Neat! That would likely be give a much more regular diffusion pattern than hand-scratching.
What about safety glass? You know, the kind with two layers of glass sandwiching a layer of plastic, to keep the broken glass from falling apart? (Or was it plastic sandwiching glass? I forget.)
I thought about paper, but you'd have to tape it down to prevent it from sliding around, and tape goo on glass or glossy surfaces isn't fun to clean up. (Though arguably better than Crisco.) Also, the only paper I could think of that might be thin enough is origami paper.
Well, wax paper might work, but you'd still have a significant loss of resolution.
The best solution might be to find translucent white glass paint, and cover a sheet of plastic with it. You might be able to get it from a hobby shop.
I see your point regarding office windows. I've never had a job with a window that wasn't shuttered or blocked by another building.
By light startup times, I'm referring to different types of lights. Incandescents turn on immediately. Flourescents may flicker a moment before remaining on. At least one type of light I've seen requires a good five to ten minutes to warm up and reach normal brightness. (Really bright lights in my old high school gym. Probably also found at convention centers.)
A simple brightness-controlled switch won't work well with lights that flicker for a few moments. (Dealing with that flicker every few minutes on a partly cloudy day would be maddening.) Nor would they work well in settings where continual light is ideal, like in a gymnasium.
The computer-controlled concept stems from integration with weather forecasts. (Partly or mostly cloudy? Increase the delay before the light sensor can turn off the light. Don't want a brief sunbeam to turn off the lights and leave the meeting in darkness.) Also, the ability to schedule light shutdowns by department. Or "rolling blackouts" if lighting expense is a target of the budget analysts. Or even simple monitoring and statistic gathering. I imagine managers of large buildings and complexes wouldn't mind some of these features.
Take your projector, set it on the floor, pointing up.
Put a clear glass table over it
lightly grease the glass. You want to be able to see shapes through it.
Think about laying another sheet of glass or clear plastic over the grease.
Voila! You've got a rear-projection system you can set things on.
If the grease is light enough, your gameboard will also be projected onto the ceiling.
Variations on a theme:
Instead of grease, get a sheet of clear plastic and rub down one side of it with steel wool until it's thoroughly scratched. A little cleaner, and you won't get Crisco all over your notes and miniatures.
Point a webcam at the table, or the ceiling projection. Keep a visual record of moves. (Audio commentary might be neat, too.)
So how do you make sure the light doesn't fall below acceptable levels before turning on the internal lights?
What about allowing for different models of lights where warm-up times are different?
You'll need to develop a sane physical user interface. Do you generally depend on a central computer? What happens if that computer fails? Do emergency floodlights come on, or is their a local manual or automatic override?
IMO, quite a thought-provoking problem, if you take time to think it through.
And, Beth? Next time daddy can't get the computer to work, tell him it's broken, and tell him to give it to you to play with, and send him to go and buy an iMac. It's a computer especially built for idio--um...
My room's lit by flourescents, and my monitor runs at a low refresh rate. When I kill all the other lights and turn on my bed lamp (incandescent) to read a book, my eyes start stinging within minutes.
So the spammer passes the testing image through as an "entrance exam" to a porn site. Porn viewers happily answer the questions, which the the spammers pass on to the testing server.
This technique has been mentioned on Slashdot before...
They don't leave them in "The Mysterious Future" long enough. I've sent corrections several times that didn't get read until after the story was posted.
From what I've learned, Japanese engineers have the enviable ability to invent something to fit their needs, even though the development cost would have to be recouped in sales. The stories I hear about developers here in America tell tales of requirements of immediate or near-immediate profits. *coughCarlyFionacough*
Yes, but going to a partner (which falls under the "go to a professional who can e-file" directive) isn't the same as just filling out a form on the IRS site and hitting submit and being done with it.
Go to the IRS website. They've got a bunch of "partners" that will e-file your taxes for free. My federal return last year was free through a link to H&R Block's website from the IRS website. I still had to pay for my state return, though. But the return check more than made up for it.
I wasn't familiar with Solaris, so you've got a point there.
ALSA imitates the originally proprietary "OSS" API,
It emulates OSS with the intention of making it obsolete. The idea is to migrate applications to a better API, without playin catch-up. A lot of OSS applications, like Samba and Mozilla, historically had to play catch-up with their proprietary counterparts, which led to a negative opinion of OSS in general.
and OS/2 Boot Manager predates LILO.
Never used OS/2, so I can't say as to its flexibility. And I'm not familiar with its birthdate, so you could be right.
Since you're Oh-for-three, assume you're wrong about the rest.
Extrapolating based on small data sets is the worst thing anyone can do when analyzing something. "You fail it."
OGG? You can claim that's not a rip on MP3 with a straight face.
They don't even try for compatibility with MP3. They're a competitor, not an immitator. There's a difference.
Jeezus.
Sorry, wrong number. Kinda cute that the Anonymous Coward's UID is 666, though.
Yes, open source invented package management, PC boot managers, and sound drivers... Nearly all of those are imitations of commercial programs. You fail it.
The grandparent was implying there were few, if any, Open Source software packages that weren't basically immitations of commercial software.
I'm not familiar with any standard closed-source package manager that pre-dates Slackware's or Red Hat's.
ALSA does not immitate proprietary sound APIs, though it will emulate one if you absolutely need it.
GRUB and LILO are thee earliest PC Boot managers I'm familiar with that are flexible in what operating systems they'll boot. IIRC, LILO even pre-dates NTLDR.
And you didn't even begin to address the bulk of the list. Guess that's what one should expect from an AC.
Python? Ruby? (I won't count Perl; it's based on awk.)
* Any number of biology and astronomy tools, of which I've got seven or eight.
ALSA?
Ogg? FLAC?
TeX?
3ddesktop?
apache?
lynx? (No, I wouldn't say it's an immitation of IE, Netscape, or even Mosaic.)
And that's just the stuff I've got installed on my computer. I don't feel like going through thousands of Debian packages just to drive home a point further.
What about programs that were developed independantly? I've often had an idea, started coding for it, and then discovered it had already been done. (Heck, some of them had even already been patented.) Who's to say that some of the OSS programs out there that have commercial counterparts weren't thought of independantly?
I began learning Perl by making a city generator for D&D. That later got released. And it just went back under active development.
Go figure.
(If you want a more recent version, email me. The code posted is no longer suitable for submitting a patch. I'm hacking up a newer version, aiming at a decent 1.0 release soon.)
Slashdot Mirror
Neat! That would likely be give a much more regular diffusion pattern than hand-scratching.
What about safety glass? You know, the kind with two layers of glass sandwiching a layer of plastic, to keep the broken glass from falling apart? (Or was it plastic sandwiching glass? I forget.)
I thought about paper, but you'd have to tape it down to prevent it from sliding around, and tape goo on glass or glossy surfaces isn't fun to clean up. (Though arguably better than Crisco.) Also, the only paper I could think of that might be thin enough is origami paper.
Well, wax paper might work, but you'd still have a significant loss of resolution.
The best solution might be to find translucent white glass paint, and cover a sheet of plastic with it. You might be able to get it from a hobby shop.
I see your point regarding office windows. I've never had a job with a window that wasn't shuttered or blocked by another building.
By light startup times, I'm referring to different types of lights. Incandescents turn on immediately. Flourescents may flicker a moment before remaining on. At least one type of light I've seen requires a good five to ten minutes to warm up and reach normal brightness. (Really bright lights in my old high school gym. Probably also found at convention centers.)
A simple brightness-controlled switch won't work well with lights that flicker for a few moments. (Dealing with that flicker every few minutes on a partly cloudy day would be maddening.) Nor would they work well in settings where continual light is ideal, like in a gymnasium.
The computer-controlled concept stems from integration with weather forecasts. (Partly or mostly cloudy? Increase the delay before the light sensor can turn off the light. Don't want a brief sunbeam to turn off the lights and leave the meeting in darkness.) Also, the ability to schedule light shutdowns by department. Or "rolling blackouts" if lighting expense is a target of the budget analysts. Or even simple monitoring and statistic gathering. I imagine managers of large buildings and complexes wouldn't mind some of these features.
Voila! You've got a rear-projection system you can set things on.
If the grease is light enough, your gameboard will also be projected onto the ceiling.
Variations on a theme:
So how do you make sure the light doesn't fall below acceptable levels before turning on the internal lights?
What about allowing for different models of lights where warm-up times are different?
You'll need to develop a sane physical user interface. Do you generally depend on a central computer? What happens if that computer fails? Do emergency floodlights come on, or is their a local manual or automatic override?
IMO, quite a thought-provoking problem, if you take time to think it through.
If it's not filtered well coming off the circuits with the alternator and spark plugs, there could easily be flicker.
41, for those who don't like doing hexadecimal conversion.
:)
Sorry.
When the Joke was modded "+5 Informative", a modded-up counterpoint might be necessary.
"swallonis," "Africus," and "Europaeus" were the words whose meanings I was able to guess.
--Wes, from Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie.
Lbhnl nirunl bganl hfgwnl rnqenl vfgunl ragraprfnl.
naanjnl rgonl?
My room's lit by flourescents, and my monitor runs at a low refresh rate. When I kill all the other lights and turn on my bed lamp (incandescent) to read a book, my eyes start stinging within minutes.
I suspect I've come to depend on flicker.
I know I saw them at Home Depot. I was thinking of putting them in my room.
I suspect this hybrid thing they're working on is a system that would turn on the electric lights in a building if there isn't enough sunlight.
The whole cable is 1.4mm thick, not just the wire. Optical fiber has a jacket that significantly increases the cable thickness.
So the spammer passes the testing image through as an "entrance exam" to a porn site. Porn viewers happily answer the questions, which the the spammers pass on to the testing server.
This technique has been mentioned on Slashdot before...
They don't leave them in "The Mysterious Future" long enough. I've sent corrections several times that didn't get read until after the story was posted.
From what I've learned, Japanese engineers have the enviable ability to invent something to fit their needs, even though the development cost would have to be recouped in sales. The stories I hear about developers here in America tell tales of requirements of immediate or near-immediate profits. *coughCarlyFionacough*
Paying attention to risk doesn't make it go away either. What matters is, the job must be done.
Yes, but going to a partner (which falls under the "go to a professional who can e-file" directive) isn't the same as just filling out a form on the IRS site and hitting submit and being done with it.
:)
Maybe, but it was still free.
Eh?
Go to the IRS website. They've got a bunch of "partners" that will e-file your taxes for free. My federal return last year was free through a link to H&R Block's website from the IRS website. I still had to pay for my state return, though. But the return check more than made up for it.
"own" is the key word here.
*ducks*
Solaris 2.0 had a package manager,
I wasn't familiar with Solaris, so you've got a point there.
ALSA imitates the originally proprietary "OSS" API,
It emulates OSS with the intention of making it obsolete. The idea is to migrate applications to a better API, without playin catch-up. A lot of OSS applications, like Samba and Mozilla, historically had to play catch-up with their proprietary counterparts, which led to a negative opinion of OSS in general.
and OS/2 Boot Manager predates LILO.
Never used OS/2, so I can't say as to its flexibility. And I'm not familiar with its birthdate, so you could be right.
Since you're Oh-for-three, assume you're wrong about the rest.
Extrapolating based on small data sets is the worst thing anyone can do when analyzing something. "You fail it."
OGG? You can claim that's not a rip on MP3 with a straight face.
They don't even try for compatibility with MP3. They're a competitor, not an immitator. There's a difference.
Jeezus.
Sorry, wrong number. Kinda cute that the Anonymous Coward's UID is 666, though.
The grandparent was implying there were few, if any, Open Source software packages that weren't basically immitations of commercial software.
And you didn't even begin to address the bulk of the list. Guess that's what one should expect from an AC.
Nethack?
liquidwar?
matrem?
dpkg? apt?
rpm?
grub? lilo?
aptitude? synaptic?
imagemagick?
Xaos?
m4?
evolver?
nmap? nessus?
Python? Ruby? (I won't count Perl; it's based on awk.)
* Any number of biology and astronomy tools, of which I've got seven or eight.
ALSA?
Ogg? FLAC?
TeX?
3ddesktop?
apache?
lynx? (No, I wouldn't say it's an immitation of IE, Netscape, or even Mosaic.)
And that's just the stuff I've got installed on my computer. I don't feel like going through thousands of Debian packages just to drive home a point further.
What about programs that were developed independantly? I've often had an idea, started coding for it, and then discovered it had already been done. (Heck, some of them had even already been patented.) Who's to say that some of the OSS programs out there that have commercial counterparts weren't thought of independantly?
I began learning Perl by making a city generator for D&D. That later got released. And it just went back under active development.
Go figure.
(If you want a more recent version, email me. The code posted is no longer suitable for submitting a patch. I'm hacking up a newer version, aiming at a decent 1.0 release soon.)
Special thanks go to YankeeInExile.