If you think about it, there are only a couple dozen skyscrapers at best in most major cities. It's not incomprehensible to believe that someone spent some time and your tax dollars on such a project. Besides, if it was done once (i.e. previous investigation) the data will generally be available after that point in time.
People get paid to discover the viscosity of ketchup, so it isn't that retarded of an idea. ./no arguement about the graham cracker crumb comment.
Goddamnit, indeed. Not to sound like a tinfoil hat wearing american or anything, but I suspect that the shows are reinforcing the fact that the cameras are actually useful.
The vast majority of cameras out there are pure crap, designed with resisting abuse in mind instead of quality. Some places put a lot of money into cameras (Worked at Mervyns for a while, loss had some nice zoom lenses)
Still, if the video is stored, the quality will be dismal - cameras regularly record 10 or 24 hours onto a standard 2 hour vhs (the 6hrs slp ones). Not only that, but they mix the feeds from 8 cameras into a single scene.
You won't realistically get better than a 320x240 image (if you get half that, I would be impressed) per scene off the tape, and that just isn't enough to be useful. Digital? Not much better, disk space is cheap and re-usable though.
Quite simply, they can tell if you're wearing a hat, maybe how long your hair is, etc. Not much else.
I mean, wouldn't it have been more interesting/dramatic if they looked at the photo, saw the skyline and one of the cops opens a book with the heights of buildings and does some writing on a scrap of paper and then looks at a wall map. One of the other cops could have said "what are you doing, how can you find her like that?" and the other cop could say "didn't you ever take Trig in high school?". Believable and real. They could of have, but it was a wee bit "cooler" Paper and pencil would of have turned people right off. Since the math behind it has been around for a while, I wouldn't think it would be surprising that a law enforcement agency has commissioned a program like this. I would of have assumed that something like this would of have been written 5 years ago. A mix of photoshop (layers, blending modes, slight rotations, a ruler, etc) and basic trig. Nothing terribly difficult to code, you'd spend a lot more time getting exact heights and a ton of pictures for rough camera angles, etc.
Can't really argue with the bullet in the rat. I know it's basically a metal detector, but IIRC they were able to analyze the exact percentage of x metal and y metal in a moving object 5 feet away. I haven't seen anything like that that is so portable.
Of course, local cops are generally technology "challenged" at best, luddites at worst, so naturally there aren't too many buyers (sw probably costs a ton too).
It also seems to be the standard in cop shows to portray the beat cops - and the detectives sometimes - as dumb. There always seems to be a need for a braniac.
Scott did work AT&T (well, Pacific Bell) for quite some time. Those years were no doubt the inspiration for most of his work and his lovely positive cheery attitude. If you're ever bored, read up on the history of the bells, att etc - even better talk to ex-employees.
Just a hint, turn down your monitor. There should be no reason that you need to run it at 100% contrast and brightness unless you are checking for very light artifacts etc in digital photos and the such (or watching a dark movie, etc). If you're just reading text / writing code / doing admin on a nix box / whatever, you can run your monitor well below that. Change the color to 6500 Kelvin (or 5000 kelvin) as well. I'm running my trinitron at 5000K, 28% brightness, 56% contrast. (This setting almost hides those goddamn wires too). Everything looks fine and is easy to read - even if my PDA's 4" screen looks brighter than my 21" monitor. (I just checked with a camera's lightmeter, and the monitor is darker - although it is a bigger surface)
Of course, if you're on a 8 year old monitor, the phosphors will be shot, so you'll need to turn it up to 100 to read anything, but that should be an exception. (I know, I know, it probably isn't where you work.)
The standard stuff like turn up your refresh rate, etc applies. 60 hz isn't doing anybody any good. If you have glasses, UV filters / anti reflective coating helps quite a bit too.
On a side note, I think you'll see the same effects on anybody who sits, generally unmoving, staring at paper at a fixed point under a harsh bright light 8 hours a day - virtually nobody does this anymore. Also, it has been reccomended for years to use natural lighting / more comfortable lighting for desk jobs.
Oh, and a big fucking thank you to the submitter who linked to a.pdf and gave no warning.
Yeah, for the most part that is true, but your average cell phone camera is 640x480 - so was the mars lander (rover?) had a camera with the same resolution. Optics do make a difference, a crappy plastic lens will make a really crappy picture regardless of the ccd behind it.
More informative is that they had nice and long warranties - 5 years in most cases. Chances are, the warranties on your dead drives are about to expire / have expired in the last couple months or so.
Because capital punishment for spamming probably can't get sufficient public support.
Ahh, capital punishment, when 9 years of anal rape bundled with HIV and Hepatitis infection isn't enough.
Call me insensitive to your plight or whatever, but cleaning up a couple emails fucking pales in comparison to what this guy will experience in prison. People get less time for murder. Murder. If you can't comprehend the difference, I really don't know how to explain it to you. I doubt you could even comprehend the difference.
And please, before you start, fuck off with the "billion spams x seconds = more than one lifetime arguement". Again, you probably can't comprehend this.
Oh, he has a somewhat good chance of catching HIV and dying of AIDS, (or even getting beat to death on whim) so just to satisfy your sense of vengance, you probably got your capital punishment.
I know that this isn't Valve's fault, but does anyone else find themselves unconsciously hating Valve more and more?
No, I've fucking hated them on a pretty routine basis since CS retail came out. Why? Because they can't seem to lock down CS worth a damn. Hackers have plagued CS from the start and valve et al don't give a shit. And now it has become "Why fix something when you'll have a competing product in x months?"
As for all the folks who are going to respond with "yeah, the game is 5 years old, blah blah". They are still pressing it, and it's still on the shelves. Kindly take your car parts analogies and fuck off and die./yeah, I just left a cs_assault match where a shithead on CT decided to activate his hacks to get a fully automatic awp and kill all the t's inside the building from the outside.//Angst is my CS nick, go figure.
Do you honestly think they give a shit? Not trying to troll or anything, but I just don't think that people in the company would even think that they would close, let alone think of what would happen to their customers.
Not surprisingly, Ukrainians don't see why their country can't become a big player in the global technology market, like India."
Because of the massive amounts of corruption at all levels of government? Organized crime bosses who refuse to let companies set up shop without bribes?
So you're just asking us to believe that this was just a minor, routine screwup. Sounds a bit fishy. I suppose that is why Google is on/.'s front page.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think about it, there are only a couple dozen skyscrapers at best in most major cities. It's not incomprehensible to believe that someone spent some time and your tax dollars on such a project. Besides, if it was done once (i.e. previous investigation) the data will generally be available after that point in time.
/no arguement about the graham cracker crumb comment.
People get paid to discover the viscosity of ketchup, so it isn't that retarded of an idea.
.
Even with the best equipment, it will still take you hours, if not days of processing to pull a license plate out.
Goddamnit, indeed.
Not to sound like a tinfoil hat wearing american or anything, but I suspect that the shows are reinforcing the fact that the cameras are actually useful.
The vast majority of cameras out there are pure crap, designed with resisting abuse in mind instead of quality. Some places put a lot of money into cameras (Worked at Mervyns for a while, loss had some nice zoom lenses)
Still, if the video is stored, the quality will be dismal - cameras regularly record 10 or 24 hours onto a standard 2 hour vhs (the 6hrs slp ones). Not only that, but they mix the feeds from 8 cameras into a single scene.
You won't realistically get better than a 320x240 image (if you get half that, I would be impressed) per scene off the tape, and that just isn't enough to be useful. Digital? Not much better, disk space is cheap and re-usable though.
Quite simply, they can tell if you're wearing a hat, maybe how long your hair is, etc. Not much else.
I mean, wouldn't it have been more interesting/dramatic if they looked at the photo, saw the skyline and one of the cops opens a book with the heights of buildings and does some writing on a scrap of paper and then looks at a wall map. One of the other cops could have said "what are you doing, how can you find her like that?" and the other cop could say "didn't you ever take Trig in high school?". Believable and real.
They could of have, but it was a wee bit "cooler" Paper and pencil would of have turned people right off.
Since the math behind it has been around for a while, I wouldn't think it would be surprising that a law enforcement agency has commissioned a program like this. I would of have assumed that something like this would of have been written 5 years ago. A mix of photoshop (layers, blending modes, slight rotations, a ruler, etc) and basic trig. Nothing terribly difficult to code, you'd spend a lot more time getting exact heights and a ton of pictures for rough camera angles, etc.
Can't really argue with the bullet in the rat. I know it's basically a metal detector, but IIRC they were able to analyze the exact percentage of x metal and y metal in a moving object 5 feet away. I haven't seen anything like that that is so portable.
Of course, local cops are generally technology "challenged" at best, luddites at worst, so naturally there aren't too many buyers (sw probably costs a ton too).
It also seems to be the standard in cop shows to portray the beat cops - and the detectives sometimes - as dumb. There always seems to be a need for a braniac.
Every time they bring up wifi or computers, I wince.
Please, the proper term is REMF's (Rear eschelon mother fuckers).
Scott did work AT&T (well, Pacific Bell) for quite some time. Those years were no doubt the inspiration for most of his work and his lovely positive cheery attitude.
If you're ever bored, read up on the history of the bells, att etc - even better talk to ex-employees.
See, you're doing something called "thinking". There isn't room for that here, just sound bites and mindless drivel.
Just a hint, turn down your monitor.
.pdf and gave no warning.
There should be no reason that you need to run it at 100% contrast and brightness unless you are checking for very light artifacts etc in digital photos and the such (or watching a dark movie, etc). If you're just reading text / writing code / doing admin on a nix box / whatever, you can run your monitor well below that.
Change the color to 6500 Kelvin (or 5000 kelvin) as well.
I'm running my trinitron at 5000K, 28% brightness, 56% contrast. (This setting almost hides those goddamn wires too). Everything looks fine and is easy to read - even if my PDA's 4" screen looks brighter than my 21" monitor.
(I just checked with a camera's lightmeter, and the monitor is darker - although it is a bigger surface)
Of course, if you're on a 8 year old monitor, the phosphors will be shot, so you'll need to turn it up to 100 to read anything, but that should be an exception. (I know, I know, it probably isn't where you work.)
The standard stuff like turn up your refresh rate, etc applies. 60 hz isn't doing anybody any good. If you have glasses, UV filters / anti reflective coating helps quite a bit too.
On a side note, I think you'll see the same effects on anybody who sits, generally unmoving, staring at paper at a fixed point under a harsh bright light 8 hours a day - virtually nobody does this anymore.
Also, it has been reccomended for years to use natural lighting / more comfortable lighting for desk jobs.
Oh, and a big fucking thank you to the submitter who linked to a
Yes, but the penalty is about the same as the penalty on second degree murder.
Am I the only one who thinks that something is wrong?
So we, as society, apparantly believe that video taping a movie in a theater is equivalent to murder. /What the fuck, no seriously.
Yeah, for the most part that is true, but your average cell phone camera is 640x480 - so was the mars lander (rover?) had a camera with the same resolution. Optics do make a difference, a crappy plastic lens will make a really crappy picture regardless of the ccd behind it.
I had the complete opposite experience, the menus in gimp are a PITA to use. Photoshop seemed really intuitive and a pleasure to work with.
do it against a wood table so that you don't scratch / dent the drive and it still has warranty ;)
You might dent the table though.
More informative is that they had nice and long warranties - 5 years in most cases.
Chances are, the warranties on your dead drives are about to expire / have expired in the last couple months or so.
So it's ok to kill someone for theft.
Ok. I'll pretend I get it.
Because capital punishment for spamming probably can't get sufficient public support.
Ahh, capital punishment, when 9 years of anal rape bundled with HIV and Hepatitis infection isn't enough.
Call me insensitive to your plight or whatever, but cleaning up a couple emails fucking pales in comparison to what this guy will experience in prison.
People get less time for murder.
Murder.
If you can't comprehend the difference, I really don't know how to explain it to you. I doubt you could even comprehend the difference.
And please, before you start, fuck off with the "billion spams x seconds = more than one lifetime arguement". Again, you probably can't comprehend this.
Oh, he has a somewhat good chance of catching HIV and dying of AIDS, (or even getting beat to death on whim) so just to satisfy your sense of vengance, you probably got your capital punishment.
Come now, don't exagerate.
They only cuss you out and slap you if you turn down the protection plan.
I know that this isn't Valve's fault, but does anyone else find themselves unconsciously hating Valve more and more?
/yeah, I just left a cs_assault match where a shithead on CT decided to activate his hacks to get a fully automatic awp and kill all the t's inside the building from the outside. //Angst is my CS nick, go figure.
No, I've fucking hated them on a pretty routine basis since CS retail came out. Why? Because they can't seem to lock down CS worth a damn. Hackers have plagued CS from the start and valve et al don't give a shit. And now it has become "Why fix something when you'll have a competing product in x months?"
As for all the folks who are going to respond with "yeah, the game is 5 years old, blah blah". They are still pressing it, and it's still on the shelves. Kindly take your car parts analogies and fuck off and die.
Do you honestly think they give a shit? Not trying to troll or anything, but I just don't think that people in the company would even think that they would close, let alone think of what would happen to their customers.
Haha, I cracked up when I read that.
Wish I could mod this discussion.
Not surprisingly, Ukrainians don't see why their country can't become a big player in the global technology market, like India."
Because of the massive amounts of corruption at all levels of government? Organized crime bosses who refuse to let companies set up shop without bribes?
Wasn't that stupid, Carly and friends got some really nice bonuses.
wtf is a "sentance" professor?
The fact that you think $10 is a good cut off pretty much shows that you are still in middle school.
Respons?
/.'s front page.
So you're just asking us to believe that this was just a minor, routine screwup.
Sounds a bit fishy. I suppose that is why Google is on