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The Quintessential Sentry Gun
mollyhackit writes "Aaron and Ezra built an automatic sentry gun using an airsoft gun, some hobby servos and a webcam.The camera automatically identifies and tracks targets. They tested it on each other to make sure it worked; video included!"
I feel sorry for the server. 8MB video file linked in the article description.
Is is just me, or is Slashdot now incredibly slow?
I started by learning Microsoft's DirectShow technology and utilizing the OpenCV library according to the tutorial by R. Laganiere to access the pixels being sent by my web cam. If you try to use the tutorial, you'll have to use the new library paths for DirectX 9 because the ones in the tutorial are a little outdated.
Microsoft, the choice of terrorists everywhere. Born, raised and trained (if you call DirectX familiarization a training) right here in the USA.
Last summer was ... last month and M$ has already changed enough for you to need new libraries. Ugh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Have you ever even been to Europe? Why assume that all Europeans are socialistic pansies? I'm a brit, I go and watch cuddly little foxes get mauled to death by beagles, and I shoot at the poor little birdies with a 12 bore. Oh, and deer. If you cared to do your research, you'd realise that there's a large chunk of British (and European) population who have absolutely no problem with bearing arms, because there's not really a reason not to.
Sure, we have tighter gun control over here (for the most part - go to Kiev and you can pick up Kalashkinovs for about £15 - and then go shoot radioactive boars in the woods!), but it doesn't make all Europeans socialistic pansies.
The media over here tends to be just as reactionary as it it can be in the states - did you ever hear about Tony Martin & Brendan Fearon? Interesting case - the left wing, proletariat media villified Tony Martin, and managed to drag public opinion in such a direction that it led to the banning of bloodsports and the like in the country - merely by raising enough bile in people who have nothing better to do with their time than whinge and bitch about things they don't know or understand.
This has turned into more of a rant than I intended. Basically, democracy is inherently flawed - why should people who have no connection to hunting and the like be able to make any kind of a decision on the basis of whether it's right or wrong? Which brings me onto my next point - why are politicians allowed to make decisions that scientists should be making? Why are the public allowed to pressurise governments into banning scientific progress because they disagree with it because they don't understand it?!
Anyway, back to my point. Not all europeans are whining lefty bureaucrats - in fact, the majority aren't - it's just that the whining lefty 'crats always get into government, because unfortunately the proles will do whatever the media tells them to think, and Murdoch enjoys a left wing government, as it promotes further circulation of his 'Banner' (think fountainhead).
Ok, really rant over now.