A controller that vibrates isn't exactly a logical thing. Sure, many things that seem obvious NOW were at one time clever inspiration on the part of people, which then had to undertake considerable time and expense to bring to market.
It's one thing to even think of something, and its a whole other to design and ramp up a feasible way of manufacturing and selling such an invention.
The patent is completely valid and numerous manufacturers have licensed it for their use. Sony should've settled out of court.
Re:Ha! You call that a solar death ray?
on
The Solar Death Ray
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· Score: 2, Informative
polished aluminum is used because its sub-mm but not extremely sub-mm (ie, optical).
its been awhile, so i forget the exact formula, but basically your surface can be as rough as some fraction of the wavelength you're trying to focus. Hence, wide waves can use dirty and/or rough surfaces (such as arecibo, which is just a hole in the ground and some perforated aluminum panels) and still work just fine, even when soiled as a huge bowl in the ground is bound to become.
I spent quite a bit of time working in a university intelligent robotics lab... and while yes, its interesting work, it takes a special breed of person to really stick with it. Most work is very intensive and slow - implementing theories found in papers, performing simulations and what not. And at the moment, much of it is still focused on such basic tasks like having a robot know where it is given its sensory input (which is still extremely crude given the tools we have... the future is machine vision, and its going to take years to make it work).
The other thing is that what you've been working on for the past 5 years may simply not work. Or a better theory might come along and render yours pointless.
Only some of the research actually involves physical robots performing tasks. That's of course the final step in implementing a theory, and usually where you realize your theory isn't complete.
I see this as a substantial difference between the US and japanese take on robotics. In the US, its very much research oriented at mostly universities and involves making robots more *intelligent*. In japan, much of the research is more focused on the physical controls. So what you get is, in the US labs we have lots of wheeled robots that are getting better at driving around intelligently, and in japan alot of robots are moving (even walking or running) with dexterity, but not very intelligently - by this i mean, they don't have much for sensory processing or localization. So while they might be building you a robot in japan that can wave hello and bring you breakfast, its not going to be much good if it doesnt realize how to get to the kitchen to make it and then get it back to you.
This could be a simple business vs. academia thing - in business, a result is expected at some point. Deadlines and all. Building a physical machine is possible with that. But doing something that nobody really knows the right way to do (localization) has been under research for nearly 4 decades now and still has a long way to go.
yes, if you buy meat and veggies in bulk, you can save.
of course, you'll have to freeze them. Nothing kills food taste and quality faster than freezing it.
Ideally, one would buy their fruits and meats *as they need them*. I try to do this. Its difficult though, with no grocer within walking distance. And its expensive too, especially if you prefer organic (I used to think that was bunk, but it really does taste better...)
So yes, in most cases these days, fresh good take out is cheaper, faster and healthier than cooking for yourself. And if you live in a large city, the choices are often plentiful.
theres a heck of alot of fast, fresh, takeout food these days. Granted, i'm sure alot of midwestern steak n' potato type towns don't have alot of this, but you'll find it on the coasts and in large cities.
Fotolog was meant (and continues to be) a blog-like community site with the emphasis on photos rather than words. Compared to the other sites like flickr which are more photo album oriented, fotolog still has the simplest, most consistent and easiest interface to use for:
a. post a daily picture (instead of written blog entry) b. write a caption c. leave a comment
Most comments are left by friends, or friends of friends of a user on the website. Just like a blog.
While flickr and the others all have comment abilities, they're secondary features rather than one of the main.
When it was launched, fotolog was a pretty unique and interesting place. Then the brazilian invasion kind of shook things up from a technical (lots of downtime from overloaded servers..) and a cultural sense (with most brazilians just posting pictures of themselves for some reason, and the most common language becoming portuguese)
Actually the worst would be someone who died of an extremely virulent form of a virus and was subsequently frozen, then thawed later.
I recall reading about how in some scandinavian country they found a body of a man who died of the 1918 influenza pandemic (one of the worst flu strains ever, millions died) that was frozen in some tundra. They set up a quarantine area around him while he was recovered, lest the extremely contagious and deadly form of the flu in him get loose.
yeah like how the immune system doesnt deal with ever-changing and evolving new things like cold and flu viruses...
oh wait... heh.
immune systems attack anything remotely suspicious and sometimes even things that they shouldnt, like ones own cells. thats what an allergic response is. martian bacteria wouldn't do anything pathologically interesting compared to what millions of years of bacterial evolution have done on earth.
Alot of it has to do with legacy scientific and engineering libraries. There are millions of lines of proven libraries that were originally written in the 60s and 70s for various scientific and engineering analysis disciplines.
When I was at the university of texas, there was a parallel programming course that was conducted in fortran and c++. The professor of it quoted how much it would cost in labor and manhours to transfer all those fortran libraries to a more "modern" language - and it was many many millions of dollars and years of work. So, the course taught parallel programming by having students doing this work! It was fairly successful, and is probably still taught. The converted libraries generated by students are in use in several fields. It was alot of parallel linear algebra libraries, IIRC.
No. The reason that you need waiver forms is so some jerk doesnt drag you into a lengthy legal process by claiming they didn't know you were going to take the photo and should get a cut of the profits. With those waiver forms, if they make a stink about it, simply hand their lawyer the form and you're done.
If you're willing to risk a pricey lawsuit, you can certainly take photos of anyone and sell them without a need for a model release form. There is nothing illegal about that. Do you think photographers who sell to tabloids get model releases?? Pure cover your ass paperwork.
Here's my annoyance story: I had a power outage take down my machine. Rebooted, bookmarks were gone. Wiped. Erased completely. The bookmark file had been replaced with the default nearly blank one.
Searching for it, finds it's a well known bug that if your machine terminates abnormally, there is a chance to lose the bookmarks. There are even extensions out there that back up your bookmarks whenever you close firefox. But really, this is unacceptable in a 1.0 released product. How can I explain to joe public that if his computer shuts down abnormally, he stands a good chance to lose his bookmarks with no recourse to get them back, except next time install some extension that backs them up... and then copy the back up into a deeply embedded profile directory... ugh. Just not good. Unacceptable, really.
It is a concern. The problem is that programming RT software is extremely time consuming and expensive. It would make the cost exorbitant and unrealistic.
Some of these machines, like the openlabs neko, have something like 8 gigs of ram in them and load everything into memory to minimize delays. Granted, it doesnt *guarantee* lack of delay, but I've not heard any complaints.
The Opteron keyboard is the OpenLabs Neko. I've seen it (met its designers too).
Its meant for a live setting - rugged and much easier to set up than the slapped together rigs I run into all the time. One big box to keep an eye on and pack is less likely to be damaged and lost than a bunch of little boxes full of consumer-ish hardware that wasn't meant for that kind of harsh, smoky, bump and drop environment.
If anyone's curious it runs XP-64 and has 8 gigs of ram in the high end version...
your powerbook isnt built for the environment and handling these things are made for. They're meant to be, and will be, abused by travelling, roadies, the musicians etc. They're very reliable.
cash is little object to a working professional who needs to get things done, and reliably.
and swapping back and forth between a midiman and a powerbook hardly looks very professional, nor does it make for a fluid show... I know alot of guys who do it both ways. The ones with the big all-in-one keyboards typically are doing a much more interesting set.
You don't think the pics the media has are anything like the raw scientific data do you? It's not like huygens broadcast it directly to the media wire... the basic data is brought in, turned into an image and processed for public consumption very roughly. I was amazed they got those couple of photos out in a matter of hours. It used to take days or weeks.
It will take that long to post-process the "real" images into useful scientific data. By then of course, the media will have moved on and its not interesting to anyone but those studying the moon.
Likely this means the end of knowledge base updates to it. The info will still be there, but it will be static (unless of course, some third party takes up the job of maintaining the knowledge base)
Considering that all the things both those do were designed and built many years ago, and in some cases, even launched into space well over a year ago, they can't really be called 2004 technology. That they were put to USE in 2004 is irrelevant.
It doesn't take away their achievement, but it doesnt apply to technology and news that is the literal cutting edge.
To be technical about it, the Bayer pattern found on consumer cameras is actually 50% green, 25% red and 25% blue. This is because human vision is more sensitive to green.
Interestingly, this is presumably because most of the visible light given off from the sun is in the yellow-green spectrum. Which also explains the predominance of green vegetation.
Its also why airport fire trucks are painted that somewhat odd color of green/yellow.
These are photos from the navigation cameras, which are black and white because the autonomous navigation system doesnt need color.
That said, the science cameras (the ones on the periscope there), are also grayscale, like all digital cameras. Consumer digital cameras have a permanently installed filter that has microscopic red, blue and green squares that turn photosites into "color" pixels.
Astronomical and very high end digital cameras don't want that though, because it limits resolution. Having adjustable filters also allows you to scope things out in infrared and UV.
I'm a photographer. It looks like very simple lighting (1 overhead) done in a seamless box. It's actually not very good and doesn't really flatter the box all that much...
Slashdot Mirror
A controller that vibrates isn't exactly a logical thing. Sure, many things that seem obvious NOW were at one time clever inspiration on the part of people, which then had to undertake considerable time and expense to bring to market.
It's one thing to even think of something, and its a whole other to design and ramp up a feasible way of manufacturing and selling such an invention.
The patent is completely valid and numerous manufacturers have licensed it for their use. Sony should've settled out of court.
polished aluminum is used because its sub-mm but not extremely sub-mm (ie, optical).
its been awhile, so i forget the exact formula, but basically your surface can be as rough as some fraction of the wavelength you're trying to focus. Hence, wide waves can use dirty and/or rough surfaces (such as arecibo, which is just a hole in the ground and some perforated aluminum panels) and still work just fine, even when soiled as a huge bowl in the ground is bound to become.
embedded systems.
there are far, far, FAR more embedded computers in the world than there are PCs. millions more.
the z80 originated in 1976 and is still mass produced.
I spent quite a bit of time working in a university intelligent robotics lab... and while yes, its interesting work, it takes a special breed of person to really stick with it. Most work is very intensive and slow - implementing theories found in papers, performing simulations and what not. And at the moment, much of it is still focused on such basic tasks like having a robot know where it is given its sensory input (which is still extremely crude given the tools we have... the future is machine vision, and its going to take years to make it work).
The other thing is that what you've been working on for the past 5 years may simply not work. Or a better theory might come along and render yours pointless.
Only some of the research actually involves physical robots performing tasks. That's of course the final step in implementing a theory, and usually where you realize your theory isn't complete.
I see this as a substantial difference between the US and japanese take on robotics. In the US, its very much research oriented at mostly universities and involves making robots more *intelligent*. In japan, much of the research is more focused on the physical controls. So what you get is, in the US labs we have lots of wheeled robots that are getting better at driving around intelligently, and in japan alot of robots are moving (even walking or running) with dexterity, but not very intelligently - by this i mean, they don't have much for sensory processing or localization. So while they might be building you a robot in japan that can wave hello and bring you breakfast, its not going to be much good if it doesnt realize how to get to the kitchen to make it and then get it back to you.
This could be a simple business vs. academia thing - in business, a result is expected at some point. Deadlines and all. Building a physical machine is possible with that. But doing something that nobody really knows the right way to do (localization) has been under research for nearly 4 decades now and still has a long way to go.
a ski slope in canada.
scanner darkly is keanu reeves, not tom cruise
yes, if you buy meat and veggies in bulk, you can save.
of course, you'll have to freeze them. Nothing kills food taste and quality faster than freezing it.
Ideally, one would buy their fruits and meats *as they need them*. I try to do this. Its difficult though, with no grocer within walking distance. And its expensive too, especially if you prefer organic (I used to think that was bunk, but it really does taste better...)
So yes, in most cases these days, fresh good take out is cheaper, faster and healthier than cooking for yourself. And if you live in a large city, the choices are often plentiful.
theres a heck of alot of fast, fresh, takeout food these days. Granted, i'm sure alot of midwestern steak n' potato type towns don't have alot of this, but you'll find it on the coasts and in large cities.
People post on fotolog for the community there.
Fotolog was meant (and continues to be) a blog-like community site with the emphasis on photos rather than words. Compared to the other sites like flickr which are more photo album oriented, fotolog still has the simplest, most consistent and easiest interface to use for:
a. post a daily picture (instead of written blog entry)
b. write a caption
c. leave a comment
Most comments are left by friends, or friends of friends of a user on the website. Just like a blog.
While flickr and the others all have comment abilities, they're secondary features rather than one of the main.
When it was launched, fotolog was a pretty unique and interesting place. Then the brazilian invasion kind of shook things up from a technical (lots of downtime from overloaded servers..) and a cultural sense (with most brazilians just posting pictures of themselves for some reason, and the most common language becoming portuguese)
Actually the worst would be someone who died of an extremely virulent form of a virus and was subsequently frozen, then thawed later.
I recall reading about how in some scandinavian country they found a body of a man who died of the 1918 influenza pandemic (one of the worst flu strains ever, millions died) that was frozen in some tundra. They set up a quarantine area around him while he was recovered, lest the extremely contagious and deadly form of the flu in him get loose.
yeah like how the immune system doesnt deal with ever-changing and evolving new things like cold and flu viruses...
oh wait... heh.
immune systems attack anything remotely suspicious and sometimes even things that they shouldnt, like ones own cells. thats what an allergic response is. martian bacteria wouldn't do anything pathologically interesting compared to what millions of years of bacterial evolution have done on earth.
"plans" have existed for decades.
Its getting the funding for it thats the problem.
Alot of it has to do with legacy scientific and engineering libraries. There are millions of lines of proven libraries that were originally written in the 60s and 70s for various scientific and engineering analysis disciplines.
When I was at the university of texas, there was a parallel programming course that was conducted in fortran and c++. The professor of it quoted how much it would cost in labor and manhours to transfer all those fortran libraries to a more "modern" language - and it was many many millions of dollars and years of work. So, the course taught parallel programming by having students doing this work! It was fairly successful, and is probably still taught. The converted libraries generated by students are in use in several fields. It was alot of parallel linear algebra libraries, IIRC.
No. The reason that you need waiver forms is so some jerk doesnt drag you into a lengthy legal process by claiming they didn't know you were going to take the photo and should get a cut of the profits. With those waiver forms, if they make a stink about it, simply hand their lawyer the form and you're done.
If you're willing to risk a pricey lawsuit, you can certainly take photos of anyone and sell them without a need for a model release form. There is nothing illegal about that. Do you think photographers who sell to tabloids get model releases?? Pure cover your ass paperwork.
Here's my annoyance story: I had a power outage take down my machine. Rebooted, bookmarks were gone. Wiped. Erased completely. The bookmark file had been replaced with the default nearly blank one.
Searching for it, finds it's a well known bug that if your machine terminates abnormally, there is a chance to lose the bookmarks. There are even extensions out there that back up your bookmarks whenever you close firefox. But really, this is unacceptable in a 1.0 released product. How can I explain to joe public that if his computer shuts down abnormally, he stands a good chance to lose his bookmarks with no recourse to get them back, except next time install some extension that backs them up... and then copy the back up into a deeply embedded profile directory... ugh. Just not good. Unacceptable, really.
It is a concern. The problem is that programming RT software is extremely time consuming and expensive. It would make the cost exorbitant and unrealistic.
Some of these machines, like the openlabs neko, have something like 8 gigs of ram in them and load everything into memory to minimize delays. Granted, it doesnt *guarantee* lack of delay, but I've not heard any complaints.
The Opteron keyboard is the OpenLabs Neko. I've seen it (met its designers too).
Its meant for a live setting - rugged and much easier to set up than the slapped together rigs I run into all the time. One big box to keep an eye on and pack is less likely to be damaged and lost than a bunch of little boxes full of consumer-ish hardware that wasn't meant for that kind of harsh, smoky, bump and drop environment.
If anyone's curious it runs XP-64 and has 8 gigs of ram in the high end version...
your powerbook isnt built for the environment and handling these things are made for. They're meant to be, and will be, abused by travelling, roadies, the musicians etc. They're very reliable.
cash is little object to a working professional who needs to get things done, and reliably.
and swapping back and forth between a midiman and a powerbook hardly looks very professional, nor does it make for a fluid show... I know alot of guys who do it both ways. The ones with the big all-in-one keyboards typically are doing a much more interesting set.
You don't think the pics the media has are anything like the raw scientific data do you? It's not like huygens broadcast it directly to the media wire... the basic data is brought in, turned into an image and processed for public consumption very roughly. I was amazed they got those couple of photos out in a matter of hours. It used to take days or weeks.
It will take that long to post-process the "real" images into useful scientific data. By then of course, the media will have moved on and its not interesting to anyone but those studying the moon.
Titan certainly does not lack an atmosphere... its 1.5 times the pressure of the earth's, and extremely thick...
Likely this means the end of knowledge base updates to it. The info will still be there, but it will be static (unless of course, some third party takes up the job of maintaining the knowledge base)
Considering that all the things both those do were designed and built many years ago, and in some cases, even launched into space well over a year ago, they can't really be called 2004 technology. That they were put to USE in 2004 is irrelevant.
It doesn't take away their achievement, but it doesnt apply to technology and news that is the literal cutting edge.
To be technical about it, the Bayer pattern found on consumer cameras is actually 50% green, 25% red and 25% blue. This is because human vision is more sensitive to green.
Interestingly, this is presumably because most of the visible light given off from the sun is in the yellow-green spectrum. Which also explains the predominance of green vegetation.
Its also why airport fire trucks are painted that somewhat odd color of green/yellow.
These are photos from the navigation cameras, which are black and white because the autonomous navigation system doesnt need color.
That said, the science cameras (the ones on the periscope there), are also grayscale, like all digital cameras. Consumer digital cameras have a permanently installed filter that has microscopic red, blue and green squares that turn photosites into "color" pixels.
Astronomical and very high end digital cameras don't want that though, because it limits resolution. Having adjustable filters also allows you to scope things out in infrared and UV.
I'm a photographer. It looks like very simple lighting (1 overhead) done in a seamless box. It's actually not very good and doesn't really flatter the box all that much...