You can replace (or augment) both Ad-Aware and StartPro with SpyBotSD. It's both an excellent spyware remover, with additional anti-spyware features, and it has a built in startup item lister/selector (including the registry), and a bunch of other built-in tools.
It's free and you got to try it to see how useful it is. It gives you a graphical representation of what's on your hard drive. It's one of the primary utilities in my Windows toolkit. I list some more on my web site, many of which others have listed here.
> But still... that handshake looked really fishy, esp. the 90 degree rotation....
To me it looks like the robot arm was programmed to go into handshake mode (rotate 90 degrees, and get ready to track up and down) when it sees the human hand moving up and down. It didn't look fishy at all.
Also, according to the block diagram, there is a second video camera, but I don't know if it was used to aid 3D object location.
> The color pictures were taken with a QX-3 USB microscope, much better.
Nice site, and cool project. I was going to say that the color macro shots looked quite good. The microscope explains that one. What type of lighting did you use?
Dean Kamen was not riding a Segway today when he introduced the 2003 "FIRST" robotics competition. That's the first time in a long time I've seen him without a Segway.
I have seen and touched the Segway (with Dean Kamen riding it), but I haven't ridden one yet. There's a photo of us with Dean on our 2002 robot team web site.
This site really helped me decide what I wanted to do for multi-monitor support. ANd they have info on stuff like multi-monitor KVM switches, and getting Nvidia and ATI cards to fully support Win2K.
My sister just had a Comcast cable modem installed, and I was there to watch, and the installer didn't try to install any software. I even asked him if he was planning to install the Comcast software (so I could tell him not to), and he said no.
FYI: My sister already had ZoneAlarm installed, and I installed a hardware router for her a few days later.
I've also had Comcast for a few years, and they didn't try to install any software on my system.
I know, I tried it, but I have to right click, then drag up diagonally to the right, then drag left or right, instead of just clicking on a tab. And what if I wanted to go over two tabs, I'd have to do that all twice.
I suppose it would get easier if I did it a lot, but it's pretty simple to click a tab, no draging involved. And it's also quicker to use the keyboard shortcuts, but you have to memorize them, and the only one I've memorized is ^T for New Tab.
Are you using pie menus or gestures? It sounds like you are using gestures, because the pie menu doesn't seem to make it any easier to switch between tabs. It seems to me that is still easier to click on a different tab than to use the pie menu to switch tabs.
Of course you can't hit regular menus with your eyes closed. That's why pie menus are so great. You can use pie menus with your eyes closed -- not that you would want to, but once you're used to pie menus, it removes they "eye" part from "eye-hand coordination".
Apparently Alias/Waverfront calls their menus "Marking Menus", and has trademarked that term, but they are very similar to pie menus, if not exactly the same. There's more info on the Piemenus.com site.
Alias/Wavefront's Maya has some advanced pie menus, and they suposedly make using the program a lot faster, especially once you know the movements by heart.
I saw them demonstrated, and they were pretty impressive (the menus and the application).
I think we had at least 4 women at the DC meetup (out of 25-30 people), including one who did the organizing (thanks).
The restaurant was a little too noisy, but we eventually got our own room, but it wasn't away from the noise.
We had at least one laptop, one digicam, which we passed around so everyone could take photos (I also had mine, but we didn't use it), and someone had a neat little VCD player, which was like a CD walkman with a video screen embeded in the lid.
Of course, everyone (just about) had a cell phone, and there were probably lots of PDA's.
Hopefully the next one will be a little farther away from the city (like in Fairfax county, where a lot of us live), so we don't have to deal with so much traffic.
Columbia was canceled due to lack of RSVP's. Didn't you get the e-mail? I did. I went to the Alexandria, Virginia (aka. DC) one instead, and it was great. We had 25-30 people there out of 184 who were on the list.
We're up to 184 people signed up for the Washington DC Slashdot Meetup. I think we actually had 25-30 people there last night, unless people showed up after I left, which was a little after 9pm, but it was still a pretty big group. And a lot of fun. It was cool to meet all those other geeks.
Every Western Digital hard drive I ever bought for personal use is still working, including, 500.Meg, 2.Gig, 6.Gig, 40.Gig, and 80.Gig Special Edition.
Many years ago, when I ran a tech support department at the FAA in DC, we got a batch of Gateway computers with 1.2 Gig WD drives, and they all went bad, and Gateway sent us replacements, but other than that bad batch, I've had good experiences with WD drives.
Every drive manufacturer has an occasional run of bad hard drives. It recently happened to IBM.
There were also two DC area Slashdot meetups, but one got canceled because everyone signed up for the other one. At least now I don't have to decide which one to attend.
We had at least 2 meetups in the DC area, and one was cancelled due to lack of RSVP's, but it looks like some of them might have signed up for the other one, because we have tons of people signed up for that one.
Slashdot Mirror
You can replace (or augment) both Ad-Aware and StartPro with SpyBotSD. It's both an excellent spyware remover, with additional anti-spyware features, and it has a built in startup item lister/selector (including the registry), and a bunch of other built-in tools.
You've got to have SpaceMonger.
It's free and you got to try it to see how useful it is. It gives you a graphical representation of what's on your hard drive. It's one of the primary utilities in my Windows toolkit. I list some more on my web site, many of which others have listed here.
> But still... that handshake looked really fishy, esp. the 90 degree rotation....
To me it looks like the robot arm was programmed to go into handshake mode (rotate 90 degrees, and get ready to track up and down) when it sees the human hand moving up and down. It didn't look fishy at all.
Also, according to the block diagram, there is a second video camera, but I don't know if it was used to aid 3D object location.
> The color pictures were taken with a QX-3 USB microscope, much better.
Nice site, and cool project. I was going to say that the color macro shots looked quite good. The microscope explains that one. What type of lighting did you use?
This guy did an in-depth HDTV report. It's on his web site: HDTV Report
Dean Kamen was not riding a Segway today when he introduced the 2003 "FIRST" robotics competition. That's the first time in a long time I've seen him without a Segway.
I have seen and touched the Segway (with Dean Kamen riding it), but I haven't ridden one yet. There's a photo of us with Dean on our 2002 robot team web site.
> I wonder if Data runs on an advanced version of the Linux kernel...
Shouldn't that be GNU/Data?
Check it out: Radio Shack Kameleon Remote
Electronics are usually more espensive in the UK, so Pounds usually match US dollars pretty closely for electronics.
They annoy me too!
This device is advertised as having "128 Classic 70's & 80's Arcade Games" built in, and it's $50, and has dual controllers.
http://www.hobbytron.net/video-game-system.html
This site really helped me decide what I wanted to do for multi-monitor support. ANd they have info on stuff like multi-monitor KVM switches, and getting Nvidia and ATI cards to fully support Win2K.
www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/
- Eric, http://www.InvisibleRobot.com/
My sister just had a Comcast cable modem installed, and I was there to watch, and the installer didn't try to install any software. I even asked him if he was planning to install the Comcast software (so I could tell him not to), and he said no.
FYI: My sister already had ZoneAlarm installed, and I installed a hardware router for her a few days later.
I've also had Comcast for a few years, and they didn't try to install any software on my system.
> you'll either never buy or drive yourself crazy.
Why can't I do both?
I know, I tried it, but I have to right click, then drag up diagonally to the right, then drag left or right, instead of just clicking on a tab. And what if I wanted to go over two tabs, I'd have to do that all twice.
I suppose it would get easier if I did it a lot, but it's pretty simple to click a tab, no draging involved. And it's also quicker to use the keyboard shortcuts, but you have to memorize them, and the only one I've memorized is ^T for New Tab.
Are you using pie menus or gestures? It sounds like you are using gestures, because the pie menu doesn't seem to make it any easier to switch between tabs. It seems to me that is still easier to click on a different tab than to use the pie menu to switch tabs.
Of course you can't hit regular menus with your eyes closed. That's why pie menus are so great. You can use pie menus with your eyes closed -- not that you would want to, but once you're used to pie menus, it removes they "eye" part from "eye-hand coordination".
I use my middle mouse button to "open link in new tab". Makes life really easy (well, at least the opening links in new tabs part of life).
Apparently Alias/Waverfront calls their menus "Marking Menus", and has trademarked that term, but they are very similar to pie menus, if not exactly the same. There's more info on the Piemenus.com site.
Alias/Wavefront's Maya has some advanced pie menus, and they suposedly make using the program a lot faster, especially once you know the movements by heart.
I saw them demonstrated, and they were pretty impressive (the menus and the application).
I think we had at least 4 women at the DC meetup (out of 25-30 people), including one who did the organizing (thanks).
The restaurant was a little too noisy, but we eventually got our own room, but it wasn't away from the noise.
We had at least one laptop, one digicam, which we passed around so everyone could take photos (I also had mine, but we didn't use it), and someone had a neat little VCD player, which was like a CD walkman with a video screen embeded in the lid.
Of course, everyone (just about) had a cell phone, and there were probably lots of PDA's.
Hopefully the next one will be a little farther away from the city (like in Fairfax county, where a lot of us live), so we don't have to deal with so much traffic.
Columbia was canceled due to lack of RSVP's. Didn't you get the e-mail? I did. I went to the Alexandria, Virginia (aka. DC) one instead, and it was great. We had 25-30 people there out of 184 who were on the list.
We're up to 184 people signed up for the Washington DC Slashdot Meetup. I think we actually had 25-30 people there last night, unless people showed up after I left, which was a little after 9pm, but it was still a pretty big group. And a lot of fun. It was cool to meet all those other geeks.
Every Western Digital hard drive I ever bought for personal use is still working, including, 500.Meg, 2.Gig, 6.Gig, 40.Gig, and 80.Gig Special Edition.
Many years ago, when I ran a tech support department at the FAA in DC, we got a batch of Gateway computers with 1.2 Gig WD drives, and they all went bad, and Gateway sent us replacements, but other than that bad batch, I've had good experiences with WD drives.
Every drive manufacturer has an occasional run of bad hard drives. It recently happened to IBM.
There were also two DC area Slashdot meetups, but one got canceled because everyone signed up for the other one. At least now I don't have to decide which one to attend.
We had at least 2 meetups in the DC area, and one was cancelled due to lack of RSVP's, but it looks like some of them might have signed up for the other one, because we have tons of people signed up for that one.