I did RTFA, am I to assume you did? Note carefully the use of future tense in the following quote (emphasis mine):
The team is now collaborating with researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to demonstrate the effect. Initially they
will generate shock waves by shooting bullets at photonic crystals. This would destroy the crystal, but not before the light has had time to shift. Eventually, sound waves should do the job just as well, they say. "Its really practical, and potentially even easier to do than with actual shock waves," says Reed.
The paper is in reference to the computer simulations, which came before any observations of the effect. They are currently trying to create the effect in a lab, in partnership with Lawrence Livermore labs, and the initial experiments will involve shooting crystals with a bullet.
kravlor said: There are a couple of problems with the article and its claims, however:
Near 100% efficiency -- I'd like to see a reproducable demonstration of this. If it is true, we will have a revolution in the solar cell industry. However, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a difficult thing to contend with; anything that comes near 100% should set off any good physicist's red flags.
The article is going to be published in the Physical Review Letters -- This is significantly different than saying the article has been published in the PRL's. Such a journal is peer reviewed, which means that other respected scientists in the field have read and commented on the article and its methods, and endorse the results. This case, however, seems a lot like "cold fusion" -- with researchers calling a press conference before letting others reproduce their results.
Right now, everything in the article is pure speculation and they realize that wholeheartedly. In fact, the effect only exists in computer simulations currently, so the researchers haven't even witnessed it yet. The article will be subject to peer review, of course, but it's simply a theoretical discussion giving computational proof of an effect believed to exist, so as long as the underlying theory is sound, the results are likely to be accepted. This isn't a case of astounding experimental results being claimed where the methodology is suspect.
Until somebody comes up with a feasible method to produce these results, they will remain 'meta-results'. This is not like cold-fusion at all; in that case, the original researchers actually claimed success in producing the result (not just theoretically proving it possible).
I'm pretty sure that a call to vibrate() every few minutes will do nothing but drain the battery quicker. Obviously, the conversion from vibration back to stored electricity can't be 100% efficient, so vibrating the phone will always cause a net loss.
As somebody else mentioned, would this be able to harness motion of the phone? Most people lug their cell phones around in a pocket/bag/purse, and they go through a lot of motion in your average day. Given that this technology is purpose-built to extract energy from engine vibrations (thousands of RPMs) it seems unlikely that it could efficiently harness day-to-day jarring of a cell phone. Perhaps a mechanism like that found in self-winding watches (a simple unbalanced wheel and some gearing) might be better suited to the task... anybody know if this would be practical, or if it has been done before?
Don't mind me... I must have been on something last night. I meant 15 years... the fundamental DCT/huffman algorithm underlying JPEG was around in basic form in the late 80 as it was being developed by various researchers.
Dan East said: One thing of interest is that for decades both the storage capacity of computers has grown along with the amount of information we need to store. However we are reaching the threshold where the amount of information we need to store will plateau. A perfect example is audio files. We are now storing audio data at a high enough quality that any additional improvement will not be discernable by a person with normal hearing. Thus in the future the storage required for a typical song will not be any larger. On the contrary, assuming that compression algorithms keep advancing, we may actually need less storage in the future for audio data. We will eventually see video reach a similar plateau, where a high enough resolution will be achieved to satisfy even the most devoted technophiles.
I think the above statement may be a little shortsighted, and it's exactly the same thing people used to think. Everyone has asked the question, "Who really needs (100MB|840MB|1GB|120GB) of storage space?" only to find themselves scrambling for more space in the future. That's the nature of the beast.
Nobody ever thought of storing high quality audio on a computer because it wasn't convenient, and it pushed the bounds of what was possible. As technology has improved, it's completely common. Same thing with video (although we are still in the early adoption stage as only in the recent past have general processors been fast enough to able to play high quality video, and hard-drives been big enough to store them).
As for compression? It's definitely in the "incremental gains" department. There haven't been major gains in compression in a long time, and there are definite theoretical bounds on how efficiently we can compress. In the last 25 years since JPEG was a working standard we've only marginally improved on it (with JPEG-2000, a wavelet based codec which is only marginally better quality/filesize wise, and is being touted as a JPEG replacement largely for other reasons: multiresolution, (nearly) embedded bitstream, etc..) So, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for revolutionary new compression techniques.
However I fully expect that we will find new things to store that will push the bounds of current limits. There's always a desire for better quality, and although audio may be near the plateau point, video is a long ways off, and there will inevitably be the need to store 3D video/hologram information eventually....
As network infrastructure improves, I don't doubt your last comment: carriers are definitely going to want to provide you with streaming data rather than have you toting it all locally. But what about data you've gathered yourself with your phone/camera/etc?
Content still available...
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4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
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· Score: 2, Informative
From what I understand, the Al-Jazeera channel is available unencumbered off of some satellite, so given $200 worth of hardware (I'm sure many satellite junkies have the necessary hardware) their news content is readily available.
I'm not sure I'd buy into the organized DDOS, but rather into a (near) world-wide slashdotting type effect. I've been frequenting their website quite a bit over the last week, and it's been fading in and out of existence (at least for my locale) quite often.
Most of the 'scandalous' images have been slurped from various sources and they're available in plenty of places. One such site is http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/ (be gentle!), which includes the pictures of the supposedly executed soldiers.
I hope Al-Jazeera beefs up their infrastructure and expands their newly launched minimal english service... it's nice to have news from outside sources (ie: outside the US sphere of influence) with an opposite view-point.
Re:Tech support for your family??
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Family Tech Support
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· Score: 5, Insightful
true_majik says:This is one reason I stay away from building custom PC's for relatives. If the PC breaks down, they expect me to fix it ASAP. It doesn't matter that they download and execute every file e-mailed to them, or that they click on YES for every Active-X control in websites, or as Bull999999 already mentioned (a.k.a. AOL, Real Player, Bonzi Buddy, Hot Bar, etc)...No, it's my fault.:(
I repeatedly came up against this problem. Having built my mother's computer, and performed ongoing tech support, things really fell to pieces when I moved 300 miles away. In fact, after only 4 months (with lots of over-the-phone tech support), the computer was so clogged with drive-by-downloads/trojans/viruses that it completely stopped functioning. Over Thanksgiving I cleaned everything up, put on AdAware and various Anti-Trojan/Anti-Virus programs, and hoped for the best. By Christmas, it was totally screwed again! This is due in large part to my younger siblings clicking yes to every offer of increased download speed, enhanced surfing experience, etc... (not to mention my 15 year old brothers penchant for internet pr0n)
It had gotten so bad that I had to take the nazi-sysadmin route, upgrade them to Win2K, create every family member individual accounts, and then severely restrict them so that they could no longer download/install new crap. After a little education about reading email, a scheduled virus/trojan/spyware cleanup, and a new firewall, things have finally smoothed out a bit.
I'm sure everybody here has similar experiences... it just seems that the geek of every family gets automatically assigned tech support duties. Hell, my family complains that they never hear from me, but the only time I hear from them is when it's computer related!
I'm a graduate student in Mathematics studying (convex) optimization problems so I see a healthy mix of pure and applied math. When I'm doing pure math the best tool for the job is a strongly symbolic math package like Maple (which I use extensively). Maple is also really good for quick visualization and helps gain insight and intuition into problems. Other offerings in this arena include Mathcad and Mathematica (however Mathcad actually uses a smaller version of Maple's symbolic engine).
Similarily, if the task is more numeric, Matlab is the choice (actually, we use Octave, which is a GPL'd and free numeric package that has Matlab syntax; most code written for one runs in the other). I'd say Matlab/Octave are most useful for prototyping numeric algorithms, and solving medium sized numeric problems.
Finally, when a tool is needed that performs well at one specific task (or the problem size gets really large), you can't beat writing your own tools from scratch in the compiled language of your choice. At this point, there are a variety of libraries that one may find useful (for arbitrary precision arithmetic, expression parsing, symbolic manipulation, etc).
So I guess the answer isn't white or black, but rather varying shades of grey (as is always the case).
Sometimes this works in your favor! I was withdrawing $40 from a CIBC (Canadian bank) ATM a few years ago, and out came $120! I double checked my bank statement, and it had only withdrawn $40.
In my case, I didn't bother to go and report the problem...;)
This seems like new marketing for an existing technology. I remember seeing these windows in "homes of the future" quite a few years back.
Up until now, they've been marketed as 'privacy' windows, that can be made clear at the flick of a switch. And it is important to note that they require power to stay clear (although I don't know how much), so you'd want them someplace where they are regularly opaque.... like, maybe in a bathroom? Or windows around an indoor pool?
It's not like the glass actually makes the images, it just serves as a blank screen for a projector. Now if they had windows that doubled as flat displays, that would be something new and cool. As I recall, the windows I saw were a grey color when opaque--not ideal for a projection screen. Maybe they've made them whiter?
I don't understand how these things would be hurricane proof.
An airplane like a 727 can handle 500+ mph "winds", because that's how fast it moves through the air when it's flying. However, that is smooth airflow along the longitudinal axis of the aircraft.
One of these sitting close to the ground would be subject to changing winds from all directions. During a hurricane, as the winds eddied wildy over the ground's surface, it'd be similar to flying into severe turbulence.
Obviously, being able to weather-vane would have the thing pointed predominantly into the wind, but that pivot point would have to absorb the energy of any lateral and vertical components of the wind striking the aircraft.
It seems to be a pretty bold claim, with little or no research to back it.
The very first underground train in New York worked exactly like this, pneumatically. Everything old is new again, eh?
How exactly does this qualify as pneumatic? I think this would be "anti-pneumatic" if such a term existed...;)
Pneumatic implies they are using air-pressure as the driving force. Most pneumatic systems (like money tubes at some theatres and large stores) actually suck air out, and as the air at the intake of the tube rushes to fill the vacuum, it has to push the capsule. This system talks about using evacuated tubes (ie: a vacuum), so that the capsules can travel with pretty much no friction. The entire tube system is a vacuum, so there's no suck and no blow; the actual driving force would likely be electric...
How would you like it if you were killed and no one cared, or worse, people made endless jokes about your death?
I'd be pissed if people didn't laugh about my death! I'd rather my life be remembered for its good times (those generally include humor), than for people to only think somber thoughts of me. Not to mention that it's pretty selfish of you to require everyone to "care" about your death by reflecting quietly on it.
As theLOUDroom pointed out previously, making light of a bad situation is an effective, and I'd say necessary coping mechanism. If you've ever known anyone in a particularly morbid field (and I mean gruesome deaths), such as firemen, paramedics, aircraft crash investigators, coroners, etc..., then you will realize that most of them share a very dark and black sense of humor... or they drink heavily.
There are times when jokes are disrespectful, and certain jokes here have crossed the line. However, the fact remains that it's not up to you to decide what coping mechanims are and are not appropriate, nor is it up to you alone to decide what is and isn't funny to others.
Unfortunately, the PacketShaper is a little smarter than this... it doens't solely rely on ports to identify traffic. It actually analyzes the stream data as it passes through the system, and recognizes the individual P2P protocols in use (among hundreds of other specific traffic types and sub-types). Some P2P protocols are quite crafty and send their data over a seemingly innocent HTTP stream... but the PacketShaper catches those too...;)
Actually, there are a lot of universities across North America that run PacketShapers for the very purpose of controlling P2P traffic. I work for Packeteer, and universities/schools have been an important customer since P2P networks blossomed...
but when you torture a cat or dog keeping it locked up in a house, and over feed it, then modify its behavior with gadgets like this
He's not torturing his cat by keeping it locked up, but rather giving it free reign to follow it's cat instincts, and go hunting at all hours of the night. What he is doing, however, is preventing the cat from dragging kills into his house and making a mess.
While this may modify the cats behavior in the long run, I can't see how it would be considered a harmful modification; it's not directly discouraging anything inherent in the cat's nature.
But, on the topic of keeping cats and dogs as entirely inside pets, I agree; I find that pretty unappealing and somewhat cruel.
This happens all the time. The person will set up a circle of identities, set up auctions, and use another of the identities to purchase the item. Sometimes it's ony guy, sometimes it's actually a group of buddies. Normally they're small ticket items, and there are many sold in a short time period. The circular bidding buils up a bunch of accounts to high approval ratings.
In checking out someone's feedback, make sure to cross check their buyer's and seller's, and make sure there's not a short-chain of mutual purchases...
Unfortunately, if the person is determined enough, and has the time, they can make a series of auctions like this look very convincing, and it's really hard to track down...
I even went so far as to reverse look up the guy's phone number, and check to see if his physical address matched the payment info he gave me. Then, using MapQuest, you can even see if there's a house there (this doesn't have any practical advantage, but at least I could say to myself "I know where he lives...")
Seriously though, in buying expensive items (the item I was buying was $800), it makes sense to use an Escrow service. For a whole $10, and probably an extra day of delay, I *knew* that I would get the product in the condition described, or all of my money back... it just makes sense!
As others have alredy pointed out, this is an intractable problem, and there has been lots of research into it.
The creation of a perceptually uniform color space (ie: where some metric, typically the Euclidean norm, between two colors is directly proportional to the "visible" difference between them) has long been a holy grail, and the color space generally accepted to do the best job is CIELAB. However, CIELAB is known to suffer from non-linearities throughout its gamut. Also, the approach you are taking is a little simplistic, as to accurately determine perceptual color distance you need to incorporate the viewing conditions at the viewer's end, plus the properties of the display.
If the purpose of this is simply to ensure that two colors are distinctive when placed together, the simplest approach is to use only the luminance information (there are many different ways of calculating 'luminance', but they all involve a weighted average of the color components); you can rest assured that if the luminance difference is large enough, the color's will be perceptually distinct.
This problem comes up a lot in color reduction literature, and there are tons of resources out there on this stuff... be sure to check out citeseer (researchindex.com). Some of the quick and dirty metrics I've seen that do a fairly tolerable job is to convert to luminance-chrominance colorspace (ie: YUV, YCbCr, etc...), and then take a standard Euclidean norm, but weight the luminance contribution heavier than the chrominance contributions (something like 2:1 works well). Again, this is far from uniform, but it's tolerable, and when used in color reduction algorithms produces noticeably better results than simple RGB Euclidean.
Tough problem with no clean answer. May I ask what exactly your not-for-profit organization wishes to do with such a metric?
Everyone goes through this thought process when they start thinking about career paths. The best thing to do, is be as broad as possible.
I spent my undergrad years pursuing a double major Math and Physics, with a minor in CompSci. That gives me a broad footing in all technology fields, allowing me to go work as an engineer, programmer, teacher, etc. Currently I work doing research, mostly involving Math and CompSci, and am pursuing my MSc in Pure Math.
One thing I found very important is that skills gained outside of school are very important. If you have a higher education, but are a self-taught wizard at designing and piecing together custom electronics, then those skills are very employable, even though not formally attained.
In my personal experience, I have a friend with a pure BSc in physics whose first job was writing software for microcontrollers for a small company that made laser cutting machines. From there, he's now working in the research department at a network appliance company, helping to design network traffic control algorithms, a job heavy in CompSci and Math (same place I work).
By having a higher education, you show your ability to learn. As long as you can demonstrate good problem solving skills, and a broad base skill-set, you're good to go for most any job. If you specialize too much in university, you narrow your range outside of university.
Could this lead to new data compression schemes for non-detail critical images and other files? A sort of JPG with half detail and half math? It wouldnt be high quality but it would be a fraction of the size, perhaps yet another low-bandwidth video codec?
Are you even familiar with how JPEG works? It's already half-detail, half-math... JPEG images involve a significant amount of math and statistical trickery (in throwing away data). However, all the math used in standard signal processing (image and audio compression fall in this category) make the basic assumption that the signal is sampled at a uniform rate... a lot of the current techniques wouldn't apply without tweaking...
No matter *what* they do, there'll never be a copy protection that works... as long as the music is playable through a computer, it can be ripped. Take the simplest possible example: pipe the output of your sound card into *any* recording device, be it a computer, or otherwise. If you have a sound-card with digital out, then this is a lossless step, preserving the original quality.
All of these schemes are pointless and nothing more than a nuisance to consumers. As someone else already said, this actually helps things to get pirated, as you can buy it, rip it, and return it for full price!
I seem to remember that as a side effect to the proposed quantum gravity theory and various string theories, that even photons create small gravitational fields; however, the strength of the field is inversely proportional to a power of the speed of the light (1/(c^n))... have we directly measured this effect yet?
Maybe all of the research into slowing light down might make this effect measurable...
...a lot of other hoaxes out there (that numerous people have already mentioned), however, it also sounds like another "new" technology.
There's a company out there called Datagistics that is also claiming magic compression of pretty much all data, using a technique they call "Random Access Para-Integrated Data", or RAPID for short. They're not claiming 100:1, but rather 20:1, so I guess their technology has a 5 times better chance of being real;)
The site is unfortunately a little light on the details, not even offering a techo-babble pseudo-explanation like these ZeoSync guys...
Is that video *and* audio? Or is that video only? Either way, it seems too good to be true. Typically, 128kbps is the considered the bottom end for near CD quality for MP3 audio... at 200kbps for this VP3, if they have decent stereo sound encapsulated, that doesn't leave a lot of room for the video!
Even if that figure is for video data only, that seems way too good... 200kbps is barely enough to describe audio, let alone a decent representation of video! Don't forget, DivX takes about 10Mbyte/min or 1365kbps for audio and video at decent quality...
I wonder what the quality and resolution are truly like...
If on the other hand, they included an accelerometer in the GPS unit they could tell with great precision which changes were due to movements, and which were due to errors.
Techniques like this are typically employed in high end navigation units in large commercial aircraft and military aircraft.
Typically, the order of importance is reversed. High end inertial navigation units using ring laser gyros actually have better accuracy than GPS (in terms of acceleration and velocity), and act as the primary signal. However, error accumulates over time from the double integration of the acceleration signal, and eventually becomes non-trivial. By slaving the GPS to the inertial unit, you can counteract this error and create a very reliable and very accurate system.
Unfortunately, high end solid state gyros are not a readily available consumer product (the full 6 degree of freedom RLG system in the Space Shuttle is around $250,000 CAD). However, there is an abundance of cheap fairly accurate accelerometer technology available that may be good enough to make a system like this viable (Analog Devices ADXL202 chip is a 2 axis accelerometer in a 1cm^2 chip package, and there are several peizo gyro manufacturers making systems intended for auto-stabilization of RC helicopters and such).
Overall, it's a great idea and has been proven to work very well; but, it'll be awhile before we see such systems in the world of consumer electronics.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a couple of problems with the article and its claims, however:
- Near 100% efficiency -- I'd like to see a reproducable demonstration of this. If it is true, we will have a revolution in the solar cell industry. However, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a difficult thing to contend with; anything that comes near 100% should set off any good physicist's red flags.
- The article is going to be published in the Physical Review Letters -- This is significantly different than saying the article has been published in the PRL's. Such a journal is peer reviewed, which means that other respected scientists in the field have read and commented on the article and its methods, and endorse the results. This case, however, seems a lot like "cold fusion" -- with researchers calling a press conference before letting others reproduce their results.
Right now, everything in the article is pure speculation and they realize that wholeheartedly. In fact, the effect only exists in computer simulations currently, so the researchers haven't even witnessed it yet. The article will be subject to peer review, of course, but it's simply a theoretical discussion giving computational proof of an effect believed to exist, so as long as the underlying theory is sound, the results are likely to be accepted. This isn't a case of astounding experimental results being claimed where the methodology is suspect.Until somebody comes up with a feasible method to produce these results, they will remain 'meta-results'. This is not like cold-fusion at all; in that case, the original researchers actually claimed success in producing the result (not just theoretically proving it possible).
I'm pretty sure that a call to vibrate() every few minutes will do nothing but drain the battery quicker. Obviously, the conversion from vibration back to stored electricity can't be 100% efficient, so vibrating the phone will always cause a net loss.
As somebody else mentioned, would this be able to harness motion of the phone? Most people lug their cell phones around in a pocket/bag/purse, and they go through a lot of motion in your average day. Given that this technology is purpose-built to extract energy from engine vibrations (thousands of RPMs) it seems unlikely that it could efficiently harness day-to-day jarring of a cell phone. Perhaps a mechanism like that found in self-winding watches (a simple unbalanced wheel and some gearing) might be better suited to the task... anybody know if this would be practical, or if it has been done before?
Don't mind me... I must have been on something last night. I meant 15 years... the fundamental DCT/huffman algorithm underlying JPEG was around in basic form in the late 80 as it was being developed by various researchers.
Dan East said:
One thing of interest is that for decades both the storage capacity of computers has grown along with the amount of information we need to store. However we are reaching the threshold where the amount of information we need to store will plateau. A perfect example is audio files. We are now storing audio data at a high enough quality that any additional improvement will not be discernable by a person with normal hearing. Thus in the future the storage required for a typical song will not be any larger. On the contrary, assuming that compression algorithms keep advancing, we may actually need less storage in the future for audio data. We will eventually see video reach a similar plateau, where a high enough resolution will be achieved to satisfy even the most devoted technophiles.
I think the above statement may be a little shortsighted, and it's exactly the same thing people used to think. Everyone has asked the question, "Who really needs (100MB|840MB|1GB|120GB) of storage space?" only to find themselves scrambling for more space in the future. That's the nature of the beast.
Nobody ever thought of storing high quality audio on a computer because it wasn't convenient, and it pushed the bounds of what was possible. As technology has improved, it's completely common. Same thing with video (although we are still in the early adoption stage as only in the recent past have general processors been fast enough to able to play high quality video, and hard-drives been big enough to store them).
As for compression? It's definitely in the "incremental gains" department. There haven't been major gains in compression in a long time, and there are definite theoretical bounds on how efficiently we can compress. In the last 25 years since JPEG was a working standard we've only marginally improved on it (with JPEG-2000, a wavelet based codec which is only marginally better quality/filesize wise, and is being touted as a JPEG replacement largely for other reasons: multiresolution, (nearly) embedded bitstream, etc..) So, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for revolutionary new compression techniques.
However I fully expect that we will find new things to store that will push the bounds of current limits. There's always a desire for better quality, and although audio may be near the plateau point, video is a long ways off, and there will inevitably be the need to store 3D video/hologram information eventually....
As network infrastructure improves, I don't doubt your last comment: carriers are definitely going to want to provide you with streaming data rather than have you toting it all locally. But what about data you've gathered yourself with your phone/camera/etc?
From what I understand, the Al-Jazeera channel is available unencumbered off of some satellite, so given $200 worth of hardware (I'm sure many satellite junkies have the necessary hardware) their news content is readily available.
I'm not sure I'd buy into the organized DDOS, but rather into a (near) world-wide slashdotting type effect. I've been frequenting their website quite a bit over the last week, and it's been fading in and out of existence (at least for my locale) quite often.
Most of the 'scandalous' images have been slurped from various sources and they're available in plenty of places. One such site is http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/ (be gentle!), which includes the pictures of the supposedly executed soldiers.
I hope Al-Jazeera beefs up their infrastructure and expands their newly launched minimal english service... it's nice to have news from outside sources (ie: outside the US sphere of influence) with an opposite view-point.
true_majik says: This is one reason I stay away from building custom PC's for relatives. If the PC breaks down, they expect me to fix it ASAP. It doesn't matter that they download and execute every file e-mailed to them, or that they click on YES for every Active-X control in websites, or as Bull999999 already mentioned (a.k.a. AOL, Real Player, Bonzi Buddy, Hot Bar, etc)...No, it's my fault. :(
I repeatedly came up against this problem. Having built my mother's computer, and performed ongoing tech support, things really fell to pieces when I moved 300 miles away. In fact, after only 4 months (with lots of over-the-phone tech support), the computer was so clogged with drive-by-downloads/trojans/viruses that it completely stopped functioning. Over Thanksgiving I cleaned everything up, put on AdAware and various Anti-Trojan/Anti-Virus programs, and hoped for the best. By Christmas, it was totally screwed again! This is due in large part to my younger siblings clicking yes to every offer of increased download speed, enhanced surfing experience, etc... (not to mention my 15 year old brothers penchant for internet pr0n)
It had gotten so bad that I had to take the nazi-sysadmin route, upgrade them to Win2K, create every family member individual accounts, and then severely restrict them so that they could no longer download/install new crap. After a little education about reading email, a scheduled virus/trojan/spyware cleanup, and a new firewall, things have finally smoothed out a bit.
I'm sure everybody here has similar experiences... it just seems that the geek of every family gets automatically assigned tech support duties. Hell, my family complains that they never hear from me, but the only time I hear from them is when it's computer related!
...for the job at hand.
I'm a graduate student in Mathematics studying (convex) optimization problems so I see a healthy mix of pure and applied math. When I'm doing pure math the best tool for the job is a strongly symbolic math package like Maple (which I use extensively). Maple is also really good for quick visualization and helps gain insight and intuition into problems. Other offerings in this arena include Mathcad and Mathematica (however Mathcad actually uses a smaller version of Maple's symbolic engine).
Similarily, if the task is more numeric, Matlab is the choice (actually, we use Octave, which is a GPL'd and free numeric package that has Matlab syntax; most code written for one runs in the other). I'd say Matlab/Octave are most useful for prototyping numeric algorithms, and solving medium sized numeric problems.
Finally, when a tool is needed that performs well at one specific task (or the problem size gets really large), you can't beat writing your own tools from scratch in the compiled language of your choice. At this point, there are a variety of libraries that one may find useful (for arbitrary precision arithmetic, expression parsing, symbolic manipulation, etc).
So I guess the answer isn't white or black, but rather varying shades of grey (as is always the case).
Sometimes this works in your favor! I was withdrawing $40 from a CIBC (Canadian bank) ATM a few years ago, and out came $120! I double checked my bank statement, and it had only withdrawn $40.
;)
In my case, I didn't bother to go and report the problem...
This seems like new marketing for an existing technology. I remember seeing these windows in "homes of the future" quite a few years back.
Up until now, they've been marketed as 'privacy' windows, that can be made clear at the flick of a switch. And it is important to note that they require power to stay clear (although I don't know how much), so you'd want them someplace where they are regularly opaque.... like, maybe in a bathroom? Or windows around an indoor pool?
It's not like the glass actually makes the images, it just serves as a blank screen for a projector. Now if they had windows that doubled as flat displays, that would be something new and cool. As I recall, the windows I saw were a grey color when opaque--not ideal for a projection screen. Maybe they've made them whiter?
I don't understand how these things would be hurricane proof.
An airplane like a 727 can handle 500+ mph "winds", because that's how fast it moves through the air when it's flying. However, that is smooth airflow along the longitudinal axis of the aircraft.
One of these sitting close to the ground would be subject to changing winds from all directions. During a hurricane, as the winds eddied wildy over the ground's surface, it'd be similar to flying into severe turbulence.
Obviously, being able to weather-vane would have the thing pointed predominantly into the wind, but that pivot point would have to absorb the energy of any lateral and vertical components of the wind striking the aircraft.
It seems to be a pretty bold claim, with little or no research to back it.
The very first underground train in New York worked exactly like this, pneumatically. Everything old is new again, eh?
;)
How exactly does this qualify as pneumatic? I think this would be "anti-pneumatic" if such a term existed...
Pneumatic implies they are using air-pressure as the driving force. Most pneumatic systems (like money tubes at some theatres and large stores) actually suck air out, and as the air at the intake of the tube rushes to fill the vacuum, it has to push the capsule. This system talks about using evacuated tubes (ie: a vacuum), so that the capsules can travel with pretty much no friction. The entire tube system is a vacuum, so there's no suck and no blow; the actual driving force would likely be electric...
How would you like it if you were killed and no one cared, or worse, people made endless jokes about your death?
I'd be pissed if people didn't laugh about my death! I'd rather my life be remembered for its good times (those generally include humor), than for people to only think somber thoughts of me. Not to mention that it's pretty selfish of you to require everyone to "care" about your death by reflecting quietly on it.
As theLOUDroom pointed out previously, making light of a bad situation is an effective, and I'd say necessary coping mechanism. If you've ever known anyone in a particularly morbid field (and I mean gruesome deaths), such as firemen, paramedics, aircraft crash investigators, coroners, etc..., then you will realize that most of them share a very dark and black sense of humor... or they drink heavily.
There are times when jokes are disrespectful, and certain jokes here have crossed the line. However, the fact remains that it's not up to you to decide what coping mechanims are and are not appropriate, nor is it up to you alone to decide what is and isn't funny to others.
Unfortunately, the PacketShaper is a little smarter than this... it doens't solely rely on ports to identify traffic. It actually analyzes the stream data as it passes through the system, and recognizes the individual P2P protocols in use (among hundreds of other specific traffic types and sub-types). Some P2P protocols are quite crafty and send their data over a seemingly innocent HTTP stream... but the PacketShaper catches those too... ;)
Actually, there are a lot of universities across North America that run PacketShapers for the very purpose of controlling P2P traffic. I work for Packeteer, and universities/schools have been an important customer since P2P networks blossomed...
but when you torture a cat or dog keeping it locked up in a house, and over feed it, then modify its behavior with gadgets like this
He's not torturing his cat by keeping it locked up, but rather giving it free reign to follow it's cat instincts, and go hunting at all hours of the night. What he is doing, however, is preventing the cat from dragging kills into his house and making a mess.
While this may modify the cats behavior in the long run, I can't see how it would be considered a harmful modification; it's not directly discouraging anything inherent in the cat's nature.
But, on the topic of keeping cats and dogs as entirely inside pets, I agree; I find that pretty unappealing and somewhat cruel.
This happens all the time. The person will set up a circle of identities, set up auctions, and use another of the identities to purchase the item. Sometimes it's ony guy, sometimes it's actually a group of buddies. Normally they're small ticket items, and there are many sold in a short time period. The circular bidding buils up a bunch of accounts to high approval ratings.
In checking out someone's feedback, make sure to cross check their buyer's and seller's, and make sure there's not a short-chain of mutual purchases...
Unfortunately, if the person is determined enough, and has the time, they can make a series of auctions like this look very convincing, and it's really hard to track down...
I even went so far as to reverse look up the guy's phone number, and check to see if his physical address matched the payment info he gave me. Then, using MapQuest, you can even see if there's a house there (this doesn't have any practical advantage, but at least I could say to myself "I know where he lives...")
Seriously though, in buying expensive items (the item I was buying was $800), it makes sense to use an Escrow service. For a whole $10, and probably an extra day of delay, I *knew* that I would get the product in the condition described, or all of my money back... it just makes sense!
As others have alredy pointed out, this is an intractable problem, and there has been lots of research into it.
The creation of a perceptually uniform color space (ie: where some metric, typically the Euclidean norm, between two colors is directly proportional to the "visible" difference between them) has long been a holy grail, and the color space generally accepted to do the best job is CIELAB. However, CIELAB is known to suffer from non-linearities throughout its gamut. Also, the approach you are taking is a little simplistic, as to accurately determine perceptual color distance you need to incorporate the viewing conditions at the viewer's end, plus the properties of the display.
If the purpose of this is simply to ensure that two colors are distinctive when placed together, the simplest approach is to use only the luminance information (there are many different ways of calculating 'luminance', but they all involve a weighted average of the color components); you can rest assured that if the luminance difference is large enough, the color's will be perceptually distinct.
This problem comes up a lot in color reduction literature, and there are tons of resources out there on this stuff... be sure to check out citeseer (researchindex.com). Some of the quick and dirty metrics I've seen that do a fairly tolerable job is to convert to luminance-chrominance colorspace (ie: YUV, YCbCr, etc...), and then take a standard Euclidean norm, but weight the luminance contribution heavier than the chrominance contributions (something like 2:1 works well). Again, this is far from uniform, but it's tolerable, and when used in color reduction algorithms produces noticeably better results than simple RGB Euclidean.
Tough problem with no clean answer. May I ask what exactly your not-for-profit organization wishes to do with such a metric?
Everyone goes through this thought process when they start thinking about career paths. The best thing to do, is be as broad as possible.
I spent my undergrad years pursuing a double major Math and Physics, with a minor in CompSci. That gives me a broad footing in all technology fields, allowing me to go work as an engineer, programmer, teacher, etc. Currently I work doing research, mostly involving Math and CompSci, and am pursuing my MSc in Pure Math.
One thing I found very important is that skills gained outside of school are very important. If you have a higher education, but are a self-taught wizard at designing and piecing together custom electronics, then those skills are very employable, even though not formally attained.
In my personal experience, I have a friend with a pure BSc in physics whose first job was writing software for microcontrollers for a small company that made laser cutting machines. From there, he's now working in the research department at a network appliance company, helping to design network traffic control algorithms, a job heavy in CompSci and Math (same place I work).
By having a higher education, you show your ability to learn. As long as you can demonstrate good problem solving skills, and a broad base skill-set, you're good to go for most any job. If you specialize too much in university, you narrow your range outside of university.
Could this lead to new data compression schemes for non-detail critical images and other files? A sort of JPG with half detail and half math? It wouldnt be high quality but it would be a fraction of the size, perhaps yet another low-bandwidth video codec?
Are you even familiar with how JPEG works? It's already half-detail, half-math... JPEG images involve a significant amount of math and statistical trickery (in throwing away data). However, all the math used in standard signal processing (image and audio compression fall in this category) make the basic assumption that the signal is sampled at a uniform rate... a lot of the current techniques wouldn't apply without tweaking...
No matter *what* they do, there'll never be a copy protection that works... as long as the music is playable through a computer, it can be ripped. Take the simplest possible example: pipe the output of your sound card into *any* recording device, be it a computer, or otherwise. If you have a sound-card with digital out, then this is a lossless step, preserving the original quality.
All of these schemes are pointless and nothing more than a nuisance to consumers. As someone else already said, this actually helps things to get pirated, as you can buy it, rip it, and return it for full price!
I seem to remember that as a side effect to the proposed quantum gravity theory and various string theories, that even photons create small gravitational fields; however, the strength of the field is inversely proportional to a power of the speed of the light (1/(c^n))... have we directly measured this effect yet?
Maybe all of the research into slowing light down might make this effect measurable...
...a lot of other hoaxes out there (that numerous people have already mentioned), however, it also sounds like another "new" technology.
;)
There's a company out there called Datagistics that is also claiming magic compression of pretty much all data, using a technique they call "Random Access Para-Integrated Data", or RAPID for short. They're not claiming 100:1, but rather 20:1, so I guess their technology has a 5 times better chance of being real
The site is unfortunately a little light on the details, not even offering a techo-babble pseudo-explanation like these ZeoSync guys...
Is that video *and* audio? Or is that video only? Either way, it seems too good to be true. Typically, 128kbps is the considered the bottom end for near CD quality for MP3 audio... at 200kbps for this VP3, if they have decent stereo sound encapsulated, that doesn't leave a lot of room for the video!
Even if that figure is for video data only, that seems way too good... 200kbps is barely enough to describe audio, let alone a decent representation of video! Don't forget, DivX takes about 10Mbyte/min or 1365kbps for audio and video at decent quality...
I wonder what the quality and resolution are truly like...
Techniques like this are typically employed in high end navigation units in large commercial aircraft and military aircraft.
Typically, the order of importance is reversed. High end inertial navigation units using ring laser gyros actually have better accuracy than GPS (in terms of acceleration and velocity), and act as the primary signal. However, error accumulates over time from the double integration of the acceleration signal, and eventually becomes non-trivial. By slaving the GPS to the inertial unit, you can counteract this error and create a very reliable and very accurate system.
Unfortunately, high end solid state gyros are not a readily available consumer product (the full 6 degree of freedom RLG system in the Space Shuttle is around $250,000 CAD). However, there is an abundance of cheap fairly accurate accelerometer technology available that may be good enough to make a system like this viable (Analog Devices ADXL202 chip is a 2 axis accelerometer in a 1cm^2 chip package, and there are several peizo gyro manufacturers making systems intended for auto-stabilization of RC helicopters and such).
Overall, it's a great idea and has been proven to work very well; but, it'll be awhile before we see such systems in the world of consumer electronics.