The critical algorithm at the core of it all is called "SIFT".... Then you have sets of 2D coordinates of 3D points under several projections (images). This data defines a set of equations which you can solve to get the relative camera positions and 3D coordinates of the feature points.
With Bing, they're probably doing it this way. Google on the other hand took a short cut and gathered the geometry directly using time of flight laser scanners. Although with the recent data from the ski slopes it looks like they ditched the laser scanners and are reconstructing the geometry from the images like you suggest.
True, but that misses the point. Yes, it was possible before - in the same way that satellite imagery was available on TerraServer for years before Google Maps. The difference between possible and easy is all the difference in the world.
You're right - no way this guy would have a standford physics department website unless he was qualified, or someone with qualifications was very impressed by what he was saying.
After reading his first long set of slides, I must say it does seem remarkable, though my GR is not strong enough to really make a call on whether or not it stands up.
I am intrigued by who this guy is though. He doesn't really seem to be on the radar - very little info to be got from Google. I think he is not a physics prof.
Some sleuthing turned up the following:
1) He's an MIT graduate.
2) He a (very) few published papers on the idea in his slides.
3) He worked for a company called Affymetrix that makes gene microarrays.
4) One of the physics faculty at Penn State, who works on carbon nanotubes, is called Alexander Mayer, but reading his CV, I think this is not the same person.
5) There's some personal info here from a housing ad he posted on a berkely lab page.
OAKLAND HILLS home, furn bdrm & ba avail for visiting scholar, euro style decor, lge closet, desk/computer workstation, DSL, lge secluded patio on 1/3 acre with stunning view, lge liv room, close to trails & Chabot observatory, 36" telescope for use, secure storage, close to pub trans, exc kitchen, share home w/ single, straight professional male homeowner, age 38 w/ no pets, $1,200/mo incl util on a month-to-month basis, pref pros in astrophysics/physics/math, Alex, amayer@alum.mit.edu
Yes, I found that claim puzzling too. He doesn't seem to support it in any way, unlike his other claims that seem quite strong and have a lot of empirical support. Perhaps it's obvious if you know more physics than I do, but I am not so sure.
Of course, he gives very few numbers, so it's hard to be sure about any of what he's saying, but the wealth of phenomena that this basic idea seems to explain does seem to suggest he's on to something. I personally think at least some of his ideas may be right.
Don't you think that would have already happened by now? Homosexuality isn't exactly new, after all.
Besides, genetics is more devious than you give it credit for. Say, perhaps, that the "gay gene", when present in men, causes them to be gay, but when present in women makes them more fertile. Then the gene might actually increase overall fitness, and be selected for.
If you are going to discuss whether or not homosexuality is biologically determined, at least know the facts.
For example, the rate of homosexuality among twins:
* 52% of identical (monozygotic) twins of homosexual men are likewise homosexual
* 22% of fraternal (dizygotic) twins are likewise homosexual
* 11% of adoptive brothers of homosexual men are likewise homosexual
Compared to a background rate of homosexuality in the population somewhere around 5%, the figures seem to me fairly persuasive evidence of a strong biological component. It's clearly not entirely genetically determined - monozygotic twins are about as close as you can get to perfect clones, and even there the correlation is only 50% - but biology is obviously a major factor.
Homosexuality is also not confined to humans - 10% of sheep are exclusively homosexual, to pick a random example. Perhaps they chose it too?
To anyone who's looked at the research, a biological basis is not really in doubt. I am always puzzled by people who come out with statements like "I don't think that's something you're born with." on the basis of exactly zero evidence. I would be interested to know if you still believe that.
Yeah, map24 is great for pure maps. For that, it still has many lovely features that Google is missing, like measureing distances, etc (what's up with Google having no scale on their maps?!)
But the local search with google maps is just incomparable. Map24 has nothing remotely close. And that just makes Google Maps so much more useful.
An excellent question-answering engine is BrainBoost.. It's currently slow, but damn impressive sometimes.
The other day I needed to know, for obscure reasons, the number of heroin addicts in Dublin. This is the kind of info that you know is probably on the web, but is going to be hard to find with Google.
That's damn impressive. Out of curiosity I tried to see if I could find the same info with Google - it was fairly tough. Took three or four searches, eventually resorting to
"there are * heroin" Dublin
which is a fairly specialized search that average users probably wouldn't be able to construct. The BrainBoost search, on the other hand, was completely natural, my granma could have done it.
So, thumbs up for BrainBoost for question answering.
Still, it's not the kind of thing you'll want every day. For day-to-day search, Google is the tool, but BB is worth a look.
BlueTooth headset should be fine.
But wired headsets not necessarily - the wire partially waveguides the microwaves from the phone. See here
You should be able to block this effect by putting a ferrite bead on the wire.
The use of a hands-free headset partially reduces the electromagnetic-field strength at the head.1 However, the cable not only transmits the intended low-frequency voice signal, but also couples a portion of the cell phone's RF energy onto the cable and subsequently to the user's head. The localized field strength of this RF energy depends on the frequency (either 900 MHz or 1,900 MHz), the length of the cable (normally about 25), and the standing waves this creates.
I have had exactly the same experience. This was with a modern GSM phone, which I believe have lower power outputs than the old analogues (though I live a a poor signal area, where they up their power output to compensate, so maybe comparable).
I don't have access to a land line, so I used to make long calls on my mobile. Often an hour or more. Once 3 hours.
I would end up with a headache, and this kind of feeling like my head was fuzzy, like I couldn't concentrate properly. It scared the hell out of me. Unfortunately its basically impossible for me to avoid using a mobile, short of abandoning my social life, but now I hold it away from my head, keep calls as short as possible, and send text messages instead of calling.
It has been pointed out to me that if someone could demonstrate a mechanism whereby low energy radio photons could cause biological effects (e.g. break DNA strands), they would probably win Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Still, ignoring what your own body is telling you, even if I can't explain why, does not seem very intelligent.
There have been some proposed mechanisms by which radio waves could have biological effects. Have a look at this New Scientist article:
Now Bo Sernelius, a physicist at Linkoping University in Sweden, has a new lead. He modelled the dielectric properties of cells. Water molecules have poles of positive and negative electric charge that are known to create attractive forces between cells, known as van der Waals forces.
These are normally extremely weak, typically around a billion-billionth of a newton. Using a highly simplified mathematical model of two red blood cells, Sernelius calculated what effect electromagnetic fields created by different frequencies of radiation would have on the forces.
He found that the water molecules inside the cells attempt to align their positive and negative poles with the alternating field produced by the radiation. They all end up pointing in the same direction, and this strengthens the van der Waals forces.
According to Sernelius's figures, in fields of 850 megahertz - around the frequency used by mobile phones - the attractive forces appear to leap to micronewton strength. That is a huge jump of around 11 orders of magnitude, and completely unexpected, says Sernelius.
If the effect could be confirmed experimentally it could form the basis of an explanation for tissue damage: stronger attractive forces between cells might make them clump together, for example, or cause blood vessels to contract.
Something pretty similar has already been done here.
They have an impressive online demo to play with.
It's called Visual Google - You give it a picture, and it returns all the frames in a movie that contain the picture. The clever bit is that it uses a kind of text-retrieval inspired method to do it, so the processing time is essentially zero (just an inverted index lookup, with "visual words")
I get the Acrobat problem too - but then, as long as I can remember, Acrobat has been crashing my browser. Not unique to Firefox. Acrobat 6 seems to have a memory leak too though. Bloody Acrobat.
Incidentally, one that that annoys me about Firefox is that the history sidebar is incredibly slow. It takes ages to open, and not just the first time, but every time. Some sloppy coding going on there.
Can't help but think they messed up naming this one - everyone (in the UK anyway) is going to confuse it with the League of Gentlemen - a very twisted black comedy.
Absolutely true. Friend of mine in law says that their lecturer told them before the exam that none of them would get above 75% simply becuase he didn't mark above 75%.
On the opther hand, it's quite possible (from personal experience) to get 100% in an maths/science/engineering exam [Actually, they balked at 100 and gave me 99% instead].
I can only speak from personal experience, but I think the failure rate must be far less. I live in Ireland half the year, and spend the other half in the UK. I get delivery reports from the network that tells me whether a message has been delivered, delayed, etc. They've only very occasionally failed - and then it's usually during major network congestion, like at a rock concert, or on new years eve, etc.
I don't know how popular it is in the US, but text messaging is big over here. People chat by text message about all sorts of things too trivial to ring someone about, plus you can text someone from situations where you couldn't call - such as during a class, etc. The networks operators love it - at $0.10 per message on most pre-paid service, it generates tons of cash or very little network traffic. It was the big surprise money generator when they launched GSM.
Whatever else this may be, it's definately not a hoax.This guy did indeed win Ireland's Young Scientist competition. I know because it takes place 5 minutes walk away from my house. He also made the front page of the Irish Times, a major national newspaper.
As for his claims, well, I wasn't at the show this year, so I haven't seen his entry, unfortunately. They do sound fairly unbelievable, but you have to remember that they're being filtered through journalists, most of whom are really fairly tech-ignorant.
I can say though that the Young Scientist is a major and well respected competition. The quality of the winners varies a lot from year to year, as you'd expect, but it's not run by idiots likely to be taken in by a hoax. Two yeras ago they flew in a Maths professor from MIT to verify some claim, so don't just accept things blindly.
Of course, none of this prevents this guy from having stolen chunks of Mozilla or something, and then bolting some bits on.
Slashdot Mirror
The critical algorithm at the core of it all is called "SIFT". ... Then you have sets of 2D coordinates of 3D points under several projections (images). This data defines a set of equations which you can solve to get the relative camera positions and 3D coordinates of the feature points.
With Bing, they're probably doing it this way. Google on the other hand took a short cut and gathered the geometry directly using time of flight laser scanners. Although with the recent data from the ski slopes it looks like they ditched the laser scanners and are reconstructing the geometry from the images like you suggest.
True, but that misses the point. Yes, it was possible before - in the same way that satellite imagery was available on TerraServer for years before Google Maps. The difference between possible and easy is all the difference in the world.
I am intrigued by who this guy is though. He doesn't really seem to be on the radar - very little info to be got from Google. I think he is not a physics prof.
Some sleuthing turned up the following:
1) He's an MIT graduate.
2) He a (very) few published papers on the idea in his slides.
3) He worked for a company called Affymetrix that makes gene microarrays.
4) One of the physics faculty at Penn State, who works on carbon nanotubes, is called Alexander Mayer, but reading his CV, I think this is not the same person.
5) There's some personal info here from a housing ad he posted on a berkely lab page.
That's about all I can find.
Yes, I found that claim puzzling too. He doesn't seem to support it in any way, unlike his other claims that seem quite strong and have a lot of empirical support. Perhaps it's obvious if you know more physics than I do, but I am not so sure.
Of course, he gives very few numbers, so it's hard to be sure about any of what he's saying, but the wealth of phenomena that this basic idea seems to explain does seem to suggest he's on to something. I personally think at least some of his ideas may be right.
Don't you think that would have already happened by now? Homosexuality isn't exactly new, after all.
Besides, genetics is more devious than you give it credit for. Say, perhaps, that the "gay gene", when present in men, causes them to be gay, but when present in women makes them more fertile. Then the gene might actually increase overall fitness, and be selected for.
Homosexuality is also not confined to humans - 10% of sheep are exclusively homosexual, to pick a random example. Perhaps they chose it too?
To anyone who's looked at the research, a biological basis is not really in doubt. I am always puzzled by people who come out with statements like "I don't think that's something you're born with." on the basis of exactly zero evidence. I would be interested to know if you still believe that.
I apologise. I misread the parent as "Ireland is (part of) the UK."
Grammatical dyslexia or something. He is absolutely right. Sorry.
But the local search with google maps is just incomparable. Map24 has nothing remotely close. And that just makes Google Maps so much more useful.
Oh, wait, am I a bit out of touch with the last 300 years of history?
I hope to God the parent is a troll.
Huh. So there is. I didn't notice that. Perhaps the results have changed since I ran the search.
The other day I needed to know, for obscure reasons, the number of heroin addicts in Dublin. This is the kind of info that you know is probably on the web, but is going to be hard to find with Google.
I used BrainBoost - "How many heroin addicts are there in Dublin?", and, bam, first line of the result - "There are 13,000 heroin addicts in Dublin."
That's damn impressive. Out of curiosity I tried to see if I could find the same info with Google - it was fairly tough. Took three or four searches, eventually resorting to
which is a fairly specialized search that average users probably wouldn't be able to construct. The BrainBoost search, on the other hand, was completely natural, my granma could have done it.So, thumbs up for BrainBoost for question answering.
Still, it's not the kind of thing you'll want every day. For day-to-day search, Google is the tool, but BB is worth a look.
But wired headsets not necessarily - the wire partially waveguides the microwaves from the phone. See here You should be able to block this effect by putting a ferrite bead on the wire.
I don't have access to a land line, so I used to make long calls on my mobile. Often an hour or more. Once 3 hours.
I would end up with a headache, and this kind of feeling like my head was fuzzy, like I couldn't concentrate properly. It scared the hell out of me. Unfortunately its basically impossible for me to avoid using a mobile, short of abandoning my social life, but now I hold it away from my head, keep calls as short as possible, and send text messages instead of calling.
It has been pointed out to me that if someone could demonstrate a mechanism whereby low energy radio photons could cause biological effects (e.g. break DNA strands), they would probably win Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Still, ignoring what your own body is telling you, even if I can't explain why, does not seem very intelligent.
There have been some proposed mechanisms by which radio waves could have biological effects. Have a look at this New Scientist article:
Yes, I know, everyone else says X-or, but that never seemed to roll off the tongue.
Something pretty similar has already been done here. They have an impressive online demo to play with.
It's called Visual Google - You give it a picture, and it returns all the frames in a movie that contain the picture. The clever bit is that it uses a kind of text-retrieval inspired method to do it, so the processing time is essentially zero (just an inverted index lookup, with "visual words")
Incidentally, one that that annoys me about Firefox is that the history sidebar is incredibly slow. It takes ages to open, and not just the first time, but every time. Some sloppy coding going on there.
Sorry, it just seemed a little absurd when I read it. Obviously from what people have been saying, it's not really an issue.
I think E is a long way from really being useable.
Nokia 8850, small cute phone that is nothing but functional
Ah, well, that would explain it then.
Never heard of it, unfortunately. Still, I reckon it'll confuse a lot of people.
Can't help but think they messed up naming this one - everyone (in the UK anyway) is going to confuse it with the League of Gentlemen - a very twisted black comedy.
Also in his new novella "Fast Times at Fairmont High" that won this years Hugo. Also a great story.
On the opther hand, it's quite possible (from personal experience) to get 100% in an maths/science/engineering exam [Actually, they balked at 100 and gave me 99% instead].
I don't know how popular it is in the US, but text messaging is big over here. People chat by text message about all sorts of things too trivial to ring someone about, plus you can text someone from situations where you couldn't call - such as during a class, etc. The networks operators love it - at $0.10 per message on most pre-paid service, it generates tons of cash or very little network traffic. It was the big surprise money generator when they launched GSM.
As for his claims, well, I wasn't at the show this year, so I haven't seen his entry, unfortunately. They do sound fairly unbelievable, but you have to remember that they're being filtered through journalists, most of whom are really fairly tech-ignorant.
I can say though that the Young Scientist is a major and well respected competition. The quality of the winners varies a lot from year to year, as you'd expect, but it's not run by idiots likely to be taken in by a hoax. Two yeras ago they flew in a Maths professor from MIT to verify some claim, so don't just accept things blindly.
Of course, none of this prevents this guy from having stolen chunks of Mozilla or something, and then bolting some bits on.