Actually, what you see here as a bug, was actually a feature if you read the article. They used this technique to unify multiple copies of identical content (same filename and contents) appearing at different places in the resource data.
Let others smack you down, but with nearly 30 years of programming experience in numerous languages, I'm with you.
Indented branching flow seems clean, stable and maintainable. I got dissed for a job i applied for because my code was designed this way instead of the "enlightened" way of throwing exceptions. Exceptions are ok, I guess, if everything is a C++ objects that self-destructs when it goes out of scope, but reality doesn't always work that way. In retrospect, I'm glad I'm not at that job.
Russ, I read the PDF and enjoyed it very much. I'm a big fan of qmail and run it on all of my machines. But maybe I missed it, I didn't see Dan mention anything about a license change for qmail, or maybe I'm misinterpreting what you said by "a dedication of qmail to the public domain". Could you enlighten me?
The imagery is quite dark in many places. I found it useful to copy & paste the image into Photoshop (or GIMP or whatever) and apply an auto levels to it. This often blows it out too light, so if you can blend that 50% with the original, it looks about right. In Photoshop I do this by creating an Adjustment Layer of type Levels (above the original image in the Layers list), setting it to Auto, then setting the layer opacity to 50%. This allows me to paste in a new image right below it in the layer stack and have it take effect immediately.
Too bad the image quality is compromised by JPEG compression.
Somewhere I thought you could load a KML (with Overlays) into Google Maps for viewing (http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2006/11/kml-on- google-maps.html) but I can't seem to get this to work with this KML. It is sometimes nice to see a little context to see if the white blob you're looking at is Steve, or just a typical white landscape feature.
There's two useful file formats for sending models to a 3D prototype machine -- the STL format, and a simplified variant of VRML.
The STL file format was specifically designed for these purposes and is both simple and topologically strict (no wacky one-sided surfaces, etc). However, it was designed before any machines supported color output, so it entirely neglected color and color textures. So, fabricators like Z-corp adopted VRML in a simplified form to transfer color and texture to their modelmaking machines.
[Semi-blatant but still interesting plugs]
A couple of years ago, at the request of one of our customers (LGM, in Minturn Colorado) we added STL and VRML-for-STL output to the Scene Express output module of our Visual Nature Studio 3D landscape modeling tool. There are some free sample 3d STL landscape files that you can download and check out (or even build, if you're really bored and have too much money lying around. The technology is pretty amazing for making 3d maps models (more) for visitor centers and museums and golf courses and such, though we really need machines that can make a bigger model in one piece. Right now big models have to be made as small (like, 12"x12") pieces and tiled together. LGM has a big CNC mill that can carve a big model out of styrofoam, but it is all monochrome. It has to then be hand painted/textured/landscaped and populated with models, trees and buildings (which are sometimes STL-fabricated too!).
Isn't it possible, that Google is engaged in a little eBay-style shill bidding? Google doesn't really want Doubleclick. In fact, Google would probably prefer NOT to have DoubleClick, and not to have DoubleClick EXIST at all. Google just wants to deny Microsoft an opportunity, or failing that, make them pay WAY more than fair value for the privilege. Google can play the table for a few rounds in a bidding war with Microsoft, and then back away at the last second when they think Bill has reached his table stakes. Not that Bill can't afford to pay some amount, it's just that at some point, Microsoft will really regret lining Hellman & Friedman's pockets any more than they had to. Google doesn't care if H&F get rich, as long as it makes Bill poorer.;)
And in Google's mind, it might not even be evil. It might be PREVENTING evil. If I were Google (and I'm not, darn it) I'd totally play it that way.
While the virtual Fayetteville is cool, it's kinda late to the party. This is exactly what my software is used for, and we even already support Google Earth, NASA WorldWind, VRML, VTP and more. The nice thing being, unlike SketchUp, we author to many formats, not just KML, so you can reuse the same scene in numerous environments and you're not locked in.
I keep an Amiga 3000 running, for a variety of historical and legal reasons, though I can basically emulate it on my laptop much more practically.
The chain of evidence and tool certification will be a problem. I could do a forensic examination of that machine, but that hardware pre-dates most digital forensics procedures, so how COULD there be any accepted or certified protocols?
BTW, That DPS TBC is a great piece of gear. It's actually an ISA card that communicates with the host by serial (actually MIDI!). All it needs from the ISA bus is power! You can pull the card out of the Amiga and just hook it up to power, which could be supplied by any old 386 or 486 motherboard. It could talk to a modern computer via MIDI for control. They had a version of the host software for PCs, I think under Windows. The host software should run fine under modern Windows, or Win emulation on Linux. Alternately, the midi commands were published, you could cobble together a Qt Linux controller in a few hours.
Buy this book! Support Paul!
on
OpenGL Distilled
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Full disclosure: Paul is a friend of mine, and I helped proof this book too.
In all seriousness, this is an excellent book. Paul wrote this book to fill a serious need -- an updated, quality OpenGL book for this age. So much of what is in the canonical texts is no longer important (geometry by Begin/End), and they won't cover the new recommended practices (VBOs, Vertex Arrays, etc).
On a personal level, Paul is one of the most generous and helpful programmers I know. I owe him lots of beer for all the advice he has provided. He also participates in the open source OpenScenGraph project: http://openscenegraph.org/ a high-performance 3D toolkit for Windows, Mac and Unix/Linux, used in hundreds of open source and commercial simulator, game and 3D visualization projects (including my company's NatureView Express tool http://3dnature.com/nv.html -- plug plug!)
Amen to Lord of Light, and a lot of older Zelazny. Some of his greatest writing is less well known, and only available used.
His estate ought to be able to revive those somehow, even if the big publishers don't see opportunities for mucho dinero in them. I know he had a family when he passed away -- I want to buy his works, and I want them to reap the rewards of it.
It's a bunch of great guys in Boulder, Colorado (not too far from my company in Morrison). Their product kicks butt. If you want intuitive 3D modelling, get it. It's pretty cool that they have released a free version for Google modeling. I don't think it's really monopolistic/anticompetitive, because the free version ONLY works with Google Earth. It can't export to anything else useful. You still have to buy the $500 Pro version for that. And $500 is a bargain for what you get.
Yes, their freebie version is useful for people who want to model their own house and not use it in Google Earth, but really, you can't say they're shutting out anyone here by making it free -- there's Free Software like Blender and Wings3D that have been out forever that filled that niche too, and so far the market for 3D modeling tools has failed to collapse. (The difference being that ANYONE can learn SketchUp in a few hours. Really.)
Commercial diclosure and plugs: My company makes an add-on foliage library for SketchUp and a Google Earth Exporter for our 3D Landscape visualization software. But I don't get diddly for kickbacks from Google/SketchUp. I really do think they have a kickin product.
A forthcoming book that does discuss the bredth of historical and yet-unsolved codes and ciphers, is Elonka Dunin's Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms. One of the cool parts is that it includes around 600 puzzles that are encoded in these systems, along with tips about how to break each one. Solutions are included in the back for those who fail. It does address the Voynich Manuscript, though doesn't have any solutions for it.;)
Part of the problem is that the Neuros II went open source, and then re-closed. I don't believe it has ever re-opened. It was a mess. While it was open, there were many modifications made that improved it and fixed problems (that, really, Neuros themselves should have fixed).
Now the Neuros II is a closed-dead-end product too. I own one. One of the reasons I chose it was the open source nature. I regret buying it now, because the hardware is flaky, and the software is unreliable and now unmaintained.
I would say be wary of dealing with Neuro Audio. Their hardware platform was VERY cool - the NII has every feature you could want, except for size/weight minimization -- but they don't put a lot of work into quality of experience. Their software is, pardon the slight, a lot like much open source software. Powerful, but kinda klunky and unintuitive.
On the plus side, their synchronization manager software was fully open-sourced, and has been replaced by several open-source projects, but the core code that runs on the player is stuck.
>there doesn't seem to be any prior art, much less a staggering amount.
Actually, there are several significant pieces of prior art. For various reasons, the USPTO and courts have decided to overlook each of them. Just because you aren't aware of them doesn't make them nonexistant. Some of us were there when all this happened, and know what a travesty this shakedown is.
Eolas is a scam, on the order of an SCO. (Hey, did we just coin a universal unit of business scam magnitude?)
I have five machines (older workstation chassis repurposed as SOHO servers) a 24-port switch, DSL gear, a couple of laptops as NOC monitoring stations, and enough UPSes to run them all, in the former laundry closet of the house we remodeled into our office. We have a high-capacity centrifugal bathroom vent fan sucking air off the top of the room and ducting it down flexible metal vent hose, and out the old dryer vent outlet. The doorway to the room is weatherstripped around the edges and we cut a 30"x3" intake vent in the bottom panel of it. On the inside of this vent intake we use COTS furnace air filter media -- buy on a roll at Home Depot and cut to fit. Spray with a little aerosol oil (WD40 or actual air filter oil) to catch dust better. Change filters every few month or when they get grubby. The closet is located in the basement of an air-conditioned building, so the intake air through the bottom of the door is already the coldest in the building.
All the gear is on metal restaurant-style wire shelving (black of course, came from Target, $40 for a 4-shelf unit) for better airflow, and stylish looks. We installed a $15 indoor/outdoor thermometer, sitting on the bottom shelf with the exterior probe taped to the ceiling. It monitors and records temp extrema at those two locations, which usually differ by about 3F.
I have never seen happier and cleaner SOHO servers. We never visit the room anymore -- I went in to plug a new network drop into the switch the other day and had to fight my way through cobwebs it'd been undistrubed so long. As a plus, we had to do extensive drywall work during the remodel, and took the opportunity to pull 4 Cat6 network drops into every room (except the kitchen and baths). The conference room is rigged for 6 drops, for after-hours LAN parties. We have a network diagram posted on the wall of the server closet, making it easy to reconfigure the network to partition off part of it for games, so as not to disturb the rest. We'll soon be adding a real punch-down patch panel on a suspended 1/3rd rack and upgrading the switch to Gigabit and moving it to the rack, which will clean up the wiring quite a bit.
UAlaska is doing BitTorrent, but the tracker is unreachable, I'd guess because all of the other traffic is blitzing it. I was recommending they unplug the other traffic and let the torrent do the work.
Photoshop: Open As, Raw, select the file, fill in the X and Y dimensions. Number of channels is 3, 0 bytes header. I haven't been able to get one of the files yet, so I can't tell you if you need to turn on interleaved or not, but I suspect you will want interleaved.
We (3D Nature) packaged up the old BlueMarble data, along with 1Km terrain data for the whole earth (GTOPO30) on a product called Ultimate Earth for our landscape visualization software, Visual Nature Studio. It's pretty cool to be able to pull up an area, add your own data to what we provide, and have a ready-made planet visualization.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, what you see here as a bug, was actually a feature if you read the article. They used this technique to unify multiple copies of identical content (same filename and contents) appearing at different places in the resource data.
Let others smack you down, but with nearly 30 years of programming experience in numerous languages, I'm with you. Indented branching flow seems clean, stable and maintainable. I got dissed for a job i applied for because my code was designed this way instead of the "enlightened" way of throwing exceptions. Exceptions are ok, I guess, if everything is a C++ objects that self-destructs when it goes out of scope, but reality doesn't always work that way. In retrospect, I'm glad I'm not at that job.
http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?c=Page&cid=1165692953912&pagename=OIT-New%2FOITXLayout
oit@state.co.us
Russ, I read the PDF and enjoyed it very much. I'm a big fan of qmail and run it on all of my machines. But maybe I missed it, I didn't see Dan mention anything about a license change for qmail, or maybe I'm misinterpreting what you said by "a dedication of qmail to the public domain". Could you enlighten me?
The imagery is quite dark in many places. I found it useful to copy & paste the image into Photoshop (or GIMP or whatever) and apply an auto levels to it. This often blows it out too light, so if you can blend that 50% with the original, it looks about right. In Photoshop I do this by creating an Adjustment Layer of type Levels (above the original image in the Layers list), setting it to Auto, then setting the layer opacity to 50%. This allows me to paste in a new image right below it in the layer stack and have it take effect immediately.
- google-maps.html) but I can't seem to get this to work with this KML. It is sometimes nice to see a little context to see if the white blob you're looking at is Steve, or just a typical white landscape feature.
Too bad the image quality is compromised by JPEG compression.
Somewhere I thought you could load a KML (with Overlays) into Google Maps for viewing (http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2006/11/kml-on
Uh, I'll give out the URL: http://landcover.org/
Why keep it a secret? It's a great resource, and the more people use it, the more support it will get and the more benefit we will all realize.
Blatant Commercial Plug: I make software for processing Landsat image bands into Natural Color GeoTIFF images.
Best. Comment. Ever.
One of my favorite Simpson's ToH quotes.
Replying to my own post.
Z-Corp just introduced a new model 450 printer that is cheaper, easier and cleaner to operate:
http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/11230/
There's two useful file formats for sending models to a 3D prototype machine -- the STL format, and a simplified variant of VRML.
The STL file format was specifically designed for these purposes and is both simple and topologically strict (no wacky one-sided surfaces, etc). However, it was designed before any machines supported color output, so it entirely neglected color and color textures. So, fabricators like Z-corp adopted VRML in a simplified form to transfer color and texture to their modelmaking machines.
[Semi-blatant but still interesting plugs]
A couple of years ago, at the request of one of our customers (LGM, in Minturn Colorado) we added STL and VRML-for-STL output to the Scene Express output module of our Visual Nature Studio 3D landscape modeling tool. There are some free sample 3d STL landscape files that you can download and check out (or even build, if you're really bored and have too much money lying around. The technology is pretty amazing for making 3d maps models (more) for visitor centers and museums and golf courses and such, though we really need machines that can make a bigger model in one piece. Right now big models have to be made as small (like, 12"x12") pieces and tiled together. LGM has a big CNC mill that can carve a big model out of styrofoam, but it is all monochrome. It has to then be hand painted/textured/landscaped and populated with models, trees and buildings (which are sometimes STL-fabricated too!).
Isn't it possible, that Google is engaged in a little eBay-style shill bidding? Google doesn't really want Doubleclick. In fact, Google would probably prefer NOT to have DoubleClick, and not to have DoubleClick EXIST at all. Google just wants to deny Microsoft an opportunity, or failing that, make them pay WAY more than fair value for the privilege. Google can play the table for a few rounds in a bidding war with Microsoft, and then back away at the last second when they think Bill has reached his table stakes. Not that Bill can't afford to pay some amount, it's just that at some point, Microsoft will really regret lining Hellman & Friedman's pockets any more than they had to. Google doesn't care if H&F get rich, as long as it makes Bill poorer. ;)
And in Google's mind, it might not even be evil. It might be PREVENTING evil. If I were Google (and I'm not, darn it) I'd totally play it that way.
Good to see you're still around, "C.W.". ;)
While the virtual Fayetteville is cool, it's kinda late to the party. This is exactly what my software is used for, and we even already support Google Earth, NASA WorldWind, VRML, VTP and more. The nice thing being, unlike SketchUp, we author to many formats, not just KML, so you can reuse the same scene in numerous environments and you're not locked in.
9 o n-Selbyn i
http://3dnature.com/scene.html
http://3dnature.com/kml.html
Here's a heapload of links about this sort of thing done by my users over the past few years. Some of this is realtime (Google Earth or our NatureView Express viewer) and some of it is pre-rendered to still images, AVIs or Quicktime (similar to something like Blender or POVRay).
http://3dnature.com/images/DUQueryPhoto.jpg
http://3dnature.com/images/NVE-Interlocken.jpg
http://3dnature.com/images/FairplayPowerPlant.jpg
http://3dnature.com/images/Fairplay-WW-large.jpg
http://redgeographics.com/sample_apeldoorn_3d.php
http://www.3dnworld.com/gallery.php?user=FAhl
http://www.3dnworld.com/gallery.php?user=JBailey
http://www.3dnworld.com/gallery.php?user=MBoyer
http://www.3dnworld.com/gallery.php?user=KBried%E
http://www.3dnworld.com/gallery.php?user=GDonalds
http://www.3dnworld.com/gallery.php?user=MGualdri
http://www.3dnworld.com/gallery.php?user=RLovel
http://www.3dnworld.com/gallery.php?user=MOstrom
And plenty more like it.
I keep an Amiga 3000 running, for a variety of historical and legal reasons, though I can basically emulate it on my laptop much more practically.
The chain of evidence and tool certification will be a problem. I could do a forensic examination of that machine, but that hardware pre-dates most digital forensics procedures, so how COULD there be any accepted or certified protocols?
BTW, That DPS TBC is a great piece of gear. It's actually an ISA card that communicates with the host by serial (actually MIDI!). All it needs from the ISA bus is power! You can pull the card out of the Amiga and just hook it up to power, which could be supplied by any old 386 or 486 motherboard. It could talk to a modern computer via MIDI for control. They had a version of the host software for PCs, I think under Windows. The host software should run fine under modern Windows, or Win emulation on Linux. Alternately, the midi commands were published, you could cobble together a Qt Linux controller in a few hours.
Full disclosure: Paul is a friend of mine, and I helped proof this book too.
In all seriousness, this is an excellent book. Paul wrote this book to fill a serious need -- an updated, quality OpenGL book for this age. So much of what is in the canonical texts is no longer important (geometry by Begin/End), and they won't cover the new recommended practices (VBOs, Vertex Arrays, etc).
On a personal level, Paul is one of the most generous and helpful programmers I know. I owe him lots of beer for all the advice he has provided. He also participates in the open source OpenScenGraph project:
http://openscenegraph.org/
a high-performance 3D toolkit for Windows, Mac and Unix/Linux, used in hundreds of open source and commercial simulator, game and 3D visualization projects (including my company's NatureView Express tool http://3dnature.com/nv.html -- plug plug!)
Amen to Lord of Light, and a lot of older Zelazny. Some of his greatest writing is less well known, and only available used.
His estate ought to be able to revive those somehow, even if the big publishers don't see opportunities for mucho dinero in them. I know he had a family when he passed away -- I want to buy his works, and I want them to reap the rewards of it.
It's a bunch of great guys in Boulder, Colorado (not too far from my company in Morrison). Their product kicks butt. If you want intuitive 3D modelling, get it. It's pretty cool that they have released a free version for Google modeling. I don't think it's really monopolistic/anticompetitive, because the free version ONLY works with Google Earth. It can't export to anything else useful. You still have to buy the $500 Pro version for that. And $500 is a bargain for what you get.
Yes, their freebie version is useful for people who want to model their own house and not use it in Google Earth, but really, you can't say they're shutting out anyone here by making it free -- there's Free Software like Blender and Wings3D that have been out forever that filled that niche too, and so far the market for 3D modeling tools has failed to collapse. (The difference being that ANYONE can learn SketchUp in a few hours. Really.)
Commercial diclosure and plugs: My company makes an add-on foliage library for SketchUp and a Google Earth Exporter for our 3D Landscape visualization software. But I don't get diddly for kickbacks from Google/SketchUp. I really do think they have a kickin product.
http://kryptos.arcticus.com/
Please, don't everybody click on it at once, it's only a P100 webserver on DSL. Use a cache if it dies:
http://kryptos.arcticus.com.nyud.net:8090/
Actually, they were generic Sam's Club 4-pounds-a-bag gourmet jelly beans. But it was real Mountain Dew. The clone stuff doesn't taste right.
Full disclosure: Elonka is a friend of mine, and my co-moderator on the Kryptos solving group.
Part of the problem is that the Neuros II went open source, and then re-closed. I don't believe it has ever re-opened. It was a mess. While it was open, there were many modifications made that improved it and fixed problems (that, really, Neuros themselves should have fixed).
Now the Neuros II is a closed-dead-end product too. I own one. One of the reasons I chose it was the open source nature. I regret buying it now, because the hardware is flaky, and the software is unreliable and now unmaintained.
I would say be wary of dealing with Neuro Audio. Their hardware platform was VERY cool - the NII has every feature you could want, except for size/weight minimization -- but they don't put a lot of work into quality of experience. Their software is, pardon the slight, a lot like much open source software. Powerful, but kinda klunky and unintuitive.
On the plus side, their synchronization manager software was fully open-sourced, and has been replaced by several open-source projects, but the core code that runs on the player is stuck.
>there doesn't seem to be any prior art, much less a staggering amount.
Actually, there are several significant pieces of prior art. For various reasons, the USPTO and courts have decided to overlook each of them. Just because you aren't aware of them doesn't make them nonexistant. Some of us were there when all this happened, and know what a travesty this shakedown is.
Eolas is a scam, on the order of an SCO. (Hey, did we just coin a universal unit of business scam magnitude?)
I have five machines (older workstation chassis repurposed as SOHO servers) a 24-port switch, DSL gear, a couple of laptops as NOC monitoring stations, and enough UPSes to run them all, in the former laundry closet of the house we remodeled into our office. We have a high-capacity centrifugal bathroom vent fan sucking air off the top of the room and ducting it down flexible metal vent hose, and out the old dryer vent outlet. The doorway to the room is weatherstripped around the edges and we cut a 30"x3" intake vent in the bottom panel of it. On the inside of this vent intake we use COTS furnace air filter media -- buy on a roll at Home Depot and cut to fit. Spray with a little aerosol oil (WD40 or actual air filter oil) to catch dust better. Change filters every few month or when they get grubby. The closet is located in the basement of an air-conditioned building, so the intake air through the bottom of the door is already the coldest in the building.
All the gear is on metal restaurant-style wire shelving (black of course, came from Target, $40 for a 4-shelf unit) for better airflow, and stylish looks. We installed a $15 indoor/outdoor thermometer, sitting on the bottom shelf with the exterior probe taped to the ceiling. It monitors and records temp extrema at those two locations, which usually differ by about 3F.
I have never seen happier and cleaner SOHO servers. We never visit the room anymore -- I went in to plug a new network drop into the switch the other day and had to fight my way through cobwebs it'd been undistrubed so long. As a plus, we had to do extensive drywall work during the remodel, and took the opportunity to pull 4 Cat6 network drops into every room (except the kitchen and baths). The conference room is rigged for 6 drops, for after-hours LAN parties. We have a network diagram posted on the wall of the server closet, making it easy to reconfigure the network to partition off part of it for games, so as not to disturb the rest. We'll soon be adding a real punch-down patch panel on a suspended 1/3rd rack and upgrading the switch to Gigabit and moving it to the rack, which will clean up the wiring quite a bit.
I'll see if I can find some photos of it to post.
Lossless JPEG2000 would be an excellent choice for this.
UAlaska is doing BitTorrent, but the tracker is unreachable, I'd guess because all of the other traffic is blitzing it. I was recommending they unplug the other traffic and let the torrent do the work.
Photoshop: Open As, Raw, select the file, fill in the X and Y dimensions. Number of channels is 3, 0 bytes header. I haven't been able to get one of the files yet, so I can't tell you if you need to turn on interleaved or not, but I suspect you will want interleaved.
We (3D Nature) packaged up the old BlueMarble data, along with 1Km terrain data for the whole earth (GTOPO30) on a product called Ultimate Earth for our landscape visualization software, Visual Nature Studio. It's pretty cool to be able to pull up an area, add your own data to what we provide, and have a ready-made planet visualization.