The more technology I live with, the more I like to abandon it and go to the country. I never like phone calls, I usually dislike TV, I often dislike the Web and email and computers...
I am beginning to see a pattern here. Does anyone else notice that the in the last ten years, the fun seems to have slowly bled from computing and technology?
The link points to a story about how EToys set up a corporate website on mod_perl. Not about how mod_perl was the greatest thing since sliced shit and regularly tromped C++ and Java in benchmarks, but just that one could do it. Big deal! I'm not talking about how one *can* do it -- I'd advocate Common LISP in that case -- but about how one should do it.
Apache and Perl was the way to go in 1996, but times have changed. Systems like PHP and (here comes the -1 Flamebait mod) ASP are faster and more efficient than Perl CGI. Serious webmasters do it in Java or C anyhow, for serious speed.
my dad is a physicist. he, and every colleague of his who writes code, writes it in Fortran.
part of it is that there's 40 years of perfectly good legacy code to keep using. but mostly it's that C's numerical libraries still, after all this time, aren't as fast as a good Fortran's.
of course I've heard of Ardour. it's a half-assed (0.522 assed, currently) competitor to ProTools. only a professional audio fool would trust their bread-and-butter recordings to a beta program they just pulled off SourceForge.
Linux is a great server OS. It's even a great desktop OS, if you know what you're doing. But professional audio?
It's nice to dream, but for now and for the forseeable future, the software just isn't there. There's barely enough professional audio software for Windows... Linux just doesn't compete.
Until the software's written, there's no point in making a distro to pretend that it is.
Besides, about 98% of professional audio tweaks use Macs. The other 2% use Amiga.:)
Didn't I read this on alt.sex.erotica?
on
Tracking Hackers
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
The structure of the book is different from the "Know Your Enemy": Lance starts from the very beginning - namely, his first honeypot penetration experience and then goes on to talk about all aspects of honeypots.
yow. interesting topic to start off a book on hackers.:)
It seems like everyone in the world, particularly the US and Japan, is looking towards more and more sensory overload for happiness. I mean, seriously, do we need a cell phone, PDA, pager, and a DivX player all vying for our attention every moment of our day? Will this make us any happier, or will it push us further into becoming the attention-less, cynical pricks we silently feel ourselves becoming?
All these stimuli are really going to do a number on us in the long run, mark my words. I fear for two generations from now, who will grow up in a world of stimulation we can't even currently dream of.
The FCC is going to screw us
on
Future of Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The writeup is right; the FCC will need to give Wi-Fi a chance before it catches on. And the FCC won't, because the money-rich and power-hungry wireless companies and other broadcasting firms always manage to win somehow. If the FCC were interested in crawling out from beneath the desk of Big Business, then Wi-Fi would already be in motion.
it's an internet tabloid creating a mountain ("Linus himself is praying that AMD wins!") from a molehill (half a sentence in an unrelated USENET post).
so, let me get this straight. he intended to explain DVD region circumvention in order to publicly disobey an authority.... then an authority said "don't do that". so he won't.
sorry, but back in 2000-2001 i was living large. jobs were everywhere and if you had any credentials at all, companies would fight about who got to give you $70k/yr to do 1.5hrs of work a day. this was a tech boom.
then money ran out, few of the companies survived, and the boom collapsed.
or, if you're speaking about a technological boom, you're even more incorrect. the internet is one of the most significant developments in human communication's history.
These 4.8-5.3% of people aren't bumming around Europe, finding themselves, etc. They're applying for jobs left and right, and getting none. This is a real problem, because you have a hungry 5% instead of a lazy 5%.
Just look at the IT job situation and tell me it's not bad.
Video Orbits of the Projective Group: A New Perspective on Image Compositing. Steve Mann Abstract A new technique has been developed for estimating the projective (homographic) coordinate transformation between pairs of images of a static scene, taken with a camera that is free to pan, tilt, rotate about its optical axis, and zoom. The technique solves the problem for two cases:
* images taken from the same location of an arbitrary 3-D scene, or * images taken from arbitrary locations of a flat scene.
The technique, first published in 1993,
@INPROCEEDINGS{mannist,
AUTHOR = "S. Mann",
TITLE = "Compositing Multiple Pictures of the Same Scene",
Organization = {The Society of Imaging Science and Technology},
BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the 46th Annual {IS\&T} Conference},
Address = {Cambridge, Massachusetts},
Month = {May 9-14},
pages = "50--52",
note = "ISBN: 0-89208-171-6",
YEAR = {1993}
}
has recently been published in more detail in:
@techreport{manntip,
author = "S. Mann and R. W. Picard",
title = "Video orbits of the projective group;
A simple approach to featureless estimation of parameters",
institution = "Massachusetts Institute of Technology",
type = "TR",
number = "338",
address = "Cambridge, Ma",
month = "See http://n1nlf-1.eecg.toronto.edu/tip.ps.gz",
note = "Also appears {IEEE} Trans. Image Proc., Sept 1997, Vol. 6 No. 9",
year = 1995}
(The aspect of the 1993 paper dealing with differently exposed pictures to appear in a later Proc IEEE paper; please contact author of this WWW page if you're interested in knowing more about extending dynamic range by combining differently exposed pictures, or getting a preprint.)
A pdf file of the above publication, as it originally appeared, with the original pagination, etc., is also available.
The new algorithm is applied to the task of constructing high resolution still images from video. This approach generalizes inter-frame camera motion estimation methods which have previously used an affine model and/or which have relied upon finding points of correspondence between the image frames.
The new method, which allows an image to be created by ``painting with video'' is used in conjunction with a wearable wireless webcam, so that image mosaics can be generated simply by looking around, in a sense, ``painting with looks''. Introduction Combining multiple pictures of the same static scene allows for a higher ``resolution'' image to be constructed.: Example of image composite from IS&T 1993 paper (click to see higher resolution version). In the above example, the spatial extent of the image is increased by panning the camera while mosaicing and the spatial resolution is increased by zooming the camera and by combining overlapping frames from different viewpoints.
Note that the author overran the panning to appear twice in the composite picture (this is an old trick dating back to the days of the 1904 Kodak circuit 10 camera which is still used to take the freshman portraits in Killian court, and there are several people who still overrun the camera to get in the picture twice). Note also that the author appears sharper on the right than on the left because of the zooming in (``saliency'') at that region of the image.
Note also that, unlike previous methods based on the affine model, the inserts are not parallelogram-shaped (e.g. not affine), because a projective (homographic) coordinate transformation is used here rather than the affine coordinate transformation.
The difference between the affine model and the projective model is evident in the following figure:
For completeness, other coordinate transformations, such as bilinear and pseudo-perspective, are also shown. Note that the models are presented in two categories, models that exhibit the ``chirping'' effect, and those that do not. Examples
1. Extreme wide-angle architectural shot. A wide-sweeping panorama is presented in a distortion-free form (e.g. where straight lines map to straight lines).
2. My point of view at Wal-Mart Click for medium-resolution greyscale image; a somewhat higher resolution image is available here; a much higher resolution version of this same picture, in either 192 bit color (double) or 24 bit color (uchar), is available upon request).
3. ``Claire'' image sequence Paul Hubel aims a hand-held video camera at his wife. Although the scene is not completely static and there is no constraint to keep the camera center of projection (COP) fixed, the algorithm produces a reasonable composite image.
4. An ``environment map'' of the Media Lab's ``computer garden''.
5. Head-mounted camera at a restaurant
6. Outdoor scene with people, close-up (Alan Alda interviewing me for Sci.Am "FRONTIERS").
7. National geographic visit
See a gallery of quantigraphic image composites Obtain (download) latest version of VideoOrbits freesource from sourceforge or if you can take a look at an older version, (download of old version) or if you don't want to obtain the whole tar file, you can take a look at the README of the old version. bugs, bug reports, suggestions for features, etc. to: mann@eecg.toronto.edu, fungja@eyetap.org, corey@eyetap.org My original Matlab files upon which the C version of orbits is based (these in-turn were based on my PV-Wave and FORTRAN code) For more info on orbits, see chapter 6 of the textbook. Steve's personal Web page List of publications
Just because Slashdot might receive money for a while, doesn't mean it is safe from going to shit. Many would say it is already happening right now. Whatever one's opinion, it is true that new management and ownership by a larger company will only increase the chance that Slashdot will be ultimately controlled by people who don't give a shit. That's never good for a website. I wouldn't even rule out Rob and friends being deposed themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
The more technology I live with, the more I like to abandon it and go to the country. I never like phone calls, I usually dislike TV, I often dislike the Web and email and computers...
I am beginning to see a pattern here. Does anyone else notice that the in the last ten years, the fun seems to have slowly bled from computing and technology?
Unless you're developing 100% for IEWin, IIS, and MS-SQL, ASP never is.
that has nothing to do with ASP at all. that's 100% in the web programmer's hands. MS-SQL is certainly no worse than MySQL, which the book advocates.
i'd rather use Apache than IIS anyday though.
The link points to a story about how EToys set up a corporate website on mod_perl. Not about how mod_perl was the greatest thing since sliced shit and regularly tromped C++ and Java in benchmarks, but just that one could do it. Big deal! I'm not talking about how one *can* do it -- I'd advocate Common LISP in that case -- but about how one should do it.
Apache and Perl was the way to go in 1996, but times have changed. Systems like PHP and (here comes the -1 Flamebait mod) ASP are faster and more efficient than Perl CGI. Serious webmasters do it in Java or C anyhow, for serious speed.
these guys sent "someone has a crush on you!" messages to thousands of MIT students. talk about blowing your cover. :)
my dad is a physicist. he, and every colleague of his who writes code, writes it in Fortran.
part of it is that there's 40 years of perfectly good legacy code to keep using. but mostly it's that C's numerical libraries still, after all this time, aren't as fast as a good Fortran's.
Doubtless you are aware of the broad problems and miadventures of the USPTO. In your opinion, what are the USPTO doing wrong?
of course I've heard of Ardour. it's a half-assed (0.522 assed, currently) competitor to ProTools. only a professional audio fool would trust their bread-and-butter recordings to a beta program they just pulled off SourceForge.
however it is constantly becoming easier to find free software to fulfill your sound/MIDI needs.
for amateurs, maybe. audio professionals (who are, after all, the people we're talking about) wouldn't touch Linux with a 39.5' pole, and rightly so.
Linux is a great server OS. It's even a great desktop OS, if you know what you're doing. But professional audio?
:)
It's nice to dream, but for now and for the forseeable future, the software just isn't there. There's barely enough professional audio software for Windows... Linux just doesn't compete.
Until the software's written, there's no point in making a distro to pretend that it is.
Besides, about 98% of professional audio tweaks use Macs. The other 2% use Amiga.
The structure of the book is different from the "Know Your Enemy": Lance starts from the very beginning - namely, his first honeypot penetration experience and then goes on to talk about all aspects of honeypots.
:)
yow. interesting topic to start off a book on hackers.
just a few days ago, Bruce gave his contact phone number in case anyone wanted to call him and talk about HP. his phone number is 510/526-1165.
It seems like everyone in the world, particularly the US and Japan, is looking towards more and more sensory overload for happiness. I mean, seriously, do we need a cell phone, PDA, pager, and a DivX player all vying for our attention every moment of our day? Will this make us any happier, or will it push us further into becoming the attention-less, cynical pricks we silently feel ourselves becoming?
All these stimuli are really going to do a number on us in the long run, mark my words. I fear for two generations from now, who will grow up in a world of stimulation we can't even currently dream of.
The writeup is right; the FCC will need to give Wi-Fi a chance before it catches on. And the FCC won't, because the money-rich and power-hungry wireless companies and other broadcasting firms always manage to win somehow. If the FCC were interested in crawling out from beneath the desk of Big Business, then Wi-Fi would already be in motion.
it's an internet tabloid creating a mountain ("Linus himself is praying that AMD wins!") from a molehill (half a sentence in an unrelated USENET post).
crap story.
"Every episode of "Seinfeld" is now available to download free to anyone with access to the Internet."
:)
what, does FOX not exist on his planet?
maybe one of these robots could give Bruce Perens' illegal speech! what a setup!!
so, let me get this straight. he intended to explain DVD region circumvention in order to publicly disobey an authority.... then an authority said "don't do that". so he won't.
just wanted to grab some headlines, i guess...
sorry, but back in 2000-2001 i was living large. jobs were everywhere and if you had any credentials at all, companies would fight about who got to give you $70k/yr to do 1.5hrs of work a day. this was a tech boom.
then money ran out, few of the companies survived, and the boom collapsed.
or, if you're speaking about a technological boom, you're even more incorrect. the internet is one of the most significant developments in human communication's history.
either way, i think i disagree.
These 4.8-5.3% of people aren't bumming around Europe, finding themselves, etc. They're applying for jobs left and right, and getting none. This is a real problem, because you have a hungry 5% instead of a lazy 5%.
Just look at the IT job situation and tell me it's not bad.
you can do this with AppleScript, quite possibly the most underrated language of its kind.
Video Orbits of the Projective Group:
A New Perspective on Image Compositing.
Steve Mann
Abstract
A new technique has been developed for estimating the projective (homographic) coordinate transformation between pairs of images of a static scene, taken with a camera that is free to pan, tilt, rotate about its optical axis, and zoom. The technique solves the problem for two cases:
* images taken from the same location of an arbitrary 3-D scene, or
* images taken from arbitrary locations of a flat scene.
The technique, first published in 1993,
@INPROCEEDINGS{mannist,
AUTHOR = "S. Mann",
TITLE = "Compositing Multiple Pictures of the Same Scene",
Organization = {The Society of Imaging Science and Technology},
BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the 46th Annual {IS\&T} Conference},
Address = {Cambridge, Massachusetts},
Month = {May 9-14},
pages = "50--52",
note = "ISBN: 0-89208-171-6",
YEAR = {1993}
}
has recently been published in more detail in:
@techreport{manntip,
author = "S. Mann and R. W. Picard",
title = "Video orbits of the projective group;
A simple approach to featureless estimation of parameters",
institution = "Massachusetts Institute of Technology",
type = "TR",
number = "338",
address = "Cambridge, Ma",
month = "See http://n1nlf-1.eecg.toronto.edu/tip.ps.gz",
note = "Also appears {IEEE} Trans. Image Proc., Sept 1997, Vol. 6 No. 9",
year = 1995}
(The aspect of the 1993 paper dealing with differently exposed pictures to appear in a later Proc IEEE paper; please contact author of this WWW page if you're interested in knowing more about extending dynamic range by combining differently exposed pictures, or getting a preprint.)
A pdf file of the above publication, as it originally appeared, with the original pagination, etc., is also available.
The new algorithm is applied to the task of constructing high resolution still images from video. This approach generalizes inter-frame camera motion estimation methods which have previously used an affine model and/or which have relied upon finding points of correspondence between the image frames.
The new method, which allows an image to be created by ``painting with video'' is used in conjunction with a wearable wireless webcam, so that image mosaics can be generated simply by looking around, in a sense, ``painting with looks''.
Introduction
Combining multiple pictures of the same static scene allows for a higher ``resolution'' image to be constructed.: Example of image composite from IS&T 1993 paper (click to see higher resolution version). In the above example, the spatial extent of the image is increased by panning the camera while mosaicing and the spatial resolution is increased by zooming the camera and by combining overlapping frames from different viewpoints.
Note that the author overran the panning to appear twice in the composite picture (this is an old trick dating back to the days of the 1904 Kodak circuit 10 camera which is still used to take the freshman portraits in Killian court, and there are several people who still overrun the camera to get in the picture twice). Note also that the author appears sharper on the right than on the left because of the zooming in (``saliency'') at that region of the image.
Note also that, unlike previous methods based on the affine model, the inserts are not parallelogram-shaped (e.g. not affine), because a projective (homographic) coordinate transformation is used here rather than the affine coordinate transformation.
The difference between the affine model and the projective model is evident in the following figure:
For completeness, other coordinate transformations, such as bilinear and pseudo-perspective, are also shown. Note that the models are presented in two categories, models that exhibit the ``chirping'' effect, and those that do not.
Examples
1. Extreme wide-angle architectural shot. A wide-sweeping panorama is presented in a distortion-free form (e.g. where straight lines map to straight lines).
2. My point of view at Wal-Mart Click for medium-resolution greyscale image; a somewhat higher resolution image is available here; a much higher resolution version of this same picture, in either 192 bit color (double) or 24 bit color (uchar), is available upon request).
3. ``Claire'' image sequence Paul Hubel aims a hand-held video camera at his wife. Although the scene is not completely static and there is no constraint to keep the camera center of projection (COP) fixed, the algorithm produces a reasonable composite image.
4. An ``environment map'' of the Media Lab's ``computer garden''.
5. Head-mounted camera at a restaurant
6. Outdoor scene with people, close-up (Alan Alda interviewing me for Sci.Am "FRONTIERS").
7. National geographic visit
See a gallery of quantigraphic image composites
Obtain (download) latest version of VideoOrbits freesource from sourceforge
or if you can take a look at an older version, (download of old version) or if you don't want to obtain the whole tar file, you can take a look at the README of the old version. bugs, bug reports, suggestions for features, etc. to: mann@eecg.toronto.edu, fungja@eyetap.org, corey@eyetap.org
My original Matlab files upon which the C version of orbits is based (these in-turn were based on my PV-Wave and FORTRAN code)
For more info on orbits, see chapter 6 of the textbook. Steve's personal Web page
List of publications
i'm glad the ACLU is stepping up to the plate on this one. good that they're on Bruce Perens' side too. renew your membership today!
Just because Slashdot might receive money for a while, doesn't mean it is safe from going to shit. Many would say it is already happening right now. Whatever one's opinion, it is true that new management and ownership by a larger company will only increase the chance that Slashdot will be ultimately controlled by people who don't give a shit. That's never good for a website. I wouldn't even rule out Rob and friends being deposed themselves.
I guess we'll wait and see...
it makes me wonder when *ahem* certain other Linux news sites will fail as well.
LNUX closed today at $0.66, i think...