As per the subject, I was actually mistaken. The NXT contains both an Atmel ARM7 microcontroller and an Atmel AVR, so it's even more powerful than the Roomba.
To your first reply: 1/3 of a meter is about 33cm. Oddly enough, 1/3 of a foot is exactly 4 inches.
If you need more accuracy, that's what decimals are for.
1 Gallon of water? About 7 pounds.
a) that's rote memorization. b) It's "about" 7 pounds. Oddly enough, 1L of water is exactly 1kg.:) Well, ignoring temperature and impurities...
Yards of cloth are a gross measure -- it's linear yards
Well that makes things even worse! Honestly, WTF is a linear yard??:) And why should I *need* a specialized measuring tool? Oh yeah... because it's Imperial. Why can't I just use a regular ol' meters and centimeters with a straight-up tape measure?
I'm making pastry, so I can't have any of this "about 333mL" stuff
Bah, since when did you need sub-mL accuracy for making pastry? That's a 1/5th of a teaspoon, for you metric-crippled folks. It's not *that* sensitive (it's far more sensitive to temperature).
I've seldom needed tablespoon to teaspoon conversions, but it's 3 teaspoons to the tablespoon. However, I don't know the tablespoon to cup conversion. Something like 32 or so.
And that's exactly my point. If I don't have a particular measure, I need to make it up with others. For example, I lost my 1/3 cup measure, so I need to make it up with my others. With Imperial, that's practically impossible without a conversion table. With metric, it's easy-peasy.
As for your 3 tsp = 1 tbsp, again, that's rote memorization, and it's a pain in the ass. OTOH, if you're dealing with metric, it's 15mL and 5mL. Again, simple.
I keep hearing about how great metric is because it is so easy to convert from one unit to the next. However, I keep thinking to myself, so what?
It's true, Imperial really is designed to have a lot of domain-specific measurements. However, there are times when metric is damned convenient.
For example, how heavy is a gallon of water? I can tell you how heavy a liter of water is quite quickly, but a gallon? I have no idea. I was building a rainwater collection system this past summer, and I needed to figure out how much weight the supports needed to be able to carry. It sure made me glad we use metric here.
How 'bout a seamstress? They probably need to convert yards of material to inches all day long. 'twould be a lot easier if they dealt in meters and centimeters.
And then there's imperial food measurements. WTF do I need to memorize how many teaspoons are in a damned tablespoon? Give me mL any day. Not to mention the mess of throwing in fluid ounces and all that garbage.
I agree, they seem like somewhat contrived examples. But the point is Imperial is not without it's warts. Yeah, it has some conveniences for things like construction, but it's far from perfect, and the fact it isn't a nice, unified system is *really* troublesome for anyone doing serious science, engineering, etc.
However, yours is the first example I've found where metric is easier. I had to think about dividing 12 by 3. I didn't have to think about dividing 10 by 3. Thank you.
You know, I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not...:) Honestly, I'll be the first to admit that 12/3 is going to be easier than 10/3, simply because we all have to learn multiplication tables in elementary school. My point is simply that such standard fractions (like a 1/3rd of a meter) would simply end up being memorized.
Designing and adding 3rd party sensors is a breeze.
And it'll get even easier once Hitechnic releases their NXT Prototype board. It's basically a breadboard with the I2C interface mounted and ready to go.
Sure, but, forgetting the obvious flexibility of a Mindstorms kit, it also comes with touch, light, and ultrasonic sensors, bluetooth capability, three servos, and and bunch of Technics pieces, plus the ability to use any other Technics kits you have. Not to mention new third party gear that will be coming around, such as HiTechnic's 3-axis accelerometer/tilt sensor.
So sure, it's twice as expensive, but looking at it, it seems like a pretty good deal to me.
It's based on Atmel AVR, so you don't need help with programming environment, bytecode, etc. It's an AVR.
So's the NXT brick. Check the website yourself if you like.
Durability is an interesting point. But, to claim that makes the Roomba at all superior is, I think, rather shortsighted, as it's not *nearly* as flexible.
I always thought that Lego Mindstorms was the "the perfect robotics platform for hobbyists, schools, and universities alike", especially after the release of their NXT kit.
* Released the source to the firmware, so people can write code right down to the metal. * Provided *hardware* schematics, so people can hack their own gear. * Fully opened the specs to the programming environment, bytecode, etc, on the shipped firmware. * Opened up the Bluetooth protocol used by the NXT firmware.
Yeah, same goes here in Edmonton, where we're due for a blizzard tonight.:( And here I had a perfect reason to break out the ol' 4.5" that goes woefully underutilized most days...
Yes. All morality ultimately comes down to someone saying that something is right or wrong
Good, I'm glad we agree.
In other words, it is impossible for an atheist to show either statement "X is morally right" or "X is morally wrong" right or wrong for any X.
The exact same thing is true for religion. Prove to me that your God actually said "X is right" or "X is wrong". Wait, you can't, can you? There's no way for you to prove that God made that decree, as opposed to, say, some nutjob trying to rebel against the oppression of the Romans. Worse, in the case of religion, people happily pick and choose their morality. For example, people say "I can eat shellfish because the NT obsoletes the Pentateuch". Then they turn around and condemn gays based on Leviticus.
Therefore, the argument that "god said so, therefore it's moral" is merely an appeal to an arbitrary authority, and is no better than saying "Kant said so, therefore it's moral". They're on the exact same footing. 'course, the difference is the latter is at least grounded in some kind of rational, philosophical reasoning... as opposed to, say, rules which ban the creation of clothing from two different fibres.
Well sure, if you buy a 14" Schmidt-Cassegrain or similar design. But a simple 14" reflector on a Dobsonian mount can be had for around $1000. And you could probably build one for a fair bit less.
Why is it that relating computers to cars is considered insightful?
Can you explain why it's not? Like cars, many many people use it and are used to it's user interface, which, in spirit, has been the same since the old win16 days. Is it perfect? Of course not. Neither is the steering wheel. But it's familiar, and so any change to this UI should be done for very good reasons. Otherwise, people simply won't bother upgrading. After all, why go through all that trouble if it isn't really worth it?
While cost is an important factor, that isn't entirely the point. Consider, the more fuel you have to carry through to landing, the more mass you have. And the more mass you have, the more fuel you need to get into orbit in the first place. It's a waste. Wouldn't you rather send more people or cargo?
Furthermore, there's a lot more that can go wrong with a VTOL craft (engine trouble, fuel leak, etc, etc). The shuttle, OTOH, can glide in unpowered (assuming it has enough fuel to complete it's deorbit burn).
Hell, IMHO, a paraschute landing makes more sense than a powered vertical landing...
Well, in the server space, virtualization gives you immense flexibility, thanks to simplified backup and restore, migration, failover, and so forth, not to mention enhanced security and auditability. Yes, you could implement those features for every service you run, but why go through that effort when it's more easily done with a virtualized environment?
For developers, VMs are fantastic. Not only does it let you target multiple architectures easily, it also makes it possible to create, backup, restore, and teardown machines quickly, which is damn handy for certain modes of development (being able to revert to a known-good configuration of a test system is *very* useful).
But you're right, on the desktop, the uses are limited, probably to security, where you can easily sandbox legacy software.
So then the virtual machine needs to understand the underlying hardware, in order to provide useful virtualized devices. Thus, you have to write a virtual machine for every native platform, which is responsible for providing a unified interface to the underlying hardware.
Hey, maybe instead what you could do is create a machine that virtualized the devices and provided some sort of interface that programs could just access directly! Of course, you'd need is some additional interfaces for process creation and scheduling, but that seems pretty trivial. Man, that'd be sweet... you'd have this nice little "system" "operating" on top of the hardware, but it could hide all the details from the applications running inside! It's brilliant!
I'd mod you up if I could. That's an excellent comment, and echos my own thoughts on the subject. And from another standpoint, the idea that "advancement" implies movement into management really leaves us pure technical folk out in the cold. There are many of us that are perfectly happy working as senior technical staff, and either don't have the proper skills or inclination for management above the technical lead level. IMO, these people should not be punished, but in your average corporation, you either move up or move out.
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Not sure if this is a troll, but it's: X, Y, Z, Pitch, Roll, Yaw.
You're quite the engineer if you can't understand the difference between a passive RFID device and an active RF transmitter.
Or... $499 for the 4Gb model? Or $599 for the 8Gb version? Honestly, wtf did you get $2000 from, exactly?
As per the subject, I was actually mistaken. The NXT contains both an Atmel ARM7 microcontroller and an Atmel AVR, so it's even more powerful than the Roomba.
To your first reply: 1/3 of a meter is about 33cm. Oddly enough, 1/3 of a foot is exactly 4 inches.
:) Well, ignoring temperature and impurities...
:) And why should I *need* a specialized measuring tool? Oh yeah... because it's Imperial. Why can't I just use a regular ol' meters and centimeters with a straight-up tape measure?
If you need more accuracy, that's what decimals are for.
1 Gallon of water? About 7 pounds.
a) that's rote memorization. b) It's "about" 7 pounds. Oddly enough, 1L of water is exactly 1kg.
Yards of cloth are a gross measure -- it's linear yards
Well that makes things even worse! Honestly, WTF is a linear yard??
I'm making pastry, so I can't have any of this "about 333mL" stuff
Bah, since when did you need sub-mL accuracy for making pastry? That's a 1/5th of a teaspoon, for you metric-crippled folks. It's not *that* sensitive (it's far more sensitive to temperature).
I've seldom needed tablespoon to teaspoon conversions, but it's 3 teaspoons to the tablespoon. However, I don't know the tablespoon to cup conversion. Something like 32 or so.
And that's exactly my point. If I don't have a particular measure, I need to make it up with others. For example, I lost my 1/3 cup measure, so I need to make it up with my others. With Imperial, that's practically impossible without a conversion table. With metric, it's easy-peasy.
As for your 3 tsp = 1 tbsp, again, that's rote memorization, and it's a pain in the ass. OTOH, if you're dealing with metric, it's 15mL and 5mL. Again, simple.
I keep hearing about how great metric is because it is so easy to convert from one unit to the next. However, I keep thinking to myself, so what?
:) Honestly, I'll be the first to admit that 12/3 is going to be easier than 10/3, simply because we all have to learn multiplication tables in elementary school. My point is simply that such standard fractions (like a 1/3rd of a meter) would simply end up being memorized.
It's true, Imperial really is designed to have a lot of domain-specific measurements. However, there are times when metric is damned convenient.
For example, how heavy is a gallon of water? I can tell you how heavy a liter of water is quite quickly, but a gallon? I have no idea. I was building a rainwater collection system this past summer, and I needed to figure out how much weight the supports needed to be able to carry. It sure made me glad we use metric here.
How 'bout a seamstress? They probably need to convert yards of material to inches all day long. 'twould be a lot easier if they dealt in meters and centimeters.
And then there's imperial food measurements. WTF do I need to memorize how many teaspoons are in a damned tablespoon? Give me mL any day. Not to mention the mess of throwing in fluid ounces and all that garbage.
I agree, they seem like somewhat contrived examples. But the point is Imperial is not without it's warts. Yeah, it has some conveniences for things like construction, but it's far from perfect, and the fact it isn't a nice, unified system is *really* troublesome for anyone doing serious science, engineering, etc.
However, yours is the first example I've found where metric is easier. I had to think about dividing 12 by 3. I didn't have to think about dividing 10 by 3. Thank you.
You know, I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not...
Designing and adding 3rd party sensors is a breeze.
And it'll get even easier once Hitechnic releases their NXT Prototype board. It's basically a breadboard with the I2C interface mounted and ready to go.
Sure, but, forgetting the obvious flexibility of a Mindstorms kit, it also comes with touch, light, and ultrasonic sensors, bluetooth capability, three servos, and and bunch of Technics pieces, plus the ability to use any other Technics kits you have. Not to mention new third party gear that will be coming around, such as HiTechnic's 3-axis accelerometer/tilt sensor.
So sure, it's twice as expensive, but looking at it, it seems like a pretty good deal to me.
It's based on Atmel AVR, so you don't need help with programming environment, bytecode, etc. It's an AVR.
So's the NXT brick. Check the website yourself if you like.
Durability is an interesting point. But, to claim that makes the Roomba at all superior is, I think, rather shortsighted, as it's not *nearly* as flexible.
I always thought that Lego Mindstorms was the "the perfect robotics platform for hobbyists, schools, and universities alike", especially after the release of their NXT kit.
Hell, if you look here, you can see that they've:
* Released the source to the firmware, so people can write code right down to the metal.
* Provided *hardware* schematics, so people can hack their own gear.
* Fully opened the specs to the programming environment, bytecode, etc, on the shipped firmware.
* Opened up the Bluetooth protocol used by the NXT firmware.
Additionally, they've opened the doors to third party accessories.
Seriously, what can a hacked Roomba offer that's better than all that?
Link (from either of you)?
I think you mean FLOSSFFLOSSS - Free/Libre Open Source Software For Free/Libre Open Source Software's Sake.
But How big is a 3rd of a meter?
Around 33cm. What, you can't divide?
Honestly, if people used these units, they'd get used to the standard fractions pretty quickly. The real problem is inertia, plain and simple.
I can't bring myself to do it...
;)
LOL, yeah... thanks... both of you. Bastards.
Yeah, same goes here in Edmonton, where we're due for a blizzard tonight. :( And here I had a perfect reason to break out the ol' 4.5" that goes woefully underutilized most days...
Yes. All morality ultimately comes down to someone saying that something is right or wrong
Good, I'm glad we agree.
In other words, it is impossible for an atheist to show either statement "X is morally right" or "X is morally wrong" right or wrong for any X.
The exact same thing is true for religion. Prove to me that your God actually said "X is right" or "X is wrong". Wait, you can't, can you? There's no way for you to prove that God made that decree, as opposed to, say, some nutjob trying to rebel against the oppression of the Romans. Worse, in the case of religion, people happily pick and choose their morality. For example, people say "I can eat shellfish because the NT obsoletes the Pentateuch". Then they turn around and condemn gays based on Leviticus.
Therefore, the argument that "god said so, therefore it's moral" is merely an appeal to an arbitrary authority, and is no better than saying "Kant said so, therefore it's moral". They're on the exact same footing. 'course, the difference is the latter is at least grounded in some kind of rational, philosophical reasoning... as opposed to, say, rules which ban the creation of clothing from two different fibres.
Except that this is just Kant arbitrarily deciding that following this principle is morally better than not following it
As opposed to God saying the exact same thing?
So much for women who will die if childbirth proceeds, eh?
Well sure, if you buy a 14" Schmidt-Cassegrain or similar design. But a simple 14" reflector on a Dobsonian mount can be had for around $1000. And you could probably build one for a fair bit less.
You mean troll?
Why is it that relating computers to cars is considered insightful?
Can you explain why it's not? Like cars, many many people use it and are used to it's user interface, which, in spirit, has been the same since the old win16 days. Is it perfect? Of course not. Neither is the steering wheel. But it's familiar, and so any change to this UI should be done for very good reasons. Otherwise, people simply won't bother upgrading. After all, why go through all that trouble if it isn't really worth it?
While cost is an important factor, that isn't entirely the point. Consider, the more fuel you have to carry through to landing, the more mass you have. And the more mass you have, the more fuel you need to get into orbit in the first place. It's a waste. Wouldn't you rather send more people or cargo?
Furthermore, there's a lot more that can go wrong with a VTOL craft (engine trouble, fuel leak, etc, etc). The shuttle, OTOH, can glide in unpowered (assuming it has enough fuel to complete it's deorbit burn).
Hell, IMHO, a paraschute landing makes more sense than a powered vertical landing...
Well, in the server space, virtualization gives you immense flexibility, thanks to simplified backup and restore, migration, failover, and so forth, not to mention enhanced security and auditability. Yes, you could implement those features for every service you run, but why go through that effort when it's more easily done with a virtualized environment?
For developers, VMs are fantastic. Not only does it let you target multiple architectures easily, it also makes it possible to create, backup, restore, and teardown machines quickly, which is damn handy for certain modes of development (being able to revert to a known-good configuration of a test system is *very* useful).
But you're right, on the desktop, the uses are limited, probably to security, where you can easily sandbox legacy software.
So then the virtual machine needs to understand the underlying hardware, in order to provide useful virtualized devices. Thus, you have to write a virtual machine for every native platform, which is responsible for providing a unified interface to the underlying hardware.
Hey, maybe instead what you could do is create a machine that virtualized the devices and provided some sort of interface that programs could just access directly! Of course, you'd need is some additional interfaces for process creation and scheduling, but that seems pretty trivial. Man, that'd be sweet... you'd have this nice little "system" "operating" on top of the hardware, but it could hide all the details from the applications running inside! It's brilliant!
I'd mod you up if I could. That's an excellent comment, and echos my own thoughts on the subject. And from another standpoint, the idea that "advancement" implies movement into management really leaves us pure technical folk out in the cold. There are many of us that are perfectly happy working as senior technical staff, and either don't have the proper skills or inclination for management above the technical lead level. IMO, these people should not be punished, but in your average corporation, you either move up or move out.