It is much more motivating to be learning to program with a particular project in mind. I'd argue it also teaches you to program better because you can't avoid the bits of the task that you find difficult or tedious. I'm a scientist but I spend a lot of my time programming experiments, models or analysis code.
I teach a research methods module to undergraduate life sciences students. The vast majority of these people have never programmed and never expect to. This is a bit strange when so much of being a professional scientist in my field involves programming. Recently, we changed the research assignment they have to do so that it now involves some very basic programming. Mostly GUI stuff where they build a timeline and a "flow" out of blocks, but there are a few lines of code they need to write too.
I was expecting there to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the content being too difficult, and a rebellion against being made to program. In reality, nobody complained and most of the students seemed to enjoy it. Some of them got very excited about writing a program that made a computer do what they wanted it to do. They also got quite competitive about writing their programs better than their colleagues (to the point of argument, but it was still encouraging to see). These people were not nerds, and talking to them I got the impression some thought computers were just "magic". One student didn't even understand that computer programmers existed who wrote software to make computers do things.
I've just had a chat with someone else working in my lab who pointed out that beyond my problems with this, the projected image itself would appear to jump erratically around. This would be for the exact same reason that we usually don't notice our eye movements (i.e. stabilisation in the brain factoring them out).
You're right, you'd get fading for any perfectly fixed image. You could always modulate it to avoid that though.
The problem I find with doing as you say (simulating that the text display is at a position in space) is that next you might want some way to turn it on and off. Maybe a hand gesture? And then a way to manipulate the text? More hand gestures? Speech recognition? If it has to do significant processing you're going to need some external hardware. At what point are you basically simulating picking up a smartphone (for no benefit)?
Once you've done that it's functionally no different to installing the tech into a wearable headset. Putting it into a pair of glasses would actually be a lot simpler because you never have to factor out the eye movements, comfort and safety are less problematic, and you have more space to work with. It's possible that the lenses for focusing the image at a close distance might not work when they're not fixed to the eye's position though.
Actually, the problem with the method you lay out is that I'm pretty sure you would have to have the lenses for focusing the display over the centre of your vision (though I don't know much about ocular optics, I study the brain side of things). In that case you would need the technology to be tiny if it wasn't going to obscure the most informative area of your visual field when you weren't actively using it.
You can't read text in your peripheral vision. The best they could hope for would be sticking rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) text in the fovea (i.e. flashing up a rapid sequence of words right in the centre of the visual field). This could work, but it's hard to see why anybody would want it. You wouldn't be able to multi-task, because the text would be in the way. You wouldn't be able to access the text in a non-serial fashion either, which removes any advantage over having it presented in audio form.
Scientists have been after a larger e-ink display for reading journal articles on for a while. It doesn't have to be colour, it just needs to be big enough for an A4.pdf to be readable on it (and the figures too!).
You could try getting a message posted out to people who work in perceptual psychology and visual neuroscience to see what they have to say about your condition. Some of them might even be local. Be careful not to come across as too crazy though!
Would you say that about people with idiopathic Parkinson's disease? That word doesn't mean what you think it does (even though you link to an article explaining it).
I guess for Best Buy the important thing would be that knocking that delay down to 200ms makes the PC "just feel that little bit faster". For a customer who's just bought a new computer, that's probably reassuring.
Also: to refer to the sections that mention gaming as only being a small proportion of the whole book is a bit disingenuous given that most of the rest of the manifesto is copied from elsewhere (Wikipedia, other books, the Unabomber's manifesto...).
I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it's one of the hottest games this year. I played MW1 as well but I didn't really like it as I'm generally more the fantasy RPG kind of person - Dragon Age Origins etc.and not so much into first person shooters. I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else. I've still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations...
How does this square with the argument the writer of this piece is making? They quote that section and then avoid addressing it.
There are two meanings of "neural network" here. There is the biological one that the brain satisfies and the computer science one that it has not been proven to. You can't treat them as if they are equivalent.
Because the tip is located using template-matching you would only need to substitute a different output mapping to the "pointy pixels looking like a sword tip" input. Or you could add an additional "pointiness" parameter to the algorithm which reshapes their sharp angle vectors. You could even work on the assumption that metal (greys) will have pointy edges and increase the pointiness for grey objects but keep it where it is for other colours.
I know "TFA" is rarely "R"ed around here but they use template-matching to preserve intentional hard angles. They use a guy with a sword as one of the EXAMPLE images!
In the interest of blowing your mind: How do you think the images from the two eyes are combined when the disparity between them can vary depending on the distance that the stimulus is from you?
Slashdot Mirror
The big question for me is: Are the jokes still going to be funny?
Because of who gets the money that the government spends.
We don't fuck for fuck sake, we fuck for the climax. Without the climax, fucking would be fucking boring.
This is amusing because the Slashdot sterotype totally applies (a virgin who is very opinionated regarding things he knows nothing about).
It is much more motivating to be learning to program with a particular project in mind. I'd argue it also teaches you to program better because you can't avoid the bits of the task that you find difficult or tedious. I'm a scientist but I spend a lot of my time programming experiments, models or analysis code.
I teach a research methods module to undergraduate life sciences students. The vast majority of these people have never programmed and never expect to. This is a bit strange when so much of being a professional scientist in my field involves programming. Recently, we changed the research assignment they have to do so that it now involves some very basic programming. Mostly GUI stuff where they build a timeline and a "flow" out of blocks, but there are a few lines of code they need to write too.
I was expecting there to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the content being too difficult, and a rebellion against being made to program. In reality, nobody complained and most of the students seemed to enjoy it. Some of them got very excited about writing a program that made a computer do what they wanted it to do. They also got quite competitive about writing their programs better than their colleagues (to the point of argument, but it was still encouraging to see). These people were not nerds, and talking to them I got the impression some thought computers were just "magic". One student didn't even understand that computer programmers existed who wrote software to make computers do things.
Looks like you might benefit from the Khan Academy video on First Degree Price Discrimination: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0wg9ZPyL38
I'd much rather be able to predict where the image is going to end up. Maybe make it so you can project onto arbitrary objects?
See "A Nice Morning Drive", by Richard Foster.
I've just had a chat with someone else working in my lab who pointed out that beyond my problems with this, the projected image itself would appear to jump erratically around. This would be for the exact same reason that we usually don't notice our eye movements (i.e. stabilisation in the brain factoring them out).
He's talking about tracking the movement to simulate it not being attached to the eyeball.
You're right, you'd get fading for any perfectly fixed image. You could always modulate it to avoid that though.
The problem I find with doing as you say (simulating that the text display is at a position in space) is that next you might want some way to turn it on and off. Maybe a hand gesture? And then a way to manipulate the text? More hand gestures? Speech recognition? If it has to do significant processing you're going to need some external hardware. At what point are you basically simulating picking up a smartphone (for no benefit)?
Once you've done that it's functionally no different to installing the tech into a wearable headset. Putting it into a pair of glasses would actually be a lot simpler because you never have to factor out the eye movements, comfort and safety are less problematic, and you have more space to work with. It's possible that the lenses for focusing the image at a close distance might not work when they're not fixed to the eye's position though.
Actually, the problem with the method you lay out is that I'm pretty sure you would have to have the lenses for focusing the display over the centre of your vision (though I don't know much about ocular optics, I study the brain side of things). In that case you would need the technology to be tiny if it wasn't going to obscure the most informative area of your visual field when you weren't actively using it.
You can't read text in your peripheral vision. The best they could hope for would be sticking rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) text in the fovea (i.e. flashing up a rapid sequence of words right in the centre of the visual field). This could work, but it's hard to see why anybody would want it. You wouldn't be able to multi-task, because the text would be in the way. You wouldn't be able to access the text in a non-serial fashion either, which removes any advantage over having it presented in audio form.
Siri actually understands the meaning of words
Searle's Chinese room argument applies.
Scientists have been after a larger e-ink display for reading journal articles on for a while. It doesn't have to be colour, it just needs to be big enough for an A4 .pdf to be readable on it (and the figures too!).
I'd recommend that the OP join this list:
http://visionscience.com/mail/cvnet/cvnet.info.html
You could try getting a message posted out to people who work in perceptual psychology and visual neuroscience to see what they have to say about your condition. Some of them might even be local. Be careful not to come across as too crazy though!
How would you test the Wi-Fi sensitivity that you describe with fMRI?
Would you say that about people with idiopathic Parkinson's disease? That word doesn't mean what you think it does (even though you link to an article explaining it).
I guess for Best Buy the important thing would be that knocking that delay down to 200ms makes the PC "just feel that little bit faster". For a customer who's just bought a new computer, that's probably reassuring.
Also: to refer to the sections that mention gaming as only being a small proportion of the whole book is a bit disingenuous given that most of the rest of the manifesto is copied from elsewhere (Wikipedia, other books, the Unabomber's manifesto...).
I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it's one of the hottest games this year. I played MW1 as well but I didn't really like it as I'm generally more the fantasy RPG kind of person - Dragon Age Origins etc .and not so much into first person shooters. I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else. I've still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations...
How does this square with the argument the writer of this piece is making? They quote that section and then avoid addressing it.
There are two meanings of "neural network" here. There is the biological one that the brain satisfies and the computer science one that it has not been proven to. You can't treat them as if they are equivalent.
Because the tip is located using template-matching you would only need to substitute a different output mapping to the "pointy pixels looking like a sword tip" input. Or you could add an additional "pointiness" parameter to the algorithm which reshapes their sharp angle vectors. You could even work on the assumption that metal (greys) will have pointy edges and increase the pointiness for grey objects but keep it where it is for other colours.
I know "TFA" is rarely "R"ed around here but they use template-matching to preserve intentional hard angles. They use a guy with a sword as one of the EXAMPLE images!
In the interest of blowing your mind: How do you think the images from the two eyes are combined when the disparity between them can vary depending on the distance that the stimulus is from you?
Devil's advocate: What would be a disproof of evolution?