Bravo, phayes - that is exactly right.
Everyone - post a thank you while you can (e.g. before May 16).
It's a nice gesture.
btw, the groklaw paypal-donation button still works.
I tested it with a few bucks from my paypal account:-)
PJ's hard work has made the world a better place - again, just a nice gesture.
I’ve confirmed that the ‘keylogger’ that Samsung was accused of shipping with certain notebooks yesterday by NetworkWorld is, in fact, a false-positive result by GFI VIPRE antivirus software.
Replicating the false-positive is easy simply create an empty folder called SL in the Windows folder and scan it.
This was a pretty interesting podcast - they made the point that the Egyptian military wasn't beating down protesters because the protesters are pretty much the military's customer base.
Which suggests the Egyptian military be might more in tune with economic reality than the governments of many other countries. It will be interesting to see what they do next.
There is no such thing as cheating, only getting creative with your sources. The real world, whatever your career will be, relies on the same behavior that is punished in school that they call "cheating."
No such thing as cheating? You're a funny guy:-)
Observation: cheating demonstrates a lack of integrity.
Pro-Tip: Integrity is important for several reasons. One practical reason is that if you lack integrity, nobody will want to do business with you.
Now you may be (indirectly) be advocating that open-book tests are a better measure of learning; but that is rather different from what you wrote. *shrug* At any rate...
My gift to you - some Real World examples of cheating: List Of Corporate Scandals Enron was just "creative with their sources"! Brilliant:-)
2006 HP Spying Scandal
2008 Siemens Scandal, involving cases of bribery on behalf of Siemens towards the Greek Government
American Airlines, deferred maintenance of aircraft
Adelphia officers trial and prison sentence
AOL Time Warner
Arthur Andersen
BAE Systems bribery scandal related to the Al Yamamah contracts with Saudi Arabia.
Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal
Barings Bank, derivatives trading scandal
Bayer, links to Josef Mengele's Auschwitz human experiments, HIV-tainted blood products, anti-Semitism, racism
Bre-X gold mining and stock scandal
Bristol-Myers Squibb accounting scandal
Clearstream, which has been qualified as "the greatest financial scandal in Luxembourg" (Clearstream is a clearing house, i.e. sort of a "bank of banks", used to centralize credit & debit between banks and other financial organizations). As of 2006, it hasn't been resolved yet.
Chiquita Brands International Financing terrorist organizations
CMS Energy
Compass Group, bribed the United Nations in order to win business.
Corrib gas controversy Kilcommon, Erris, Co. Mayo, Ireland.
Deutsche Bank, spying scandal
Duke Energy
Dynegy
El Paso Corp.
Enron accounting fraud, involving Arthur Andersen
Exxon overreporting of oil reserves
Fannie Mae underreporting of profit
Firestone Tire and Rubber Company for use of child labor
FlowTex, the largest corporate scandal in German history
Ford Pinto scandal
Global Crossing
Guinness affair
Hafskip's collapse
Halliburton overcharging government contracts
Harken Energy Scandal
HealthSouth reporting exaggerated earnings
Homestore.com
IG Farben, participation in the Holocaust
Kerr-McGee, the Karen Silkwood case
Kinney National Company financial scandal
Kmart
Krupp, participation in arming Nazi Germany and in the Holocaust
Lernout & Hauspie accounting fraud
Lockheed bribery scandal in Germany, Japan, and Netherlands
Merck Medicaid fraud investigation
MG Rover Group accounts and pensions scandal
Mirant
Morrison-Knudsen scandal. Led to William Agee's ouster
Nicor Energy
Nortel executives overstate post-dot-com recovery earnings in order to earn bonuses
One.Tel collapse
Options backdating involving over 100 companies
Parmalat accounting scandal & mutual fund fraud
Peregrine Systems corporate executives convicted of accounting fraud
Phar-Mor company lied to shareholders. CEO eventually sentenced to prison for fraud and company eventually became bankrupt.
Qwest Communications
RadioShack CEO David Edmondson lied about attaining a B.A. degree from Pacific
Netflix is getting a lot of things right. The cost is low. Streaming works pretty well; they make it easy. I find their picture quality & sound better than youtube.
Yeah I could chase torrents. It doesn't take a LOT of time to manage torrent downloads. But Netflix takes NO time.
I don't subscribe to cable-tv; I'm happy to let Netflix act like my DVR.
I especially like their BBC content (I really enjoyed "The IT Crowd"!). I bet there are other ways to watch BBC content. But Netflix sends a some money the BBC's way. It is important to me to support what I value.
s/valour/velour/
velour
excerpt: According to costumer designer William Blackburn, the uniforms on Star Trek: The Original Series were made of velour. They were always riding up on the actors, and what came to be known as "Command Gold" was originally "Command Green", but the green velour became varying shades of yellow and light greens under the studio lights.
Just for fun, I was surprised to see velour has been around for a while:
historyVelour was invented in 1844 in Lyons (France). The word "Velour" is derived from French which is a term for velvet.
I do not think anyone 40 years ago dreamed that computers would ever be a prevalent in society as they are in the present. Most early computer scientists saw themselves as playing a game not developing the infrastructure that exists now.
Prevalent? The visionaries saw where it could go. 42 years ago, people were thinking about prevalent personal computing like laptops & tablets:
This concept was created two years before the founding of Xerox PARC. Kay wanted to make "A Personal Computer For Children Of All Ages." The ideas led to the development of the Xerox Alto prototype, which was originally called "the interim Dynabook". It embodied all the elements of a graphical user interface, or GUI, as early as 1972.
...
The hardware on which the programming environment ran was relatively irrelevant.
To say it another way, this was like dreaming up the OLPC in 1968. *shrug* They had to invent the tech behind today's "prevalent infrastructure" just to make things happen.
Steve Jobs had co-founded Apple Computer in 1976. The first popular personal computer, the Apple 2, was a hit - and made Steve Jobs one of the biggest names of a brand-new industry. At the height of Apple's early success in December 1979, Jobs, then all of 24, had a privileged invitation to visit Xerox Parc.
Steve Jobs And they showed me really three things. But I was so blinded by the first one I didn't even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object orienting programming they showed me that but I didn't even see that. The other one they showed me was a networked computer system...they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc., etc., I didn't even see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn't know that at the time but still though they had the germ of the idea was there and they'd done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day.
It was a turning-point. Jobs decided that this was the way forward for Apple.
(As an aside, I'm reading Anathem again - Computer Science could really benefit from Lorites.)
Prosecutors will go and tell a jury that the odds of a match are 1 in 1,000,000 (for example).
Interesting points about false positive rates.
Here's a thought experiment: How would prosecutors react if the law put their dna on file, too? Why not add in everybody who is involved: prosecutors, governor, representatives, judges, police, civil servants, lab techs, it staff...
I like to think they would start having second thoughts about how swell of an idea it is. Since it has such a low error rate, what could they possibly complain about? I wonder if any of them would say, "Hmmm..." ?
(For the record, this slope is too slippery - I really don't want to our society to go there. I was just wondering if the people involved with implementing this would be ok with having their on dna go on file as well).
Context is interesting - it is a "big deal", really. Here is an example of context for Egyptian hieroglyphs: The "northward" glyph was a lowered sail: the Nile flows north, so they would use current to travel (no sail). The "southward" glyph was a raised, wind-filled sail since the prevailing winds blew south. South was literally "the direction one sails". Which is, by the way, very convenient when you need to go upstream without a motor.
These things were just obvious if your life and economy revolved around the Nile. Without that context, it has no meaning.
Text-speak has gained huge popularity. Everybody understand LOL and:-) today. Why won't something like Iconoglyphs become very popular?
r.e. the hieroglyphs, this is just some trivia I picked up from a museum exhibit; interesting stuff - museums are cool:-) More detail here: http://www.egyptianmyths.net/sail.htm
actually 8MB... Re: must be thinking of the 370
on
The Design of Design
·
· Score: 1
Try less than half a megabyte. You must be thinking of the 370.
The System/360 models announced in 1964 ranged in speed from 0.034 MIPS [1] to 1.700 MIPS (50 times that speed)[2], with 8 kB and up to 8 MB of main memory,[2] though the latter was unusual. A large system might have 256 KB of main storage.
The part about 256 KB fits what you say with less than half a meg - I've read that memory was crazy expensive back in the day (as I write this on my 16gb laptop!). Before my time, but still - very interesting stuff. I bet it was fascinating to write code for these things.
I was impressed the asimo guessed, "Maybe toy car?" when looking at the hand-sized mini-cooper model. I did want to see them work on overlapping categories, like: is-a(toy) and is-a(car).
You considered some "interesting" power sources:
100 km^2 solar panels - pretty expensive, check
4.5*10^8 kg of batteries - too heavy, check
8.2*10^11 kg of fuel cells - also too heavy, check
several hydrogen bombs - difficult, check
antimatter reactors - not invented yet, check
But why stop with antimatter?
Why not: a naquada reactor?
Why not: a deathstar full of gerbil wheels?
Why not: unobtanium batteries? Are we having fun yet?:-)
So yeah, lighting up large land areas with a space laser is a non-starter. I get that.
And there are more effective ways to solve the advanced-warning problems that don't involve space lasers. I get that, too.
Still, space lasers are kind of cool. It is interesting to ponder, even if it is wildly impractical.
*shrug*
By the way... You missed my points about: 1) lighting up a single spot & scanning that back and forth across the ground. That drops the illumination requirements a lot: from 25GW to 100W (using a 10m^2 "spot" at 1w/m).
How many "tons of hydrogen fuel cells" would that require?
(I also wonder whether 1 W/m would even be noticeable, but *shrug* it was just the example Tibit used.)
And 2) Tibit's example assumes continuous operation. I pointed out it wouldn't need to stay on for years at a time - just a few hours at most. Does that trim anything off the number of required batteries?
Anyway, thanks for coming out to play.:-)
p.s. I know you were just having fun with it. My goal was wondering is there any possible way to make it work at all, even if it isn't cost effective. Out of all your ideas, the solar array seemed least implausible. Along those lines, shrinking the illumination area and limiting the activation time seem to make it a few notches even less implausible. But that is, of course, still many many steps away from practical.
Why does it need to be continuous light? What would a 10m x 10m "point" look like raster scanning a swath of coastline?
How bright would it have to be to be noticeable when everything around you briefly flashed red from reflectance? And wouldn't the beam itself be pretty visible from atmospheric backscatter?
Instead of a 5,000km x 5,000km area, what about something that better matches a coastline? Maybe 5,000km x 10km ?
And why orbit a gigawatt reactor? It isn't like this would need to be switched on continuously for days and days. Put up enough batteries to run it for 15 minutes at a time. After a few hours, the wave would hit and at that point it doesn't really matter.
I don't know lighting well enough to say whether 1w/m^2 "on the ground" would be noticeable. The down side there is you'd want enough of a flash to get attention, but not enough to blind / interfere w/evacuation.
Plenty of other problems, though.
As for the people writing "this is just science fiction", lighten up. Computer vision was science fiction not that long ago.
*shrug* This is an interesting idea; perhaps not practical, but still interesting.
Some followup questions for the original poster: what %ge of tsunamis would this actually be helpful? (e.g. if it is too close, there won't be enough time to get evacuate, and if it is coming from across the pacific then there is enough time to save most people with conventional tech). How much would it cost? Would that money be better invested in saving some people from some tsunamis, or in saving all costal area people from rising sea-levels / global warning? My gut feeling is the global-warming thing would be a better "net-good" for the planet.
So, any ideas about how to legally stop OCR of the plate#? After a little searching, I found the following in a google cache (this seems like it is for the stoplight-runner cameras, but still: they've put some thought into this):
* Platefinder - Sophisticated firmware continually searches the camera's field of view for the presence of a license plate.
* Dual Lens Camera - As a license plate is detected, the dual lens camera is triggered to capture both color and infrared images of the vehicle and plate. Infrared cameras are able to see license plates regardless of sun glare, darkness, or other adverse conditions.
* Triple Flash Technology - This patented technology varies the flash, shutter and gain settings of the camera to capture multiple plate images, ensuring the highest quality photo regardless of light or weather conditions. Only the image determined to produce the highest quality read is sent on for processing.
* Optical Character Recognition "Engine" - Unlike some players in the ALPR community, MVTRAC does not use generic OCR engine for all states and regions. MVTRAC uses a customized OCR engine specific to the state or region of interest. MVTRAC OCR engines are very tolerant of skewed and off-axis plate reads, various plate sizes, syntax rules, and designs. The engine reads the captured infrared plate image and converts it to a data file.
* Processors - In addition to housing the patented Platefinder and triple flash technologies, MVTRAC processors perform the OCR translation and can use the captured data in a variety of ways via a MVTRAC software application or third party solution.
* Application Software- Software interfaces, specific to the industry or application, allow the user of the system to easily view and manage the data.
Sark: Well, I... it's just... a User, I mean... Users wrote us. A User even wrote you! Master Control Program: No one User wrote me. I'm worth millions of their man-years. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tron/
SatanicPuppy wrote... > Perl is weakly typed on a lot of things, > but it's static for data structures and subroutines. > So you can have a hash of hashes, or an array of arrays, > but you can't get arrays in your hashes or vice versa.
Bad puppy:-) I would like to mod that post '-1 good intentions w/ignorance'.
Thank you, bsDaemon.
It is worth looking at the code in bsDaemon's link. For all the jokes about perl code being read-only, this is really pretty clear: --- begin excerpt --- Answer: How do I make a hash of arrays? contributed by chromatic
my %dramatis_personae = ( humans => [ 'hamnet', 'shakespeare', 'robyn', ], faeries => [ 'oberon', 'titania', 'puck', ], other => [ 'morpheus, lord of dreams' ], );
Access it like this:
foreach my $group (keys %dramatis_personae) { print "The members of $group are\n"; foreach (@{$dramatis_personae{$group}}) { print "\t$_\n"; } } --- end excerpt --- (I'm guessing 'Hamnet' is a typo). Anyway... There are other ways to do this in perl, but the *intention* should be pretty clear.
Just for fun, does anybody here have a corresponding Scala example?
--- begin --- Pickens Gives New Meaning to 'Self-Government'
By Steven Milloy July 31, 2008
The more you learn about T. Boone Pickens' plan to switch America to wind power, the more you realize that he seems willing to say and do just about anything to make another billion or two.
This column previously discussed the plan's technical and economic shortcomings and marketing ruses. Today, we'll look into the diabolical machinations behind it.
Simply put, Pickens' pitch is "embrace wind power to help break our 'addiction' to foreign oil." There is, however, another intriguing component to Pickens' plan that goes unmentioned in his TV commercials, media interviews and web site -- water rights, which he owns more of than any other American.
Pickens hopes that his recent $100 million investment in 200,000 acres worth of groundwater rights in Roberts County, Texas, located over the Ogallala Aquifer, will earn him $1 billion. But there's more to earning such a profit than simply acquiring the water. Rights-of-way must be purchased to install pipelines, and opposition from anti-development environmental groups must be overcome. Here's where it gets interesting, according to information compiled by the Water Research Group, a small grassroots group focusing on local water issues in Texas.
Purchasing rights-of-way is often expensive and time-consuming -- and what if landowners won't sell? While private entities may be frustrated, governments can exercise eminent domain to compel sales. This is Pickens' route of choice. But wait, you say, Pickens is not a government entity. How can he use eminent domain? Are you sitting down?
At Pickens' behest, the Texas legislature changed state law to allow the two residents of an 8-acre parcel of land in Roberts County to vote to create a municipal water district, a government agency with eminent domain powers. Who were the voters? They were Pickens' wife and the manager of Pickens' nearby ranch. And who sits on the board of directors of this water district? They are the parcel's three other non-resident landowners, all Pickens' employees. --- end --- excerpt from http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080731.html If this true, it is an impressive scheme.
There was an AC post to this link below. If true, this explains the "technical problems" pretty well.
Well whoever it was, AT&T is offering up $100,000 to find out. Sounds like AT&T might be a little upset.
Below is an excerpt from the article. The link to the story has an interesting video clip from a local news station (see "video gallery" (flash)). Interesting to me, anyway, as I've never seen a cut fiber cable flopping about. The "play by play" event sequencing was also interesting to see; sounds like it hit the fan about 2am local time.
---begin--- AT&T is Now Offering a $100,000 Reward for Phone Vandalism Information
AT&T is now offering $100,000 reward for information leading to arrest/conviction of those responsible for California phone vandalism. To report information call 408-947-STOP
Police say someone cut the fiber optic cables inside the south San Jose vault on purpose early Thursday morning....etc... ---end---
Slashdot Mirror
Bravo, phayes - that is exactly right. Everyone - post a thank you while you can (e.g. before May 16). It's a nice gesture.
:-)
btw, the groklaw paypal-donation button still works.
I tested it with a few bucks from my paypal account
PJ's hard work has made the world a better place - again, just a nice gesture.
Besides which if a welshman invented fire...
Nice! Wish I had mod points today :-)
Samsung 'keylogger' is a GFI VIPRE antivirus false-positive
Excerpt from link:
I’ve confirmed that the ‘keylogger’ that Samsung was accused of shipping with certain notebooks yesterday by NetworkWorld is, in fact, a false-positive result by GFI VIPRE antivirus software. Replicating the false-positive is easy simply create an empty folder called SL in the Windows folder and scan it.
"On today's Planet Money, we look at the Egyptian military's deep business ties to everything from dishwashers to resort hotels. And we consider how those ties influence how the military responds to the crisis."
Which suggests the Egyptian military be might more in tune with economic reality than the governments of many other countries. It will be interesting to see what they do next.
nilbog wrote:
There is no such thing as cheating, only getting creative with your sources. The real world, whatever your career will be, relies on the same behavior that is punished in school that they call "cheating."
No such thing as cheating? You're a funny guy :-)
Observation: cheating demonstrates a lack of integrity.
Pro-Tip: Integrity is important for several reasons. One practical reason is that if you lack integrity, nobody will want to do business with you.
Now you may be (indirectly) be advocating that open-book tests are a better measure of learning; but that is rather different from what you wrote.
*shrug* At any rate...
My gift to you - some Real World examples of cheating: List Of Corporate Scandals :-)
Enron was just "creative with their sources"! Brilliant
2006 HP Spying Scandal
2008 Siemens Scandal, involving cases of bribery on behalf of Siemens towards the Greek Government
American Airlines, deferred maintenance of aircraft
Adelphia officers trial and prison sentence
AOL Time Warner
Arthur Andersen
BAE Systems bribery scandal related to the Al Yamamah contracts with Saudi Arabia.
Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal
Barings Bank, derivatives trading scandal
Bayer, links to Josef Mengele's Auschwitz human experiments, HIV-tainted blood products, anti-Semitism, racism
Bre-X gold mining and stock scandal
Bristol-Myers Squibb accounting scandal
Clearstream, which has been qualified as "the greatest financial scandal in Luxembourg" (Clearstream is a clearing house, i.e. sort of a "bank of banks", used to centralize credit & debit between banks and other financial organizations). As of 2006, it hasn't been resolved yet.
Chiquita Brands International Financing terrorist organizations
CMS Energy
Compass Group, bribed the United Nations in order to win business.
Corrib gas controversy Kilcommon, Erris, Co. Mayo, Ireland.
Deutsche Bank, spying scandal
Duke Energy
Dynegy
El Paso Corp.
Enron accounting fraud, involving Arthur Andersen
Exxon overreporting of oil reserves
Fannie Mae underreporting of profit
Firestone Tire and Rubber Company for use of child labor
FlowTex, the largest corporate scandal in German history
Ford Pinto scandal
Global Crossing
Guinness affair
Hafskip's collapse
Halliburton overcharging government contracts
Harken Energy Scandal
HealthSouth reporting exaggerated earnings
Homestore.com
IG Farben, participation in the Holocaust
Kerr-McGee, the Karen Silkwood case
Kinney National Company financial scandal
Kmart
Krupp, participation in arming Nazi Germany and in the Holocaust
Lernout & Hauspie accounting fraud
Lockheed bribery scandal in Germany, Japan, and Netherlands
Merck Medicaid fraud investigation
MG Rover Group accounts and pensions scandal
Mirant
Morrison-Knudsen scandal. Led to William Agee's ouster
Nicor Energy
Nortel executives overstate post-dot-com recovery earnings in order to earn bonuses
One.Tel collapse
Options backdating involving over 100 companies
Parmalat accounting scandal & mutual fund fraud
Peregrine Systems corporate executives convicted of accounting fraud
Phar-Mor company lied to shareholders. CEO eventually sentenced to prison for fraud and company eventually became bankrupt.
Qwest Communications
RadioShack CEO David Edmondson lied about attaining a B.A. degree from Pacific
Netflix is getting a lot of things right.
The cost is low.
Streaming works pretty well; they make it easy.
I find their picture quality & sound better than youtube.
Yeah I could chase torrents. It doesn't take a LOT of time to manage torrent downloads. But Netflix takes NO time.
I don't subscribe to cable-tv; I'm happy to let Netflix act like my DVR.
I especially like their BBC content (I really enjoyed "The IT Crowd"!). I bet there are other ways to watch BBC content. But Netflix sends a some money the BBC's way. It is important to me to support what I value.
*shrug*
Netflix is getting a lot of things right.
velour excerpt: According to costumer designer William Blackburn, the uniforms on Star Trek: The Original Series were made of velour. They were always riding up on the actors, and what came to be known as "Command Gold" was originally "Command Green", but the green velour became varying shades of yellow and light greens under the studio lights.
Just for fun, I was surprised to see velour has been around for a while:
historyVelour was invented in 1844 in Lyons (France). The word "Velour" is derived from French which is a term for velvet.
Speaking of The Empire Strikes Back, this was especially good.
Family Guy: Something, Something, Something Dark Side (trailer)
Not all of the FamilyGuy works for me, but one this was very well done. I haven't laughed that hard for a good long while.
WHY DO THEY COST A KIDNEY PER TERABYTE???
Actually, that is a pretty good deal...
Meshach wrote:
I do not think anyone 40 years ago dreamed that computers would ever be a prevalent in society as they are in the present. Most early computer scientists saw themselves as playing a game not developing the infrastructure that exists now.
Prevalent? The visionaries saw where it could go.
42 years ago, people were thinking about prevalent personal computing like laptops & tablets:
Excerpt from wikipedia about Alan Key's "Dynabook" concept:
To say it another way, this was like dreaming up the OLPC in 1968.
*shrug* They had to invent the tech behind today's "prevalent infrastructure" just to make things happen.
Here is Steve Jobs talking about his visit to Xerox Parc - not quite 40 years ago, but close enough:
Excerpt from the documentary "Triumph of the Nerds"
(As an aside, I'm reading Anathem again - Computer Science could really benefit from Lorites.)
Prosecutors will go and tell a jury that the odds of a match are 1 in 1,000,000 (for example).
Interesting points about false positive rates.
Here's a thought experiment:
How would prosecutors react if the law put their dna on file, too?
Why not add in everybody who is involved: prosecutors, governor, representatives, judges, police, civil servants, lab techs, it staff...
I like to think they would start having second thoughts about how swell of an idea it is. Since it has such a low error rate, what could they possibly complain about? I wonder if any of them would say, "Hmmm..." ?
(For the record, this slope is too slippery - I really don't want to our society to go there. I was just wondering if the people involved with implementing this would be ok with having their on dna go on file as well).
it is due to sql...
Huh? It happened because they use sql?
Following that line of thought,
isn't it really due to the use
of CPU's in those servers?
hold both sides of the screen... Where is he going to get another hand from?
Dude, it wraps around .
Context is interesting - it is a "big deal", really. Here is an example of context for Egyptian hieroglyphs:
The "northward" glyph was a lowered sail: the Nile flows north, so they would use current to travel (no sail).
The "southward" glyph was a raised, wind-filled sail since the prevailing winds blew south. South was literally "the direction one sails". Which is, by the way, very convenient when you need to go upstream without a motor.
These things were just obvious if your life and economy revolved around the Nile.
Without that context, it has no meaning.
Text-speak has gained huge popularity. :-) today.
Everybody understand LOL and
Why won't something like Iconoglyphs become very popular?
r.e. the hieroglyphs, this is just some trivia I picked up from a museum exhibit; interesting stuff - museums are cool :-)
More detail here: http://www.egyptianmyths.net/sail.htm
Try less than half a megabyte. You must be thinking of the 370.
up to 8MB actually... excerpt
The part about 256 KB fits what you say with less than half a meg - I've read that memory was crazy expensive back in the day (as I write this on my 16gb laptop!). Before my time, but still - very interesting stuff. I bet it was fascinating to write code for these things.
I was impressed the asimo guessed, "Maybe toy car?" when looking at the hand-sized mini-cooper model.
I did want to see them work on overlapping categories, like: is-a(toy) and is-a(car).
My monitor has ONE BIG PIXEL. It ain't easy to use but I get by.
Actually that's just the disk activity light.
You considered some "interesting" power sources:
100 km^2 solar panels - pretty expensive, check
4.5*10^8 kg of batteries - too heavy, check
8.2*10^11 kg of fuel cells - also too heavy, check
several hydrogen bombs - difficult, check
antimatter reactors - not invented yet, check
But why stop with antimatter? :-)
Why not: a naquada reactor?
Why not: a deathstar full of gerbil wheels?
Why not: unobtanium batteries?
Are we having fun yet?
So yeah, lighting up large land areas with
a space laser is a non-starter. I get that.
And there are more effective ways to solve
the advanced-warning problems that don't
involve space lasers. I get that, too.
Still, space lasers are kind of cool. It is
interesting to ponder, even if it is wildly
impractical.
*shrug*
By the way...
You missed my points about:
1) lighting up a single spot & scanning
that back and forth across the ground.
That drops the illumination requirements
a lot: from 25GW to 100W (using a 10m^2
"spot" at 1w/m).
How many "tons of hydrogen fuel cells"
would that require?
(I also wonder whether 1 W/m would even be
noticeable, but *shrug* it was just the
example Tibit used.)
And 2) Tibit's example assumes continuous operation.
I pointed out it wouldn't need to stay on for years
at a time - just a few hours at most. Does that trim
anything off the number of required batteries?
Anyway, thanks for coming out to play. :-)
p.s. I know you were just having fun with it.
My goal was wondering is there any possible way
to make it work at all, even if it isn't cost
effective. Out of all your ideas, the solar
array seemed least implausible.
Along those lines, shrinking the illumination
area and limiting the activation time seem to
make it a few notches even less implausible.
But that is, of course, still many many steps
away from practical.
Why does it need to be continuous light?
What would a 10m x 10m "point" look like
raster scanning a swath of coastline?
How bright would it have to be to be noticeable
when everything around you briefly flashed red
from reflectance? And wouldn't the beam itself
be pretty visible from atmospheric backscatter?
Instead of a 5,000km x 5,000km area,
what about something that better matches
a coastline? Maybe 5,000km x 10km ?
And why orbit a gigawatt reactor?
It isn't like this would need to be switched
on continuously for days and days. Put up enough
batteries to run it for 15 minutes at a time.
After a few hours, the wave would hit and
at that point it doesn't really matter.
I don't know lighting well enough to
say whether 1w/m^2 "on the ground"
would be noticeable. The down side
there is you'd want enough of a flash
to get attention, but not enough to
blind / interfere w/evacuation.
Plenty of other problems, though.
As for the people writing "this is just
science fiction", lighten up.
Computer vision was science fiction not
that long ago.
*shrug*
This is an interesting idea; perhaps not
practical, but still interesting.
Some followup questions for the original poster:
what %ge of tsunamis would this actually be helpful?
(e.g. if it is too close, there won't be enough time
to get evacuate, and if it is coming from across the
pacific then there is enough time to save most people
with conventional tech).
How much would it cost?
Would that money be better invested in saving some
people from some tsunamis, or in saving all costal
area people from rising sea-levels / global warning?
My gut feeling is the global-warming thing would be
a better "net-good" for the planet.
But this is still an interesting idea :-)
So, any ideas about how to legally stop OCR of the plate#?
After a little searching, I found the following in a google cache (this seems like
it is for the stoplight-runner cameras, but still: they've put some thought into this):
* Platefinder - Sophisticated firmware continually searches the camera's field of view for the presence of a license plate.
* Dual Lens Camera - As a license plate is detected, the dual lens camera is triggered to capture both color and infrared images of the vehicle and plate. Infrared cameras are able to see license plates regardless of sun glare, darkness, or other adverse conditions.
* Triple Flash Technology - This patented technology varies the flash, shutter and gain settings of the camera to capture multiple plate images, ensuring the highest quality photo regardless of light or weather conditions. Only the image determined to produce the highest quality read is sent on for processing.
* Optical Character Recognition "Engine" - Unlike some players in the ALPR community, MVTRAC does not use generic OCR engine for all states and regions. MVTRAC uses a customized OCR engine specific to the state or region of interest. MVTRAC OCR engines are very tolerant of skewed and off-axis plate reads, various plate sizes, syntax rules, and designs. The engine reads the captured infrared plate image and converts it to a data file.
* Processors - In addition to housing the patented Platefinder and triple flash technologies, MVTRAC processors perform the OCR translation and can use the captured data in a variety of ways via a MVTRAC software application or third party solution.
* Application Software- Software interfaces, specific to the industry or application, allow the user of the system to easily view and manage the data.
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:t9W6EKcsOHgJ:mvtrac.threesphere.com/alpr/overview/+mvtrac+camera&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
No matter how smart an AI developer may be
Sark: Well, I... it's just... a User, I mean... Users wrote us. A User even wrote you!
Master Control Program: No one User wrote me. I'm worth millions of their man-years.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tron/
SatanicPuppy wrote...
:-)
> Perl is weakly typed on a lot of things,
> but it's static for data structures and subroutines.
> So you can have a hash of hashes, or an array of arrays,
> but you can't get arrays in your hashes or vice versa.
Bad puppy
I would like to mod that post '-1 good intentions w/ignorance'.
Thank you, bsDaemon.
It is worth looking at the code in bsDaemon's link.
For all the jokes about perl code being read-only,
this is really pretty clear:
--- begin excerpt ---
Answer: How do I make a hash of arrays?
contributed by chromatic
my %dramatis_personae = (
humans => [ 'hamnet', 'shakespeare', 'robyn', ],
faeries => [ 'oberon', 'titania', 'puck', ],
other => [ 'morpheus, lord of dreams' ],
);
Access it like this:
foreach my $group (keys %dramatis_personae) {
print "The members of $group are\n";
foreach (@{$dramatis_personae{$group}}) {
print "\t$_\n";
}
}
--- end excerpt ---
(I'm guessing 'Hamnet' is a typo).
Anyway...
There are other ways to do this in perl, but the *intention*
should be pretty clear.
Just for fun, does anybody here have a corresponding Scala example?
Fool? No.
Evil Genius?
Maybe... check this out:
--- begin ---
Pickens Gives New Meaning to 'Self-Government'
By Steven Milloy
July 31, 2008
The more you learn about T. Boone Pickens' plan to switch America to wind power, the more you realize that he seems willing to say and do just about anything to make another billion or two.
This column previously discussed the plan's technical and economic shortcomings and marketing ruses. Today, we'll look into the diabolical machinations behind it.
Simply put, Pickens' pitch is "embrace wind power to help break our 'addiction' to foreign oil." There is, however, another intriguing component to Pickens' plan that goes unmentioned in his TV commercials, media interviews and web site -- water rights, which he owns more of than any other American.
Pickens hopes that his recent $100 million investment in 200,000 acres worth of groundwater rights in Roberts County, Texas, located over the Ogallala Aquifer, will earn him $1 billion. But there's more to earning such a profit than simply acquiring the water. Rights-of-way must be purchased to install pipelines, and opposition from anti-development environmental groups must be overcome. Here's where it gets interesting, according to information compiled by the Water Research Group, a small grassroots group focusing on local water issues in Texas.
Purchasing rights-of-way is often expensive and time-consuming -- and what if landowners won't sell? While private entities may be frustrated, governments can exercise eminent domain to compel sales. This is Pickens' route of choice. But wait, you say, Pickens is not a government entity. How can he use eminent domain? Are you sitting down?
At Pickens' behest, the Texas legislature changed state law to allow the two residents of an 8-acre parcel of land in Roberts County to vote to create a municipal water district, a government agency with eminent domain powers. Who were the voters? They were Pickens' wife and the manager of Pickens' nearby ranch. And who sits on the board of directors of this water district? They are the parcel's three other non-resident landowners, all Pickens' employees.
--- end ---
excerpt from http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080731.html
If this true, it is an impressive scheme.
There was an AC post to this link below.
If true, this explains the "technical problems" pretty well.
Oh.
Unless you were talking about implants on yourself.
*shudder*
Go play with yourself indeed.
Well whoever it was, AT&T is offering up $100,000 to find out. Sounds like AT&T might be a little upset.
Below is an excerpt from the article. The link to the story has an interesting video clip from a local news station (see "video gallery" (flash)). Interesting to me, anyway, as I've never seen a cut fiber cable flopping about. The "play by play" event sequencing was also interesting to see; sounds like it hit the fan about 2am local time.
---begin---
AT&T is Now Offering a $100,000 Reward for Phone Vandalism Information
AT&T is now offering $100,000 reward for information leading to arrest/conviction of those responsible for California phone vandalism. To report information call 408-947-STOP
Police say someone cut the fiber optic cables inside the south San Jose vault on purpose early Thursday morning. ...etc...
---end---