I guess the most flexible solution would be to have several cameras filming the scene from different angles, having some (quite big) cluster of computers to calculate a 3D-representation of the scene and render everything in the computer. So you can do exactly what you want. I don't know how many cameras one would need to create a decent 3D model, but I guess it should be less than you need for a technique described above (for a not too complicated scene).
Once you have the 3D-scene in the computer you are absolutely free to create any time/camera path/zoom/whatever variations one could imagine (and probably a lot more than anybody would imagine before he had used it for some time).
But I guess for things like this we still have to wait some time for enough processing power and good 3D-reconstruction programs (I have seen some, which are not really easy to work with (still lots of user interaction needed to get nice models even from simple scenes) and still don't bring really good results). But who knows, maybe we'll see things like that soon (or are there already spots using a similar technique?).
As I understand the whole thing the tax ban only counts for electronically delivered goods (software, electronic books, music, video,...), so there still is the sales tax for everything else (you still can't eat electronically delivered pizza:).
My second point is: for big companies it would not be a problem to circumvent those taxes. It's easy: one server in the US for serving people inside the US. One server somewhere in the EU for serving people inside the EU. And one server for every country the company wants to sell their goods tax-free. Then they have to distribute their goods to all of these servers once (paying export tax) and serve their customers from there (without paying this tax). That's all. Or did I miss something? It only hurts small companies who can't afford a server in every country they want to sell their goods in. I can't see why Microsoft is against this tax, I'm sure they got an office in almost every (interesting) country (interesting in the sense of having at least a certain number of potential customers).
And this second thought could also reduce the network load (think of it as a caching proxy).
> i'm soo glad that law didnt pass a while > back, and we still have access to guns, > because I think its about time we shoot > every politition and make taco and hemos > king and queen of this > country/planet/universe!:)
I guess postings like this alone could justify a law that bans the access to weapons for everyone (or at least to some, who are obviously not in a state of mind to be allowed to own weapons). And no, I don't think everything turns to be a good joke just because you put a ':)' at the end.
I don't mean to start a flame-war here, but statements like the above one are not ok, even when you intended it as a joke. Sadly enough, there are lots of weirdos out there who take things like this for real.
Christoph
P.S. Sorry if I have been a bit rude, I have had a rough day today.
A friend of mine uses Photoshop a lot. The reason for him not to change to Gimp is the lack of CMYK-support. He needs CMYK, because he uses his images for printing.
The problems aren't that obvious. First to create a (near)ideal road system for any non-trivial situation isn't an easy task to do (and if you get it right for today, somebody will build some new shopping centers or something like that tomorrow, which creates a lot of new traffic, and voila, you have to redesign your whole road-system). Beside that, usually there are already roads (and buidlings, rivers, bridges, parks, mountains,...), and you can not build a whole new system of roads.
You will have to try the make the best of the given situation (best being a compromise between the costs of the buidling works (not only in the financial sense, you will also have to take into consideration environmental aspects, people living there,...) and the achieved benefits.)
I think (although, of course, I am not an expert on traffic), the cheapest thing to change is the schedule of the traffic lights. By using computer simulations you can probably find out how long to show green and red lights on any traffic light to maximize throughput. This problem is similar to task-scheduling problems in computer operating systems. Using super computers to simulate the traffic is probably a better idea than trying the whole thing out in the real world:) And you will need quite a lot of processing power to simulate a real world traffic situation.
It may cost a nice sum of money to let those super computers try to solve the problem, but just imagine how much money could be saved if an average of, say, 10.000 people in their cars save only 10 minutes every day going to work and back home, possibly just by changing some traffic lights. Time, fuel, pollution,..., (what a wonderful world it could be:)
Just imagine: you get into your car, plug in your mobile and start listening to you favourite mp3s. After a while the music fades and you hear a nice voice telling you:
"You got a call from Peter. Do you wish to take it?".
You now have to choice to say "Yes" or "No" or use the touchscreen on your car-stereo-computer combo to select yes or no. You talk to your friend Peter (if you selected to do so), hang up the phone afterwards using the touchscreen, the music comes back on.
A while later the music fades again, and the voice tells you:
"You got email. Do you want me to read you the title?".
You can also instruct the thing to read you the whole mail. Or you simply stop your car to read it yourself on the display.
Sounds nice, don't you think? All of this could be done using a device similar to this new empeg car stereo. I guess there's enough computing power for simple voice-recognition and handling a mobile phone.
Slashdot Mirror
Once you have the 3D-scene in the computer you are absolutely free to create any time/camera path/zoom/whatever variations one could imagine (and probably a lot more than anybody would imagine before he had used it for some time).
But I guess for things like this we still have to wait some time for enough processing power and good 3D-reconstruction programs (I have seen some, which are not really easy to work with (still lots of user interaction needed to get nice models even from simple scenes) and still don't bring really good results). But who knows, maybe we'll see things like that soon (or are there already spots using a similar technique?).
Christoph
As I understand the whole thing the tax ban only counts for electronically delivered goods (software, electronic books, music, video, ...), so there still is the sales tax for everything else (you still can't eat electronically delivered pizza :).
My second point is: for big companies it would not be a problem to circumvent those taxes. It's easy: one server in the US for serving people inside the US. One server somewhere in the EU for serving people inside the EU. And one server for every country the company wants to sell their goods tax-free. Then they have to distribute their goods to all of these servers once (paying export tax) and serve their customers from there (without paying this tax). That's all. Or did I miss something? It only hurts small companies who can't afford a server in every country they want to sell their goods in. I can't see why Microsoft is against this tax, I'm sure they got an office in almost every (interesting) country (interesting in the sense of having at least a certain number of potential customers).
And this second thought could also reduce the network load (think of it as a caching proxy).
Hope everything is understandable,
Christoph
> back, and we still have access to guns,
> because I think its about time we shoot
> every politition and make taco and hemos
> king and queen of this
> country/planet/universe!
I guess postings like this alone could justify a law that bans the access to weapons for everyone (or at least to some, who are obviously not in a state of mind to be allowed to own weapons). And no, I don't think everything turns to be a good joke just because you put a ':)' at the end.
I don't mean to start a flame-war here, but statements like the above one are not ok, even when you intended it as a joke. Sadly enough, there are lots of weirdos out there who take things like this for real.
Christoph
P.S. Sorry if I have been a bit rude, I have had a rough day today.
Christoph
You will have to try the make the best of the given situation (best being a compromise between the costs of the buidling works (not only in the financial sense, you will also have to take into consideration environmental aspects, people living there, ...) and the achieved benefits.)
I think (although, of course, I am not an expert on traffic), the cheapest thing to change is the schedule of the traffic lights. By using computer simulations you can probably find out how long to show green and red lights on any traffic light to maximize throughput. This problem is similar to task-scheduling problems in computer operating systems. Using super computers to simulate the traffic is probably a better idea than trying the whole thing out in the real world :) And you will need quite a lot of processing power to simulate a real world traffic situation.
It may cost a nice sum of money to let those super computers try to solve the problem, but just imagine how much money could be saved if an average of, say, 10.000 people in their cars save only 10 minutes every day going to work and back home, possibly just by changing some traffic lights. Time, fuel, pollution, ..., (what a wonderful world it could be:)
Christoph
"You got a call from Peter. Do you wish to take it?".
You now have to choice to say "Yes" or "No" or use the touchscreen on your car-stereo-computer combo to select yes or no. You talk to your friend Peter (if you selected to do so), hang up the phone afterwards using the touchscreen, the music comes back on.
A while later the music fades again, and the voice tells you:
"You got email. Do you want me to read you the title?".
You can also instruct the thing to read you the whole mail. Or you simply stop your car to read it yourself on the display.
Sounds nice, don't you think? All of this could be done using a device similar to this new empeg car stereo. I guess there's enough computing power for simple voice-recognition and handling a mobile phone.
Christoph