If you're engaged in public activity, you don't have much of an expectation of privacy, do you?
Unless you're the subject of an active criminal investigation, however, there's a reasonable expectation that you should be free from undue scrutiny. Why? Because it has that ever-popular "chilling effect on free speech" that you see mentioned so often in First Amendment cases.
Example: An FBI agent walks into a mosque and says, "Hey folks! No cause for alarm. Just wanted to let you know we'll have three agents with tape recorders at every public meeting held here from now on. But hey, as long as you're not doing or saying anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about, right?" It'd be hard to argue that this wouldn't have a profound impact on legitimate discourse in that particular forum.
Face it, observation by the law carries with it (rightly or no) a certain presupposition of wrongdoing. For instance, pretend you're driving along when a police cruiser comes out of nowhere and decides to sit five feet from your rear bumper for the next 20 miles. I guarantee you at least two things are gonna happen. (1) You'll sit there furiously trying to figure out what it was you did wrong. Speeding? Illegal turn? (2) Your manner of driving will be greatly impacted while the cruiser is there. You'll become overly cautious.
(And yes, I know this is an apples/oranges deal. Driving isn't a constitutionally protected right. Just wanted to get across the point that even within the bounds of legal behavior, we act differently while watched.)
That's completely asinine.
Friendly tip: insulting people or their opinions usually isn't the best way to begin your arguments.
that can handle those odd-shaped screws/nuts/bolts/etc. Back in my first year of higher ed -- Stevens Institute of Technology, god how I don't miss it -- swiping the licence plates from the college president's car was *the* campus sport. Each time a set of plates disappeared, they'd use more exotic fasteners. And every time, they'd be swiped again. Heck, one guy I knew must have had a good half dozen of the poor guy's plates in his room.
Oh, and those tools are good for... erm... "borrowing" all sorts of other things, too. Truly,the gift that keeps on giving. =)
According to this, the world's first Xtender Xbox modchip preorders were shipped today
Whoa, whoa, whoa there sonny. Did you say "Xtender"? You mean they're making the damned thing even bigger?
*sigh* Someone save me a spot in line at IKEA; I'm gonna need a larger entertainment center.
P.S. - I kid, I kid. I swear. I love my XBox. I'm actually dying to slot Morrowind in it... whenever that game gets around to releasing itself. =)
Re:what's wrong with non-textbooks?
on
Linux Textbooks?
·
· Score: 2
However, instructors should be able to synthesize these sources themselves and then provide them to the students.
Good instructors should be able to, yes. But, as I'm sure we can all attest to, you're not always guaranteed to get a good instructor. Or even a competent one.
A good textbook is a safety net. It provides a bare minimum of learning. A good instructor may not use it at all, but at least it's there.
Re:what's wrong with non-textbooks?
on
Linux Textbooks?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Take it as a compliment, please, when I say that you are in the blessed minority (along with a lot of other/.ers and, I'd hope, myself). You're able to pull together disparate sources of information -- FAQs, man pages, example code on someone's hobby site -- and synthesize a full learning experience from them. And while this can be a very productive way of working, it's also a somewhat non-traditional one.
Assuming that we're also talking about introductory level courses here, some of the students in question may not be used to (or even capable of) learning that way. In those cases, having a good textbook for one-stop info shopping both in and out of class is not necessarily a bad thing. (I know that when I was learning Perl, the llama book was a godsend during that first week or two, particularly the exercises at the end of each chapter.)
Also, a good textbook can be the best defense against a bad instructor. (And best intentions aside, you'd be surprised how many of these there are out there.) If the professor is a wash, you can at least go off on your own and learn what's in the text. And if you're lucky enough to get a good instructor, she/he will likely use the text only as a starting point for even more in-depth discussions.
Seems to me it would be worthwhile to adopt a "loser pays" system.
Unfortunately, this would be just as open to abuse as the current system.
For one thing, most IP cases tend to linger for a good number of years. Can your Small Company X do without those several million dollars in legal costs till then? Probably not.
More importantly, it would set those daunting economic hurdles even higher. Let's suppose Small Company X was sued by a top-tier corporation (e.g. MSFT). If you thought mounting your own legal defense was expensive, just wait till you see how much *they* spend. Let's say you somehow lost and damages of only $1 were awarded (as has happened in any number of cases). You'd still lose the shirt off your back.
Send all input to sleonard@planetquake.com and I will post any and all comments to Dteam, where applicable. Please contact me if you have any comments."
Umm... doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose of an Ask Slashdot? You know, where we all get to do the communal comment thing and learn from one another and, if we've all been really good, make s'mores at the end of the night?
As so: I'd honestly love to see a course that deals with that elusive first hurdle -- getting startup funding. Where to start looking, how much proof-of-concept is needed, etc. Seems like we've all got ideas for that one perfect game (just like everyone claims to have that one great novel in them) but no concept of how much soul-selling is involved in even thinking of getting it to market.
That is to say, a course less about coding and more about coinage. (A sad reality, but a true one.)
From reading the article, it looks like this claim is based only on statistical analysis of life expectancy data. More specifically (from the article):
In their study, Vaupel and Oeppen reviewed longevity data from developed countries, including Australia, Iceland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.S. They found that life expectancy in such countries is steadily increasing by three months a year, per year.
"The key issue for policymakers to understand from our study is that there appears to be no finite limit to life expectancy," says Vaupel
Somehow, reaching that conclusion from that data seems incorrect. Just because a value is increasing at a steady rate doesn't mean it will continue to do so. Simple example: a dropped object will accelerate for a time then hit terminal velocity (in a real-world situation).
The fact that our life expectancy continues to increase may simply indicate our lifespans haven't yet hit their "terminal velocity" (as determined by biological/environmental factors).
In other words, they ain't dropping us from high enough yet. =)
I mean, pretty much every console out there lives and dies by their "exclusive" content.
PS2: everything Squaresoft
Nintendo: Mario, Zelda
X-Box: Halo
It's not so much a Microsoft thing as it is an industry thing. I've fallen into their trap myself. I bought a PlayStation primarily to run Final Fantasy. I bought a N64 primarily to run Zelda. (X-Box? I'll wait for Halo on the PC, thanks. No mouse, no WASD, no service.)
As fun as it is to punch MSFT in the nose every once in a while, don't blame 'em for this one... =)
It was pretty much irrelevant to the school that they got a copy of Office v.X and earlier versions for Macintosh because not a single user on campus had one
I'm going to send you a very big and very empty box with my address written on it and all postage paid. Please encourage your now-former department to take all that unused Mac software and mail it to me posthaste. Just the thought of all those CDs going to seed breaks my heart. =)
And yes, Office v.X is a terrific product -- although I only use the non-Word portions of it. (I still prefer Word 5.1, as close to perfection as that product line will ever come. Who need all the overhead? Just let me tap at the keys and correct my spelling every once in a while). I'll second your kudos to the Mac unit at MSFT.
The Microsoft agreements provide other software than the OS. Most Mac users use Office and therefore can benefit from an agreement.
Erm... run that by me again?
Here's a list of the software regulated by this agreement. I'll drop the ones that are currently available for Mac (as listed on the MSFT site) into boldface:
Desktop Package* (Includes Office, Core CAL & Windows Upgrades)
Office Standard, Pro and Macintosh Editions
Windows Desktop Operating System Upgrades
Core Client Access Licenses (CALs)
SQL ServerTM CALs
Visio Professional Edition
FrontPage
Visual Studio
Project
Publisher
Encarta Class Server
Encarta Reference Library and Online Deluxe
Magic School Bus
Windows 2000 Professional Step by Step Interactive by Microsoft Press
Web Publishing Step by Step Interactive by Microsoft Press
Now can you repeat that bit again about Mac users benefiting from this?
somewhere on the package or CD it informs you that you agree to accept the EULA
Unless the full text of the EULA is printed alongside that packaging statement, this would also lack a legal leg to stand on. In essence, it would force someone to agree to a contract without even being able to see the full text of that document.
Two scientifically verified speakers? Connected to gobs of organic RAM? I think I'm one quick hack away from turning my skull into a portable MP3 player.
I dunno, the biggest problem I've had re: U.S. vacation time is that in this "new economy", it's commonplace to spend two or three years at a job then move along to another firm. (This is especially true in my chosen field of advertising.) And this is all well and good, except that many firms' HR depts haven't really adjusted and still base vacation time solely on number of years served at that one company. ("Sure, you might be a VP with 20 years experience, but you've only been with us for a year. Enjoy that one week off, kiddo.")
Heck, the agency I'm with now doesn't offer any vacation time during the first year; you have to borrow against the following year's allotment -- which amounts to two weeks spread out over two years. Ugh.
End result: it's become yet another item one has to bargain for when going through the experienced hire job hop. And you might find you'll need to trade away more than you expected (in terms of salary, perks, etc.) if time off is really that important to you.
Well... at least until the job market opens up some; then it's safe to play a bit of hardball again. =)
And as far as I can recall, 2 of them (AMC and Loews) are across the street from each other on 42nd street.
You know, I was just thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, because those two theaters (Loews and AMC on 42nd) are so close together, they have a sort of "gentleman's agreement" in which they don't show the same movies in the same week. One would hope they decide to bend the rules for Star Wars, but ya never know...
I feel like I should be getting riled up here...
on
Wiretapping Made Easier
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
...but I'm not quite sure about what.
A quick read-through of the bill -- and as bills go, this one is really short, so hop on over and take a look -- makes it seem as if all they've done is add owning/distributing child porn was added to the list of wiretappable crimes. If there's more there, I'm missing it.
Other than the faint unease I may feel at law enforcement's gradual erosion of our communal privacy, I'm not really getting a Big Brother vibe off this one. But it might be a useful stepping-off point for a/. discussion on wiretaps in general...
Okay, now that I've got the sass out of my system and a full cup of coffee in front of me, let me mount a cogent defense on my own behalf.
What was described in that article amounts to corporate feature bloat: design driven by the content one wants to sell, not the needs of the consumer. Every time a technology was mentioned during that ZDNet interview, the Sony rep immediately explained how they plan to use it as a conduit for some piece of Sony-branded content (Mariah Carey, J-Lo, the PS2, etc.) That's the compelling reason why companies are so hot to roll out rich media wireless appliances right now. As an interactive advertising producer, I can tell you that folks are chomping at the bit waiting for this oft-promised but not-yet-delivered marketing mainline (and revenue generator).
And that's what bugs me about the situation described in the article: we're locked in a cycle right now where companies are creating artificial demand rather than addressing existing needs. A J-Lo branded phone? That connects to my PS2? At what point did we decide to applaud companies for features that, while not compellingly useful, at least aren't not useful.
I repeat, this is feature bloat. It tacks on unnecessary technology to base model products, ultimately driving up the price point for entry-level consumers who never asked for those features to start with. Call 'em "cultural blinders" if you will, but at the end of the day I just call it "feeling manipulated by the almighty dollar/yen/euro".
Two quick notes: (1) I misattributed the original quote. That was said by Sony Ericsson vice president Anil Raj. Sorry 'bout that. (2) I agree, my original post wasn't intended to be insightful. It was intended to be flip, which is about all I could muster up at that late hour. But the mod system has a mind of its own. =)
Quote from Sony Ericsson president Katsumi Ihara (showing just how misguided this whole effort is):
People are going to buy a phone for a particular purpose, whether it's to take pictures, or listen to music, or whatever. That's a fact that you have to remember.
Or maybe they're buying the phones to, oh I don't know, call people?! Perish the thought.
I give up. The way this content synergy thing is going, my kitchen blender's probably gonna have a Sony-branded web browser and pop-up ads in another 10 years. Hope they've got open source margaritas by then... *sigh*
At a very basic level, every act of expression can be considered to be interactive. (The reader response theory of modern lit crit deals with this to some extent.) That is, there's a constant give and take between the reader/observer and a creative work, static or otherwise. A person comes to "art" with a given set of experiences and beliefs through which the creative elements are filtered and to some extent reconstructed. (If you really want to force the issue, we can drop the "re" and say a work is "constructed" for the very first time when a reader/observer experiences it.) Heck, even the same reader/observer coming to the same work at two different points in time may result in two different readings.
In short, a static work offers a nearly limitless set of ways in which it can be experienced. It is, in a nutshell, interactive.
Video games simply take that basic idea and codify it. Specifically, a game designer does not present the player with a singular experience, but rather the potential for a given set of experiences. Not limitless, since there are constraints to what I can do in game; for example, if the game lacks guns, I can't choose to shoot someone.
I choose Hamlet. I proceed to kill my father's murderer right away, because I'm awesome. Shakespeare obviously didn't intend that...
That doesn't diminish the standing of the original as speech or art. For instance, I can grab a Dostoevsky book off my shelf, tear out every other page, and try reading the thing that way. Did he intend this? No. Does it alter my reading experience? Yup. Does this mean "Demons" is not speech or art? Of course not.
So, please, bear with me for a little while longer, because I think I'm almost getting it.
The scenario above, if I understand it correctly, describes a person tracking something on a screen. In that case, an increasing return on angle to x-distance makes perfect sense. (Whew.) But the review gives me the impression that this mechanism works in the opposite manner. That is, one's head isn't doing the tracking along the width/height of the screen, but is the object (silver dot) being tracked from a single fixed point (camera) above the screen.
I've already admitted I was an English major, so I don't have any formulas to fall back on here. Instead, I'm reduced to scribbling on scratch paper and trying to describe that. We have the circle of radius 5" you described. We have the head mouse-using woman facing the screen. Observing it from overhead, if she turns her head 45 degrees to the right, the dot on her forehead moves a small distance the Y-axis and a larger one along the X-axis. (I'm still scribbling as I'm typing here). Now if she turns her head another 45 degrees to the right, wouldn't the dot on her head move a smaller distance on the X-axis than and a larger distance on the Y-axis as compared to her first movement? And if the camera only tracked movements along the X-axis...
Anyway, thanks for taking time out for this impromptu geometry lesson. The world will be a better place for it. =)
I can't say for sure, since I haven't tried the thing, but wouldn't having the camera track a silver dot on your forehead result in slower cursor speed the farther you move it from the center of the screen?
What I mean to say is that your head doesn't move in a purely horizontal (or vertical) fashion; rather, it swivels atop your neck. So as one nears the extremes -- trying to move the cursor to the right screen edge, for instance -- there would be less purely horizontal motion for the camera to detect, since the silver dot is describing a curve.
Maybethe product compensates for this at the edges? Or detects depth? I don't know, but I'd be interested in finding out.
Slashdot Mirror
Not necessary -- my PC case is already at the karma cap. (What can I say? It posts a lot when I'm not home.) But hey, thanks for keeping it in mind.
Unless you're the subject of an active criminal investigation, however, there's a reasonable expectation that you should be free from undue scrutiny. Why? Because it has that ever-popular "chilling effect on free speech" that you see mentioned so often in First Amendment cases.
Example: An FBI agent walks into a mosque and says, "Hey folks! No cause for alarm. Just wanted to let you know we'll have three agents with tape recorders at every public meeting held here from now on. But hey, as long as you're not doing or saying anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about, right?" It'd be hard to argue that this wouldn't have a profound impact on legitimate discourse in that particular forum.
Face it, observation by the law carries with it (rightly or no) a certain presupposition of wrongdoing. For instance, pretend you're driving along when a police cruiser comes out of nowhere and decides to sit five feet from your rear bumper for the next 20 miles. I guarantee you at least two things are gonna happen. (1) You'll sit there furiously trying to figure out what it was you did wrong. Speeding? Illegal turn? (2) Your manner of driving will be greatly impacted while the cruiser is there. You'll become overly cautious.
(And yes, I know this is an apples/oranges deal. Driving isn't a constitutionally protected right. Just wanted to get across the point that even within the bounds of legal behavior, we act differently while watched.)
Friendly tip: insulting people or their opinions usually isn't the best way to begin your arguments.
Oh, and those tools are good for... erm... "borrowing" all sorts of other things, too. Truly,the gift that keeps on giving. =)
Whoa, whoa, whoa there sonny. Did you say "Xtender"? You mean they're making the damned thing even bigger?
*sigh* Someone save me a spot in line at IKEA; I'm gonna need a larger entertainment center.
P.S. - I kid, I kid. I swear. I love my XBox. I'm actually dying to slot Morrowind in it... whenever that game gets around to releasing itself. =)
Good instructors should be able to, yes. But, as I'm sure we can all attest to, you're not always guaranteed to get a good instructor. Or even a competent one.
A good textbook is a safety net. It provides a bare minimum of learning. A good instructor may not use it at all, but at least it's there.
Assuming that we're also talking about introductory level courses here, some of the students in question may not be used to (or even capable of) learning that way. In those cases, having a good textbook for one-stop info shopping both in and out of class is not necessarily a bad thing. (I know that when I was learning Perl, the llama book was a godsend during that first week or two, particularly the exercises at the end of each chapter.)
Also, a good textbook can be the best defense against a bad instructor. (And best intentions aside, you'd be surprised how many of these there are out there.) If the professor is a wash, you can at least go off on your own and learn what's in the text. And if you're lucky enough to get a good instructor, she/he will likely use the text only as a starting point for even more in-depth discussions.
Same article appeared on /. back in March, dinnit?
Unfortunately, this would be just as open to abuse as the current system.
For one thing, most IP cases tend to linger for a good number of years. Can your Small Company X do without those several million dollars in legal costs till then? Probably not.
More importantly, it would set those daunting economic hurdles even higher. Let's suppose Small Company X was sued by a top-tier corporation (e.g. MSFT). If you thought mounting your own legal defense was expensive, just wait till you see how much *they* spend. Let's say you somehow lost and damages of only $1 were awarded (as has happened in any number of cases). You'd still lose the shirt off your back.
Umm... doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose of an Ask Slashdot? You know, where we all get to do the communal comment thing and learn from one another and, if we've all been really good, make s'mores at the end of the night?
As so: I'd honestly love to see a course that deals with that elusive first hurdle -- getting startup funding. Where to start looking, how much proof-of-concept is needed, etc. Seems like we've all got ideas for that one perfect game (just like everyone claims to have that one great novel in them) but no concept of how much soul-selling is involved in even thinking of getting it to market.
That is to say, a course less about coding and more about coinage. (A sad reality, but a true one.)
The fact that our life expectancy continues to increase may simply indicate our lifespans haven't yet hit their "terminal velocity" (as determined by biological/environmental factors).
In other words, they ain't dropping us from high enough yet. =)
- PS2: everything Squaresoft
- Nintendo: Mario, Zelda
- X-Box: Halo
It's not so much a Microsoft thing as it is an industry thing. I've fallen into their trap myself. I bought a PlayStation primarily to run Final Fantasy. I bought a N64 primarily to run Zelda. (X-Box? I'll wait for Halo on the PC, thanks. No mouse, no WASD, no service.)As fun as it is to punch MSFT in the nose every once in a while, don't blame 'em for this one... =)
I'm going to send you a very big and very empty box with my address written on it and all postage paid. Please encourage your now-former department to take all that unused Mac software and mail it to me posthaste. Just the thought of all those CDs going to seed breaks my heart. =)
And yes, Office v.X is a terrific product -- although I only use the non-Word portions of it. (I still prefer Word 5.1, as close to perfection as that product line will ever come. Who need all the overhead? Just let me tap at the keys and correct my spelling every once in a while). I'll second your kudos to the Mac unit at MSFT.
Erm... run that by me again?
Here's a list of the software regulated by this agreement. I'll drop the ones that are currently available for Mac (as listed on the MSFT site) into boldface:
- Desktop Package* (Includes Office, Core CAL & Windows Upgrades)
- Office Standard, Pro and Macintosh Editions
- Windows Desktop Operating System Upgrades
- Core Client Access Licenses (CALs)
- SQL ServerTM CALs
- Visio Professional Edition
- FrontPage
- Visual Studio
- Project
- Publisher
- Encarta Class Server
- Encarta Reference Library and Online Deluxe
- Magic School Bus
- Windows 2000 Professional Step by Step Interactive by Microsoft Press
- Web Publishing Step by Step Interactive by Microsoft Press
Now can you repeat that bit again about Mac users benefiting from this?Wow, Linux really has had a polarizing effect on the computer world.
Quick, hand me that screwdriver!
Heck, the agency I'm with now doesn't offer any vacation time during the first year; you have to borrow against the following year's allotment -- which amounts to two weeks spread out over two years. Ugh.
End result: it's become yet another item one has to bargain for when going through the experienced hire job hop. And you might find you'll need to trade away more than you expected (in terms of salary, perks, etc.) if time off is really that important to you.
Well... at least until the job market opens up some; then it's safe to play a bit of hardball again. =)
You know, I was just thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, because those two theaters (Loews and AMC on 42nd) are so close together, they have a sort of "gentleman's agreement" in which they don't show the same movies in the same week. One would hope they decide to bend the rules for Star Wars, but ya never know...
A quick read-through of the bill -- and as bills go, this one is really short, so hop on over and take a look -- makes it seem as if all they've done is add owning/distributing child porn was added to the list of wiretappable crimes. If there's more there, I'm missing it.
Other than the faint unease I may feel at law enforcement's gradual erosion of our communal privacy, I'm not really getting a Big Brother vibe off this one. But it might be a useful stepping-off point for a /. discussion on wiretaps in general...
What was described in that article amounts to corporate feature bloat: design driven by the content one wants to sell, not the needs of the consumer. Every time a technology was mentioned during that ZDNet interview, the Sony rep immediately explained how they plan to use it as a conduit for some piece of Sony-branded content (Mariah Carey, J-Lo, the PS2, etc.) That's the compelling reason why companies are so hot to roll out rich media wireless appliances right now. As an interactive advertising producer, I can tell you that folks are chomping at the bit waiting for this oft-promised but not-yet-delivered marketing mainline (and revenue generator).
And that's what bugs me about the situation described in the article: we're locked in a cycle right now where companies are creating artificial demand rather than addressing existing needs. A J-Lo branded phone? That connects to my PS2? At what point did we decide to applaud companies for features that, while not compellingly useful, at least aren't not useful.
I repeat, this is feature bloat. It tacks on unnecessary technology to base model products, ultimately driving up the price point for entry-level consumers who never asked for those features to start with. Call 'em "cultural blinders" if you will, but at the end of the day I just call it "feeling manipulated by the almighty dollar/yen/euro".
Two quick notes: (1) I misattributed the original quote. That was said by Sony Ericsson vice president Anil Raj. Sorry 'bout that. (2) I agree, my original post wasn't intended to be insightful. It was intended to be flip, which is about all I could muster up at that late hour. But the mod system has a mind of its own. =)
And I've also got pretty bad taste in clothing. What's not to love?
People are going to buy a phone for a particular purpose, whether it's to take pictures, or listen to music, or whatever. That's a fact that you have to remember.
Or maybe they're buying the phones to, oh I don't know, call people?! Perish the thought.
I give up. The way this content synergy thing is going, my kitchen blender's probably gonna have a Sony-branded web browser and pop-up ads in another 10 years. Hope they've got open source margaritas by then... *sigh*
At a very basic level, every act of expression can be considered to be interactive. (The reader response theory of modern lit crit deals with this to some extent.) That is, there's a constant give and take between the reader/observer and a creative work, static or otherwise. A person comes to "art" with a given set of experiences and beliefs through which the creative elements are filtered and to some extent reconstructed. (If you really want to force the issue, we can drop the "re" and say a work is "constructed" for the very first time when a reader/observer experiences it.) Heck, even the same reader/observer coming to the same work at two different points in time may result in two different readings.
In short, a static work offers a nearly limitless set of ways in which it can be experienced. It is, in a nutshell, interactive.
Video games simply take that basic idea and codify it. Specifically, a game designer does not present the player with a singular experience, but rather the potential for a given set of experiences. Not limitless, since there are constraints to what I can do in game; for example, if the game lacks guns, I can't choose to shoot someone.
I choose Hamlet. I proceed to kill my father's murderer right away, because I'm awesome. Shakespeare obviously didn't intend that...
That doesn't diminish the standing of the original as speech or art. For instance, I can grab a Dostoevsky book off my shelf, tear out every other page, and try reading the thing that way. Did he intend this? No. Does it alter my reading experience? Yup. Does this mean "Demons" is not speech or art? Of course not.
So, please, bear with me for a little while longer, because I think I'm almost getting it.
The scenario above, if I understand it correctly, describes a person tracking something on a screen. In that case, an increasing return on angle to x-distance makes perfect sense. (Whew.) But the review gives me the impression that this mechanism works in the opposite manner. That is, one's head isn't doing the tracking along the width/height of the screen, but is the object (silver dot) being tracked from a single fixed point (camera) above the screen.
I've already admitted I was an English major, so I don't have any formulas to fall back on here. Instead, I'm reduced to scribbling on scratch paper and trying to describe that. We have the circle of radius 5" you described. We have the head mouse-using woman facing the screen. Observing it from overhead, if she turns her head 45 degrees to the right, the dot on her forehead moves a small distance the Y-axis and a larger one along the X-axis. (I'm still scribbling as I'm typing here). Now if she turns her head another 45 degrees to the right, wouldn't the dot on her head move a smaller distance on the X-axis than and a larger distance on the Y-axis as compared to her first movement? And if the camera only tracked movements along the X-axis...
Anyway, thanks for taking time out for this impromptu geometry lesson. The world will be a better place for it. =)
What I mean to say is that your head doesn't move in a purely horizontal (or vertical) fashion; rather, it swivels atop your neck. So as one nears the extremes -- trying to move the cursor to the right screen edge, for instance -- there would be less purely horizontal motion for the camera to detect, since the silver dot is describing a curve.
Maybethe product compensates for this at the edges? Or detects depth? I don't know, but I'd be interested in finding out.