1) If this was a police or city camera, it likely wouldn't have been placed that high up since the lower the camera is, the easier it would be to view the license plate. The higher it is, the greater the viewing angle and the slimmer the image of the plate the harder it becomes for a program to correctly distinguish the important features.
Oh fer crying out loud, just give the footage to the NCIS guys. They can take footage from a 20 year old parking lot camera and enhance it to full high def such that one can easily zoom in on a tiny little license plate and read it easily. In fact, don't bother giving it to them. They probably already pushed 2 or 3 buttons and then typed furiously for 10 seconds and broke all of the security in the entire federal government, took the footage, found the plate, accosted the owner, and have him behind bars.
Here's the part I like. Thirty years ago we railed on the soviet union for attacking other sovereign governments and forcing their way of government on them, for imprisoning people without rights or due process, and for a long ugly war in Afghanistan where many civilians were killed in a fairly pointless war. Oh, and for taking away civil liberties from their people and suppressing people with the 'wrong ideas' or for practicing religion. This is how we demonized them to support the spending on covert and direct operations and a military build-up that cost trillions.
Today we attack other sovereign nations and force democracy on them, we put people up in Guantanamo Bay, and we've had a long ugly war in Afghanistan where many civilians were killed in a pointless war. We've systematically removed rights from our citizens and given them to the police to suppress wars on drugs, terrorism, or whatever the money-waster flavor of the month is. We suppress people with the wrong ideas, and as a Christian nation that was founded by people fleeing religious persecution, we're rather un-christian-like in our treatment of non christians. Now the muslim extremists demonize us on the same grounds that we demonized the Soviets over.
So we were either wrong then, or wrong now. Maybe both.
My guess as well. But I'll add the incompetence level where nobody knows what they are or why they're there, they're installed in dangerous places, and then everyone hush hushes to maximize the tin foil hattery.
All the earmarkings of a government agency doing stupid things stupidly, then failing to properly address it when its discovered.
...they test it out with the users of a web service that isn't a dinosaur that just hasn't realized that it's dead yet.
Seriously? C'mon man, I quit using Yahoo about 5 years ago. Surprisingly, they deleted my email account without any warning at all, although they did send me a note afterwards telling me that they did it.
This is the standard claim that is thrown against Apple. It's not the glowing bitten Apple you're buying with that extra dough. What you are getting is a lot more things:
* Robust case that works the exact same way also 3 years after active use and possible multiple falls. The screen still closes tightly and soundlessly. I've had my MacBook Pro fall somehow and dent one edge near the CD drive and I've never noticed it. A comparable blow to cause aluminum to dent like this would have shattered a plastic laptop.
Hmm, exactly the same as my 3 year old HP 17" laptop that I paid $400 for.
* Ease of use. And that's something most people forget to price really. If your life turns around Linux kernels and command line and you don't have lawn to mow or family to spend quality time with, then you might not understand how much that is worth. Software management is hassle free (drag and drop for 90% of stuff, App Store for the rest that keeps and does all the updates for you).
I've seen several head to head ease of use studies that said that osx isnt any easier to use than win7. The thing is, nobody hangs around in the operating system much, and once you get into an app you aren't going to see any difference regardless of what OS you're running. This was a great argument when XP was the new kid on the block, but its 2012 now.
* Easy support from Apple as already outlined in many posts that makes sure any issue that pops up for the ordinary user is solved and their experience is a great one. Forget here the geeks that squeak when the latest nightly doesn't build from ports or what not. Noone cares about that really as it affects a negligible amount of people in the real world (albeit quite a lot of people on slashdot).
Last time I checked, Dell, Lenovo and other companies vie with Apple for top spot in support. Buy a laptop from the microsoft store and they'll support you just like apple does.
* The speed... Forget the need to compare drive spin speeds and CPU MHz and what not. What really matters is the speed at which your computer operates when you do stuff. And while Mac's are usually "underpowered" in comparison to many PC's it's due to perfectly clear reasons and lack of need for anything higher. You don't gain much by slamming the highest end CPU in there and then being unable to sustain it for 8h as well as the heating that you have to take care of. What really matters is that the macs with OS X combination is really snappy in most situations. If you go for an Air that is all SSD with passive cooling you get nice speed with no noise what so ever.
I'm afraid I have to stop here. When you make an argument that its a good idea to pay more for less power because the operating system is somewhat more efficient, then you're a fanboy. I just built two hackintosh desktops for around $500 each that would compete with a $2000+ high end pro model from apple. Looking at the apple BOM, mine also has better parts in every regard. But your argument is that I should pay the $2k, get a slower machine, and thats the win?
I have two cheap laptops with ssd's in them, total cost under $500. i3's, 4gb ram, 128gb ssd. Quiet, fast, cheap.
What you're getting for the extra money is Apples profit margin leveraged against slave labor. Stupid *and* immoral.
...second buy whatever the right screen size is that she wants for under $500. If she doesn't like it, take it back and now that you know what she didn't like, get whatever else is on sale that suits her.
Don't waste your money on 'business grade' or supposed 'high end' laptops. They're made on the same assembly lines by the same people using largely the same parts, which is why you keep finding so much similarity. While one might make a specific quality argument for a more expensive model, generally you can buy two cheap ones for the price of one of the models meant largely to impress the people watching you use it. So buy one now and in 3 years, buy whatever the state of the art cheap laptop is at that time.
Hard to carry an xbox around with you. Plus motorola has plenty of set top boxes and google has google tv. Not a high end gaming console, but when you can have the same thing on your tv, phone, tablet and computer with access to most music, books and apps...whats not to like?
Not to mention Google swears that a huge percentage of tv's made in the second half of this year will have google tv incorporated.
I don't think Microsoft is going to be a player in any market anymore. It appears that their only trick is to shove windows onto small platforms where its not needed. Unless you have an xbox (which is hard to haul around with you), they don't have much in the way of a viable full platform set with apps and music and books. Lets face it, Bing/xbox live/whatever they're calling it these days sucks.
I always like the random tech cheer for stuff like arm and linux. C'mon guys, you need a business driver and there isnt one. You don't just take technology and look for a problem for it to solve, you identify the most important problems to solve and then implement technology to solve that problem.
ARM built up to do what a desktop cpu does will look just like the cpu it intends to replace. It won't have significant power or energy advantages. It'll require a ton of software work and rework.
This is MIPS and PowerPC all over again. Nobody needs it. But we'll certainly spend a billion on it before realizing that it doesn't do anything for anyone.
Good luck to the ARM ceo. Bravado doesn't make the payroll.
No, I didn't. You implied he'd have to change careers because his kind of job might go away. I pointed out that he's going to not only need to dig into his current job (because trying to compete with 25 year olds at half pay in a completely new type of job would be suicidal), he's going to have to move into a senior/lead management type role to stay employed until he's in his mid to late 50's. Good luck after that.
You're apparently unfamiliar with the highly entertaining lack of work for techies in their late 40's+. If you aren't preparing to move into management or a leadership role of some kind, or you're ridiculously specialized you'll be forced out of the job in favor of a pair of 25 year old kids who together will be making the same money you are.
Don't think so? Think of all the 55 or 60 or 65 year old primarily technical guys you know that went through the recession and kept their jobs. There are some, for sure...but not that many.
I went straight into operating system and microprocessor design in the 1970's and frankly don't remember too many people complaining about a lack of a degree after 4-5 years of job effort. I did have a few people get excited about hiring me but then change their minds when they found out I wasn't carrying a masters or doctorate. I decided I didn't want to work for buttheads who were more interested in the paper than the ability.
After ten years, it was more of a "wow, you don't have a degree?" as a minor item of interest when someone saw my resume. So either the guys you work for are buttheads or the ceiling you're hitting is an excuse you're having laid on you.
Yep, I've yet to have a distro drop onto a machine and not need me to edit 27 text files using a myriad of editors after referring to 20 web posts...to get the frickin sound to work. That one was a hand rolled distro for a specific htpc machine too...
Ask a question and you'll get "Yer too stupid" or "You'll have to read 32,000 pages of stuff and figure it out yourself!".
Non pure and annointed drivers and apps that arent truly "open source" aren't included. I've got news for the open source community. Users dont give a @%#$!
In the meanwhile, its easier to load win7 or lion on a box. The drivers are all there and they work. You dont have to edit text files. Support is widely available from non snotty non fifteen year olds. You dont have to go to 10 sites and read chicken bones and feathers to figure out how to get stuff to work.
Too many choices, none of them work as well as the commercial OS's, and none of them bring me anything that an $80 windows license wont solve.
The shortfalls in tax revenues in no way led to funding cuts in k-12 and other education areas. State politicians decided to cut those programs instead of cutting their own pork spending and wasteful projects when they ran out of money. They do that because taking money away from schools, fire and police helps motivate the sheeple into offering up more to the tax coffers.
It sure would be nice if Microsoft and Apple and everyone else paid their fair share. But lets not lose focus on who the real problem is with regards to the taxation situation. We really DONT have a revenue problem. We really DO have a spending problem.
He did say 'spatially', so maybe its windmills in space?
Humongous wind arrays all around the bay area including the well known altamont pass. No apparent change to the area weather as a result in fact they have the nicest weather around. I call bullshit. Maybe setting up large windmill arrays gets you warm predictable weather almost year round.
You'd have thought that we'd have gotten rid of the poor by now. Nobody seems to want them and they dont seem to contribute much. I guess we need someone to buy all the surplus hamburger helper and powdered eggs.
Maybe the state of texas willl give everyone some of that 1970's surplus cheese in exchange for paying their sales taxes.
Its worse than that. There is this presumption that you can just start charging sales tax and automatically add that amount to the state coffers with no unintended consequences.
I like to buy stuff from amazon because they dont collect CA taxes, at least not yet. I do that because the politicians in the state will waste every penny I give them on horseshit and stuff that makes them feel powerful.
I'd just as soon that they dont have a chance to spend my money, so when Amazon starts collecting CA tax, I'll simply start buying from some other etailer thats out of state that doesn't. I would expect this will have a clear cut impact on amazons bottom line, causing them to urp up thousands of workers. Hell, I can buy half the stuff I buy from amazon directly from the chinese companies that make it, without tax.
So I'm afraid to tell all the politicians in Texas and California who cant live within their means. You aren't getting my money no matter how hard you try. If you backflip enough and spend more millions of my tax dollars on all of this legislation to try to squeeze more money out of me, I'll simply leave the state.
Ah come on. Groping children is way more interesting than worrying about getting called out for profiling and racism. The thing is, it hurts when large heavily bearded men hit you. Little girls, not so much. I dont think they even have a washington lobby, do they?
Slashdot Mirror
1) If this was a police or city camera, it likely wouldn't have been placed that high up since the lower the camera is, the easier it would be to view the license plate. The higher it is, the greater the viewing angle and the slimmer the image of the plate the harder it becomes for a program to correctly distinguish the important features.
Oh fer crying out loud, just give the footage to the NCIS guys. They can take footage from a 20 year old parking lot camera and enhance it to full high def such that one can easily zoom in on a tiny little license plate and read it easily. In fact, don't bother giving it to them. They probably already pushed 2 or 3 buttons and then typed furiously for 10 seconds and broke all of the security in the entire federal government, took the footage, found the plate, accosted the owner, and have him behind bars.
Here's the part I like. Thirty years ago we railed on the soviet union for attacking other sovereign governments and forcing their way of government on them, for imprisoning people without rights or due process, and for a long ugly war in Afghanistan where many civilians were killed in a fairly pointless war. Oh, and for taking away civil liberties from their people and suppressing people with the 'wrong ideas' or for practicing religion. This is how we demonized them to support the spending on covert and direct operations and a military build-up that cost trillions.
Today we attack other sovereign nations and force democracy on them, we put people up in Guantanamo Bay, and we've had a long ugly war in Afghanistan where many civilians were killed in a pointless war. We've systematically removed rights from our citizens and given them to the police to suppress wars on drugs, terrorism, or whatever the money-waster flavor of the month is. We suppress people with the wrong ideas, and as a Christian nation that was founded by people fleeing religious persecution, we're rather un-christian-like in our treatment of non christians. Now the muslim extremists demonize us on the same grounds that we demonized the Soviets over.
So we were either wrong then, or wrong now. Maybe both.
I used to do that. But I got tired of being thrown in jail for various random charges.
My guess as well. But I'll add the incompetence level where nobody knows what they are or why they're there, they're installed in dangerous places, and then everyone hush hushes to maximize the tin foil hattery.
All the earmarkings of a government agency doing stupid things stupidly, then failing to properly address it when its discovered.
...they test it out with the users of a web service that isn't a dinosaur that just hasn't realized that it's dead yet.
Seriously? C'mon man, I quit using Yahoo about 5 years ago. Surprisingly, they deleted my email account without any warning at all, although they did send me a note afterwards telling me that they did it.
This is the standard claim that is thrown against Apple. It's not the glowing bitten Apple you're buying with that extra dough. What you are getting is a lot more things:
* Robust case that works the exact same way also 3 years after active use and possible multiple falls. The screen still closes tightly and soundlessly. I've had my MacBook Pro fall somehow and dent one edge near the CD drive and I've never noticed it. A comparable blow to cause aluminum to dent like this would have shattered a plastic laptop.
Hmm, exactly the same as my 3 year old HP 17" laptop that I paid $400 for.
* Ease of use. And that's something most people forget to price really. If your life turns around Linux kernels and command line and you don't have lawn to mow or family to spend quality time with, then you might not understand how much that is worth. Software management is hassle free (drag and drop for 90% of stuff, App Store for the rest that keeps and does all the updates for you).
I've seen several head to head ease of use studies that said that osx isnt any easier to use than win7. The thing is, nobody hangs around in the operating system much, and once you get into an app you aren't going to see any difference regardless of what OS you're running. This was a great argument when XP was the new kid on the block, but its 2012 now.
* Easy support from Apple as already outlined in many posts that makes sure any issue that pops up for the ordinary user is solved and their experience is a great one. Forget here the geeks that squeak when the latest nightly doesn't build from ports or what not. Noone cares about that really as it affects a negligible amount of people in the real world (albeit quite a lot of people on slashdot).
Last time I checked, Dell, Lenovo and other companies vie with Apple for top spot in support. Buy a laptop from the microsoft store and they'll support you just like apple does.
* The speed... Forget the need to compare drive spin speeds and CPU MHz and what not. What really matters is the speed at which your computer operates when you do stuff. And while Mac's are usually "underpowered" in comparison to many PC's it's due to perfectly clear reasons and lack of need for anything higher. You don't gain much by slamming the highest end CPU in there and then being unable to sustain it for 8h as well as the heating that you have to take care of. What really matters is that the macs with OS X combination is really snappy in most situations. If you go for an Air that is all SSD with passive cooling you get nice speed with no noise what so ever.
I'm afraid I have to stop here. When you make an argument that its a good idea to pay more for less power because the operating system is somewhat more efficient, then you're a fanboy. I just built two hackintosh desktops for around $500 each that would compete with a $2000+ high end pro model from apple. Looking at the apple BOM, mine also has better parts in every regard. But your argument is that I should pay the $2k, get a slower machine, and thats the win?
I have two cheap laptops with ssd's in them, total cost under $500. i3's, 4gb ram, 128gb ssd. Quiet, fast, cheap.
What you're getting for the extra money is Apples profit margin leveraged against slave labor. Stupid *and* immoral.
...second buy whatever the right screen size is that she wants for under $500. If she doesn't like it, take it back and now that you know what she didn't like, get whatever else is on sale that suits her.
Don't waste your money on 'business grade' or supposed 'high end' laptops. They're made on the same assembly lines by the same people using largely the same parts, which is why you keep finding so much similarity. While one might make a specific quality argument for a more expensive model, generally you can buy two cheap ones for the price of one of the models meant largely to impress the people watching you use it. So buy one now and in 3 years, buy whatever the state of the art cheap laptop is at that time.
See? I knew there was an answer, AND someone willing to find it.
Hard to carry an xbox around with you. Plus motorola has plenty of set top boxes and google has google tv. Not a high end gaming console, but when you can have the same thing on your tv, phone, tablet and computer with access to most music, books and apps...whats not to like?
Not to mention Google swears that a huge percentage of tv's made in the second half of this year will have google tv incorporated.
I don't think Microsoft is going to be a player in any market anymore. It appears that their only trick is to shove windows onto small platforms where its not needed. Unless you have an xbox (which is hard to haul around with you), they don't have much in the way of a viable full platform set with apps and music and books. Lets face it, Bing/xbox live/whatever they're calling it these days sucks.
Apple has a range of consumer electronics, app and media markets, etc.
Amazon has some consumer electronics and is expanding, and has app and media markets.
Now Google will have a range of consumer electronics branded under their own name, a likely well manicured phone and tablet, app and media markets.
All three have the potential to develop sophisticated soup-to-nuts ecosystems.
Goodbye Microsoft...
I was just wondering what WHCMCHSHCHSC stood for, but the article never mentions it and neither did the front page of the company's web site.
So aside from having security issues, somewhere along the line someone forgot that not everyone knows what WHCSMSHC XVIII stands for.
I always like the random tech cheer for stuff like arm and linux. C'mon guys, you need a business driver and there isnt one. You don't just take technology and look for a problem for it to solve, you identify the most important problems to solve and then implement technology to solve that problem.
ARM built up to do what a desktop cpu does will look just like the cpu it intends to replace. It won't have significant power or energy advantages. It'll require a ton of software work and rework.
This is MIPS and PowerPC all over again. Nobody needs it. But we'll certainly spend a billion on it before realizing that it doesn't do anything for anyone.
Good luck to the ARM ceo. Bravado doesn't make the payroll.
No, I didn't. You implied he'd have to change careers because his kind of job might go away. I pointed out that he's going to not only need to dig into his current job (because trying to compete with 25 year olds at half pay in a completely new type of job would be suicidal), he's going to have to move into a senior/lead management type role to stay employed until he's in his mid to late 50's. Good luck after that.
You're apparently unfamiliar with the highly entertaining lack of work for techies in their late 40's+. If you aren't preparing to move into management or a leadership role of some kind, or you're ridiculously specialized you'll be forced out of the job in favor of a pair of 25 year old kids who together will be making the same money you are.
Don't think so? Think of all the 55 or 60 or 65 year old primarily technical guys you know that went through the recession and kept their jobs. There are some, for sure...but not that many.
I went straight into operating system and microprocessor design in the 1970's and frankly don't remember too many people complaining about a lack of a degree after 4-5 years of job effort. I did have a few people get excited about hiring me but then change their minds when they found out I wasn't carrying a masters or doctorate. I decided I didn't want to work for buttheads who were more interested in the paper than the ability.
After ten years, it was more of a "wow, you don't have a degree?" as a minor item of interest when someone saw my resume. So either the guys you work for are buttheads or the ceiling you're hitting is an excuse you're having laid on you.
Yep, I've yet to have a distro drop onto a machine and not need me to edit 27 text files using a myriad of editors after referring to 20 web posts...to get the frickin sound to work. That one was a hand rolled distro for a specific htpc machine too...
Ask a question and you'll get "Yer too stupid" or "You'll have to read 32,000 pages of stuff and figure it out yourself!".
Non pure and annointed drivers and apps that arent truly "open source" aren't included. I've got news for the open source community. Users dont give a @%#$!
In the meanwhile, its easier to load win7 or lion on a box. The drivers are all there and they work. You dont have to edit text files. Support is widely available from non snotty non fifteen year olds. You dont have to go to 10 sites and read chicken bones and feathers to figure out how to get stuff to work.
Too many choices, none of them work as well as the commercial OS's, and none of them bring me anything that an $80 windows license wont solve.
The shortfalls in tax revenues in no way led to funding cuts in k-12 and other education areas. State politicians decided to cut those programs instead of cutting their own pork spending and wasteful projects when they ran out of money. They do that because taking money away from schools, fire and police helps motivate the sheeple into offering up more to the tax coffers.
It sure would be nice if Microsoft and Apple and everyone else paid their fair share. But lets not lose focus on who the real problem is with regards to the taxation situation. We really DONT have a revenue problem. We really DO have a spending problem.
"Nuc Nuc nuc!!!" Woob woob woob! Nyahhhhhhhh yah yahhhh..."
He did say 'spatially', so maybe its windmills in space?
Humongous wind arrays all around the bay area including the well known altamont pass. No apparent change to the area weather as a result in fact they have the nicest weather around. I call bullshit. Maybe setting up large windmill arrays gets you warm predictable weather almost year round.
You'd have thought that we'd have gotten rid of the poor by now. Nobody seems to want them and they dont seem to contribute much. I guess we need someone to buy all the surplus hamburger helper and powdered eggs.
Maybe the state of texas willl give everyone some of that 1970's surplus cheese in exchange for paying their sales taxes.
Its worse than that. There is this presumption that you can just start charging sales tax and automatically add that amount to the state coffers with no unintended consequences.
I like to buy stuff from amazon because they dont collect CA taxes, at least not yet. I do that because the politicians in the state will waste every penny I give them on horseshit and stuff that makes them feel powerful.
I'd just as soon that they dont have a chance to spend my money, so when Amazon starts collecting CA tax, I'll simply start buying from some other etailer thats out of state that doesn't. I would expect this will have a clear cut impact on amazons bottom line, causing them to urp up thousands of workers. Hell, I can buy half the stuff I buy from amazon directly from the chinese companies that make it, without tax.
So I'm afraid to tell all the politicians in Texas and California who cant live within their means. You aren't getting my money no matter how hard you try. If you backflip enough and spend more millions of my tax dollars on all of this legislation to try to squeeze more money out of me, I'll simply leave the state.
Ah come on. Groping children is way more interesting than worrying about getting called out for profiling and racism. The thing is, it hurts when large heavily bearded men hit you. Little girls, not so much. I dont think they even have a washington lobby, do they?
Eh, we just put the terrorists in charge of airport security.
You're welcome to pat down my wife. Just wash your hands afterwards...