I tried teaching my self some Python a while back and found it very easy. The only experience that I had before in any computer language is MEL (Maya Embedded Language). I bought a book called Game Programming (Publiser: Wiley, ISBN 978-0-470-06822-9) and over my two week Christmas break I was able to build a nice little top down shooter with programmer graphics.
It uses the pyGame library for most of the heavy hitting (like writing to the screen and the like) but it also introduced me to Objects and Classes as well as how to think in small steps to help break down what I was trying to do.
I always suggest this book to artists that I meet who wants to get into scripting. And most of them who have borrowed it end up buying it for themselves when thay have to give back my book.
I have to keep the speed limiter on or the wires get too hot for my liking. Also, keep in mind that the bike I have was never made for anything like this (it an old Rocky Mountain from the late 80's I think )and the bikes front forks flex a bit more then I like when giving it power.
Over all though I can't complain... They gave me a real good deal on the kit and battery. And when driving downtown I have no trouble keeping up with traffic. The best part is that I keep the batteries in my saddle bags so it's hard to tell that there is anything different on the bike other then the hub motor which nobody seems to notice anyway.
I did the same thing with my bike. At first I would pedal my bike to work and back every day but I would always be working late and after a 14 hour day at work I would then have to pedal, mostly up hill, to get home. Then I would have to wait about 2 hours or so until my body would relax enough to get to sleep. I eventually got sick of this and decided to buy a kit for my bike. 750W motor and a 48v 20Ahr LiPo battery pack does the trick. I get about 40kms and I can go about 55kph without the speed limiter. I also don't have to pedal at all if I don't want to, even while going up hill. This setup can be illegal where I am if I unplug the limiter but that never happens;) .
The big difference that I found is that I stopped running stop signs and I would actually stop when people were in a crosswalk instead of driving around them. When I was on my normal push bike I was always trying not to lose momentum since it was so hard earned with sweat and energy. But on the electric bike I don't care since it costs me nothing in effort to start from a complete stop. I'm much more aware of my surroundings which I'm sure is from not having to spend so much energy peddling. I realize that i'm now treating the ride as if I'm on a proper motorbike and I've been driving much safer because if it.
I charge the battery at work for the most part but even if I didn't electricity is about 5.91c a kWh where I live which ends up being practically free for me. And the guys I work with appreciate it much more now that I don't arrive covered in sweat.
The best part is all the bike lanes and paths we have here in Vancouver, BC. I can get almost anywhere without being in heavy traffic and most of the routes are on proper pavement. With the Olympics coming up and all the road closures that will come with it, the bike will be, by far, the best way to get around town.
The best/worst part about it is the other bikers swearing at me when I pass them going up the hill on the way home.
This is how I check for how much compression i have in my images.
1. Grab the original and the jpeg into photoshop (or whatever you use)
2. do a difference as your transfer mode. This will show you how different it is.
3. find out the value of all the pixels (I don't know ad them together or something)
Repeat the above steps with the second picture.
whichever is more is the one that is more different (why does that sound like bad English to me?) will be the lower quality image.
Use python and the PIL (python image library) to automate the whole thing and thats it.
Great. An article about a technology that can't be used not only for legal reasons but because of technological ones as well.
By the time this is fast enough to detect things at the speeds it needs to today, we'll be transferring stuff way faster... will it ever be able to catch up? And that's not even taking into account encryption.
Completely agree. Hiding the police behind a desk watching a camera or driving a car is not the way to go. These things are a lot less of a deterrent then having a few cops walk the beat in a bad neighborhood.
It's the same reason they took the cops out of the cars and put them on the street in New York.
Think about it. If your someone who's going to commit a crime are you going to be afraid of a camera that might have a person watching the screen that it's attached to? Probably not. How about a cop car that might drive by every twenty minuets or so with a cop in it who probably isn't looking hard around the streets he's driving on because he's on his way to a call or something. Probably wouldn't deter someone from breaking into a car and taking things. But, put a couple o cops walking the beat and watch how things change. The people who aren't doing anything bad feel more secure. The ones that were thinking of doing something bad will go somewhere else and the ones that are doing some thing bad will probably get caught.
There are some pretty bad neighborhoods around where I live and having a cop drive by make me feel just a little bit better then having a camera on a 30ft pole. Whereas getting to say hello to a pair of cops walking by me on the sidewalk makes me feel a whole lot better about my security of my surroundings. As if all I have to do is shout and they will come running to my aid and as unlikely that is to happen the other guy has got to be thinking the same thing.
Cameras don't make me feel secure, they make it feel like I'm being watched. A couple of cops walking the beat on the other side of the street? They just make me feel secure.
Bonus points if you can tell me how the joint I smoked last night affected your life or anyone around you, and why I deserve to be punished for that but the people at the bar don't.
Just to play devils advocate here, It all depends on where you got the marijuana from. Where I live (British Columbia) the drug trade is a big industry. People here get shot for dealing drugs in the wrong neighborhood and the money that you spend on that dope goes to fund their little drug war. Sometimes innocent people get in the way and that crime factor is the big problem as far as I'm concerned.
Of course if they would just legalize it and have the government sell it at cost plus ten percent, it would put all these guys out of business as well as raise a substantial amount of money for the government coffers. Especially considering that here in BC marijuana is a multi billion dollar industry. Then institutionalize the rest of the harder ones so that people addicted to them could get them for little or no money. Then I wouldn't have to worry about somebody breaking into my car for the spare change in my ashtray so they can get five bucks for a hit of crack, which in the end costs me three hundred bucks to replace the broken window in said car.
Actually we do use cards like this. Think of the film "The Dark Night" This was shot on I-max resolution film. That's 70mm size film which they scanned in at 8k. Now you want to color correct that film. There is no way your going to want to do that in less then real time. The guys doing it get paid way to much and the equipment that they use rents for way to much to just have them waiting around for a render even if its from the renderfarm. With 4GB of ram you would have one hell of a frame buffer and with the ability to calculate some of the more complicated things in the hardware in real time you can get way more done.
Here are some systems that already use Nvidia 2GB quadro cards: Inferno Luster Toxic
FTA:
"the cylindrical portals tend to form above Earth's equator and then roll over Earth's winter pole"
I wonder if that's why the aurora borealis seems to crawl across the sky. I seem to remember (from when I lived in the high north) that it happened in fairly regular intervals. The "every eight minuets" seems to ring true as the time between each pass of the light though I haven't been there in eight years so I might just be remembering it wrong.
There is enough electrical infrastructure around right now to do the job of refueling electric cars and the like. Why go through all the bother to rip apart all the old gas stations to install new pressurized tanks to hold all this hydrogen when all we have to do is use the same habits that we use for our cell phones with our cars.
Last time I was leaving the mountain the parking lot was full of people who couldn't even get their cars out of their parking stall since it snowed so much during the day. Funny thing was, all of the ones that were having trouble where the low to the ground little cars.
That extra weight actually helps, by the way. Living in the far north where it's so cold they don't even bother to salt the roads most people, including myself, would put sand bags in the trunk to help with traction on the mostly ice roads. ( and you always had a supply of sand if things got a little too slippery)
When it comes to driving on roads that are covered in snow and the gravel truck or snow plow hasn't been by I would rather be in a 4x4 then a Miata. It's much easier to drive safe in those conditions in the former then the latter.
I would rather people spend their excess money on something like this the latest Prada purse or big screen TV. There is something about rich people caring about the environment that almost makes me believe in humanity.
We've got to start somewhere. Let the rich be the first to make it cheaper for the rest.
I was working on a show which had a bunch of SGI Boxes similar to this. Two servers (2 dual core processors per server) in a 1U case. Only problem with it was that if something went wrong with one of two servers in the box you had to send the whole box back to SGI to get fixed.
Now you would think that normally it wouldn't be a problem if 8 CPUs out of 200 go down on a farm but the way they usually set up the farm (in my experience) is by assigning some processors to each department using a priority structure. So lets say the simulation department had sent some stuff to the farm. 20 min later the stuff finishes. Now lighting can get those CPUs at a low priority until the sim guys send another job to the farm. Problem is if your have a small section of the farm and one of those machines in that small section broke (which happens a lot when the farm starts to get flooded near the end of a show) your stuck not being able to do work for a while until IT gives you priority on some other machines (which at the end of a production can take a ling time).
What I would love to see is the farm software seperating the job by CPU cycles so that when I come in early and there nobody's around I could get the full processing power of the farm to my self.
Slashdot Mirror
You have launched a conspiracy to deny others the right to travel without interference and delay.
sounds kind of like what the TSA does....
I tried teaching my self some Python a while back and found it very easy. The only experience that I had before in any computer language is MEL (Maya Embedded Language). I bought a book called Game Programming (Publiser: Wiley, ISBN 978-0-470-06822-9) and over my two week Christmas break I was able to build a nice little top down shooter with programmer graphics.
It uses the pyGame library for most of the heavy hitting (like writing to the screen and the like) but it also introduced me to Objects and Classes as well as how to think in small steps to help break down what I was trying to do.
I always suggest this book to artists that I meet who wants to get into scripting. And most of them who have borrowed it end up buying it for themselves when thay have to give back my book.
There are a lot of stores here in Vancouver so it was really easy to shop around. I got the Kit and batteries from these guys:
http://www.ecodrive.ca/products_comp.html
and then bought a 800W motor controller from these guys:
http://www.e-ride.ca/Electric_VehicleParts/index.htm#
I have to keep the speed limiter on or the wires get too hot for my liking. Also, keep in mind that the bike I have was never made for anything like this (it an old Rocky Mountain from the late 80's I think )and the bikes front forks flex a bit more then I like when giving it power.
Over all though I can't complain... They gave me a real good deal on the kit and battery. And when driving downtown I have no trouble keeping up with traffic. The best part is that I keep the batteries in my saddle bags so it's hard to tell that there is anything different on the bike other then the hub motor which nobody seems to notice anyway.
I did the same thing with my bike. At first I would pedal my bike to work and back every day but I would always be working late and after a 14 hour day at work I would then have to pedal, mostly up hill, to get home. Then I would have to wait about 2 hours or so until my body would relax enough to get to sleep. I eventually got sick of this and decided to buy a kit for my bike. 750W motor and a 48v 20Ahr LiPo battery pack does the trick. I get about 40kms and I can go about 55kph without the speed limiter. I also don't have to pedal at all if I don't want to, even while going up hill. This setup can be illegal where I am if I unplug the limiter but that never happens ;) .
The big difference that I found is that I stopped running stop signs and I would actually stop when people were in a crosswalk instead of driving around them. When I was on my normal push bike I was always trying not to lose momentum since it was so hard earned with sweat and energy. But on the electric bike I don't care since it costs me nothing in effort to start from a complete stop. I'm much more aware of my surroundings which I'm sure is from not having to spend so much energy peddling. I realize that i'm now treating the ride as if I'm on a proper motorbike and I've been driving much safer because if it.
I charge the battery at work for the most part but even if I didn't electricity is about 5.91c a kWh where I live which ends up being practically free for me. And the guys I work with appreciate it much more now that I don't arrive covered in sweat.
The best part is all the bike lanes and paths we have here in Vancouver, BC. I can get almost anywhere without being in heavy traffic and most of the routes are on proper pavement. With the Olympics coming up and all the road closures that will come with it, the bike will be, by far, the best way to get around town.
The best/worst part about it is the other bikers swearing at me when I pass them going up the hill on the way home.
This is how I check for how much compression i have in my images.
1. Grab the original and the jpeg into photoshop (or whatever you use)
2. do a difference as your transfer mode. This will show you how different it is.
3. find out the value of all the pixels (I don't know ad them together or something)
Repeat the above steps with the second picture.
whichever is more is the one that is more different (why does that sound like bad English to me?) will be the lower quality image.
Use python and the PIL (python image library) to automate the whole thing and thats it.
Sounds like Vancouver, BC to me...
http://www.factsandopinions.com/Explore/A68E5188-139B-4F9C-B22E-5AFF46406503.html
From the Link:
Crashes occur up to three times more often than the provincial average, and average annual ICBC claims for the road are over $11 million.
That's close to how it feels riding my motorcycle.
I tried that with my car purchase but the government just subsidized them anyway.
Great. An article about a technology that can't be used not only for legal reasons but because of technological ones as well.
By the time this is fast enough to detect things at the speeds it needs to today, we'll be transferring stuff way faster... will it ever be able to catch up? And that's not even taking into account encryption.
Completely agree. Hiding the police behind a desk watching a camera or driving a car is not the way to go. These things are a lot less of a deterrent then having a few cops walk the beat in a bad neighborhood.
It's the same reason they took the cops out of the cars and put them on the street in New York.
Think about it. If your someone who's going to commit a crime are you going to be afraid of a camera that might have a person watching the screen that it's attached to? Probably not. How about a cop car that might drive by every twenty minuets or so with a cop in it who probably isn't looking hard around the streets he's driving on because he's on his way to a call or something. Probably wouldn't deter someone from breaking into a car and taking things. But, put a couple o cops walking the beat and watch how things change. The people who aren't doing anything bad feel more secure. The ones that were thinking of doing something bad will go somewhere else and the ones that are doing some thing bad will probably get caught.
There are some pretty bad neighborhoods around where I live and having a cop drive by make me feel just a little bit better then having a camera on a 30ft pole. Whereas getting to say hello to a pair of cops walking by me on the sidewalk makes me feel a whole lot better about my security of my surroundings. As if all I have to do is shout and they will come running to my aid and as unlikely that is to happen the other guy has got to be thinking the same thing.
Cameras don't make me feel secure, they make it feel like I'm being watched. A couple of cops walking the beat on the other side of the street? They just make me feel secure.
Raccoons but without the bandit feel. Though I imagine that there are quite a few copyright and patent lawyers that think differently.
Your still going to have to pay property taxes though.
Bonus points if you can tell me how the joint I smoked last night affected your life or anyone around you, and why I deserve to be punished for that but the people at the bar don't.
Just to play devils advocate here, It all depends on where you got the marijuana from. Where I live (British Columbia) the drug trade is a big industry. People here get shot for dealing drugs in the wrong neighborhood and the money that you spend on that dope goes to fund their little drug war. Sometimes innocent people get in the way and that crime factor is the big problem as far as I'm concerned.
Of course if they would just legalize it and have the government sell it at cost plus ten percent, it would put all these guys out of business as well as raise a substantial amount of money for the government coffers. Especially considering that here in BC marijuana is a multi billion dollar industry. Then institutionalize the rest of the harder ones so that people addicted to them could get them for little or no money. Then I wouldn't have to worry about somebody breaking into my car for the spare change in my ashtray so they can get five bucks for a hit of crack, which in the end costs me three hundred bucks to replace the broken window in said car.
Actually we do use cards like this. Think of the film "The Dark Night" This was shot on I-max resolution film. That's 70mm size film which they scanned in at 8k. Now you want to color correct that film. There is no way your going to want to do that in less then real time. The guys doing it get paid way to much and the equipment that they use rents for way to much to just have them waiting around for a render even if its from the renderfarm. With 4GB of ram you would have one hell of a frame buffer and with the ability to calculate some of the more complicated things in the hardware in real time you can get way more done.
Here are some systems that already use Nvidia 2GB quadro cards:
Inferno
Luster
Toxic
FTA:
"the cylindrical portals tend to form above Earth's equator and then roll over Earth's winter pole"
I wonder if that's why the aurora borealis seems to crawl across the sky. I seem to remember (from when I lived in the high north) that it happened in fairly regular intervals. The "every eight minuets" seems to ring true as the time between each pass of the light though I haven't been there in eight years so I might just be remembering it wrong.
So essentially it's just a French Press except not quite as good coffee comes out..... Whats the big deal here again?
To do that you would have to be lying on the ground looking up unless of course this wheel in your eyeball was spinning like a son of a bitch.
Agreed.
There is enough electrical infrastructure around right now to do the job of refueling electric cars and the like. Why go through all the bother to rip apart all the old gas stations to install new pressurized tanks to hold all this hydrogen when all we have to do is use the same habits that we use for our cell phones with our cars.
Actually they are doing superconductor power in Manhattan right now. Check it out:
http://uaelp.pennnet.com/display_article/341375/22/ARTCL/none/none/1/AMSC-ships-superconductor-wire-for-project-hydra-prototype-power-cable/
(sorry about the link, was the first to come up on google)
Last time I was leaving the mountain the parking lot was full of people who couldn't even get their cars out of their parking stall since it snowed so much during the day. Funny thing was, all of the ones that were having trouble where the low to the ground little cars.
That extra weight actually helps, by the way. Living in the far north where it's so cold they don't even bother to salt the roads most people, including myself, would put sand bags in the trunk to help with traction on the mostly ice roads. ( and you always had a supply of sand if things got a little too slippery)
When it comes to driving on roads that are covered in snow and the gravel truck or snow plow hasn't been by I would rather be in a 4x4 then a Miata. It's much easier to drive safe in those conditions in the former then the latter.
I would rather people spend their excess money on something like this the latest Prada purse or big screen TV. There is something about rich people caring about the environment that almost makes me believe in humanity.
We've got to start somewhere. Let the rich be the first to make it cheaper for the rest.
Ummm... She is a professional skier. I think a Truck is a great place to start for her since she has to drive up mountains all the time.
Yes but how long do they hold their charge? From what I recall they dissipate quite quickly compared to even lead acid batteries.
I was working on a show which had a bunch of SGI Boxes similar to this. Two servers (2 dual core processors per server) in a 1U case. Only problem with it was that if something went wrong with one of two servers in the box you had to send the whole box back to SGI to get fixed.
Now you would think that normally it wouldn't be a problem if 8 CPUs out of 200 go down on a farm but the way they usually set up the farm (in my experience) is by assigning some processors to each department using a priority structure. So lets say the simulation department had sent some stuff to the farm. 20 min later the stuff finishes. Now lighting can get those CPUs at a low priority until the sim guys send another job to the farm. Problem is if your have a small section of the farm and one of those machines in that small section broke (which happens a lot when the farm starts to get flooded near the end of a show) your stuck not being able to do work for a while until IT gives you priority on some other machines (which at the end of a production can take a ling time).
What I would love to see is the farm software seperating the job by CPU cycles so that when I come in early and there nobody's around I could get the full processing power of the farm to my self.