He should make the code available, this looks pretty cool, although I can see how it would be tricky to compensate for wind, gusts etc. I would love to know if he did anything smart with timing decelerations and such-like. I have one of these blimps, and generally the best way to navigate is to pulse the motors to adjust velocity and direction.
Lots of potential here for intelligent control of the blimp, but no evidence that he tried any of that.
The movie is cool, but if everyone grabs it from the web server, I doubt it will last long, so please grab it from Freenet rather than getting them from the website. I have mirrored it here (install and run Freenet before clicking on the link):
Freenet is coping admirably with the slashdotting, my node is only 31% loaded, and that is while downloading a 150MB file from Freenet (which I am getting at 50k/sec!).
That's funny. So why can't China or Your-favorite-regime simply block/ban downloading freenet itself?
They can, in fact, they already have - this is the reason for Freenet's new "distribution node" functionality - from the release notes:
One fundamental problem with distributing Freenet from a website is that it creates a central point of failure. In the event that this website was shut-down it would seriously inhibit the deployment of the Freenet software. To address this issue, Freenet now includes the ability to self-propogate! Using Freenet's new "distribution node" functionality, you can send people a URL (through out-of-band means such as in your email signature) which will allow them to download and install Freenet directly from your node. Their version of Freenet will inherit your node's network knowledge eliminating any reliance on a centralized "bootstrapping" service.
WhyWikiWorks [c2.com] claims that the lack of wysiwyg editing on wikis is important for keeping the signal-to-noise ratio high. I wonder if using non-HTML text markup helps too.
What elitist crap! Next they will be arguing that mandating use of Latin on the web will further help to improve the quality of content!
People's ability to contribute to a Wiki is not directly proportional to their willingness to tolerate the ugly and inconsistent grammers that seem to be reinvented every time someone creates a new Wiki.
If you were any good at your job, you would have no trouble competing with other tech workers, H1B or not.
Whenever I hear people gripe about H1B workers, they are basically saying "I suck at my job so I need labor protectionism to get rid of my competition".
It would be nice to know what it is we are supposed to be downloading here - come on slashdot editors! Not all of us are Anime fans, and for those that aren't, it would be nice to at least have some indication as to what this is without having to download it (thus wasting bandwidth that could be used by someone who is interested).
...people need to realize that many of the people wearing white coats these days are really just hyped-up snake-oil salesmen.
Unfortunately, the reality is increasingly that many in the scientific profession achieve success by attracting public attention, the public often being a poor judge of true innovation. Why? Because if you aren't making wild claims, CNN just doesn't care, and how does a Professor that has made a genuine contribution to their field compete with an idiot that is on CNN every second day?
There are those that have made a career out of telling the media what they want to hear. People who gladly accept publicity even when their self-aggrandization hurts serious research in their field.
For the perfect example, learn a little about the career of Kevin Warwick, the UK's foremost pseudo-scientist.
Science and academia are increasingly a joke. For some time now, it has been more about public image than genuine contribution to the human understanding of the world around them.
Go into your preferences, and put a check box beside 'hardware'. You'll never see one of these stories again.
Perhaps, but there are many hardware stories that I do find interesting (generally those which aren't simply about incremental performance improvements) which I also wouldn't see.
If someone creates some new memory which leads to an order of magnitude increase, then that is interesting, but just because someone can string together a bunch of conventional hard drives, that is hardly news - everyone knows that it is possible.
Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. I read it a few years ago, it is really inspirational.
Do domain names make trademarks obsolete?
on
Verbing Weirds Google
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
For a company which does its business online, and which owns its domain name, surely the concept of a trademark becomes somewhat obsolete. Wouldn't the common usage of the verb "to Google" meaning "to search" increase the value of the domain google.com?
IMHO, this is a typical case of a laywer being too trigger-happy to appreciate the big picture. If I owned google.com, widespread use of the term "google" would be music to my ears, trademarks be damned.
Much as people might hate to admit it, the film industry has been responsible for numerous advances in technology over the years, many of which have found applications outside the movie industry.
Again, not an advance in technology.
Bringing a new technology from the labratory to millions of homes is an advance in technology.
I'm not sure the Internet is at any risk of disappearing due to this, or even affected at all really.
Tell that to those whose universities are monitoring their internet traffic as a result of RIAA threats.
Not true at all. The GPL would be entirely unenforceable if works distributed under it were not granted IP protections.
The GPL fights fire with fire. Its proponents would much prefer a world without intellectual property laws, but since they do exist, it is only pragmatic to use them for their own ends.
There is a big difference between endorsing something's existence, and acknowledging its existence.
The GPL embraces the concept of intellectual property law and uses it to forward the philosophical point of view that the *code* ( not the coder) should always be free.
No, the GPL uses copyright law against itself, the proponents of the GPL would much prefer a world in which IP law doesn't exist, but since it does exist, we may as-well use it to our advantage. That is simple pragmatism.
Their attitude is to grant patents left right and center, and let the courts sort it out. The have no real incentive to try and find prior art.
The problem is that in the time between the dumb patent being granted, and the courts sorting it out, severe damage can be done to people's freedom to innovate.
Recall that over the past 100 years (and beyond), significant advances in technology have almost always been despite IP laws, not because of them*
*Some examples:
The modern movie industry set up in Southern California to escape from Edison's patents
The VCR was fought tooth and nail by the movie industry even though 2/3rds of their revenue now come from video rentals and sales
The proliferation of the commodity PC was only possible when IBM's BIOS was reverse engineered thus evading trade secret laws
The Internet is currently under siege from copyright holders
One of the worlds fastest growing operating systems, Linux, explicitly rejects the concept of intellectual property in its license
Come on, we know you love Linux but give it up! - Windows is no more or no less vulnerable than Linux when you have console access as has been pointed out repeatedly. If you can gain access to a computer, be it Linux or Windows XP, you can access the data on that computer.
By trying to claim that this is somehow a win for Linux, you are simply proving your that you are willing to ignore facts when advocating Linux. This makes you just as bad as Microsoft's marketing drones.
If American's think that they must endure the crass commercialism of a music industry that treats art as product, they should try visiting the UK, and perhaps watching "Top of the Pops" - a BBC show (thus paid for by the general public) which is a shameless tool of the major record labels.
I am not sure whether the music industry has as much political influence in the UK - but they have certainly done just as much damage to our culture.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of potential here for intelligent control of the blimp, but no evidence that he tried any of that.
The movie is cool, but if everyone grabs it from the web server, I doubt it will last long, so please grab it from Freenet rather than getting them from the website. I have mirrored it here (install and run Freenet before clicking on the link):
Freenet is coping admirably with the slashdotting, my node is only 31% loaded, and that is while downloading a 150MB file from Freenet (which I am getting at 50k/sec!).
Just mirrored the file on Freenet, you can grab it here.
One fundamental problem with distributing Freenet from a website is that it creates a central point of failure. In the event that this website was shut-down it would seriously inhibit the deployment of the Freenet software. To address this issue, Freenet now includes the ability to self-propogate! Using Freenet's new "distribution node" functionality, you can send people a URL (through out-of-band means such as in your email signature) which will allow them to download and install Freenet directly from your node. Their version of Freenet will inherit your node's network knowledge eliminating any reliance on a centralized "bootstrapping" service.
People's ability to contribute to a Wiki is not directly proportional to their willingness to tolerate the ugly and inconsistent grammers that seem to be reinvented every time someone creates a new Wiki.
Only problem is that I can't find a single web page which demonstrates Midas in-action, what gives?!
Whenever I hear people gripe about H1B workers, they are basically saying "I suck at my job so I need labor protectionism to get rid of my competition".
It would be nice to know what it is we are supposed to be downloading here - come on slashdot editors! Not all of us are Anime fans, and for those that aren't, it would be nice to at least have some indication as to what this is without having to download it (thus wasting bandwidth that could be used by someone who is interested).
Unfortunately, the reality is increasingly that many in the scientific profession achieve success by attracting public attention, the public often being a poor judge of true innovation. Why? Because if you aren't making wild claims, CNN just doesn't care, and how does a Professor that has made a genuine contribution to their field compete with an idiot that is on CNN every second day?
There are those that have made a career out of telling the media what they want to hear. People who gladly accept publicity even when their self-aggrandization hurts serious research in their field.
For the perfect example, learn a little about the career of Kevin Warwick, the UK's foremost pseudo-scientist.
Science and academia are increasingly a joke. For some time now, it has been more about public image than genuine contribution to the human understanding of the world around them.
If someone creates some new memory which leads to an order of magnitude increase, then that is interesting, but just because someone can string together a bunch of conventional hard drives, that is hardly news - everyone knows that it is possible.
I am much more interested in what interesting things people do with computers, not how tricked out their computers are.
Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. I read it a few years ago, it is really inspirational.
IMHO, this is a typical case of a laywer being too trigger-happy to appreciate the big picture. If I owned google.com, widespread use of the term "google" would be music to my ears, trademarks be damned.
There is a big difference between endorsing something's existence, and acknowledging its existence.
The problem is that in the time between the dumb patent being granted, and the courts sorting it out, severe damage can be done to people's freedom to innovate.
Recall that over the past 100 years (and beyond), significant advances in technology have almost always been despite IP laws, not because of them*
*Some examples:
It is possible to get Freenet working on OSX, take a look at the Freenet website here, and email support@freenetproject.org if you need any help.
There is no reason for them not to wash their hands either, perhaps you should send a memo about that too?
Shame on them.
I hope that you aren't anyone's manager.
By trying to claim that this is somehow a win for Linux, you are simply proving your that you are willing to ignore facts when advocating Linux. This makes you just as bad as Microsoft's marketing drones.
I am not sure whether the music industry has as much political influence in the UK - but they have certainly done just as much damage to our culture.