The question is begging to be asked... in your scenario, what's the benefit of pre-breaking the baloon? You're better off keeping the baloon intact and letting the space debris break it. So, there's no "deployment" of large liquid drops involved (it's a side effect, not the aim of the shield).
The image/phrase shown is supposed to be a secret one that the customer chose beforehand (i.e. when setting up their account).
So, when I go to my bank site and click the button (presumably after logging in so they know who I am), if I don't see the cute little picture of my son and the phrase "you're cool", then I know it's a fraud.
It's not just a standard image/phrase... it's customized and unique.
I guess it's nice to live in your padded little world, where you're spoon fed exactly what you want to hear.
Those of us who live in the real world don't trust everything that's given to us. You don't have to be paranoid to realize that everything is not always as it seems.
I just hope you also accept that just because someone's morals aren't the same as yours, it doesn't automatically make them an immoral person (or corporation).
that YOUR internet isn't already being filtered in some way?
Maybe the US gov't is doing the same thing, just on a more subtle and un-obvious way.
Just because we think we live in an open and free society doesn't mean that we're not fed as much propaganda as the rest of the world - it just means it's not so blatant.
My favorite example is CNN.com - if you visit the page often enough, you'll occasionally see a major headline story show up, and two minutes later it's gone... with NO word about that story ever again (anywhere on CNN.com). Searching overseas news sources will often bring up the whole story, but not always.
Obviously, someone censors these things after they appear - in a country where freedom of the press is supposedly paramount, this is a very scary thing.
However, the government there is probably making a sound economic decision to only support windows. What's the market share of Windows-based systems for the desktop in Australia these days? 95%? Ok, say even as low as 90%...
That other 10% is made up of at least several different flavours of Linux and Mac OS's - each of which would need testing/revisions.
They would also need equipment and support people to support each OS.
So - it would cost you, the tax payer, a lot of money to do your tax return on your Mac, for little comparitive return because of the small number of people that would use the software in comparision. You still have the option of using the paper forms, or having someone do your taxes for you, or (god forbid), finding someone who will let you use their Windows PC.
Go ahead and protest... if you're successful, great. But are the extra tax costs worth the convenience of using your Mac?
The angle of attack of one blade is different than the other... on advance the angle/lift is lowered, and on retreat is is increased. So, the lift generated is the same although the relative wind speeds are different.
This means that the blade angle is adjusted continually as the blade rotates - that's the main reason why you see such a complicated coupling at the hub of a helicopter blade.
MadCow.
Re:Artist missed the "art" portion of the project.
on
The Neuron Drive
·
· Score: 1
That was missing from the mirror, and the original page was slashdotted...
I'll have to go see it, but I still fail to see the connection from your description (it appears you agree)... no real reason for the hard drive to be there except to complete a sad joke in the name of the piece.
My opinion: if you need to know the name of a piece to appreciate it at all, then it's not good art (I can think of no exceptions off hand...). This is worse - knowing the name only lets you know that the artist has a long ways to go.
MadCow.
Artist missed the "art" portion of the project...
on
The Neuron Drive
·
· Score: 1
Other than a fancy name to conceptualize the piece, the artist missed his mark entirely... sure there's a drive... sure there are two fans... sure it "works"... but the drive is just THERE. It's not actually a piece of the canvas in any conceptual way beyond location and name.
If the drive itself had been more integral to the piece, and there was some sort of yin/yang between it and the canvas I'd call it art. Personally, I think it's two disassociated items duct-taped together for no apparant reason, then given some stupid name to try to make up for the lack of artistic merit.
Sorry. And yes, I studied art and art history, and have a BAA in it. Now, having said that, I fully admit that my OPINION is no more valid than anyone elses - including the artist's.
A friend of mine used to work for Sony... he swears this is a true story:
Sony had a petabyte tape backup system they wanted to sell into North America... called the "Peta-file". Thankfully, Sony NA managed to have the name changed prior to it's introduction here.
I like the sig - I'm sure most people don't believe it, although I'm absolutely sure it's right (+/- a percent or two... I have no stats on amputees to go by).:)
Correction: 2 axis are limited to 180-degrees range of motion (rotation, elevation). Tilt has no limit within my model, and of course XYZ movement is only limited by the field of view and resolution of the camera.
FYI - I use it with VERY low webcam resolution - 70x100 pixels is lots to work with (of course it depends on your accuracy requirments for movement - gaming, etc. has lots of leeway). Image quality isn't really a factor either, as long as you can make out the three points.
You're correct - you have to assume that the rotation in that ONE axis will be within a 180-degree range. However, for "head tracking" and such for computer control, if you're not looking at the screen then it's pointless anyways, right?
By setting the default orientation of the three points sensibly to begin with, you can safely work within the limits of a single-camera field.
I'm not saying it can do everything a $3k solution with multiple sensors/cameras can do, but for the price of a $19 webcam and a couple LEDs (or something else to make the triangle points with), it's pretty functional for most computer needs.
I wrote a cool little tool to give 6-degrees input from a single webcam. It tracks the three points of a triangle, and calculates X-Y-Z-tilt-rotation-elevation based on that.
The logarithms to do the calculations are solid - all you need is a better mousetrap than I have for finding the three triangle points in a single image frame (should be very straight forward - mine works but is slow).
Is this old hat, or would there be good value to open-sourcing it? I'll likely never commercialize it on my own.
The real question is: if it saves him 200 hours of reading a semester, is he using that 200 hours to provide more/better services to his students?
Is he looking closer at portions of the papers the software identifies? Is he using the output to generate more detailed/customized feedback that will help the student?
Online banking is successful / useful because it's convenient... that could be outweighed by security risks as malware gets worse.
However consider how it'd work with a bootable CD: - shut down everything on my computer, save open documents, and all that crap - find a CD - boot to that CD (assuming it likes my hardware to start with) - wait for it to boot... (ho hum...) - do my banking - NOT be able to save any info to my local computer (for checkbook reconcilliation, or any other local use) - I guess I'll now have to find a paper and pen to copy the info I need down... - shut down again... - reboot again to get back to normal operation... (la-dee-da.... ho hummm...) - find the stuff I was working on before, and get back into the groove...
Does THAT sound convenient any more? I don't know about you guys, but my computer doesn't boot very quickly. We're talking a total of 15 minutes minimum just to go check your balance.
I can stop by the REAL bank on my way home from work easier than that. I don't see this as a good thing overall - even if it does provide the best security. There must be better alternatives (as mentioned in other threads).
Slashdot Mirror
Great, now all the toilets will be plugged up with copies of the GPL... which has to be distributed with said derrivitive works.
MadCow.
The question is begging to be asked... in your scenario, what's the benefit of pre-breaking the baloon? You're better off keeping the baloon intact and letting the space debris break it. So, there's no "deployment" of large liquid drops involved (it's a side effect, not the aim of the shield).
MadCow.
Brilliant comment, not.
The image/phrase shown is supposed to be a secret one that the customer chose beforehand (i.e. when setting up their account).
So, when I go to my bank site and click the button (presumably after logging in so they know who I am), if I don't see the cute little picture of my son and the phrase "you're cool", then I know it's a fraud.
It's not just a standard image/phrase... it's customized and unique.
RTFA, or even TFComments.
MadCow.
I guess it's nice to live in your padded little world, where you're spoon fed exactly what you want to hear.
Those of us who live in the real world don't trust everything that's given to us. You don't have to be paranoid to realize that everything is not always as it seems.
MadCow.
I just hope you also accept that just because someone's morals aren't the same as yours, it doesn't automatically make them an immoral person (or corporation).
MadCow.
that YOUR internet isn't already being filtered in some way?
Maybe the US gov't is doing the same thing, just on a more subtle and un-obvious way.
Just because we think we live in an open and free society doesn't mean that we're not fed as much propaganda as the rest of the world - it just means it's not so blatant.
My favorite example is CNN.com - if you visit the page often enough, you'll occasionally see a major headline story show up, and two minutes later it's gone... with NO word about that story ever again (anywhere on CNN.com). Searching overseas news sources will often bring up the whole story, but not always.
Obviously, someone censors these things after they appear - in a country where freedom of the press is supposedly paramount, this is a very scary thing.
MadCow.
However, the government there is probably making a sound economic decision to only support windows. What's the market share of Windows-based systems for the desktop in Australia these days? 95%? Ok, say even as low as 90%...
That other 10% is made up of at least several different flavours of Linux and Mac OS's - each of which would need testing/revisions.
They would also need equipment and support people to support each OS.
So - it would cost you, the tax payer, a lot of money to do your tax return on your Mac, for little comparitive return because of the small number of people that would use the software in comparision. You still have the option of using the paper forms, or having someone do your taxes for you, or (god forbid), finding someone who will let you use their Windows PC.
Go ahead and protest... if you're successful, great. But are the extra tax costs worth the convenience of using your Mac?
MadCow
The angle of attack of one blade is different than the other... on advance the angle/lift is lowered, and on retreat is is increased. So, the lift generated is the same although the relative wind speeds are different.
This means that the blade angle is adjusted continually as the blade rotates - that's the main reason why you see such a complicated coupling at the hub of a helicopter blade.
MadCow.
That was missing from the mirror, and the original page was slashdotted...
I'll have to go see it, but I still fail to see the connection from your description (it appears you agree)... no real reason for the hard drive to be there except to complete a sad joke in the name of the piece.
My opinion: if you need to know the name of a piece to appreciate it at all, then it's not good art (I can think of no exceptions off hand...). This is worse - knowing the name only lets you know that the artist has a long ways to go.
MadCow.
Other than a fancy name to conceptualize the piece, the artist missed his mark entirely... sure there's a drive... sure there are two fans... sure it "works"... but the drive is just THERE. It's not actually a piece of the canvas in any conceptual way beyond location and name.
If the drive itself had been more integral to the piece, and there was some sort of yin/yang between it and the canvas I'd call it art. Personally, I think it's two disassociated items duct-taped together for no apparant reason, then given some stupid name to try to make up for the lack of artistic merit.
Sorry. And yes, I studied art and art history, and have a BAA in it. Now, having said that, I fully admit that my OPINION is no more valid than anyone elses - including the artist's.
MadCow.
A friend of mine used to work for Sony... he swears this is a true story:
:)
Sony had a petabyte tape backup system they wanted to sell into North America... called the "Peta-file". Thankfully, Sony NA managed to have the name changed prior to it's introduction here.
So, PetaBox is slightly better... slightly.
MadCow.
>The 40000th digit is a 5.
Yeah, but how many digits are there BEFORE the decimal?
MadCow
(and yes, that IS sarcastic...!)
I like the sig - I'm sure most people don't believe it, although I'm absolutely sure it's right (+/- a percent or two... I have no stats on amputees to go by). :)
MadCow.
Learning from pre-translated texts is a great start...
Step two should be human corrections to machine-translated documents (learn from your mistakes - like we do), should it not?
MadCow.
Correction: 2 axis are limited to 180-degrees range of motion (rotation, elevation). Tilt has no limit within my model, and of course XYZ movement is only limited by the field of view and resolution of the camera.
FYI - I use it with VERY low webcam resolution - 70x100 pixels is lots to work with (of course it depends on your accuracy requirments for movement - gaming, etc. has lots of leeway). Image quality isn't really a factor either, as long as you can make out the three points.
MadCow.
You're correct - you have to assume that the rotation in that ONE axis will be within a 180-degree range. However, for "head tracking" and such for computer control, if you're not looking at the screen then it's pointless anyways, right?
By setting the default orientation of the three points sensibly to begin with, you can safely work within the limits of a single-camera field.
I'm not saying it can do everything a $3k solution with multiple sensors/cameras can do, but for the price of a $19 webcam and a couple LEDs (or something else to make the triangle points with), it's pretty functional for most computer needs.
MadCow.
I'm daft today - read "algorithms" instead of logarithms. :)
MadCow.
to solve this particular issue? (i.e. calculating 6-degree info from 3 points in an image?).
:)
I'm so used to the sarcasm on Slashdot I may have missed a joke here instead.
If so, let me know.
Kevin.
I wrote a cool little tool to give 6-degrees input from a single webcam. It tracks the three points of a triangle, and calculates X-Y-Z-tilt-rotation-elevation based on that.
The logarithms to do the calculations are solid - all you need is a better mousetrap than I have for finding the three triangle points in a single image frame (should be very straight forward - mine works but is slow).
Is this old hat, or would there be good value to open-sourcing it? I'll likely never commercialize it on my own.
MadCow.
slsia.
(subject line says it all). q:]
MadCow.
But are all those systems actually running 64-bit hardware? If not, the announcement is pointless.
MS: "Yes, our brand new car has a beautiful high-tech hydrogen fuel cell in it!"
Driver: "But it's a diesel car..."
MS: "Well... yes.... it's actually just sitting in the back seat for now."
MadCow.
I was thinking a nice trans-atlantic cruise would be more realistic.
I'm sure he can spend 7 days in the swimming pool, maybe with the "support raft" by his side too.
MadCow.
>>use your girlfriends
./ers these days.
Is that because she's likely not to live with you anymore, and hence doesn't need it?
After all, it seems "girlfriend" is a stretch for most
q:] (it had to be said, sorry)
MadCow.
The real question is: if it saves him 200 hours of reading a semester, is he using that 200 hours to provide more/better services to his students?
Is he looking closer at portions of the papers the software identifies? Is he using the output to generate more detailed/customized feedback that will help the student?
Or, is he just improving his handicap?
MadCow
Online banking is successful / useful because it's convenient... that could be outweighed by security risks as malware gets worse.
However consider how it'd work with a bootable CD:
- shut down everything on my computer, save open documents, and all that crap
- find a CD
- boot to that CD (assuming it likes my hardware to start with)
- wait for it to boot... (ho hum...)
- do my banking
- NOT be able to save any info to my local computer (for checkbook reconcilliation, or any other local use) - I guess I'll now have to find a paper and pen to copy the info I need down...
- shut down again...
- reboot again to get back to normal operation... (la-dee-da.... ho hummm...)
- find the stuff I was working on before, and get back into the groove...
Does THAT sound convenient any more? I don't know about you guys, but my computer doesn't boot very quickly. We're talking a total of 15 minutes minimum just to go check your balance.
I can stop by the REAL bank on my way home from work easier than that. I don't see this as a good thing overall - even if it does provide the best security. There must be better alternatives (as mentioned in other threads).
MadCow.