Two years ago someone posted a 150 PDF about the writing of the Star Wars screenplays, particulalry the first one. And it had morphed all over the place without much thought to world building.
There are some authors like Toklein and Hal Clement who insist on constructing a detailed world before writing the novel. But that was not Lucas's style in the beginning.
They were showing a trailer for Surrogates at District Nine. The plots sound similar- intermeshed human-MMO worlds gone flakey. Cameron may have better F/X from what I've seen so far. If both are well-executed, then I may like both.
There is slowing of the clock onboard GPS satellites both due to the orbital speed (special relativity) and lower gravity (general relativity). This paper says special relativity errors accumlate about 7 microseconds a day and general relativity 46 microseconds. Radio signals move a thousand feet per microsecond, so the effect significant.
For the first century of use as evidence, there were no statistically significant studies whowing finger print evidence was valid. It was just the expert witness of police investigators saying so. I see articles periodically mentioning this. Only a defense lawyer with immense resources can challenge the overall science of fingerprint evidence due to its use for a century.
This device went over budget and deadline. But in the long it allow more capable space probes than the current nuclear thermal generators.
The Mars Science Lander, now named "Curiosity", is a billion over budget and and two years late in launching. It had almost derailed the entire NASA program. Curosity is the size of an minivan and is too large for conventional solar panels.
I was in a large auto accident six years ago (5 cars, 8 people, 1 death, 1 homocide conviction).
Everyone and their mother seemed to have my social. It was in the health records. All six insurance adjustors had it. And all the lawyers. I didnt put it on any forms I filled out.
Geobiologist Peter Ward claimed in his book The Medea Hypothesis . that the long term trend in CO2 is declining and there willbe too little for eukaroyote life in a few hundred million years. The early Earth probabaly had double-digit percentage C02 like its neighbors Mars and Venus. That declined to percent or two by the start of multicellular life a half billion years ago. Then It fell currently to three-hundreds of a percent until anthromophic burning looks it will double that. But the long term trend is decline. When CO2 falls below one hundredth of a percent it will be too little for photosynthesis, plant and animal life. The Earth will then revert to the bacteria planet it was for most of its history.
Where does the CO2 go? It dissolves in the ocean and turns into carbonate rock where its pretty well locked up, unless a volcano burns it back into gas. Sea creature skeletons add to this process. 99.98% of Earth's carbon is currently locked in limestone. The rest is in the biosphere and petroleum deposits.
Fair simple global environmental engineering could reverse the process. Just burn limestone to release CO2. Thats how people make lime for cement. But do this on a gloabl scale.
P.S. The Medea Hypothesis is a pun on the Gaia Hypothesis. Porfessor Ward suggests ecology is not stable and friendly to life. But it goes bserk and causes mass extinctions now and then. Read the rest of his book.
One Bills final projects at Microsoft was to systematize software for robotics. I dont know if ever got very far with this. It didnt seem to be immediately commercial.
I recall the MIT media lab doing location-sensitive overlays on video goggles (unable to find web page). These would be a lot like Google Map mashups. Having an iPhone and Google Map would simplify heir engineering- they wouldnt have to invesnt as much hardware from scratch as they did in their project.
And when authorities want to go after somebody, theres lots of rarely enforced regulations they can invoke to stop them. China law enforcement is probably more arbitrary than US. But its a matter of degree.
This LED-backlit LCD supposed has a five-million-to-one contrast ratio.
But then again, how many camera systems have 24-bit dynamic range and is this preserved in current digital compression techniques? Probably not. The whole system has to handle this.
Back in the 1990s when studios were switching over to digital editing, the advanced companies were a real stickler for 24-bit per color channel standard. The hardware graphics companies claimed this was overkill. It is not overkill where you have adquate monitors and cameras.
I saw this at my local science museum. I went ther to look at decent feeds space shuttle space walks on their NASA TV. To me this is absolutely fascinating to see live astronauts and the earth moving below. But as action TV, its pretty dull. Most of the museum patrons were watching simulated animations of space probes on another monitor. That was far more flashy!
Kids die at criminal justice reform schools and at the tough-love summer camps when kids get out of line with their peers. TV news magazines have done several stories on these tragedies.
I made it SIGGRAPH last year, but not this year. Its GEEK heaven. SIGGRAPH makes me aware how inadequate current video technology is. Do not be deceived by current large screen HD TVs - technology can do so much better.
In a nutshell, perfect video technology would be "indistinguishable from looking outside of a window on a sunny day". Thats what human visual systems are designed for. I've seen some experimental systems at SIGGRAPH that start to approach this quality. I hope it doesnt take 40 years to commercialize this like HDTV. I would love to see a theater movie where it felt like I was looking through a window at another world.
Resolution is probably the best aspect of current video. Beyond about 2,000 scan lines and 4K horizontal pixels, you reallly cant see more, unless it is a very large screen.
Contrast is perhaps in worst shape. The most impressive videos are those that have contrast ranges over a million, preferably over a billion. Super dark shadows and bright light source appear real then. The best monitors at Best Buy have contrast ranges in hundred thousands, but many are under a thousand. Different contrasts are very noticeable viewing screens side-by side. Sony has an experimental Organic-LED screen with a million contrast that starts to look realistic.
Current video only fills about half of the human perceptual color space. I've seen six-primary-color systems at SIGGRAPH that approach 80%-90% of the color space. They are very impressive when looking at nature and artwork. Compare a work of art and its best conventional video display and the color inadequacies will be immediately apparent.
Least is important is 3D in my opinion. It does make things look more real when you look through a window.
A big issue with enhanced video is that its not just the display device, but the whole video system. You need a camera, a signal representation, coomunication bandwidth, and recording devices that support all the enhanced features. You really cant shoe-horn it in existing systems.
My optrometrist has a machine that shoots lasers into my eye and measures the resulting focus. It gets the first 95% of the prescription right, leaving the last 5% to the optometrist and my taste.
I believe the Lasik people use something similar, also measuring cornea shape.
Astronomers have auto-focus telescopes which work off guide stars or lasers. Many cameras auto-focus.
Some wyou'd somehow minaturize this and put it into eyeglasses. Who knows when?
Slashdot Mirror
Dont over-interpret it.
Two years ago someone posted a 150 PDF about the writing of the Star Wars screenplays, particulalry the first one. And it had morphed all over the place without much thought to world building.
There are some authors like Toklein and Hal Clement who insist on constructing a detailed world before writing the novel. But that was not Lucas's style in the beginning.
They were showing a trailer for Surrogates at District Nine. The plots sound similar- intermeshed human-MMO worlds gone flakey. Cameron may have better F/X from what I've seen so far. If both are well-executed, then I may like both.
There is slowing of the clock onboard GPS satellites both due to the orbital speed (special relativity) and lower gravity (general relativity). This paper says special relativity errors accumlate about 7 microseconds a day and general relativity 46 microseconds. Radio signals move a thousand feet per microsecond, so the effect significant.
When I'm guessing, I type it into the little google text box to double-check. Thats more reliable than a spell-checker.
For the first century of use as evidence, there were no statistically significant studies whowing finger print evidence was valid. It was just the expert witness of police investigators saying so. I see articles periodically mentioning this. Only a defense lawyer with immense resources can challenge the overall science of fingerprint evidence due to its use for a century.
Diesels usually have high sulfur and nitrosoxide. The new so-called "clean diesel" engines and fuel supposed beat this problem.
But I like it for its philosophical ending. Once you get past too much Nicholas Cage, I thought the plot was interesting.
This device went over budget and deadline. But in the long it allow more capable space probes than the current nuclear thermal generators.
The Mars Science Lander, now named "Curiosity", is a billion over budget and and two years late in launching. It had almost derailed the entire NASA program. Curosity is the size of an minivan and is too large for conventional solar panels.
Prime candidate is molecular oxygen in an atmosphere which is highly unstable. But there are other chemical candidates too.
I was in a large auto accident six years ago (5 cars, 8 people, 1 death, 1 homocide conviction). Everyone and their mother seemed to have my social. It was in the health records. All six insurance adjustors had it. And all the lawyers. I didnt put it on any forms I filled out.
Because if you put in some gasoline in a new one it will still be there a decade later when you look again.
Geobiologist Peter Ward claimed in his book The Medea Hypothesis . that the long term trend in CO2 is declining and there willbe too little for eukaroyote life in a few hundred million years. The early Earth probabaly had double-digit percentage C02 like its neighbors Mars and Venus. That declined to percent or two by the start of multicellular life a half billion years ago. Then It fell currently to three-hundreds of a percent until anthromophic burning looks it will double that. But the long term trend is decline. When CO2 falls below one hundredth of a percent it will be too little for photosynthesis, plant and animal life. The Earth will then revert to the bacteria planet it was for most of its history.
Where does the CO2 go? It dissolves in the ocean and turns into carbonate rock where its pretty well locked up, unless a volcano burns it back into gas. Sea creature skeletons add to this process. 99.98% of Earth's carbon is currently locked in limestone. The rest is in the biosphere and petroleum deposits.
Fair simple global environmental engineering could reverse the process. Just burn limestone to release CO2. Thats how people make lime for cement. But do this on a gloabl scale.
P.S. The Medea Hypothesis is a pun on the Gaia Hypothesis. Porfessor Ward suggests ecology is not stable and friendly to life. But it goes bserk and causes mass extinctions now and then. Read the rest of his book.
One Bills final projects at Microsoft was to systematize software for robotics. I dont know if ever got very far with this. It didnt seem to be immediately commercial.
I recall the MIT media lab doing location-sensitive overlays on video goggles (unable to find web page). These would be a lot like Google Map mashups. Having an iPhone and Google Map would simplify heir engineering- they wouldnt have to invesnt as much hardware from scratch as they did in their project.
And when authorities want to go after somebody, theres lots of rarely enforced regulations they can invoke to stop them. China law enforcement is probably more arbitrary than US. But its a matter of degree.
I saw this opinion piece in PC magazine earlier this year. These companies excel in their main domain, but flouder in the others.
People are making all their appliances twitter now.
This LED-backlit LCD supposed has a five-million-to-one contrast ratio.
But then again, how many camera systems have 24-bit dynamic range and is this preserved in current digital compression techniques? Probably not. The whole system has to handle this.
Back in the 1990s when studios were switching over to digital editing, the advanced companies were a real stickler for 24-bit per color channel standard. The hardware graphics companies claimed this was overkill. It is not overkill where you have adquate monitors and cameras.
I saw this at my local science museum. I went ther to look at decent feeds space shuttle space walks on their NASA TV. To me this is absolutely fascinating to see live astronauts and the earth moving below. But as action TV, its pretty dull. Most of the museum patrons were watching simulated animations of space probes on another monitor. That was far more flashy!
Kids die at criminal justice reform schools and at the tough-love summer camps when kids get out of line with their peers. TV news magazines have done several stories on these tragedies.
I made it SIGGRAPH last year, but not this year. Its GEEK heaven. SIGGRAPH makes me aware how inadequate current video technology is. Do not be deceived by current large screen HD TVs - technology can do so much better.
In a nutshell, perfect video technology would be "indistinguishable from looking outside of a window on a sunny day". Thats what human visual systems are designed for. I've seen some experimental systems at SIGGRAPH that start to approach this quality. I hope it doesnt take 40 years to commercialize this like HDTV. I would love to see a theater movie where it felt like I was looking through a window at another world.
Resolution is probably the best aspect of current video. Beyond about 2,000 scan lines and 4K horizontal pixels, you reallly cant see more, unless it is a very large screen.
Contrast is perhaps in worst shape. The most impressive videos are those that have contrast ranges over a million, preferably over a billion. Super dark shadows and bright light source appear real then. The best monitors at Best Buy have contrast ranges in hundred thousands, but many are under a thousand. Different contrasts are very noticeable viewing screens side-by side. Sony has an experimental Organic-LED screen with a million contrast that starts to look realistic.
Current video only fills about half of the human perceptual color space. I've seen six-primary-color systems at SIGGRAPH that approach 80%-90% of the color space. They are very impressive when looking at nature and artwork. Compare a work of art and its best conventional video display and the color inadequacies will be immediately apparent.
Least is important is 3D in my opinion. It does make things look more real when you look through a window.
A big issue with enhanced video is that its not just the display device, but the whole video system. You need a camera, a signal representation, coomunication bandwidth, and recording devices that support all the enhanced features. You really cant shoe-horn it in existing systems.
My optrometrist has a machine that shoots lasers into my eye and measures the resulting focus. It gets the first 95% of the prescription right, leaving the last 5% to the optometrist and my taste.
I believe the Lasik people use something similar, also measuring cornea shape.
Astronomers have auto-focus telescopes which work off guide stars or lasers. Many cameras auto-focus.
Some wyou'd somehow minaturize this and put it into eyeglasses. Who knows when?
But it has a "mainframe" price :-(
The Air is light, very readable screen, fast graphics, etc.
They know if the thing is turned on it will create "red matter" and suck the whole Earth into it. (Sounds like a movie plot)
Sure, some science gets done at both. But at the cost of constructing these facilities?