I've checked it out some on their website. What you say is far from true.
The DUO guys aren't "ready to go *today*" at all! They're still in early development! They are WAY behind the LEAP.
This is what I learned from their website:
(A) They haven't decided (or announced) the degree to which it will be open source. They said so in a forum on their own website. So that part is still very much up in the air.
(B) DUO just finished building their development prototype. LEAP has had actual development units out for months. They have gone through 4 physical revisions, and many firmware revisions. Many developers have been actively developing for the LEAP for that same period. I happen to know because (disclaimer) I happen to be one of them. Nevertheless, I am not terribly biased toward the LEAP. I am simply reporting the facts as I see them.
(C) The LEAP looks pretty nice and it is small. The DUO looks about 3 or 4 times as big, has cameras awkwardly sticking out of it, and looks cheap. Yet for some reason getting on the bandwagon even during the development stage costs almost 2 times the retail price of a LEAP? Say what?
(D) While they make claims of high accuracy and low latency, I don't see any numbers anywhere. I'll believe that when I see it.
All in all, at this stage of the game, the LEAP has a hell of a lot going for it that the DUO lacks. Maybe it will be better in the long run. Maybe it will be open source. But neither of those things is anywhere near certain yet.
"Right... so why not support the DUO instead... ?"
While I know quite a bit about the LEAP, information seems pretty scarce about the DUO. Also, I would not be too sure about the Open Source bit. This is from the OS X forum on their website:
"Thanks for your API feedback. The vision pipeline is not Objective-C, and in answer to your question about source library or precompiled/headers, the degree to which the software will be open source is unannounced yet. However, your thoughts about the SDK are extremely valuable and the team is listening, keep the comments coming!"
So... they haven't even decided how much, if any, of it will be open source yet. Further, they are nowhere as far along in the development cycle as the LEAP is. Yes, the fact that LEAP was in development was announced quite a while ago. But they did not announce a projected shipping date until recently. What's wrong with that? How many years was the Kinect in development?
More questions about the DUO to which I did not find ready answers:
They mention "highly accurate" and "low latency"... but nowhere do they say HOW accurate, or what the latency actually is. (The latter figure of course depends on some variables, but they could give us a baseline.)
I saw a demo with 5 fingers, but not 10. Can it track 10? I don't know. I know that the LEAP can.
The DUO looks about 3 or 4 times as large as a LEAP, it looks cheaply made, it is still in early development, they seem to be holding the actual specs pretty close to their chests, yet it costs nearly twice as much as a LEAP? WTF?
My impression: they're pretty strong on innuendo, pretty short on details, and they have a long way to go yet. All in all, I'll go for now with a product that I know is professionally done and that I know works as advertised (because I have a development unit).
"... ESPECIALLY since all the fancy bits are in their software..."
Not really. An awful lot of processing is done in hardware and firmware. There is no way software could handle the load of data otherwise.
Even so, interpreting that data is processor intensive. But it's up to developers to make that data interface with their own software.
There are already open-source libraries available to programmers, in some languages, for that latter step. But they do still rely on the low-level "driver" if you want to call it that.
"While I'm all for new and exciting technology, I'm not sure I like having cameras around that can be hacked, and visual interfaces that may record motions I make that I do not intend to go into a computer."
The LEAP does not take pictures. It does not even contain a camera.
While it works kind of like a Kinect (in that they both use light), the similarity pretty much stops there.
"I'm going with the DUO for a couple of reasons. LEAP has been at this for how long now, and they still don't really have a product widely available; the DUO guys seem to be ready to go *today*. And while LEAK doesn't have any plans to produce an open source driver so that I can use this device and do my own processing of the data, the DUO guys say their driver will be open source. Indeed, their hardware will be licensed under Creative Commons."
The LEAP and the DUO are two completely different kinds of devices. You are comparing apples and oranges.
"How do you have something like the Kinect and not have patents all over something related that basically would prevent this, or at least cause it to have to license numerous patents? Missed opportunity indeed."
I am in the Leap developer program and I have one. But I am not an expert on the Kinect. From what I understand, the Kinect uses cameras and visible light to do passive motion detection. The Leap works very differently. It uses active infrared signals and a pair of infrared detectors to do its magic. Unlike the Kinect, its active area is limited to just above the desktop. But also unlike Kinect, they claim precision down to a few microns. I haven't tried to measure the accuracy of mine, but it's pretty darned accurate.
Also, using the SDK, you can (A) detect all 10 fingers, (B) the position of each finger, (C) the direction each finger is pointing, (D) the position and orientation of the palm, and (E) the relative curvature of the palm (e.g., the diameter of an imaginary ball in your hand).
It's pretty impressive. The question is how well it will be integrated into software. Like any "alternative" controller, implementation in an individual application might be sad or might be great. There is no way to tell in advance, and I am sure we will see some of each.
"That would be an apt analogy if, typically, the rose bush disintegrated as soon as you pulled it from the ground, and you had to take extreme measures to stabilize it."
Since it does, in fact, start dying (which is effectively the same as disintegrating) as soon as you pull it out of the ground, then I would say the analogy holds.
Extreme high-tech measures, like highly artificial hydroponics, would be needed to keep it alive without its soil.
The VERY SAME result -- within margin of error anyway -- was found like 10 or 12 years ago. There is absolutely nothing new here.
All this tells us is that law enforcement and other 3rd parties should not be allowed to get their hands on your cell phone location data without a warrant.
"The isolated genes do not exist in nature, and never have."
I would not be so sure. They got there in the first place somehow... we know that in some cases it was via mutation, in other cases genes were inserted by viruses, etc.
As I pointed out above, I could use the same argument to say that if I pull a rose bush out of the ground it isn't a "product of nature" either. After all, rose bushes do not normally exist without topsoil.
"Well, the argument is that the isolated genes are a product of a human-developed process, not products of nature, and are different from the non-isolated genes. So that makes the products of the (patents expired) process patentable."
But it's a bullshit argument. I could use exactly the same reasoning to argue that if I pull a wild rose bush out of the ground, it's not a product of nature either.
So are regular telephones, and cell phones, and Jitsi, and ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger, and AIM, and Jabber, and Google Talk, and Facetime, and Twitter, and even talking face to face. And let's not forget the U.S. Mail.
"I'm merely pointing out the "minor" issues with this concept, regardless of where our Rights have dissolved away."
Not only would legislating nearly anything based on this border on Thought Crime, it would reflect ignorance of the basic principle that statistics do not reveal anything about individual cases.
Some of the tools can be used for forensics. But it has a large number of penetration testing tools for doing security audits. The largest and best collection I know about. Of free and open source tools, anyway.
"No, it isn't. Congress has many possible justifications to legislate in an area while keeping it constitutional. Only one of them is the interstate commerce clause. "
No, they don't. They have one possible justification only: the Constitution and the enumerated powers granted to Congress that it contains.
But the fact is that they claim the interstate commerce clause as justification for these particular laws. So even if they had other possible justifications, that is irrelevant.
"I'm skeptical of Natural Rights. There is no Nature's God, no Creator and thus no One to bestow upon us more than a culture can establish for itself."
It does not require religion to believe in the concept of Natural Rights based on one's humanity.
It is merely a set of beliefs that a body of people hold as a standard. You are reading too much into the name. Nobody I know of -- including the founders -- tried to claim it was some kind of natural law. It's just a set of rules to live by.
Having said that, they are considered "natural" in that this belief system says government does not have the power to grant them or take them away. As distinct from grants of privileges by government.
"You are hilariously wrong. I own and run a CNC mill. It does not have an "ingot" loading slot."
I did not say it did. Nevertheless, it does not take a genius to mount a block of metal in one, ready to be machined.
"G-code is machine-specific, more so than assembly for a computer. I would not even run g-code that was produced for the SAME MODEL OF MACHINE - there are too many other (physical) variables."
It's done all the time. The fact that you aren't confident doing it doesn't mean others are as reluctant.
There are lots of manufacturing companies all over the place that do automated CNC. I used to work in one. So you can say I sound like an arrogant computer nerd all you like, but to me it sounds like you are an arrogant CNC operator with delusions of grandeur. Belong to a union, do you?
This suite of tools used to go under the name of "BackTrack", most recently BackTrack 5. It has now been named Kali Linux.
This is a full-blown Linux distro with all the security tools you are ever likely to need. Metasploit? It's there. Nessus? It's there. The actual list of tools is huge.
Kali won't teach you everything about using the tools (though there are good instructions available online). But it does offer all you could want in one package.
The fact of the matter is that Congress and the ATF are both schizophrenic. While they know that they have the authority to regulate interstate trade, with the aid of SCOTUS they have come to try to regulate nearly everything under the sun using that as a justification. But at the same time, they STILL, deep down, know they don't really have constitutional authority. That's why you see so many laws that only apply if you are selling across state lines (many gun laws are good examples of this).
The very existence of so many laws that apply only when affairs involve interstate trade is proof that they know their genuine authority stops there.
But that hasn't stopped them, in the past, from passing laws that exceed this authority. Like the one I mentioned earlier about what guns the ATF does not allow you to make for yourself. The restrictions are actually pretty narrow, but the real question is whether they have the authority to do that at all. (It is probably obvious from my comments that I firmly believe the answer to that is no.) Still, those laws, unconstitutional or not, do exist and probably will until somebody successfully challenges them.
I already stated that the law was unconstitutional, so I guess I don't understand your question about a "constitutional law". If you could be more specific, I might be able to answer better.
"You are so naive, you cite counter-examples in your own posts."
Hahaha. No I didn't. It's only a "counter example" if you assume the law is constitutional. I didn't say the law was constitutional, I just said it was the law, and to be careful. (People can and have been put in prison for breaking unconstitutional laws. Quite a lot of them, in fact.)
Most current Federal gun laws are unconstitutional, except for those that actually do involve interstate sale. The Federal government has gotten away with it... until recently.
Haven't you noticed how many states have been passing legislation "nullifying" Federal gun laws? Because the states know they're unconstitutional. This is not the first time that sort of thing has happened.
Same with the marijuana laws. If it's grown in the state and never passes outside of it, the Federal government has no authority. Wickard v. Filburn bedamned.
If the states didn't understand that, they wouldn't be legalizing marijuana.
"The problem here is you have a lack of foresight."
No, the problem is that you don't understand Constitutional law.
The ATF -- and the Federal government in general -- have no Constitutional authority to prevent you from manufacturing a firearm for your own use. Even under the bizarre "Wickard v. Filburn" SCOTUS decision about "interstate commerce", they STILL don't have authority to regulate it because there is not even theoretically ANY commerce involved, much less interstate.
ATF is not concerned, because it is literally no business of theirs. They have no authority to regulate guns manufactured by an individual for personal use.
"If you think congress won't make printed weapons illegal and put that under the purview of the ATF, you are utterly naive."
It isn't naivete. It's a greater knowledge of Constitutional law than you possess.
Don't misunderstand me... there's a very good chance that Congress would try. They've tried all kinds of unconstitutional things in the past. But it won't fly.
Slashdot Mirror
I've checked it out some on their website. What you say is far from true.
The DUO guys aren't "ready to go *today*" at all! They're still in early development! They are WAY behind the LEAP.
This is what I learned from their website:
(A) They haven't decided (or announced) the degree to which it will be open source. They said so in a forum on their own website. So that part is still very much up in the air.
(B) DUO just finished building their development prototype. LEAP has had actual development units out for months. They have gone through 4 physical revisions, and many firmware revisions. Many developers have been actively developing for the LEAP for that same period. I happen to know because (disclaimer) I happen to be one of them. Nevertheless, I am not terribly biased toward the LEAP. I am simply reporting the facts as I see them.
(C) The LEAP looks pretty nice and it is small. The DUO looks about 3 or 4 times as big, has cameras awkwardly sticking out of it, and looks cheap. Yet for some reason getting on the bandwagon even during the development stage costs almost 2 times the retail price of a LEAP? Say what?
(D) While they make claims of high accuracy and low latency, I don't see any numbers anywhere. I'll believe that when I see it.
All in all, at this stage of the game, the LEAP has a hell of a lot going for it that the DUO lacks. Maybe it will be better in the long run. Maybe it will be open source. But neither of those things is anywhere near certain yet.
"Right... so why not support the DUO instead... ?"
While I know quite a bit about the LEAP, information seems pretty scarce about the DUO. Also, I would not be too sure about the Open Source bit. This is from the OS X forum on their website:
"Thanks for your API feedback. The vision pipeline is not Objective-C, and in answer to your question about source library or precompiled/headers, the degree to which the software will be open source is unannounced yet. However, your thoughts about the SDK are extremely valuable and the team is listening, keep the comments coming!"
So... they haven't even decided how much, if any, of it will be open source yet. Further, they are nowhere as far along in the development cycle as the LEAP is. Yes, the fact that LEAP was in development was announced quite a while ago. But they did not announce a projected shipping date until recently. What's wrong with that? How many years was the Kinect in development?
More questions about the DUO to which I did not find ready answers:
They mention "highly accurate" and "low latency"... but nowhere do they say HOW accurate, or what the latency actually is. (The latter figure of course depends on some variables, but they could give us a baseline.)
I saw a demo with 5 fingers, but not 10. Can it track 10? I don't know. I know that the LEAP can.
The DUO looks about 3 or 4 times as large as a LEAP, it looks cheaply made, it is still in early development, they seem to be holding the actual specs pretty close to their chests, yet it costs nearly twice as much as a LEAP? WTF?
My impression: they're pretty strong on innuendo, pretty short on details, and they have a long way to go yet. All in all, I'll go for now with a product that I know is professionally done and that I know works as advertised (because I have a development unit).
Pardon me. I hadn't seen the one you were referring to. I thought you meant the DUO game controller, which is a completely different animal.
I hadn't heard about the DUO before. I'm checking it out.
"... ESPECIALLY since all the fancy bits are in their software..."
Not really. An awful lot of processing is done in hardware and firmware. There is no way software could handle the load of data otherwise.
Even so, interpreting that data is processor intensive. But it's up to developers to make that data interface with their own software.
There are already open-source libraries available to programmers, in some languages, for that latter step. But they do still rely on the low-level "driver" if you want to call it that.
"While I'm all for new and exciting technology, I'm not sure I like having cameras around that can be hacked, and visual interfaces that may record motions I make that I do not intend to go into a computer."
The LEAP does not take pictures. It does not even contain a camera.
While it works kind of like a Kinect (in that they both use light), the similarity pretty much stops there.
"I'm going with the DUO for a couple of reasons. LEAP has been at this for how long now, and they still don't really have a product widely available; the DUO guys seem to be ready to go *today*. And while LEAK doesn't have any plans to produce an open source driver so that I can use this device and do my own processing of the data, the DUO guys say their driver will be open source. Indeed, their hardware will be licensed under Creative Commons."
The LEAP and the DUO are two completely different kinds of devices. You are comparing apples and oranges.
"How do you have something like the Kinect and not have patents all over something related that basically would prevent this, or at least cause it to have to license numerous patents? Missed opportunity indeed."
I am in the Leap developer program and I have one. But I am not an expert on the Kinect. From what I understand, the Kinect uses cameras and visible light to do passive motion detection. The Leap works very differently. It uses active infrared signals and a pair of infrared detectors to do its magic. Unlike the Kinect, its active area is limited to just above the desktop. But also unlike Kinect, they claim precision down to a few microns. I haven't tried to measure the accuracy of mine, but it's pretty darned accurate.
Also, using the SDK, you can (A) detect all 10 fingers, (B) the position of each finger, (C) the direction each finger is pointing, (D) the position and orientation of the palm, and (E) the relative curvature of the palm (e.g., the diameter of an imaginary ball in your hand).
It's pretty impressive. The question is how well it will be integrated into software. Like any "alternative" controller, implementation in an individual application might be sad or might be great. There is no way to tell in advance, and I am sure we will see some of each.
"That would be an apt analogy if, typically, the rose bush disintegrated as soon as you pulled it from the ground, and you had to take extreme measures to stabilize it."
Since it does, in fact, start dying (which is effectively the same as disintegrating) as soon as you pull it out of the ground, then I would say the analogy holds.
Extreme high-tech measures, like highly artificial hydroponics, would be needed to keep it alive without its soil.
The VERY SAME result -- within margin of error anyway -- was found like 10 or 12 years ago. There is absolutely nothing new here.
All this tells us is that law enforcement and other 3rd parties should not be allowed to get their hands on your cell phone location data without a warrant.
"The isolated genes do not exist in nature, and never have."
I would not be so sure. They got there in the first place somehow... we know that in some cases it was via mutation, in other cases genes were inserted by viruses, etc.
As I pointed out above, I could use the same argument to say that if I pull a rose bush out of the ground it isn't a "product of nature" either. After all, rose bushes do not normally exist without topsoil.
"Well, the argument is that the isolated genes are a product of a human-developed process, not products of nature, and are different from the non-isolated genes. So that makes the products of the (patents expired) process patentable."
But it's a bullshit argument. I could use exactly the same reasoning to argue that if I pull a wild rose bush out of the ground, it's not a product of nature either.
So are regular telephones, and cell phones, and Jitsi, and ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger, and AIM, and Jabber, and Google Talk, and Facetime, and Twitter, and even talking face to face. And let's not forget the U.S. Mail.
How did all these patents get issued, when legally in the U.S., patents cannot be issued for products of nature?
Somebody is massively and badly f*cking up, somewhere.
"I'm merely pointing out the "minor" issues with this concept, regardless of where our Rights have dissolved away."
Not only would legislating nearly anything based on this border on Thought Crime, it would reflect ignorance of the basic principle that statistics do not reveal anything about individual cases.
Some of the tools can be used for forensics. But it has a large number of penetration testing tools for doing security audits. The largest and best collection I know about. Of free and open source tools, anyway.
"No, it isn't. Congress has many possible justifications to legislate in an area while keeping it constitutional. Only one of them is the interstate commerce clause. "
No, they don't. They have one possible justification only: the Constitution and the enumerated powers granted to Congress that it contains.
But the fact is that they claim the interstate commerce clause as justification for these particular laws. So even if they had other possible justifications, that is irrelevant.
"I'm skeptical of Natural Rights. There is no Nature's God, no Creator and thus no One to bestow upon us more than a culture can establish for itself."
It does not require religion to believe in the concept of Natural Rights based on one's humanity.
It is merely a set of beliefs that a body of people hold as a standard. You are reading too much into the name. Nobody I know of -- including the founders -- tried to claim it was some kind of natural law. It's just a set of rules to live by.
Having said that, they are considered "natural" in that this belief system says government does not have the power to grant them or take them away. As distinct from grants of privileges by government.
"You are hilariously wrong. I own and run a CNC mill. It does not have an "ingot" loading slot."
I did not say it did. Nevertheless, it does not take a genius to mount a block of metal in one, ready to be machined.
"G-code is machine-specific, more so than assembly for a computer. I would not even run g-code that was produced for the SAME MODEL OF MACHINE - there are too many other (physical) variables."
It's done all the time. The fact that you aren't confident doing it doesn't mean others are as reluctant.
There are lots of manufacturing companies all over the place that do automated CNC. I used to work in one. So you can say I sound like an arrogant computer nerd all you like, but to me it sounds like you are an arrogant CNC operator with delusions of grandeur. Belong to a union, do you?
This suite of tools used to go under the name of "BackTrack", most recently BackTrack 5. It has now been named Kali Linux.
This is a full-blown Linux distro with all the security tools you are ever likely to need. Metasploit? It's there. Nessus? It's there. The actual list of tools is huge.
Kali won't teach you everything about using the tools (though there are good instructions available online). But it does offer all you could want in one package.
Someone else has been giving me guff over this.
The fact of the matter is that Congress and the ATF are both schizophrenic. While they know that they have the authority to regulate interstate trade, with the aid of SCOTUS they have come to try to regulate nearly everything under the sun using that as a justification. But at the same time, they STILL, deep down, know they don't really have constitutional authority. That's why you see so many laws that only apply if you are selling across state lines (many gun laws are good examples of this).
The very existence of so many laws that apply only when affairs involve interstate trade is proof that they know their genuine authority stops there.
But that hasn't stopped them, in the past, from passing laws that exceed this authority. Like the one I mentioned earlier about what guns the ATF does not allow you to make for yourself. The restrictions are actually pretty narrow, but the real question is whether they have the authority to do that at all. (It is probably obvious from my comments that I firmly believe the answer to that is no.) Still, those laws, unconstitutional or not, do exist and probably will until somebody successfully challenges them.
I already stated that the law was unconstitutional, so I guess I don't understand your question about a "constitutional law". If you could be more specific, I might be able to answer better.
"Long ago rifle barrels didn't have to withstand the kind of pressure they do now."
True, but I read an article not long ago by a guy who recently made one the same way. It still works.
"Progress!"
Hahaha. Exactly. When I read OP the first thing I thought was "So... make and sell a 3rd party remote control."
"You are so naive, you cite counter-examples in your own posts."
Hahaha. No I didn't. It's only a "counter example" if you assume the law is constitutional. I didn't say the law was constitutional, I just said it was the law, and to be careful. (People can and have been put in prison for breaking unconstitutional laws. Quite a lot of them, in fact.)
Most current Federal gun laws are unconstitutional, except for those that actually do involve interstate sale. The Federal government has gotten away with it... until recently.
Haven't you noticed how many states have been passing legislation "nullifying" Federal gun laws? Because the states know they're unconstitutional. This is not the first time that sort of thing has happened.
Same with the marijuana laws. If it's grown in the state and never passes outside of it, the Federal government has no authority. Wickard v. Filburn bedamned.
If the states didn't understand that, they wouldn't be legalizing marijuana.
"The problem here is you have a lack of foresight."
No, the problem is that you don't understand Constitutional law.
The ATF -- and the Federal government in general -- have no Constitutional authority to prevent you from manufacturing a firearm for your own use. Even under the bizarre "Wickard v. Filburn" SCOTUS decision about "interstate commerce", they STILL don't have authority to regulate it because there is not even theoretically ANY commerce involved, much less interstate.
ATF is not concerned, because it is literally no business of theirs. They have no authority to regulate guns manufactured by an individual for personal use.
"If you think congress won't make printed weapons illegal and put that under the purview of the ATF, you are utterly naive."
It isn't naivete. It's a greater knowledge of Constitutional law than you possess.
Don't misunderstand me... there's a very good chance that Congress would try. They've tried all kinds of unconstitutional things in the past. But it won't fly.