Slashdot even got an honorable mention in the NOAA writeup (third paragraph)!
I'm happy because my concerns were addressed. I was afraid that the proposed policy was going to give commercial interests the ability to reqeust the NOAA discontinue a service without review, meaning that if weather.com didn't like the ability of the NWS to issue point forecasts they could behind-the-scenes ask for it to be ended. The modified policy now states they will "Establish... orderly processes for seeking input and suggestions to create, modify, or discontinue products and services".
It's a cool feeling to be a part of a process that actually seems to have worked to our advantage for a change.
Because re-digitizing can add some very unwanted artifacts due to "aliasing." The stream coming from the headphone jack may "seem" analog, but it's a reconstructed digital signal.
The problem is aliasing. It's the audio equivalent of the jagged edges you see on digital pictures that are blown up too large. All digital music is aliased at some level, just as all digital pictures are aliased at some resolution. The idea is to sample the original analog waveform often enough so that it doesn't distort what you hear when it's played back.
A playback device reconstructs the waveform from the samples. But at some scale, it's still a bunch of "smoothed out" stair steps. When you re-sample the waveform, if your sampling rate is out-of-sync with those stairsteps, you get a curious interference pattern based on the ratio of the original sample rate to the new sample rate. This is a very regular ratio, called a "beat frequency", and it can be very audible in the output.
To go back to the 'visible' analogy, it's like being in a moving car and looking through two chain-link fences as you travel past them -- you see a very visible and regular pattern (called a Moire pattern).
[ Side note: the reason your MP3 encoders usually offer you frequency choices of 44100 Hz and 22050 Hz is not an accident. CDs are encoded at 44100 Hz. By offering these frequencies, you are either in precise lockstep with the original, or at exactly a 2:1 ratio. Both of those cause the samples to be based exactly in sync with the original stairsteps, meaning there will be no beat frequency. So as long as your sampling rate is within 10-15 Hz of the original source, any beat frequency interference would be inaudible. ]
In the DRM world foisted upon us by the RIAA (in collusion with the congress they purchased,) my guess is they have introduced a slowly varying aliasing frequency in their line output. ( Or at least I would have if it were me designing the system;-) What this would do is cause a fixed-rate encoder to occasionally lose sync with the input signal. Once sync is lost, the beat frequencies would become audible, then disappear again as the digitizer re-synced with the input stream. Your re-digitized music would periodically sound like crap -- just enough to make you not want to digitally record off the satellite receiver.
Could this be beaten? Of course, but not easily, and not with the average MP3 encoder available today. It puts the satellite folks at an advantage until the fine authors of Lame figure out how to defeat it.
So, that's why digitizing an analog stream isn't as desirable as it may seem. That, and the convenience factor. Most people are too lazy to want to manually chop up the audio tracks into separate songs, type in artist names, and all the other grunt work that goes along with ripping an analog source. And if there's one technical defense the RIAA can always count on, it's that of lazy customers.
No, the OSS community does not need to "get rid of him." But they do need to understand that not everyone is going 100% open source. I'm running Windows at home because the games and apps I want are Win32 platform based. I'm a developer whose day job is programming on a Win32 app, and so I need to use Windows all day long. Does that mean I'm opposed to open source? Of course not, I run several open source apps, and have contributed to a few.
I usually ignore both sides of the OSS / Microsoft debate, but in this case the attitude of "trow da bums out" is just too divisive. If you're OK with paying Microsoft dues, then fine. If Robyanetta is avoiding it, that's fine too. Just both of you should recognize the other point of view isn't going away, and you should learn to cooperate on the common ground that exists between you.
That implies the most likely offering will be having the fuel cell molded into the plastics of the phone body itself. Non-removable power cell means non-reusable, and we get to buy whole new ones when we're sick of the phones.
Ironically, a fuel cell should far outlast the features of the phone itself. You'll want to buy a new phone just for the "Nokia Tricorder(TM)" feature long before the fuel cell wears out (assuming the membrane doesn't plug up with impurities over time or can be cleaned/replaced.)
It's conceivable that the fuel cells could be manufactured as a separate modular component, sold in standardized shapes (such as AA, AAA, and 9V batteries are today), and could be taken from the old phone for use in the new one. Since they will have a much longer life than rechargeable batteries, and assuming chipmaking trends continue down the smaller, less power hungry path, newer phones won't be needing that much more current even to add new features. Far in the future, new phones might not even come with fuel cells just so you can save a few bucks by reusing your old one.
If you get a long-enough life out of a fuel cell mechanism (10 or 20 years, for example) making it out of biodegradeable components isn't such a good idea anymore. Recyclable, yes, but biodegradeable, no.
[ Setting: ordinary classroom, whiteboards on front walls, clock over teacher's head, etc. There is a TEACHER standing at the front of the room. ]
TEACHER
Hi, welcome to the Commodore School of Marketing. This is Marketing 101. Have any of you ever heard of the 'Amiga'? [ a STUDENT raises his hand ] Oh, you have? OK, you're in the wrong room, you need to go back to admissions building to get your schedule sorted out.
[ STUDENT gathers his notebooks and leaves. ]
All right, class, first we're going to go over some Commodore marketing basics. Can someone identify this food in front of me?
STUDENT [ raises hand ]
Sushi?
TEACHER
That's close, but this is the Commodore School of Marketing. You must learn to call it "raw cold dead fish." Next, we have this food here. Anyone want to give it a try?
STUDENT
Cheese.
TEACHER
Good, but what kind of cheese is it?
STUDENT
Parmesan?
TEACHER
No, we call this "cheese that smells like other people's feet." OK, can someone identify this plant?
STUDENT
That's a rose.
TEACHER
Oh, dear, I'm afraid you're just not picking up on the Commodore school of marketing. This is a "sharp scratching prickly-stem bush." Let's try a different approach, shall we? [ TEACHER fiddles with a keyboard and mouse ] Can someone identify this program on this computer screen?
STUDENT [ wincing in expectation of the backlash ]
Is that an I.D.E?
[ TEACHER remains silent ]
A "development studio?" An editor?
[ a chorus of STUDENTs call out suggestions ]
"Visual developer"
"WYSIWIG GUI generator"
"turboPascal"
"Borland Delphi"
[ TEACHER loudly shushes the class ]
The first rule about Borland products is, "We don't talk about Borland products"
That's just a cheap shot. MFC has always sucked, and I mean badly.
No offense intended to Mike Blaszcak (one of the lead developers of MFC) as he made MFC tackle some pretty amazing things, but MFC's macro interface was horrible, self-inconsistent, and the documentation was extremely poor. I saw Mike at a conference once, and watched him whip out some clever MFC solution to answer an attendee's question. On one hand he acknowledged the poor quality of the documentation, then ripped the questioner a new one because he [paraphrasing here] "should have been looking at the definition of the macro, not reading an out-of-date manual" followed by "if you can't read the macro source, you shouldn't be programming."
I think at that time Mike was pretty typical of the heavy tech Microsofties. Brilliant, arrogant, socially awkward (at best), and intolerant of people who he felt weren't at his level. He navigated thru the code with the ease of the author (we all know what that's like) and demanded every chair in front of him contain either people at exactly his level, or those who should worship at the feet of the worthy. (Microsoft was wise to keep those guys locked up in Redmond, and to hire PR flacks to put on a happy public face.)
I try to make sure the family is as bored as possible watching me clean up with Spybot. Hopefully, they lose interest and wander off before it starts listing the deleted cookies like C:\Documents and settings\14-year-old-kids-name\cookies\xxx.sexxxtr acker.sex
I don't want to be in a position to have to "pass judgement" on them, nor do I want to narc on the kids. I figure that if they're having me clean up porn popups, then they've already figured out that "someone" has been visiting naughty sites. It's their job to deal with their kids, not mine.
As for me, I don't care for blocking software, and I don't have it in my house. I think parents need to be parental, rather than hope for some automated solution. Besides, I think most kids are smart enough that they view blocking software as a sign that "dad doesn't trust them." If you're running blocking software, then guess what? They're right.
That's the beauty of this phone, isn't it? They can keep the data rate the same -- but if you're going to send 7MB for a photo (OK, 2MB of JPG) you're going to use an awful lot more of it. Ka-ching!
I figure we'll be a lot more tempted to send those big hi-res pictures than a 50x50 chunk that is supposed to be a beautiful girl at a bar, but comes out looking like Spacecataz on my crappy Sony Ericsson.
It might be "nice" to have full spectrum lighting so you can see on the videotape that the bad guy is wearing khaki instead of taupe, but it's really going to be irrelevant as far as prosecution. But "even" lighting is far more important than "dynamic" lighting -- you want light all around, no dark corners, no bright wash-out spots.
Anyway, price is always a factor for commercial installations. But price doesn't just include the cost of the bulb plus the cost of the electricity. The labor cost of replacing a hard-to-get-to bulb can be many times the cost of the bulb itself. Think of the cost of renting manlifts to get to those third-floor ceiling bulbs. If you have to replace an incandescent once a year, or a CF once every seven years, the electricity savings pale in comparison to the bulb changing savings.
They never administered the vaccine at all, which was the point of this story.
IANAMD either, but I can think of a few reasons they might have induced the coma. You could be right, it could have slowed the transfer of the virus and given the retrovirals (not vaccine) time to work. Another poster guessed it might be a form of immobility to help prevent her from injuring herself through involuntary muscle spasms. I'm guessing they used it to help keep the brain from swelling due to the virus. Could have been a combination of all three.
the work that I do (programming, and webpage translation for Japanese companies)
I have just one OT question for you: are you the "All your base" guy?
Anyway, I happen to agree with you in that you absolutely need to do what you love, and you need to do it for a company that values you. A man is poor indeed if he gets up every morning thinking "my job sucks, my boss sucks, my co-workers suck, I don't want to go to work today or any day." That's not a life, that's a miserable existence.
You're lucky. The images this reminds me of are more like Mr. Garrison's "Segway" invention (on South Park, just before the release of the "real" Segway.)
TFA says "The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins." So according to my reading of this, it wouldn't appear in whitespace.
I'm not buying it for a second. Millimetre-sized dots are much larger than the resolution of the printer. Perhaps the author meant "millimetre-sized font." Or perhaps the author was only thinking of the so-called Eurion constellation, discovered by Markus Kuhn. The circles (dots?) making up the constellation are exactly one millimetre in diameter.
Mindshare that extends to Yeald himself. Apparently, he's willing to invest your money where his mouth isn't.
This is what Netcraft has to say about his site:
OS, Web Server and Hosting History for www.yeald.com
http://www.yeald.com was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 17-Nov-2004 18:00:38 GMT - refresh now FAQ
OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner
Linux Apache/1.3.27 (Linux/SuSE) mod_jk/1.2.2-dev mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6i mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a 17-Nov-2004 213.95.11.10 YEALD AG
I just signed onto the new IBM project for altruistic reasons.
I don't care if they take this data and make a for-profit drug from it. If this data helps some pharmaceutical develop a really expensive drug that prevents some nasty disease, well, so be it. My donation consists of a few dollars of electricity, and I consider the cost of the increased risk I take on my machine to be negligible (I maintain my own equipment, and voluntarily expose myself to more risk just surfing the web.) All I ask is that the software back off while I'm using the machine -- it's mine, after all.
I used to participate in the distributed.net challenges, but lately they've gotten stupid. Yes, it was important to show we could crack DES at will. But no, it's not important that we crack RC5-64 or RC5-72. It's just expending thousands of tons of coal to prove the exact point that mathematicians and cryptographers both agreed was true in the first place, that it takes e effort to crack a 2^n key. Big wasteful deal. At least the proteome folding project has the potential to pay out in benefit to humanity, even if a pharmaceutical profits from it as it passes through their hands.
It's also nice to imagine that if they find a cure for disease X, that if I got X at some point in the future I might be able to say "Hey, I volunteered to help you solve the X problem, can't I get a discount on your X drugs now?" They might go for it, they probably wouldn't, and I probably wouldn't get disease X in the first place anyway. But it's nice to imagine.
If dnet could find a deserving consumer for all those volunteer computrons, though, they'd be much more worthy of participation. Something like a distributed NOAA weather simulator, something that could benefit all of us on a daily basis would be nice.
I understand that you're making your point about "Hollywood" computer programs. (Like in Jurassic Park: "Hey, this is UNIX. I know this!") But I think these "slightly futuristic" programs do a great service -- they get ordinary software developers thinking "that's really cool -- how could I make that happen?" And some do.
Just explore a few of the possibilities: the NRO may already have software like this for satellite reconnaisance photography (and with their budget, paying for it isn't a problem.) Very few of us know what the current level of technology is for classified or top-secret systems (those few Slashdotters who do know probably aren't going to jeopardize their clearance just to enlighten our little discussion.) But would they share this with public safety organizations? Probably not.
As for affordability, a university researcher may have developed software like this in conjunction with the NYPD, and been funded by a grant.
I know that a table of building heights and math can accomplish this. (For that matter I remember entertaining myself one day playing with the images from Terraserver and calculating the time of day the satellite photographs were taken based on their date and the shadow lengths and angles.) So for a minute think about the limited requirements of the program to do this. First, Manhattan has a very distinctive skyline. There are only a few hundred buildings that such a program would need to use as reference points, limiting the scope of the data gathering to a reasonable level. (Really, how hard would it be to recognize any of those buildings, when you limit it to just a few hundred?) The height can be computed based on window-to-window and floor-to-floor spacing. Recognizing just two landmark buildings on a picture would give you all the data you need. Computers excel at both keeping tables of statistics and trig. It's just not that hard.
And as for the swooping down to the street level, that's actually the easiest part and can be done with off-the-shelf software. It just requires lots(!) of photographic data. How different was it from a $60 copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004? Have you ever used Flight Sim in "slew mode", just to drive your point of view around, and did you know there's a protocol for an external program to interface with it to drive it around exactly like that? The guys who have multiple PCs for video rendering on a dozen screens (for a wraparound cockpit effect) use it. Sure, Microsoft probably hasn't detailed every single brownstone in Manhattan on the map (yet) and probably not to the photorealistic detail you describe, but the last time I bought a copy they had fairly good detail of the downtown areas of Chicago I'm familiar with. And that was several years ago.
I think we can both agree that such programs are certainly possible (if not necessarily affordable to the NYPD,) and also that we don't know what kind of software really exists in the classified world of reconnaisance or even of police work today. And I agree with you that Hollywood's tarted-up graphics don't always represent the real world, but they certainly don't piss me off -- they excite me by getting me to wonder if such things are really possible, or if they maybe do already exist.
Slashdot Mirror
Riiiight . . . What's a first post?
Never mind, NOAA. I want you to go out into the world and collect a cluster of beowulfs, and load them up two by two.
Riiiight . . . am I on JenniCam? How come you want me to do all these weird things?
I'm going to destroy the world.
Riiiight . . . how you gonna do it?
I'm going to post the URL on the front page of Slashdot, and crap-flood 'em all right out.
Riiiight . . .
I'm happy because my concerns were addressed. I was afraid that the proposed policy was going to give commercial interests the ability to reqeust the NOAA discontinue a service without review, meaning that if weather.com didn't like the ability of the NWS to issue point forecasts they could behind-the-scenes ask for it to be ended. The modified policy now states they will "Establish... orderly processes for seeking input and suggestions to create, modify, or discontinue products and services".
It's a cool feeling to be a part of a process that actually seems to have worked to our advantage for a change.
The problem is aliasing. It's the audio equivalent of the jagged edges you see on digital pictures that are blown up too large. All digital music is aliased at some level, just as all digital pictures are aliased at some resolution. The idea is to sample the original analog waveform often enough so that it doesn't distort what you hear when it's played back.
A playback device reconstructs the waveform from the samples. But at some scale, it's still a bunch of "smoothed out" stair steps. When you re-sample the waveform, if your sampling rate is out-of-sync with those stairsteps, you get a curious interference pattern based on the ratio of the original sample rate to the new sample rate. This is a very regular ratio, called a "beat frequency", and it can be very audible in the output.
To go back to the 'visible' analogy, it's like being in a moving car and looking through two chain-link fences as you travel past them -- you see a very visible and regular pattern (called a Moire pattern).
[ Side note: the reason your MP3 encoders usually offer you frequency choices of 44100 Hz and 22050 Hz is not an accident. CDs are encoded at 44100 Hz. By offering these frequencies, you are either in precise lockstep with the original, or at exactly a 2:1 ratio. Both of those cause the samples to be based exactly in sync with the original stairsteps, meaning there will be no beat frequency. So as long as your sampling rate is within 10-15 Hz of the original source, any beat frequency interference would be inaudible. ]
In the DRM world foisted upon us by the RIAA (in collusion with the congress they purchased,) my guess is they have introduced a slowly varying aliasing frequency in their line output. ( Or at least I would have if it were me designing the system ;-) What this would do is cause a fixed-rate encoder to occasionally lose sync with the input signal. Once sync is lost, the beat frequencies would become audible, then disappear again as the digitizer re-synced with the input stream. Your re-digitized music would periodically sound like crap -- just enough to make you not want to digitally record off the satellite receiver.
Could this be beaten? Of course, but not easily, and not with the average MP3 encoder available today. It puts the satellite folks at an advantage until the fine authors of Lame figure out how to defeat it.
So, that's why digitizing an analog stream isn't as desirable as it may seem. That, and the convenience factor. Most people are too lazy to want to manually chop up the audio tracks into separate songs, type in artist names, and all the other grunt work that goes along with ripping an analog source. And if there's one technical defense the RIAA can always count on, it's that of lazy customers.
I usually ignore both sides of the OSS / Microsoft debate, but in this case the attitude of "trow da bums out" is just too divisive. If you're OK with paying Microsoft dues, then fine. If Robyanetta is avoiding it, that's fine too. Just both of you should recognize the other point of view isn't going away, and you should learn to cooperate on the common ground that exists between you.
That implies the most likely offering will be having the fuel cell molded into the plastics of the phone body itself. Non-removable power cell means non-reusable, and we get to buy whole new ones when we're sick of the phones.
It's conceivable that the fuel cells could be manufactured as a separate modular component, sold in standardized shapes (such as AA, AAA, and 9V batteries are today), and could be taken from the old phone for use in the new one. Since they will have a much longer life than rechargeable batteries, and assuming chipmaking trends continue down the smaller, less power hungry path, newer phones won't be needing that much more current even to add new features. Far in the future, new phones might not even come with fuel cells just so you can save a few bucks by reusing your old one.
If you get a long-enough life out of a fuel cell mechanism (10 or 20 years, for example) making it out of biodegradeable components isn't such a good idea anymore. Recyclable, yes, but biodegradeable, no.
That joke was a little Shakey.
TEACHER
Hi, welcome to the Commodore School of Marketing. This is Marketing 101. Have any of you ever heard of the 'Amiga'? [ a STUDENT raises his hand ] Oh, you have? OK, you're in the wrong room, you need to go back to admissions building to get your schedule sorted out.
[ STUDENT gathers his notebooks and leaves. ]
All right, class, first we're going to go over some Commodore marketing basics. Can someone identify this food in front of me?
STUDENT [ raises hand ]
Sushi?
TEACHER
That's close, but this is the Commodore School of Marketing. You must learn to call it "raw cold dead fish." Next, we have this food here. Anyone want to give it a try?
STUDENT
Cheese.
TEACHER
Good, but what kind of cheese is it?
STUDENT
Parmesan?
TEACHER
No, we call this "cheese that smells like other people's feet." OK, can someone identify this plant?
STUDENT
That's a rose.
TEACHER
Oh, dear, I'm afraid you're just not picking up on the Commodore school of marketing. This is a "sharp scratching prickly-stem bush." Let's try a different approach, shall we? [ TEACHER fiddles with a keyboard and mouse ] Can someone identify this program on this computer screen?
STUDENT [ wincing in expectation of the backlash ]
Is that an I.D.E?
[ TEACHER remains silent ]
A "development studio?" An editor?
[ a chorus of STUDENTs call out suggestions ]
"Visual developer"
"WYSIWIG GUI generator"
"turboPascal"
"Borland Delphi"
[ TEACHER loudly shushes the class ]
The first rule about Borland products is, "We don't talk about Borland products"
No offense intended to Mike Blaszcak (one of the lead developers of MFC) as he made MFC tackle some pretty amazing things, but MFC's macro interface was horrible, self-inconsistent, and the documentation was extremely poor. I saw Mike at a conference once, and watched him whip out some clever MFC solution to answer an attendee's question. On one hand he acknowledged the poor quality of the documentation, then ripped the questioner a new one because he [paraphrasing here] "should have been looking at the definition of the macro, not reading an out-of-date manual" followed by "if you can't read the macro source, you shouldn't be programming."
I think at that time Mike was pretty typical of the heavy tech Microsofties. Brilliant, arrogant, socially awkward (at best), and intolerant of people who he felt weren't at his level. He navigated thru the code with the ease of the author (we all know what that's like) and demanded every chair in front of him contain either people at exactly his level, or those who should worship at the feet of the worthy. (Microsoft was wise to keep those guys locked up in Redmond, and to hire PR flacks to put on a happy public face.)
I don't want to be in a position to have to "pass judgement" on them, nor do I want to narc on the kids. I figure that if they're having me clean up porn popups, then they've already figured out that "someone" has been visiting naughty sites. It's their job to deal with their kids, not mine.
As for me, I don't care for blocking software, and I don't have it in my house. I think parents need to be parental, rather than hope for some automated solution. Besides, I think most kids are smart enough that they view blocking software as a sign that "dad doesn't trust them." If you're running blocking software, then guess what? They're right.
Anyway, my wife is getting me this T-shirt for christmas. We'll see who's cleaning up the spyware after dinner then... :-)
I figure we'll be a lot more tempted to send those big hi-res pictures than a 50x50 chunk that is supposed to be a beautiful girl at a bar, but comes out looking like Spacecataz on my crappy Sony Ericsson.
It might be "nice" to have full spectrum lighting so you can see on the videotape that the bad guy is wearing khaki instead of taupe, but it's really going to be irrelevant as far as prosecution. But "even" lighting is far more important than "dynamic" lighting -- you want light all around, no dark corners, no bright wash-out spots.
Anyway, price is always a factor for commercial installations. But price doesn't just include the cost of the bulb plus the cost of the electricity. The labor cost of replacing a hard-to-get-to bulb can be many times the cost of the bulb itself. Think of the cost of renting manlifts to get to those third-floor ceiling bulbs. If you have to replace an incandescent once a year, or a CF once every seven years, the electricity savings pale in comparison to the bulb changing savings.
IANAMD either, but I can think of a few reasons they might have induced the coma. You could be right, it could have slowed the transfer of the virus and given the retrovirals (not vaccine) time to work. Another poster guessed it might be a form of immobility to help prevent her from injuring herself through involuntary muscle spasms. I'm guessing they used it to help keep the brain from swelling due to the virus. Could have been a combination of all three.
Something about that imagined six-inch needle kept me from ever wanting to be bitten by an animal...
I have just one OT question for you: are you the "All your base" guy?
Anyway, I happen to agree with you in that you absolutely need to do what you love, and you need to do it for a company that values you. A man is poor indeed if he gets up every morning thinking "my job sucks, my boss sucks, my co-workers suck, I don't want to go to work today or any day." That's not a life, that's a miserable existence.
And I frequently perceive sound as pain, especially when it's Gangsta Rap or Country & Western.
His feedback probe didn't go on the user's tongue...
It was controlled by a "probe".
I'm not buying it for a second. Millimetre-sized dots are much larger than the resolution of the printer. Perhaps the author meant "millimetre-sized font." Or perhaps the author was only thinking of the so-called Eurion constellation, discovered by Markus Kuhn. The circles (dots?) making up the constellation are exactly one millimetre in diameter.
"Not tonight dear, I've got a DLL incompatibility."
This is what Netcraft has to say about his site:
OS, Web Server and Hosting History for www.yeald.com
http://www.yeald.com was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 17-Nov-2004 18:00:38 GMT - refresh now FAQ
OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner
Linux Apache/1.3.27 (Linux/SuSE) mod_jk/1.2.2-dev mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.6i mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a 17-Nov-2004 213.95.11.10 YEALD AG
I don't care if they take this data and make a for-profit drug from it. If this data helps some pharmaceutical develop a really expensive drug that prevents some nasty disease, well, so be it. My donation consists of a few dollars of electricity, and I consider the cost of the increased risk I take on my machine to be negligible (I maintain my own equipment, and voluntarily expose myself to more risk just surfing the web.) All I ask is that the software back off while I'm using the machine -- it's mine, after all.
I used to participate in the distributed.net challenges, but lately they've gotten stupid. Yes, it was important to show we could crack DES at will. But no, it's not important that we crack RC5-64 or RC5-72. It's just expending thousands of tons of coal to prove the exact point that mathematicians and cryptographers both agreed was true in the first place, that it takes e effort to crack a 2^n key. Big wasteful deal. At least the proteome folding project has the potential to pay out in benefit to humanity, even if a pharmaceutical profits from it as it passes through their hands.
It's also nice to imagine that if they find a cure for disease X, that if I got X at some point in the future I might be able to say "Hey, I volunteered to help you solve the X problem, can't I get a discount on your X drugs now?" They might go for it, they probably wouldn't, and I probably wouldn't get disease X in the first place anyway. But it's nice to imagine.
If dnet could find a deserving consumer for all those volunteer computrons, though, they'd be much more worthy of participation. Something like a distributed NOAA weather simulator, something that could benefit all of us on a daily basis would be nice.
Just explore a few of the possibilities: the NRO may already have software like this for satellite reconnaisance photography (and with their budget, paying for it isn't a problem.) Very few of us know what the current level of technology is for classified or top-secret systems (those few Slashdotters who do know probably aren't going to jeopardize their clearance just to enlighten our little discussion.) But would they share this with public safety organizations? Probably not.
As for affordability, a university researcher may have developed software like this in conjunction with the NYPD, and been funded by a grant.
I know that a table of building heights and math can accomplish this. (For that matter I remember entertaining myself one day playing with the images from Terraserver and calculating the time of day the satellite photographs were taken based on their date and the shadow lengths and angles.) So for a minute think about the limited requirements of the program to do this. First, Manhattan has a very distinctive skyline. There are only a few hundred buildings that such a program would need to use as reference points, limiting the scope of the data gathering to a reasonable level. (Really, how hard would it be to recognize any of those buildings, when you limit it to just a few hundred?) The height can be computed based on window-to-window and floor-to-floor spacing. Recognizing just two landmark buildings on a picture would give you all the data you need. Computers excel at both keeping tables of statistics and trig. It's just not that hard.
And as for the swooping down to the street level, that's actually the easiest part and can be done with off-the-shelf software. It just requires lots(!) of photographic data. How different was it from a $60 copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004? Have you ever used Flight Sim in "slew mode", just to drive your point of view around, and did you know there's a protocol for an external program to interface with it to drive it around exactly like that? The guys who have multiple PCs for video rendering on a dozen screens (for a wraparound cockpit effect) use it. Sure, Microsoft probably hasn't detailed every single brownstone in Manhattan on the map (yet) and probably not to the photorealistic detail you describe, but the last time I bought a copy they had fairly good detail of the downtown areas of Chicago I'm familiar with. And that was several years ago.
I think we can both agree that such programs are certainly possible (if not necessarily affordable to the NYPD,) and also that we don't know what kind of software really exists in the classified world of reconnaisance or even of police work today. And I agree with you that Hollywood's tarted-up graphics don't always represent the real world, but they certainly don't piss me off -- they excite me by getting me to wonder if such things are really possible, or if they maybe do already exist.