a foot, or pints in a gallon". DISPROVED!! :o) Disclaimer, I had a physics teacher who lamented the demise of the slide rule ;o)
At the moment, is it illegal to sell products with both SI and imperial units?
I know that I got a shock a couple of weeks ago, my housemate asked me how many pounds there were in a kilogram. I was in the kitchen, so the first thing I did was, from previous experience, open up my cupboard and look at a packet of sugar. I couldn't believe there wasn't dual labelling, bummer.
Sodium lights are high-pressure, which means the spectral lines are spread out and difficult to filter. Mercury arc lights are low-pressure, which means the spectral lines are narrow and easy to filter.
I presume you mean the dedications/usernames on the webcam photos, as it would be pretty difficult to spell out anything with only the searchlights (this fact not stopping endless speculation by other posters). I saw them myself when in town on Saturday night, but didn't know what it was all about until an American friend sent me a link to this Slashdot story.
Surely you mean "The Stiletto in the Ghetto."
Walking home from the lab I found it looks quite good. 9MB *.mov at tcd.ie(if someone could mirror it, might be useful)
Next step would be to take some consecutive slots and make some kind of movie.
Have fun
If you look at the lights and compare the VR to the real light display, there are about 3-4 lights that look totally off. A lot of good it does if the lights aren't properly calibrated...
but then again, it's a government job, right?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
If we look at some information on light pollution, we see that low-pressure sodium lighting (LPS) is actually preferred because it is easilly filtered out. (Not to mention, it's more energy efficient.)
I'm surprised nobody here has pointed out yet. It seems the whole thing is running on Linux
Don't you moderators have a sense of humor? It's a joke! If you can't joke with your friends (Europeans), then who can you joke with?
Open Standards Portal
Anyone else wonder why Arlene MCarthy hasn't patented this system, along with any use of light emitting devices in entertainment products? After all they have to protect their important IP, I hope you all realise that looking at the lights without paying is the same as stealing? All praise Ireland for their lead role in screwing us all over on IP.
I think you need to get a clue. I live in the US for 4 months a year and have been to 23 states over the past 5 years (part business, part pleasure) and the most astounding thing to me has been just how similar they are. I see more diversity between the Scots and the English, or, actually, the Northerners and the Southerners in England - and that isn't much.
All Americans are Americans first, and, if at all, their state later. They're all bound by the fact that they're all born Americans, they all speak English, have the same media, basically the same education, and the same ways of doing business.
How on earth can a competent person try and say that someone from Utah and another from North Carolina are more diverse than a Geordie and a Sicilian?
You're an idiot.
Care to explain where the difference of two minutes and four seconds to any other timezone in the world comes from?