"The robot is equipped with a camera and sensors that track movement and heat. It is armed with a pistol that can be programmed to shoot automatically or wait for a fire order delivered with a password from anywhere through the Internet," he said.
With further development the technology could be applied to building robot guards for important places, including museums that house precious artifacts, he said.
Right, just what we need. The cleaning lady forgets to turn off the roboguard before dusting off the display cases, and it opens fire in a room full of Ming vases or valuable paintings. Soon, the tour guides would all be saying, "And now we turn to Picasso's bullet-hole period."
This will be a good chance for Linux to really shine: to show that supposedly buggy code can be run and not crash the whole system. It's a win-win situation. If the code runs right, we have another great office app. If the code runs wrong, we have more evidence that Microsoft writes bad code (and the system will recover just fine).
Although the fact that Office doesn't crash the entire system might be impressive, Microsoft could use this in another way. Just imagine, every time someone calls tech support to complain about MS Office for Linux crashing, the drones could tell them that it's a "known issue", caused by the instability of the Linux OS. The natural work-around, of course, would be to "upgrade" to Windows.
Especially considering this article. A lot of Linuxers have said that if people like Lokis start selling games, they'd buy them, but it looks like not enough people are that.
Your desktop software will most likely not need this for a LONG time. In addition, it's probably also fair to say that most servers won't need anything like this either.
Ah yes, the TI-83. My high school split its math classes into "applied" and "pre-calculus". All of the applied students had to get TI-83s, and after about a week of school every one of them had Space Invaders and all sorts of other productive programs loaded into them. It was great in detention, because the non-math teachers didn't know that they weren't actually doing work on their calculators. Of course, there were also those who put the data storage to good use for definitions and suchlike on physics and chemistry tests. Just imagine how much "learning" that could go on with one of these babies. (Of course, I was in pre-calculus, since I wanted to have a math course that would be useful in college).
The is the Dobelle institute's work with "Jerry". It's actually linked from the article. The Dobelle Institute's webpage about this is here. They've been working on this for over 30 years, and say that they have implanted 15000 other patients, although they don't say whether those patients have a similar system. Jerry's vision is rather limited -- he can only make out very high contrast objects in brightly lit rooms. The website has a lot more information, including an article with xrays of the implant.
I have a friend who's pretty gun-ho on SO (he happens to have more RAM than me). Anyway, he actually managed to install it on his dad's windows machine. I found out about this, and was pretty surprised, and so I asked him what his dad said about it. He said his dad didn't even know what had happened until my friend mentioned something about having to get MS Office 2000. "I thought we already had Microsoft Office," his dad replied, "except it didn't crash as much."
I remember reading somewhere (I think it was in the Globe & Mail) about how natural gas is being used more by large commercial/government fleets. From what I understand, it is actually possible to convert a gasoline car to a natural gas car. With the amount of driving that taxi/police cars do, it is actually cost-effective to both pay for the conversion and for a refuelling station. As well, I think I read that there is a version of I think the Crown Victoria that comes factory equipped to burn natural gas. The only problem is that with taxi/police/etc fleets, they're willing to go to a central depot to refuel. You could never get your normal suburban driver to drive 5-10 miles to refuel.
If it's for finding explosives, why do they only test students like me? It would seem to me that as a white middle-class teenage Canadian (although that part might not be obvious) male, I'd be one of the least likely people to be carrying explosives.
Re:Something you can do (in U.S.) to protect liber
on
Walk-By DNA Testing
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· Score: 1
Now, don't you think that it might be a liiitle bit ridiculous to link those two together as cause and effect? Perhaps, in fact, it might be the other way around, if in fact either of those two statements are true? Perhaps, if they are both true, firearms were banned because D.C. has the highest murder rate in the country?. Naahhhhh -- everyone knows that guns stop crime. There's some band whose name I don't know who did a song called "Wouldn't it be great if everyone had a gun", with such great quotes as, "There would be no shooting, because everyone would have a gun!"
I'm still not sure that I believe either of those little factoids though
Stuff like this is already happening in airports. For example, at the U.S.'s pre-clearance customs posts in Canadian airports, they have been known to scan travellers (especially travellers < 30) for drug residues, and fine anyone found with the smallest trace of illegal drugs. They then bring the "criminal" to a cash machine, and tell him/her to pay the fine, or they won't be allowed to enter the U.S.
As a student, when I go through security at US airports, I am usually pulled out of the line and brought to a machine. They take my backpack, rub a piece of cloth all over it, and put it into the machine. Nothing's come of it yet, but I assume they're scanning me for drugs, which really pisses me off. After all, what right should security have to scan me for drugs? AFAIK, they aren't actually cops, and their job should be to protect travellers, not to prosecute the U.S.'s stupid "war on drugs". I hate to think what would happen if for some reason I was in the vicinity of someone smoking pot before I went to the airport
This sounds like a bunch of technobabble to me. I'm not a professional on this stuff, but here's what I understand about harmonics:
When a not is played, you get a pitch which corresponds to the name of the note, called the fundamental. Because of the acoustic characteristics of the instrument, you also get a bunch of overtones, which are pitches higher than the note in intervals such as fourths, fifths, and octaves to the fundamental. Different instruments produce different overtones, which causes its characteristic timbre.
Now I'm not entirely sure about the terminology I used above, but I think part of the point is that if it's going though and adding overtones, you aren't going to get a very natural sound, because everything is go to sound more similar. It might sound lusher, but it won't sound exactly right.
There's also the problem with a lot of music such as sacred music, which frequently employs high vocals, especially "castrati", now usually counter-tenors (men singing high), or boys who haven't hit puberty. I've converted some of that music to MP3, and although the high stuff sounds thinner than on CD, I don't think I want Kenwood lushening that sound -- part of the beauty of those voices is their purity.
I was in the Edmonton Space & Science Centre where I saw a game that operates on similar principles. You stand in front of a blue screen, and a camera tracks your motions, which control a sort of airborne skateboard-type thing as you fly around obstacles and try to collect points. I played it a few times, and it was fairly fun (although I don't know how much the excitement would stand up to playing it a lot of times).
The neat thing was, however, that after playing it a few times I was realized I was actually getting exercise while playing. It wasn't all that strenuous, but then I only played for about 5 minutes. I think if these types of concepts could be extended and improved , and eventually brought into the home, it could have some really good benefits. With a fairly large screen TV, it doesn't matter if you're a few metres away from the screen so you can jump around as much as you please. Then, parents wouldn't have to worry about their kids not getting exercise while playing video games. As well, people who find normal modes of exercise boring (a lot of people aren't enchanted by the treadmill) would have a fun way to burn off those extra calories.
I've heard some fairly good things about the Quicktionary. According to the website, it is able to do multiple languages -- they say there are models available for 25 different languages. It looks like a big pen, and you scan it over the text you want to translate. It even has something so that you can write out words for it to translate (I think it uses magnetized letters) if the original text is too big. The prices on their site range from $200-$230.
Here I thought the quickies were refering to Bruce Perens 2.0. Then I saw all the other stuff:) Time to remove the mind from the sewage conducting device.
In addition to going to court, we (or the author anyway) should consider this: Why did he write the code? Since he put it under the GPL, it probably wasn't to make money. So Nvidia's actions probably didn't cause him to lose any money. So, if people were to pitch in to to help take this case (or another similar one) to court, it would get the ball rolling. We could test out the GPL in court, and since the author of the code didn't expect anything to begin with, if we win, he (or she) could take the winnings, pay off any personal legal expenses, and put the rest into some sort of community-administered defense fund/war chest. Of course, there's the issue of who would administer the fund, but I'm sure we could all come to some sort of amicable agreement. (Oh no, what have I started!!) As well, I think that if there's any fairness in this world, we could get companies like Redhat or VA Linux to help out with this, considering the amount of profit they've gotten out of GPL'd software.
Redundancy is actually a very good feature in a language. Although English has moved away from it a lot more than, say, French, a case in point is the conjugation of verbs. Someone who valued efficiency in a language might say that conjugation is useless, because you just have to look at the subject. However, take a look at this sentence The girl wants some free time. Now, clearly conjugating "to want" is useless, because from the subject "the girl" you know that there's just one girl, right? But, what if you didn't hear the subject quite correctly? Then, you could check out the verb, and realize that there's just one girl, because "to want" was conjugated in the singular.
Slashdot Mirror
'Bot strokes the trigger
Dali's paintings are destroyed
Curator hits roof
(For those who don't know Dali is some sort of famous painter)
Right, just what we need. The cleaning lady forgets to turn off the roboguard before dusting off the display cases, and it opens fire in a room full of Ming vases or valuable paintings. Soon, the tour guides would all be saying, "And now we turn to Picasso's bullet-hole period."
Although the fact that Office doesn't crash the entire system might be impressive, Microsoft could use this in another way. Just imagine, every time someone calls tech support to complain about MS Office for Linux crashing, the drones could tell them that it's a "known issue", caused by the instability of the Linux OS. The natural work-around, of course, would be to "upgrade" to Windows.
Especially considering this article. A lot of Linuxers have said that if people like Lokis start selling games, they'd buy them, but it looks like not enough people are that.
And 640K ought to be enough for anyone
Ah yes, the TI-83. My high school split its math classes into "applied" and "pre-calculus". All of the applied students had to get TI-83s, and after about a week of school every one of them had Space Invaders and all sorts of other productive programs loaded into them. It was great in detention, because the non-math teachers didn't know that they weren't actually doing work on their calculators. Of course, there were also those who put the data storage to good use for definitions and suchlike on physics and chemistry tests. Just imagine how much "learning" that could go on with one of these babies. (Of course, I was in pre-calculus, since I wanted to have a math course that would be useful in college).
The is the Dobelle institute's work with "Jerry". It's actually linked from the article. The Dobelle Institute's webpage about this is here. They've been working on this for over 30 years, and say that they have implanted 15000 other patients, although they don't say whether those patients have a similar system. Jerry's vision is rather limited -- he can only make out very high contrast objects in brightly lit rooms. The website has a lot more information, including an article with xrays of the implant.
I have a friend who's pretty gun-ho on SO (he happens to have more RAM than me). Anyway, he actually managed to install it on his dad's windows machine. I found out about this, and was pretty surprised, and so I asked him what his dad said about it. He said his dad didn't even know what had happened until my friend mentioned something about having to get MS Office 2000. "I thought we already had Microsoft Office," his dad replied, "except it didn't crash as much."
I remember reading somewhere (I think it was in the Globe & Mail) about how natural gas is being used more by large commercial/government fleets. From what I understand, it is actually possible to convert a gasoline car to a natural gas car. With the amount of driving that taxi/police cars do, it is actually cost-effective to both pay for the conversion and for a refuelling station. As well, I think I read that there is a version of I think the Crown Victoria that comes factory equipped to burn natural gas. The only problem is that with taxi/police/etc fleets, they're willing to go to a central depot to refuel. You could never get your normal suburban driver to drive 5-10 miles to refuel.
If it's for finding explosives, why do they only test students like me? It would seem to me that as a white middle-class teenage Canadian (although that part might not be obvious) male, I'd be one of the least likely people to be carrying explosives.
I'm still not sure that I believe either of those little factoids though
Stuff like this is already happening in airports. For example, at the U.S.'s pre-clearance customs posts in Canadian airports, they have been known to scan travellers (especially travellers < 30) for drug residues, and fine anyone found with the smallest trace of illegal drugs. They then bring the "criminal" to a cash machine, and tell him/her to pay the fine, or they won't be allowed to enter the U.S.
As a student, when I go through security at US airports, I am usually pulled out of the line and brought to a machine. They take my backpack, rub a piece of cloth all over it, and put it into the machine. Nothing's come of it yet, but I assume they're scanning me for drugs, which really pisses me off. After all, what right should security have to scan me for drugs? AFAIK, they aren't actually cops, and their job should be to protect travellers, not to prosecute the U.S.'s stupid "war on drugs". I hate to think what would happen if for some reason I was in the vicinity of someone smoking pot before I went to the airport
When a not is played, you get a pitch which corresponds to the name of the note, called the fundamental. Because of the acoustic characteristics of the instrument, you also get a bunch of overtones, which are pitches higher than the note in intervals such as fourths, fifths, and octaves to the fundamental. Different instruments produce different overtones, which causes its characteristic timbre.
Now I'm not entirely sure about the terminology I used above, but I think part of the point is that if it's going though and adding overtones, you aren't going to get a very natural sound, because everything is go to sound more similar. It might sound lusher, but it won't sound exactly right.
There's also the problem with a lot of music such as sacred music, which frequently employs high vocals, especially "castrati", now usually counter-tenors (men singing high), or boys who haven't hit puberty. I've converted some of that music to MP3, and although the high stuff sounds thinner than on CD, I don't think I want Kenwood lushening that sound -- part of the beauty of those voices is their purity.
The neat thing was, however, that after playing it a few times I was realized I was actually getting exercise while playing. It wasn't all that strenuous, but then I only played for about 5 minutes. I think if these types of concepts could be extended and improved , and eventually brought into the home, it could have some really good benefits. With a fairly large screen TV, it doesn't matter if you're a few metres away from the screen so you can jump around as much as you please. Then, parents wouldn't have to worry about their kids not getting exercise while playing video games. As well, people who find normal modes of exercise boring (a lot of people aren't enchanted by the treadmill) would have a fun way to burn off those extra calories.
I've heard some fairly good things about the Quicktionary. According to the website, it is able to do multiple languages -- they say there are models available for 25 different languages. It looks like a big pen, and you scan it over the text you want to translate. It even has something so that you can write out words for it to translate (I think it uses magnetized letters) if the original text is too big. The prices on their site range from $200-$230.
Here I thought the quickies were refering to Bruce Perens 2.0. Then I saw all the other stuff :) Time to remove the mind from the sewage conducting device.
In addition to going to court, we (or the author anyway) should consider this:
Why did he write the code? Since he put it under the GPL, it probably wasn't to make money. So Nvidia's actions probably didn't cause him to lose any money. So, if people were to pitch in to to help take this case (or another similar one) to court, it would get the ball rolling. We could test out the GPL in court, and since the author of the code didn't expect anything to begin with, if we win, he (or she) could take the winnings, pay off any personal legal expenses, and put the rest into some sort of community-administered defense fund/war chest.
Of course, there's the issue of who would administer the fund, but I'm sure we could all come to some sort of amicable agreement. (Oh no, what have I started!!)
As well, I think that if there's any fairness in this world, we could get companies like Redhat or VA Linux to help out with this, considering the amount of profit they've gotten out of GPL'd software.
Redundancy is actually a very good feature in a language. Although English has moved away from it a lot more than, say, French, a case in point is the conjugation of verbs. Someone who valued efficiency in a language might say that conjugation is useless, because you just have to look at the subject. However, take a look at this sentence The girl wants some free time. Now, clearly conjugating "to want" is useless, because from the subject "the girl" you know that there's just one girl, right? But, what if you didn't hear the subject quite correctly? Then, you could check out the verb, and realize that there's just one girl, because "to want" was conjugated in the singular.
What JonKatz doesn't realize is that 80% of statistics are made up.