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The Technology Behind the Magic Yellow Line
CurtMonash writes "Fandome offers a fascinating video explaining how the first-down line on football broadcasts actually works. Evidently, theres a lot of processing both to calculate the exact location being photographed on the field — including optical sensors and two steps of encoding — and to draw a line in exactly the right place onscreen. For those who don't want to watch the whole video, highlights are here."
Hmmm... A new trend? No longer reading 'have not RTFA' but 'have not Viewed TFA'? /. coming to.
Dear oh dear, what is
I already knew in pretty significant detail how all this works, but there was a lot of additional information in the video that never made it to the PR-sanitized behind-the-scenes descriptions of the technology.
Plus, you get to see the ugly UI that appears to have been built as an afterthought - just like the UI of all the other industrial television software I've operated.
Would be a field that uses clear/transparent turf. and all colors on the field are defined by lights under it. The white in the 10/20/30... could be done dynamically, the end zones could be designed dynamically and relit, heck, you could switch from a green field to Boise State's blue.
This could be used to make the same field a football field, soccer field, lacrosse, field hockey... all without the the clutter of all the lines on one field.
This might be tricky with turf technology currently, but I feel like a first technology to do this might be a basketball court (lights for basketball, volleyball, etc)...
It probably isn't feasible, but would be interesting.
Yeah - it is one guy and as long as he doesn't put on an annoyingly green tie - it all just works. It is actually amazing how much technology is behind simple video effects done seamlessly. I thought it was funny when Forest Gump won the oscar for special effects - everyone was like... that isn't a special effects movie... I was like - that is the point
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
are the ones on the platforms at train stations. (In QLD anyway) The closest thing we have to this in sports around here is either during swimming, or between balls during a test match, when the commentators are bored and start drawing lines all over my TV.
The camera can zoom out to a wide field view and the computer can scan for the yard lines (maybe taking some time as players walk around) to calibrate the perspective. Do it again at a midway and zoomed in position to get the zoom calibration. Thereafter, the pan, tilt, and zoom sensors can guide computer to where to draw the line. And if the yard markers do happen to be in view with high confidence, that can refine the calibration at any time.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The yellow line is one thing, but TV sports have become the forefront for real-time image manipulation, mostly for the purpose of inserting advertisements.
Personally I hate that trend. Luckily for me, pro sports was already becoming so infested with commercialism that I stopped being interested after adolescence.
But how long before this kind of b.s. makes it into non-sports television? "The Obama inaugural, brought to you on the capitol mall by ..."
I watched the game tonight, and surprisingly, I was trying to figure out how I would do it. Yes, nerdiness has infected us all.
I thought Football was a game played with your feet! What the article discusses is a bastardised form of Rugby.
TFS made it sound like the video was an entire documentary that was going to eat at 30 minutes out of my morning. So yes, in the interests of saving time I clicked the highlights link, only to find that it would have taken longer to read the highlights than it would have to watch the video!
Seriously, three and a half minutes? Do we at Slashdot have that short an attention span that we need highlig... OH LOOK A BIRD!
That's true, but I was always more fascinated by the stuff they did for NASCAR. Not only do they use on-screen tech, but they also make use of GPS to do those fancy graphics showing info on the cars while they're moving on the road.
There was an article about this particular tech NASCAR uses in some magazine, but I can not for the life of me remember it, nor can I find any videos demonstrating it...
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh9af_gXxlM&fmt=18
I have always been amazed at the NASCAR broadcasts... if only the high-tech world of Formula-1 could catch up with these good 'ol boys!
By the way, how do soccer stadiums paint dynamic ads next to the field, visible on TV?
... All that technology applied to paint a yellow line in a completely arbitrary position. The rules need to be changed so that the location of the ball touching the ground is the location of the line. Also, the ball should have some kind of RFID chip in it, and the entire field should be built on top of a fine mesh of RFID sensors. Until then the location of the line is subject to too much human error, and as a result completely arbitrarily placed anyway.
They didn't say how it was calibrated but let's face it, there's two guys sat there constantly tweaking it so I'm pretty sure the initial pre-match calibration will be done manually.
The only clever part is the camera tracking and perspective correction.
And the interesting part is how they transmit the data round, switching between audio, over the hidden TV lines, etc.
No sig today...
Always wondered how they did that but never bothered to look it up. I thought they were doing surface analysis and then extracting the numbers, that would be a really hard problem, looks like they found a similar solution. I guess they must leave the cameras in place as I'd suspect it would be a real pain if you moved the camera after each game and then had to recalibrate.
"I'd say the resolution would need to be at least 1cm" I disagree, i think the resolution needs to be at least .74356 cm.
You can't multiply by 12?
I, like you, have no idea what a foot or an inch or American football is. I just went to Wikipedia and snatched some numbers, then asked google for '360 ft in inches'. Try it, it's free.
This guy reminds me of Jack Hanna for some reason.
I am confident in making this statement: Engineers in the US that would do things like designing large LCD screens would use SI units. The traditional system of measurement that exists here rarely causes significant difficulties in every day life. I don't really see how the benefits would outweigh the costs of forcing people to switch over. Many things are already labeled with both sets of units anyways. Other than things like road signs, its pretty much a choice. I have a set of SI wrenches and a set of "standard" wrenches. Any product that is sold in some sort of measurable quantity is usually labeled with both sets of units.
its a 3:30 minute video...do you really need highlights of a 3:30 minute video?
I'd have liked to see actual examples of the colour failing to draw on certain surfaces, etc
The britts could do it, now it's you turn, Yanks.
Pot, meet kettle?
If you really like fancy 3D computer vision and graphics techniques in sports broadcasting, check out the amazing work of http://www.liberovision.com
Or space shuttle's HUD.
Yet they need a shitload of computers (a server farm WTF !?) and several people to make this work ?
Sure, it's cute that they don't draw the line when the background's not green, but it's hardly "amazing science" or anything.
Of course everyone can. It's just that when you multiply X by 10, you just add a zero at the end of X. There's no actual calculation being done, which is inarguably easier than having to perform a real multiplication.
the lack of a oval track means you would need a lot more cameras. But yea, theres also a lot of money in F1 so that shouldn't be a problem. The tv broadcast are lacking. I have also though there would be market for multi angle dvds at the end of the season too, but the available footage is on the drab side.
If your sport requires special on-screen aids to understand what's happening it's probably overdue for a rethink.
That's like saying if your software requires a flashy box and a slick interface, it's probably due for a re-coding.
These TV tricks are pure marketing, designed to extend the appeal of the game to the very casual observer. Football has been extraordinarily successful at every level for decades, and clearly does not need "on screen aids" to be understood.
This is not the first example of such "dumbing down" of pro TV sportscasts. You may remember Fox Sports' "streaking puck" experiment a few seasons back during their NHL broadcasts. That proved a dismal failure (although it was a technical wonder at the time); the first down line-generation has proven a much more successful gimmick.
No, you know your sport is due for a re-think when its fans riot in the streets and generate massive amounts of property damage. Violence and Premature Death are civilization's long-established barometers of failure.
Certainly. Which meter should we use? The one defined by the length of a pendulum whose period is 1 second? No that won't work, gravity is slightly different depending upon where you are on the earth.
.2 milimeters shorter than the definition would like you to believe.
Okay scratch that. How about the meter whose length is defined by one ten-millionth the length of the earth's meridian between a pole and the equator? Well no that won't work either because the Earth's surface isn't consistent; it gets flatter/slimmer what have you, like when that undersea earthquake occurred (the one that made the huge tsunami a few years ago). So that means the magical platinum bar (or is it platinum iridium?) from 1840 is actually
Let's try again, maybe the measurement of the specific number of waves of a very precise wavelength from a krypton-89 atom? No too cumbersome; my super spy glasses that let me see wavelengths from atoms are at the repair shop.
Maybe the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458th of a second? That's certainly a circular definition. Why not make it 1/300,000,000th of a second so that it's a nice round number? Or sticking to the "metric" simplicity factor, why not 1/1,000,000,000th? Then everything's back to a power of 10 instead of a power of...30th?
WTF?
Why would we want to move to some system that arbitrarily decides we cannot be observant enough without magical tools to calculate some basic length? Or one that changes the definition of its basic measurement every few decades?
At least metric got it right for temperature, evenly distribute degrees across 0 to 100 where 0 is the temperature water freezes at 1 atmosphere and 100 is the temperature water boils, again at 1 atmosphere. Then again... doesn't it matter what impurities are in the water? I mean salt water doesn't freeze at 0...
Give me a rational system that doesn't require highly expensive tools to define and I'll be happy to switch to it.
This is all fascinating and everything but the masses really want to know what ever happened to that halo they used to have around the puck in NHL games?
i.e. "association football" to be technically and unambiguously correct
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
I'm usually good with technology but I don't get football analogies. Could someone explain the technology behind this magic yellow line with a car analogy?
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Base-12 units divide easily by 12, 6, 4, 3, and 2. Base-10 units divide easily by 10, 5, and 2. In addition the simplified fabrication of scales (which is not an issue anymore given precision machines) there are many circumstances where it is easier to use base-12 units.
More importantly, there's an unavoidable transition where, no matter what kind of magic you use to convince people to switch the units they use to talk about things (which is no small feat in itself), you'll still have to deal with a world full of physical objects that were constructed with nice round measurements under the old system, and really nasty measurements under the new system. I don't know about you, but I'm guessing the average person would not find it easier to work with the length "14.2875 mm" as opposed to "9/16 inches". And let's not even get into the plane crashes and whatnot caused by previous transitions in measurement systems.
The brits didn't do it at all. They weigh people in stones and speeds in MPH. They sell beer in 1/2 pints. The EU is forcing them to label many goods in SI units, but they're not really happy about that, and most products are still sized with imperial units, they're just labeled differently.
And it's always fun when it gets a little glitchy. I love seeing the driver/car marker pointing to some empty space off the track. Probably doesn't happen as much anymore, but it seemed to happen fairly regularly when I'd watch some races with a friend 3 or 4 years ago.
This guy's the limit!
When everything is labelled in both cm and in, however, there is always a "base unit" and the other one is rounded.
Example: (In the UK) I needed to replace a 47in/120cm hanging rail. So went to the shop and bought a 47in/120cm replacement. The trick was that the one I had at home was 120cm = 47.2in and I bought a 47in one = 119 cm - i.e. it did not fit.
"First of all, when someone writes "football" on slashdot. Is he referring to what is commonly known as "football" all over the world, i.e. "soccer" or what is commonly referred to all over the world as "american football"?"
Sometimes a single word has more than one meaning, especially among different cultures. When that is the case, you have to use something called context to derive which meaning the word has. So "football" could mean a few different things when written on Slashdot depending on who wrote it. Lucky for us, we're given a LOT of context here. Given that we're talking about first down lines and there's ample video showing the sport in question, the context should be pretty obvious. But since you're confused, what they're referring to would likely translate to "American football" in your vernacular.
And it was awesome that Pixar reproduced these glitches in the opening scenes Cars.
People should be doing everything from measurement to arithmetic in hexidecimal (base 16) these days. SI is obsolete in the information age. Although it might be nice to replace the abcdef numerals with something non-alphabetic.
Seriously.
You can draw all the same arguments that were made for the metric system and apply then to why we should switch everything to base 16.
Floating-point operations are generally performed on a base-2 representation of a base 10 number, so conversion errors are common. Base-10 floats or decimal types are possible, but less commonly used and generally don't have CPU hardware support.
Base-16 can represent larger values in a shorter space.
Computer memory is based on address lines that follow the powers of 2, so that a 'kilo' byte is 1024... of course people are just starting to collectively address this issue with the use of KiB.
While we are at it, why do we still have 24-hour days, or worse 12-hour half-days where the 0 hour is actually 12 and proceeds to 1. Why are there 360 degrees in one rotation? Arc seconds, arc-minutes... Why is a dozen 12 units?
Of course I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I know most non-computer science people out there would have their head spinning if they tried to understand anything besides base-10.
And that's on top of $100k hardware, $25k/year support agreement, and per-seat licensing for the admin and client portions.
So yes, you're absolutely right.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
It seems that you haven't checked the definition of a foot in a few decades...
The traditional system of measurement that exists here rarely causes significant difficulties in every day life.
200g of steak mince per person. 17 people. I'll have 3400g please.
6oz of steak mince per person. 17 people. 102oz... but I can't ask for that. How many pounds?
Large bottle of vodka: 1 litre. 1000mL. Double measure: 50mL. Bottle has 20 double measures.
Normal bottle: 0.75L. 15 double measures.
I think you buy vodka in a "fifth", a fifth of a gallon, and I think a double measure would be 2 fluid ounces. Erm...
My wall: 4.37m by 2.39m. Area: 4.37m*2.39m = 10.4m^2. The can of paint covers 10m^2, damn.
Your wall: 14 feet 4 inches by 7 feet 10 inches. Area... 172in * 94in = 16168 square inches ~= 112 square feet. The paint covers 10 square yards, is there enough? (No)
I don't really see how the benefits would outweigh the costs of forcing people to switch over. Many things are already labeled with both sets of units anyways.
Due to pressure from the EU ;-).
I have a set of SI wrenches and a set of "standard" wrenches.
That's twice as many wrenches as you'd need if everything came with one system of fixings.
The parent post shows the precise reason to move to the not-so-brain-dead SI units. First of all, when someone writes "football" on slashdot. Is he referring to what is commonly known as "football" all over the world, i.e. "soccer" or what is commonly referred to all over the world as "american football"?
Even reading the few words in the summary is enough to indicate this is about American football. Unless international football (aka soccer) now has first down lines...which it didn't, at the last game I attended a couple weeks ago.
Perhaps you could link the damn video, instead of (as usual) a link to the blog that links to the video? :(
http://www.fandome.com/video/107610/The-Mystery-of-the-Yellow-Line/
-Styopa
If it were replaced with FOSS, it probably wouldn't have a UI at all, considering the tiny userbase.
I completely forgot about that. I should watch that movie again sometime.
This guy's the limit!
Not to defend Imperial units (being a scientist by training I despise the things) but you do realize that 10 is just as imaginary a number as 12 right? SI length measurement is more consistent but doesn't make it any less imaginary than Imperial length measurements, both are pretty damn arbitrary. Remember almost all units of measure are made up and used as a convention (aka. Standard) for understanding each other.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Why are we writing about football on slashdot anyway? This is news for nerds, not news for jocks.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's easy to show the cars moving around on the road in Nascar; they only go around in a big circle!
What possible difference could it make whether or not you can personally directly measure the base units?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct - the best kind of correct.
-Number 1.0
Yeah, I've got nothing...
Because this is about the science of the yellow line not about football. Would you prefer we didn't talk about border security, cars, and replacement limbs because this is news for nerds, not news for travelers/mechanics/the disabled?
Read the F.A.Q.: Slashdot is an American website catering primarily to American users. When they say "football" instead of "soccer" you can assume that they're using the American terms for these sports. There's not need to explore context or cultural ramifications.
There are a couple of NASCAR races that take place on SCCA road courses.
What about using the nice length 5cm instead of the tricky 1.96850394 inches?
Since when are we typically dividing our measurements by factors of 12? Seriously, what's your use case here?
As for stuff being made to antique measurements: "No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back."
I think we'll somehow survive. I'd say that we're in more danger as work teams globalize more and more. Do you really want your Boeing engineers in Germany, India, China making conversions back and forth to the team in the US?
I don't really see how the benefits would outweigh the costs of forcing people to switch over.
Uhm, Mars Climate Orbiter? That was $125M down the pan in 1999, due entirely to one group of US engineers using imperial/english units, and failing to successfully communicate this to the rest, who did not.
This is very simple actually. Slashdot (it is even spelled out somewhere in the FAQ) is a US based, US centric website. So, if you see something like football, you are 99% safe in assuming we mean American football, and not rugby or soccer.
We also use non-metric units of measure here...if you visit here often, please get used to it. Again..US centric, US based website.
I promise, when I go to a UK version of Slashdot, I'll assume football means soccer, and I'll google to convert from meters to feet, and Celsius to Fahrenheit .
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yep, one foot is exactly 12 inches. One inch is defined as exactly 0.0254 m. So the "English" inch is based on exactly the same standard as the SI metre, because it is based on the SI metre. I don't see the problem though, if you need to know how long a metre is you buy a calibrated, certified thingy which measures to the accuracy you require. If the OP wants to bitch about something, they should bitch about units of mass with their easy to understand "particular lump of stuff" standard. Easy to understand, but unfortunately lumps of stuff have a bad habit of gaining and losing mass, changing the definition of your units all the time.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
I have a set of SI wrenches and a set of "standard" wrenches.
That's twice as many wrenches as you'd need if everything came with one system of fixings.
So, you're saying, when we all agree to use SI measurements, every nut and bolt currently in existence, for which I purchased my SAE wrenches, will cease to exist and be automatically replaced with SI nuts and bolts?
No?
Oh, so I'll still need those SAE wrenches? For as long as the equipment I use then on is functional and/or repairable?
Oh, shit, I guess I'll need them for the rest of my life, then; I keep my equipment running.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
6oz of steak mince per person. 17 people. 102oz... but I can't ask for that. How many pounds?"
First, what the fuck is "steak mince"? I'm guessing some form of meat? Beef? I know what a steak is, but, no idea what mince is...
And really, if you've lived with non-metric units all your life, it is easy. I have no problem knowing what size and 8 oz tenderloin or 16oz strip steak is or how big it is. I'd be completely lost trying to, off the top of my head...buy or cook with metric units. When I college in a lab, sure, no problem in doing chemistry experiments in metric, but, that isn't real every day life stuff.
I know how to dress when it is 72F outside. I'd have no clue what to dress for at something like 32C (random temp)...
If you grew up using metric...sure it is easy, just as easy as the non-metric units are for me since I grew up with them.
And sure..you can ask for 102oz. Not sure who you'd ask...most of the groceries bought in the US are self serve, you rarely see a butcher live in person. If it were me, I'd round it up to 8oz per person (6 oz is kind of a skimpy portion?) and buy 8.5 lbs of whatever type of meat steak mince is....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The point about factors of twelve is that it is very convenient to talk about 1/2 a foot, 1/3 of a foot, 1/4 of a foot and have those come out to "nice" numbers. With base 10, you have 1/2, 1/5, and 1/10 that come out nice, but 1/3 and 1/4 bring you into fractions. Thus, your parent is saying that the base twelve system is "better" for day to day use. Since most of the world has managed the switch, the argument is not decisive, but it does partially explain why it's hard to put the change through.
Why should Americans have to change their habits? I notice that you aren't suggesting that Not-Americans call soccer "association football". Typical Not-American high-falootinry - you guys think you're everybody.
I was watching a Ravens regular season game (I think) and for a couple seconds we had the view of the computer's field: black background colored lines. I realized that indeed, there was a digital 3D field that was lined up to match the camera's view. After that, it is a simple matter of using the actual camera as a player in a game with pan and tilt of the actual camera to match the virtual camera. Then, its just a projection of a line with color keying in the composite video.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Last time I was driving in England/Scotland/Wales, *ALL* of the road signs were show distances and speed limits in miles and MPH.
Web sites like these seem to indicate that nothing has changed in that regard.
In other words, the UK is hardly a good example of a country which has converted to metric measures. Perhaps Canada would be a better choice?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
No, that's obviously not what I'm saying. You might like to take some literacy classes.
I would think that most people on an American website reading an article about how the yellow line is created to indicate first down would not be thinking about soccer when they see the word "football." Your definitely right though, 914.4cm to first down is so so easy. Look how easy it is to turn into meters, 9.144 meters, I didn't even have to use any magic numbers.
Fitted furniture (e.g. kitchen stuff) in Europe is generally sold to fit widths of 600mm, or multiples of that.
600 divides by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 24, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 75, 100, 120, 150, 200, 300, 600.
"Problem" solved.
"200g of steak mince per person. 17 people. I'll have 3400g please.
6oz of steak mince per person. 17 people. 102oz... but I can't ask for that. How many pounds?"
First, what the fuck is "steak mince"? I'm guessing some form of meat? Beef? I know what a steak is, but, no idea what mince is...
Sorry, I forgot. I think you call it ground beef (well, "steak mince" is better quality than cheaper "beef mince". I guess you call a grinder what I'd call a mincer).
[BTW, saying "what the fuck is steak mince" makes you sound like an arrogant American.]
And really, if you've lived with non-metric units all your life, it is easy. I have no problem knowing what size and 8 oz tenderloin or 16oz strip steak is or how big it is.
And I know it in metric. But I don't know how much serves 17 people, the quantity is too large for me to estimate. So I need a calculation. My calculation (200*17) is easier than yours (6*17 then convert to pounds).
I'd be completely lost trying to, off the top of my head...buy or cook with metric units. When I college in a lab, sure, no problem in doing chemistry experiments in metric, but, that isn't real every day life stuff.
That's a problem with having two systems. I'm familier with metric from everyday life, so if I see "add 10ml of acid" I know how much it is (under half (well, 2/5) of a shot of vodka, less than a tablespoonful). I'm more likely to spot an error here, as just reading through instructions I might think "200g of powder? That's *visualise heap of flour*, maybe it's meant to be 20g".
This has caused big errors before, I think one case was a nuclear accident when the engineers weren't familiar with the units of liquid volume they were using (and obviously couldn't see what they were transferring, or that it was too much for the tank to hold).
I know how to dress when it is 72F outside. I'd have no clue what to dress for at something like 32C (random temp)...
Just a t-shirt in 32C. A nice winter room temperature is 18C in northern Europe.
And sure..you can ask for 102oz. Not sure who you'd ask...most of the groceries bought in the US are self serve, you rarely see a butcher live in person. If it were me, I'd round it up to 8oz per person (6 oz is kind of a skimpy portion?) and buy 8.5 lbs of whatever type of meat steak mince is....
I could ask for 102oz, but the scale measures in pounds and ounces (at least, I've only ever seen ones where you'd read off 2lb 1oz, not... erm [googles] 33oz). (Most large UK supermarkets will sell both pre-packed meat, and unpacked meat in any quantity, like a traditional butcher's shop, which also still exist).
Even buying pre-packed stuff, it's easier to add up pack weights in grams than lb-and-oz.
Well, I have A fingers, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
And really, if you've lived with non-metric units all your life, it is easy. I have no problem knowing what size and 8 oz tenderloin or 16oz strip steak is or how big it is. I'd be completely lost trying to, off the top of my head...buy or cook with metric units. When I college in a lab, sure, no problem in doing chemistry experiments in metric, but, that isn't real every day life stuff.
I know how to dress when it is 72F outside. I'd have no clue what to dress for at something like 32C (random temp)...
A handy guide to converting to metric.
the great taste of Charleston Chew?
try eliminating "sport" from your search terms.
Not being a sports fan, I don't see much of this stuff, but I once visited the company in Silicon Valley that makes the gear. The "yellow line" is one of the easier applications. It's basically a camera with encoders driving a fairly simple video processor. Calibration is manual; there's a setup display that shows the normal lines of a football field, and someone aligns the corners to match the real image from the camera. When the generated image matches the real one, the system is in alignment.
That's 1998 technology. The newer systems have gone way beyond that. Ads on billboards are sometimes replaced using the same system. Ads you see on the air may not be what people in the stadium are seeing. There's player tracking, ball tracking, the "virtual strike zone" for baseball, GPS-based tracking for NASCAR, and virtual billboard insertion into everything.
Magink has an E-ink system used by billboards with a 9mm resolution. Curved lines would be a little pixelated, and you wouldn't be able to replicate wood grain, but it would be enough resolution for the the sake of the game, and could do some interesting things during half-time. The reflective nature of E-Ink would make it much better suited for this project than an emissive display, and if it is cheap enough for a billboard, it is definitely cheap enough for a court (especially since it would likely be used as a billboard part of the time). Most indoor courts get their surface properties from varnish/wax, not the flooring material so that wouldn't be a problem either.
My main concerns would be structural support (can this stuff take being pounded on by 200 pound athletes), and how you would replace bad cells once you put the varnish surface over it. Plus something like this would become out-of-date almost as soon as you finished building it.
This makes multiplying or dividing by 10 much easier than multiplying to dividing by 12.
Quick, whats 120120934820394820843840983 multiplied by 10?
What about 120120934820394820843840983 multiplied by 12?
The second thing that could be confusing is when they say "Magic Yellow Line." They aren't referring to *real* magic.
Did I hear a fax/dial-up modem connection in that video? LOL.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Since a pound is 16 oz, you would need (17x6) 7 pounds of meat.
:-)
Since 6 is not enough.
Seriously, that took a second.
From my perspective, it is sufficiently advanced technology to be regarded as magic. Of course, I haven't watched TFA.
[BTW, saying "what the fuck is steak mince" makes you sound like an arrogant American.]
Makes him sound like an arrogant US citizen. America is a continent, not a damn country...
In Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Costa Rica, Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala..etc....etc...etc; the sport you call "soccer" is called Football.
and guess what? They're all americans.
Puff on a fag and refer to the FAQ.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I'm with you... sometimes too much technology can just ruin the game for viewers. Keep it simple, the glowing line is kind of helpful but really, after watching a few games and learning the rules, I think I can figure it out for myself. And glowing grass? Maybe an advertiser's dream come true, but bad for all the reasons you mentioned.
Any hockey fans remember that awful glowing puck the NHL tried out 10 years ago, because apparently some people had trouble following the puck? Here's a hint: look where the action is, and there you will find the puck. As well, the camera operators are skilled professionals - trust that they will be centred on it, unless the clock is stopped.
The puck's tech is actually kind of cool, although I remember the way it left streaks across the ice looked like someone set "mouse trails" to maximum on a computer desktop.
So compromise. Use base 12 counting. So "10" x "10" = "100", and "10" / 3 = 4.
I consider it unfortunate that we have 10 fingers to count on. Had we evolved to 12 fingers, math would have been so much easier.
878659 - yep its prime.
You have demonstrated a loss of $125 million due to an error by human beings. There are many ways you can correct that without forcing millions of people to do something they don't want to do. It would probably cost billions to re-educate 300 million people to understand a different system of measurement with the same level of understanding as their native system. If they don't have that same level of understanding, it seems like forcing that system on them could cause just as many inefficiencies as using a poorly defined system. Again, do the benefits really outweigh the costs?
If we're going to standardize on a new base, I vote duodecimal.
"Due to pressure from the EU ;-)."
Uhhhh, no. I don't live in the UK.
The official system of the federal government of the US is SI. The military uses it exclusively, I believe. That was the official policy at least a decade before I was born. However, its all voluntary.
In the commercial world, most things are labeled with both systems. I don't know WHY they do this, maybe so they can use the same packaging in other markets?
On the beef example, I realize your multiplication is slightly easier, but that's not a significant difficultly. Its an extra 2 seconds out of my day. Not worth spending billions of my tax dollars to force everyone to use a system they might not want to use.
Would you prefer we didn't talk about... cars
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down there pal. Not talking about cars on Slashdot is like... a car... with... no wheels.
Damn it! Slashdot analogy rule strikes again.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Guess what, a word can have different meanings in different contexts. If you were to use your brain rather than be an ignorant asshole, you would understand this. Given the history of the Americas, the name "The United States of America" seems like a perfectly reasonable name for the country that developed. Within the context of referring to an individual country, "America" seems like a perfectly reasonable and clear way to shorten that name. Now if it were not clear that you were referring to a specific country, then the word America would not be sufficiently specific.
The reason we use base 10 is b/c we have 10 fingers. If we had 13 fingers, we'd operate in base 13 natively (hmmm.... there's a good thought experiment... what would be some outcomes of operating in a prime base?).
And your comparison is bad.
Quick, what's 125234380034 in base 12 multiplied by 12
What's 125234380034 in base 12 multiplied by 10
You don't know how to divide by 16, then? I think the work involved in making an entire nation switch to different measures under threat of fine and imprisonment is greater than that of continuing to divide by 16.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
As he mentioned, if you are too lazy to divide by 16, it's perfectly acceptable to leave the quantity in ounces... just like you left yours in grams instead of insisting that the "correct" answer is 3.4 Kg.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Actually, North America and South America are continents. You sound like an arrogant Eurasian.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Fuck Canada? By the way, they're all either North or South Americans. There is no continent "America".
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You know, different meanings in different contexts and stuff =)
A US citizen? So would that be a citizen of United States of America or of the United Mexican States?
Please don't be a dumb-ass, American is as unambiguous as anything. If it confuses you I can assure you the problem is not with the word.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
All the context you will ever need is that Slashdot is an American website with American editors. That being the case, you can be pretty sure which football is intended.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Dude. What is wrong with you people?
16 ounces == 1 pound
6 ounces * 17 people-- fuck that.
6oz * 17 == 6 * 17oz
6 * 17oz == 6 * 16oz + 6 * 1oz == 6 * 1lb + 6oz
Try 6 pounds, 6 ounces? Why wasn't this blindingly obvious? Do you think I use the command line because I'm NOT too lazy to do any work?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
British people keep giving me their weight in something called "stone" ... marijuana?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Do you really think this is about me getting confused by the meaning of the word?
In SI units, it would be 110m by 55m. I'd say the resolution would need to be at least 1cm (when a line on the field is about 10cm [4in], you'll need at least a tenth of that for nice rounded lines for some sports). 110m by 55m equals 11000cm by 5500cm.
Hence, you'd need 11000 by 5500. You need not know magic numbers. You need not multiply with any non-power-of-ten number.
Uhm how did you convert 110 to 11000? What magic number did you use? Looks like you multiplied it by 100. While it is easier for humans to do this math, it is still a magic number. Why did you choose 1cm for your pixel size? Cause it was easier, what if it is easier to make the pixel sizes in 1.7cm. What does that do for your simple math?
I'm a big fan of metric, but I can still see a lot of sense on imperial units, even though I don't use them a lot except for the conventions that have survived like time measurement. There are some really weird units, but imperial's major strength is that its most common units tend to be ones that are handy for tasks that people deal with from day to day. 12's a great number because it divides by so many different whole numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12). If you have 12 of something, it'll be very versatile for being evenly split up in small groups of many sizes. This is why so many things come in 12s or similar multiples.
I'm not an expert on any of this stuff, but I'd guess that the whole '12' thing is probably also why days are historically divided into 24 hours. It makes it really easy to divide a day into discrete blocks when doing basic mathematics, which is the kind of maths most people do. Divisions of 60 are just another convenient multiple.
As for 12 hour clock-faces, it's probably just much easier to read a clock face that's divided into 12 than into 24 because the gaps between the numbers on a 12 hour clock are bigger. Even if the hands go around twice in a day, you'd nearly always be able to figure out the time based on what you already know about the day so far. There are still some annoyingly ambiguous terms that are common, like 'midnight' being used to describe both the beginning and end of a day. (If someone says 'midnight Saturday', I don't know for sure what they actually mean.)
Circles are probably divided into 360 degrees because it's a very divisible number that's very close to the number of days in a year. Every night the sky and everything in it will have moved about 1/360th of a circle from where it was at the same time the previous night, before returning to where it started. If you don't have a lot of accurate measuring and construction equipment, it's still easy to divide a circle into 360 parts (a few straight lines are easily derivable locations). If you make such a circle and line it up with things in the sky, you could figure out the day of the year relatively easily to quite an accurate amount.
There is such a thing as Metric Time, but it never really took off with the rest of the metric system.
Personally I still think it's important to have systems that work in people's heads for everyday tasks, just because people aren't computers. Metric's a nice compromise for me. I've wondered for a while what it might be like if the principles of the metric system were applied to base 12 instead of base 10. Maybe you're right, and 16 would be a better option just because we have so many computers around, but as long as most people aren't directly dealing with computer implementation, they're most likely to fall back to a number that's most directly obviously useful to them. 12 is a smaller number than 16 and it divides by more whole numbers, so it wins on two counts.
Yea.. I loved that, especially as I was the one who wrote a bunch of the RaceFX code, originally.
That was a very complex system involving hardware in -many- locations (each car, various points in the stadium, in the TV compound, etc. etc). It required a tractor-trailer's worth of stuff each week (several miles of cable can take some space too :) ).
It was stressful (consider having to recompile your application during a commercial break because the producer/director don't like something)..., but rewarding!
No, I really think it's about you wanting to be argumentative.
People who want us to say stupid things like USian do however claim that American is too vague and could mean any country in North or South America. The fact that you obviously weren't confused by the use of American shows just how silly that is.
They also ignore the fact that USian is actually more vague than American since there is only one country in the world with "America" in it's name whereas both The United States of America and the United Mexican States could both refer to themselves as The United States.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
It's actually more about identity. I hope you don't take it as a "US Hating" comment, but it's about the attitude the US has had about America.
Being myself from South America, the feeling we get when we see US citizens calling themselves "Americans", is the same feeling we get when we witness "democratic interventions" of the US into our culture, which i will not name because i think we all know what they are about and this post isn't intended as flamebait.
The discussion about America being a continent and not a country, is a discussion about people from America not wanting the US to keep depreciating and subjugating our cultures.
Soccer is what is used to refer to the kicking & running game popular in Europe and third-world countries. Football is the exciting, hard-hitting sport that is played in the NFL. Also, nothing wrong with articles on football. Stop complaining nerds :-P
For instance, you could refer to someone as either being a citizen from a country by referring to that country's name or abbreviated name OR you could refer to them as having come from a region or continent. As an example, you could refer to someone from The Federal Republic of Germany as a German or a European. You could refer to someone from The People's Republic of China as Chinese or Asian. Someone from The Commonwealth of Australia would simply be referred to as Australian (because its name includes the continent it is on).
The convention is to drop "the united states of" or "the people's republic of" or "the commonwealth of" and refer to the citizen as coming from whatever is left as the abbreviation. A citizen of the United States of America should either be referred to as American or North American by that same convention.
America is not a continent. North America and South America are. We do refer to citizens of the Federative Republic of Brazil as either Brazilian or South American.
Also, there is no other country on earth that I know of that includes America in its name, but there are others that include the words "united" and "states." When other countries refer to the citizenship of someone from The United States of America, a few do refer to the person as having come from The United States (l'Etats Unit as the French say), but by and large, the person is referred to as an American citizen. As in, they'd say you came from the United States, but you ARE an American.
I'm not sure why you have such a chip on your shoulder about this, but it's accepted worldwide as being correct to call us Americans. It's even in accordance with the accepted convention of referring to people by their citizenship. In short, you're wrong.
As an aside, I have no idea what you're referring to about our "attitude" about "America" because there is no such place... unless you're referring to the Americas (plural), but by and large, Americans honestly don't think about South America on a regular basis. We mostly hear about Canada and Mexico in the news... sometimes a bit about Cuba, Brazil and rarely Chile, Argentina, or Columbia. Our government may be "intervening", but I can tell you the average American (yes, I said it! ha!) doesn't even know or care about those interventions. They'd be lucky to be able to point out countries in S. America on the map.... it's sad, really. It's a bit unfair to refer to "our attitude" when there are 300 million of us and we all have differing opinions about most things. I honestly think you are talking about a false perception you have of Americans that whatever news you listen to has given you. I personally do not want the US involved in any foreign conflicts unless we're in a state of war or allied with the country we're keeping a presence in.
Guess what, in the U.S. we call the U.S. America and ourselves Americans, we call them South Americans or names based on their specific nationalities.
I appreciate your concern, unfortunately my reply to your point is exactly the same.
There's no continent "Britain" either. America in this context is short for United States of America, continents have nothing to do with it.
Please, someone shoot this idea down - why not just do it with infrared lights on the sidelines or something similar? All you need is some focused, non-visible light broadcast at field level and you could paint that visible using a chroma-key-like system. Calculating the angles of this and the deflection of the field, etc, etc seems far more complicated than it has to be...
There are areas of everyday use where we in the US use both metric and imperial. Both "horsepower" and "watt" measure power, but the difference is that horsepower refers to mechanical power (car engines for example), whereas watt measures electrical power.
The Imperial units are so ingrained into our way of life that it be very difficult to convert everything over. All of America's popular sports measure playing surfaces use the. (100-yd. field in American football, 90 ft. between bases in baseball, Daytona 500). All our highway distance signs would have to be changed. IOW, It would be almost prohibitively expensive to implement such a conversion.
On the other hand, i have the duty to correct you. First of all, you refer to Australia as a continent, but you're wrong. Australia is a country, the continent associated is called Oceania (or Oceanica).
Then you say, America is not a country, but N and S America are. I have to tell you that, first, even on the english language, the question about America being a continent, or the Americas being 3 continents (north, south and central), is not clear (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America). But... in every other language that wikipedia has,and is written with a western alphabet, you see America as one continent. That includes french and spanish (Amerique and América)... So i don't think you can tell me straight ahead that: "I'm wrong".
. Finally, I have to admit i wasn't clear enough about "Your attitude". My comment was based on the precept that the US are a democratic nation, and therefore, the decisions made by the US government are an extension on the positions maintained (did i write that ok?) by the US people. If that's not the case, you should really make a judgment about how your government is operating, because that's how you're seen by the rest of the world.
Considering you're the only nation (AFAIK) who includes their continent in your name, it sounds logical and respectful to the other people who inhabit America (or The Americas, if you prefer), to call you US citizens, or something which distinguish you in an unique way. It's clearer, and it actually respects the identities of the rest of the continent.
Mass is so much fun in the English unit of slugs. One lb is then 1 slug*ft/s^2. It may not be stones but you'd sure have to be stoned to want to do engineering work in these retarded uints.
What would cure you is the SI unit of storage space. All you have to do is measure disk sizes in kibibytes and you're good to go. It's kibi from kilo-binary and Mebi for megabinary. Using the SI units, if you have a 200Mebibyte disk then you know it's 200*2^20 bytes rather than trying to guess whether they actually meant 200*1e6 bytes.
You might like to, yourself. My literacy and comprehension (ooh, big word, google it if you need help) are not what is being discussed.
If I mistook you, perhaps it isn't obvious what you were saying.
Posting legitimately because I still, somehow, have no foes and my karma can afford it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Yes, human error due to different humans using different systems of measurement.
I'm not suggesting an instant transition, but I honestly don't see the costs of teaching children metric values making the whole venture ill-advised. Its worked for most of the rest of the world, are the people of America & the UK really so dumb/stubborn/proud that they can't eventually make the same transition? I'd certainly like to think not.
And by your argument, where forcing people to use a system that they're unfamiliar with causes just as many errors as using the old system, sounds to me like an argument for the switch. Their familiarity would improve with time, after all, while the old system would not.
"Due to pressure from the EU ;-)."
Uhhhh, no. I don't live in the UK.
The EU (including the UK) has been asking the US to accept products labelled only in metric for some time, so we can export "100ml" of shampoo rather than "100ml 3.38 fl oz".
I think the US has been pushing the EU to accept things labelled in US and metric measurements, but the EU was reluctant. (Possibly because it would cause confusion with the UK traditional measurements, which can be optionally added to a few things, like milk.)
They reached some agreement a few months back. It was reported in the UK in the anti-EU media as a big win for traditionalism, although it won't really make any difference to what's sold in Europe, but in the US you might start to see European manufactured (what manufacture?) stuff labelled only in metric.
I've never seen a scale that measures more than 15 oz, above that they always seem to read "1lb", "1lb 1oz" etc.
3400g = 3.4kg is so simple that it doesn't need mentioning.
The britts could do it, now it's you turn, Yanks.
They have? Then why do I hear "miles" quoted for distances in every episode of Top Gear?
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
you'd get modded flamebait if any nascar fans could figure out how to use the internet