the market is small because there's not that many uses where it's actually good now, the use for the pointing device if you can use a normal pointing device is very limited.
Yeah - small market (handicapped computer users) means high prices. Another reason why it costs $7k.
eye tracking and head tracking and etc trackign solutions are old as fff..... and it's not expensive because of the "enermous r&d"
If they actually have it working smoothly and reliably, then no, it isn't old. Try some motion tracking in After Effects or even Mocha's tracker and after seeing the ridiculous limitations of it you'll see how far behind the field is. Motion tracking is _not_ a developed field. It's still very much in the wild and it takes a certain type of engineer (i.e. high salary) to wrestle with these types of problems. And yes - the development costs _are_ enormous relative to your typical "hey let's write a webcam driver using the textbook technique that everyone on the planet already knows" projects. Sure there is plenty of research in the area but only the most recent stuff is actually applied research. (how would you have applied the research prior to the invention of computers and digital cameras?)
I wonder if someone is able to create something similar using an $20 webcam and some coding?:)
I imagine that one advantage is the outsourcing of the image recognition to an external processor. Rather than using _your_ CPU for all of that math, you can use an external box for that. By using its own camera and its own circuitry, the only processing it needs to do on your computer is the mouse movement. (which hardly requires any power). Essentially, you can add the feature without slowing your computer down at all. (just speculation, though)
Also, I agree with the others. It's not expensive because of the hardware - it's expensive because they have to pay off their enormous R&D investment. (and because people with disabilities will pay it - I would guess that mouse movement with your eyes is much better than trying to use speech recognition to open applications, etc.) The camera is probably very similar to the $20 one at Best Buy.
The Chevy ads were a worst case example, but were mainly there to illustrate the point that there seems to be this rampant culture of competition prevalent in North American culture. For instance, every car ad says their car won such and such an award, and was voted consumer choice of 20xx, and it's just plain ol' better than brand y. There are pharmaceutical ads that run for 2 minutes just so they can list all of the adverse side effects the medicine will cause (yet you should still ask your doctor if obesotol is for you), and never ending lawfirm informercials that encourage you to sue the shit out of everyone and everything because hey, you're entitled to your compensation. Then you step into walmart and you can buy giant cases of anything for a fiver sometimes less, and outside there are blokes complaining about the cost of fuel leaning fully upright on their latest 4 wheeled monstrosity. It truly is a culture of excess and frankly the cost to other people in order to sustain it makes it undeserved.
Please understand that while what you mentioned is very true (especially the law / drug ads if you watch CNN news during lunch hour) not every American should be lumped into the same greedy/wasteful category.
I abhor TV and personally believe it dumbs down the masses and promotes a culture of laziness and complacency.
My vehicle is almost 10yrs old and has been paid for long time ago.
My wife and I are professionals (accounting and engineering), yet we live in a small home that we can easily afford. Yes, even though our friends with barely a high school diploma have much bigger houses, new cars (which most of them lease by the way). Many are already on their 2nd (!!!) house despite not having any equity in their first ones (thanks to interest only loans).
I do all my own home improvements/repairs/yardwork and we eat breakfast and dinner at home, leftovers for lunch. 3-4 times per month we go out for coffee on Saturday morning as our only "luxury" that we allow ourselves as a family. Hey it's boring to eat in every day! My wife saves coupons and sews buttons back on clothing. We don't have a nanny. We don't have a housecleaner. We recycle. We only buy healthy fresh fruits/veggies/meats, nothing preprocessed. We don't have ipad this, ipod that. My PC at home is a 8yr old machine I built from newegg parts. We put as much as we can away into our retirement funds, and have already been contributing to our child's educational fund. We have not been on vacation in over 3 years. My vacation time has been spent painting or drywalling my basement.
As for purchases, my general motto is "I'd rather go without than spend money on something of low quality." So over the years I've collected a variety of, say, nice tools which will last me a lifetime instead of heading to Walmart and buying up their disposable "tools" made of mystery pot metal.
My point is this: even though we have the income to live more lavishly / wasteful, we make a conscious effort *not* to. This makes my wife and I statistical anomalies in our age group (25-34yrs).
Don't paint all americans with the same brush.
I, too, am an American and I know many people who fit this description. It's not nearly as uncommon as the stereotypes would have people believe.
What does any of this have to do with the US thinking it has the right to act as world policeman?
Says the person who has a home, as he curls up with a full stomach, a book, a fire place, and his dog at his feet.
Contrary to ignorance such as your own, and contrary to the massive bullshit spewed left and right, the majority of the population in both Iraq and Afghanistan both want the US there. Yes, the US is viewed as a necessary evil. But believing no one wants us there except oil companies is to be an idiot. People seem to be in a hurry to ignore reality so as to substitute their own.
The simple fact is, the world is likely to be a far, better, safer place for everyone exactly because of more recent middle eastern involvement by the US. And while idiots hate to admit it, much of the middle east owes a thank you to GWB. I think the only real surprise here is it happened everywhere else but Iran.
I agree - the reason for initiating the war was certainly not altruism but that doesn't make it bad for us or even bad for them (Afghanistan / Iraq). Reasons don't matter - results do.
I wish Slashdot would just block the substring "MichaelKristopeit" from all user registrations. (and block his IP address) I mean people with mod points are doing a good job keeping him in the -1, but for those of us who browse at -1 when moderating, we're sicking of seeing this crap.
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
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Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 1
I understand that it's only a 2d scalar field, if that's what you're saying, but it's still a 3d plot. It just only paints us a picture of the signal strength of a points on a 2d plane. It would still be better than the current implementation of a 2d scalar field of a one-dimensional line.
Alternatively, though, I guess they could have full-color lights and strength meters next to every light and change colors based on signal strength at every single point. That would be a 3d plot of a 3d scalar field.
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
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Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 1
Dimension One: position on x-axis Dimension Two: position on y-axis Dimension Three: signal strength
The dimensions don't have to be of the same form to be considered three-dimensional. People make the third dimension something non-positional all the time on 3D graphs.
Heck, even my bank, which made 2.1 billion dollars in profit (last quarter), does not have an Android app...
BOA has an Android mobile banking app. They make slightly more than 2.1 billion/quarter, though.
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
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Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 1
Sorry - I probably should have my fun-o-meter checked. It seems to have been stuck on zero ever since this semester started. (personally, I blame Dynamics)
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
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Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 1
*effects of geography (not "affects" - my bad)
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
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Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 1
Maybe they could have the person pause his or her movement at every "measurement" long enough to sample the data so that they could just flash up the maximum signal strength over a period of time. They'd just have to make some simple adjustments to their shutter speed and aperture on the camera to allow for the longer time but I think it would be a little more accurate. Obviously that would involve a significant code rewrite, though.
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
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Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 1
They follow the exact same path and yet the graph of bars are completely different. Almost opposite, really... I obviously expected there to be some variance, but these are not even close.
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
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Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 1
I just saw your reply to my comment right after I posted this. Someone mentioned it in the comments of the linked article as well. I'm sure at some point someone somewhere will build one.
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
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Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 1
The more I think about it, the more it seems that 3D would get pretty expensive and time consuming. (despite how awesome it would be)
Also, I just noticed where they did two "trials" along the same path and the output was completely different. That suggests that either the signal measuring device is too slow to be accurate or that the field is constantly changing. I suppose since data is sent in packets and that networks probably only broadcast their presence in bursts that it's the latter, making this whole thing unlikely to tells us anything about the affect of geography on signal strength. The only way I can think of to do this relatively accurately would be to have a one big string of these things and keep them completely fixed and use the long exposure to give you an average of sorts.
Still cool, though, from a photography perspective.
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
on
Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I would actually argue that while it may not be useful per se, it is definitely interesting to see how geography affects WIFI signal. I would really like to see a 3d version of this where instead of being, say, 30 rows by 1 column, being 30 rows by 30 columns so that you could have a 3d grid of voxels(?) where height is proportional to signal strength. It would still be artistic yet would paint a better picture of the affects of geography/terrain/building materials on WIFI strength.
(I do kindof wonder how long the signal strength meter takes to update and if it's enough for this to actually correlate accurately to the current position)
Re:I like the concept, just not the application
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Light Painting Wi-Fi
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· Score: 2
but to me it amounts to nothing but "Heh, cool concept." and I dont care beyond that.
I don't mean to be snarky but I'm sure they would say the same thing about half the stuff you do and consider "useful." Not everything has to be a tool. (I'll refrain from using that sentence to set up a snide remark) Some things can just be for enjoyment... e.g. art. I thought it was one of the coolest photographs I've seen in awhile. It's particularly interesting to people who have both an interest in photography and technology.
Lawyers make the rules here in the US. IIRC, lawyers make up about 45% of the US Congress. The rest are typically small business owners and corporate executives. "Loser-pays" isn't really in their best interest.
IANAL but I think there is a difference. From what I've read on the subject, it appears you have to prove that your reputation has actually been damaged. It's not likely that anyone who reads some kid's facebook status saying "Mr. Teachername just gave us a pop quiz - she's such a pedophile" and interpret that as an actual allegation of pedophilia. Now if the kid had said "Mr. Teachername raped me the other day and nobody believes me. Please help me." or something like that, then I think the teacher would have a case (assuming the allegation really is false). But the problem is that from the article we have no idea what the actual status was and so we clearly can't reach an educated conclusion.
The article says one of them was expelled for calling her teacher bipolar. If that's all she called her (the article is really vague, though), then it is completely ridiculous for her to be punished at all - let alone expelled. IANAL but I would go as far as to say that it's a first amendment issue. Calling a teacher a rapist or pedophile is definitely more serious, though. I think an argument could be made that "locker-room talk" (facebook) is conveyed in a certain tone (similar to that you would see on a comedian like Letterman or Leno) and that a serious allegation of rape would not be posted on facebook but instead directly to the police. (and if they did post it on facebook they would not use those words - they would make it sound more serious). Nobody reading the post would even for one second interpret it as an actual allegation of rape. If David Letterman were to put that as his facebook status it would be fair game.
I don't think that applies to microscopes... The market for internal combustion engines and refrigerators is slightly larger than that of precision microscopes.
Or you could just wear flip-flops. Eliminates the sweat problem AND the dangerous surface problems. And you can wear them in stores that say "shoes required."
Slashdot Mirror
the market is small because there's not that many uses where it's actually good now, the use for the pointing device if you can use a normal pointing device is very limited.
Yeah - small market (handicapped computer users) means high prices. Another reason why it costs $7k.
eye tracking and head tracking and etc trackign solutions are old as fff..... and it's not expensive because of the "enermous r&d"
If they actually have it working smoothly and reliably, then no, it isn't old. Try some motion tracking in After Effects or even Mocha's tracker and after seeing the ridiculous limitations of it you'll see how far behind the field is. Motion tracking is _not_ a developed field. It's still very much in the wild and it takes a certain type of engineer (i.e. high salary) to wrestle with these types of problems. And yes - the development costs _are_ enormous relative to your typical "hey let's write a webcam driver using the textbook technique that everyone on the planet already knows" projects. Sure there is plenty of research in the area but only the most recent stuff is actually applied research. (how would you have applied the research prior to the invention of computers and digital cameras?)
I wonder if someone is able to create something similar using an $20 webcam and some coding? :)
I imagine that one advantage is the outsourcing of the image recognition to an external processor. Rather than using _your_ CPU for all of that math, you can use an external box for that. By using its own camera and its own circuitry, the only processing it needs to do on your computer is the mouse movement. (which hardly requires any power). Essentially, you can add the feature without slowing your computer down at all. (just speculation, though)
Also, I agree with the others. It's not expensive because of the hardware - it's expensive because they have to pay off their enormous R&D investment. (and because people with disabilities will pay it - I would guess that mouse movement with your eyes is much better than trying to use speech recognition to open applications, etc.) The camera is probably very similar to the $20 one at Best Buy.
The Chevy ads were a worst case example, but were mainly there to illustrate the point that there seems to be this rampant culture of competition prevalent in North American culture. For instance, every car ad says their car won such and such an award, and was voted consumer choice of 20xx, and it's just plain ol' better than brand y. There are pharmaceutical ads that run for 2 minutes just so they can list all of the adverse side effects the medicine will cause (yet you should still ask your doctor if obesotol is for you), and never ending lawfirm informercials that encourage you to sue the shit out of everyone and everything because hey, you're entitled to your compensation. Then you step into walmart and you can buy giant cases of anything for a fiver sometimes less, and outside there are blokes complaining about the cost of fuel leaning fully upright on their latest 4 wheeled monstrosity. It truly is a culture of excess and frankly the cost to other people in order to sustain it makes it undeserved.
Please understand that while what you mentioned is very true (especially the law / drug ads if you watch CNN news during lunch hour) not every American should be lumped into the same greedy/wasteful category.
I abhor TV and personally believe it dumbs down the masses and promotes a culture of laziness and complacency.
My vehicle is almost 10yrs old and has been paid for long time ago.
My wife and I are professionals (accounting and engineering), yet we live in a small home that we can easily afford. Yes, even though our friends with barely a high school diploma have much bigger houses, new cars (which most of them lease by the way). Many are already on their 2nd (!!!) house despite not having any equity in their first ones (thanks to interest only loans).
I do all my own home improvements/repairs/yardwork and we eat breakfast and dinner at home, leftovers for lunch. 3-4 times per month we go out for coffee on Saturday morning as our only "luxury" that we allow ourselves as a family. Hey it's boring to eat in every day! My wife saves coupons and sews buttons back on clothing. We don't have a nanny. We don't have a housecleaner. We recycle. We only buy healthy fresh fruits/veggies/meats, nothing preprocessed. We don't have ipad this, ipod that. My PC at home is a 8yr old machine I built from newegg parts. We put as much as we can away into our retirement funds, and have already been contributing to our child's educational fund. We have not been on vacation in over 3 years. My vacation time has been spent painting or drywalling my basement.
As for purchases, my general motto is "I'd rather go without than spend money on something of low quality." So over the years I've collected a variety of, say, nice tools which will last me a lifetime instead of heading to Walmart and buying up their disposable "tools" made of mystery pot metal.
My point is this: even though we have the income to live more lavishly / wasteful, we make a conscious effort *not* to. This makes my wife and I statistical anomalies in our age group (25-34yrs).
Don't paint all americans with the same brush.
I, too, am an American and I know many people who fit this description. It's not nearly as uncommon as the stereotypes would have people believe.
What does any of this have to do with the US thinking it has the right to act as world policeman?
Says the person who has a home, as he curls up with a full stomach, a book, a fire place, and his dog at his feet.
Contrary to ignorance such as your own, and contrary to the massive bullshit spewed left and right, the majority of the population in both Iraq and Afghanistan both want the US there. Yes, the US is viewed as a necessary evil. But believing no one wants us there except oil companies is to be an idiot. People seem to be in a hurry to ignore reality so as to substitute their own.
The simple fact is, the world is likely to be a far, better, safer place for everyone exactly because of more recent middle eastern involvement by the US. And while idiots hate to admit it, much of the middle east owes a thank you to GWB. I think the only real surprise here is it happened everywhere else but Iran.
I agree - the reason for initiating the war was certainly not altruism but that doesn't make it bad for us or even bad for them (Afghanistan / Iraq). Reasons don't matter - results do.
I wish Slashdot would just block the substring "MichaelKristopeit" from all user registrations. (and block his IP address) I mean people with mod points are doing a good job keeping him in the -1, but for those of us who browse at -1 when moderating, we're sicking of seeing this crap.
I understand that it's only a 2d scalar field, if that's what you're saying, but it's still a 3d plot. It just only paints us a picture of the signal strength of a points on a 2d plane. It would still be better than the current implementation of a 2d scalar field of a one-dimensional line.
Alternatively, though, I guess they could have full-color lights and strength meters next to every light and change colors based on signal strength at every single point. That would be a 3d plot of a 3d scalar field.
Dimension One: position on x-axis
Dimension Two: position on y-axis
Dimension Three: signal strength
The dimensions don't have to be of the same form to be considered three-dimensional. People make the third dimension something non-positional all the time on 3D graphs.
I wasn't saying it was erroneous - just that I had never seen it. I often see the extraneous u's and associate it with UK-English... (and Canadian)
(with one one "L")
*only one
Ohh that's the mighty USA. I was referring to the Royal Bank of Canada.
hmmm.. I've never seen "enrol" (with one one "L") before until I clicked your link. Is that spelling common in Canada?
Heck, even my bank, which made 2.1 billion dollars in profit (last quarter), does not have an Android app...
BOA has an Android mobile banking app. They make slightly more than 2.1 billion/quarter, though.
Sorry - I probably should have my fun-o-meter checked. It seems to have been stuck on zero ever since this semester started. (personally, I blame Dynamics)
*effects of geography (not "affects" - my bad)
Maybe they could have the person pause his or her movement at every "measurement" long enough to sample the data so that they could just flash up the maximum signal strength over a period of time. They'd just have to make some simple adjustments to their shutter speed and aperture on the camera to allow for the longer time but I think it would be a little more accurate. Obviously that would involve a significant code rewrite, though.
Link to the two trials with different output:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/timo/5481044733/in/photostream/lightbox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/timo/5481047867/in/photostream/lightbox/
They follow the exact same path and yet the graph of bars are completely different. Almost opposite, really... I obviously expected there to be some variance, but these are not even close.
I just saw your reply to my comment right after I posted this. Someone mentioned it in the comments of the linked article as well. I'm sure at some point someone somewhere will build one.
The more I think about it, the more it seems that 3D would get pretty expensive and time consuming. (despite how awesome it would be)
Also, I just noticed where they did two "trials" along the same path and the output was completely different. That suggests that either the signal measuring device is too slow to be accurate or that the field is constantly changing. I suppose since data is sent in packets and that networks probably only broadcast their presence in bursts that it's the latter, making this whole thing unlikely to tells us anything about the affect of geography on signal strength. The only way I can think of to do this relatively accurately would be to have a one big string of these things and keep them completely fixed and use the long exposure to give you an average of sorts.
Still cool, though, from a photography perspective.
I would actually argue that while it may not be useful per se, it is definitely interesting to see how geography affects WIFI signal. I would really like to see a 3d version of this where instead of being, say, 30 rows by 1 column, being 30 rows by 30 columns so that you could have a 3d grid of voxels(?) where height is proportional to signal strength. It would still be artistic yet would paint a better picture of the affects of geography/terrain/building materials on WIFI strength.
(I do kindof wonder how long the signal strength meter takes to update and if it's enough for this to actually correlate accurately to the current position)
but to me it amounts to nothing but "Heh, cool concept." and I dont care beyond that.
I don't mean to be snarky but I'm sure they would say the same thing about half the stuff you do and consider "useful." Not everything has to be a tool. (I'll refrain from using that sentence to set up a snide remark) Some things can just be for enjoyment... e.g. art. I thought it was one of the coolest photographs I've seen in awhile. It's particularly interesting to people who have both an interest in photography and technology.
Lawyers make the rules here in the US. IIRC, lawyers make up about 45% of the US Congress. The rest are typically small business owners and corporate executives. "Loser-pays" isn't really in their best interest.
The article never says anything about "because democracy would have democrat in it." I'm guessing the story submitter made that up.
IANAL but I think there is a difference. From what I've read on the subject, it appears you have to prove that your reputation has actually been damaged. It's not likely that anyone who reads some kid's facebook status saying "Mr. Teachername just gave us a pop quiz - she's such a pedophile" and interpret that as an actual allegation of pedophilia. Now if the kid had said "Mr. Teachername raped me the other day and nobody believes me. Please help me." or something like that, then I think the teacher would have a case (assuming the allegation really is false). But the problem is that from the article we have no idea what the actual status was and so we clearly can't reach an educated conclusion.
The article says one of them was expelled for calling her teacher bipolar. If that's all she called her (the article is really vague, though), then it is completely ridiculous for her to be punished at all - let alone expelled. IANAL but I would go as far as to say that it's a first amendment issue. Calling a teacher a rapist or pedophile is definitely more serious, though. I think an argument could be made that "locker-room talk" (facebook) is conveyed in a certain tone (similar to that you would see on a comedian like Letterman or Leno) and that a serious allegation of rape would not be posted on facebook but instead directly to the police. (and if they did post it on facebook they would not use those words - they would make it sound more serious). Nobody reading the post would even for one second interpret it as an actual allegation of rape. If David Letterman were to put that as his facebook status it would be fair game.
I don't think that applies to microscopes... The market for internal combustion engines and refrigerators is slightly larger than that of precision microscopes.
Or you could just wear flip-flops. Eliminates the sweat problem AND the dangerous surface problems. And you can wear them in stores that say "shoes required."