You have the wrong definition of diversity. If all speakers are East Asian or Black or any other ethnicity other than White or female or gay or transgender then there is no problem. It is only a problem if they are all White male.
3. It never ends. There is no mechanism for saying that AA has been successful, therefore it can never end.
No country [*], no matter how homogeneous the population, has ever had true equality in the sense that jobs were distributed proportionally amongst genders and race and in the real world it will never happen. The mere fact that more women than men give berth to live offspring alone prevents this from happening.
* Maybe something like the Vatican (someone told me it was an independent state and I am too lazy to google it). If they had an all white male population and all the jobs were occupied by white men, then maybe they had true equality.
What seems like a sudden blow out normally starts as a much slower leak. For example, a little stone gets stuck in the tread of a tyre. Eventually it works its way through the tread, causing a slow leak. Driving on the under inflated tyre causes it to flex excessively and heat up. Eventually, it fails. To the inexperienced driver this feels like a sudden blow out. Same thing with nails, glass, etc.
Obviously if you kiss a brick or a large stone with the side wall of your tyre and it rips a fist size hole in your side wall, this system will not help. However, if your pick up a nail or something, this might be able to keep your tyre pressure high enough so that you don't get a sudden failure. If you are lucky you will make it to your destination and wake up to a flat tyre the next morning.
With trucks, you have (multiple) double axles. This means that if one of your tyres deflate, you often don't notice it until the tyre completely fails and rips to shreds. I suspect this will save the trucking industry millions in lost tyres, never mind fuel.
I have to agree with you. I have been using Linux since the early 90's and it has been my preferred OS since the mid 90's. It has always done everything I needed and I use it on my personal machines. At work I have Windows and OS X machines, but I only ever use them when, for example, I have to format a document in Word.
I have no need for Linux to dominate the desktop. In fact, using Linux gives me an advantage over most if my competitors, so I don't really want them to use Linux.
I don't understand the need to use the dominant product. If Linux does not do what you want it to do, either don't use it or change it.
Do you marry someone because she is your soul-mate or because she is popular with your friends?
I am with you. We (http://www.coe.uwc.ac.za/index.php/SASL.html) have been working on this for a while. We are totally ignoring finger spelling for sign recognition and rendering.
The taste of meat is very strongly influenced by environmental factors. This includes both what the animal eats as well as the conditions under which it is slaughtered, though the latter has less influence than the former. I grew up on a sheep farm on a diet consisting primarily of meat. I avoid lamb and mutton that is not from our farm because it just does not taste the same. I don't mind beef, poultry, pork and venison from other areas.
The vegetation where I grew up is quite flavourful and this provides a distinctive flavour to the meat. Most of our meat is prepared without any spices as there is no need. The vegetation has a bigger influence on the taste of the meat than breed. I prefer a different breed of sheep reared on our vegetation to one of our standard breed reared in a different part of the world. The fact that farmers from our area get quite a high premium for their meat suggests that others agree.
Some abattoirs use trained goats "to lead the lambs to the slaughter". This is to avoid stressing the sheep by herding them unnecessarily. Stress releases adrenalin that definitely affects the quality of the meat, as does lactic acid. Lactic acid is normally more noticeable with venison, but I suspect this has more to do with sheep being tame and game being wild.
Given the right climatic conditions (happens very rarely) on the farm, we get a proliferation of a particularly fragrant flower. When the sheep graze on this it too affects the smell and taste of the meat. My wife finds it quite disturbing when she opens the freezer and it smells more like an air freshener than meat.
The quickest path towards resolving this is genuinely for all non-criminal young Middle Easterners to start ejecting the radical element from within their ranks.
That is right. "They" must change first. "They" can not possibly justify "their" viewpoint in terms we find acceptable. We can justify the way we feel in terms we find acceptable. "They" are just to stupid to get it. In fact, "they" are not even allowed to dislike us because we are free and "they" are not. Opinions are reserved for the free and even then you are only entitled to one if you are right.
"They" just don't seem to get it. We are waging a "War on Terrorism". If one of "their" cowardly children kills one of our brave soldiers during "their" armed conflict, that is murder. If our brave soldiers happen to kill a couple of unarmed civilians/reporters/children, that is unfortunately a consequence our war. While we don't like it, we accept it as the harsh reality of our war to liberate them from themselves.
"They" should look at our society and learn from it. The average westerner who has a family member that becomes a victim of violence does not behave like these savages. No, being educated civilized people, we go through a period of introspection. We try and find out what we could possibly have done to not entice this violence. We change our lifestyle and society so as not to provoke these perpetrators of violence. We reach out to the perpetrators and see how we can rehabilitate them, even at our personal expense. We personally go into the perpetrators' communities and we eradicate the factors that could have contributed to their lives of criminality. "They", would probably demand that such perpetrators of violence be removed from society, imprisoned or even sentenced to death. And if the perpetrator had money, they would probably sue them for some cash.
If our civilized society determines that the perpetrators of violence are supported by organizations, possibly abroad, we do not launch clandestine operations on sovereign soil to rid the world of "evil drug-lords" or coerce foreign governments to do it for us. No, we accept that everybody has a right to their way of life and we should focus on how we can adapt our society to fit in with everybody else.
When we help people in their neighborhood by supplying weapons, money and other support to selected groups, "they" seem to believe that they somehow have the right to be upset with us and take matters into "their" own hands. And "they" have the audacity to not build up a uniformed army, navy and air force. before attacking us. If, and this is a big if, the need ever arose for us to enter another country to say take down an "evil warlord/drug-lord", we would do it by the book. We would seek permission from the country we are about to enter, make sure our soldiers have up to date visas, declare our weapons at customs, etc. We would not just lob a bomb at a country like Libya or coerce the world to impose sanctions on a country like Cuba because we don't agree with the way they think.
These savages. Just because "they" can't appreciate all the good things we are doing for them "they" deserve it if a couple of bystanders get killed. It is time "they" adopted our open-minded approach and see things our way.
Being truly open minded is a very difficult (if not impossible) thing to do. Being an outsider helps. I can follow at least some of the logic of both sides, but that does not make one side right and the other side wrong.
... Move out to a small town and you'll quickly see what a lack of privacy really is. Everybody knows what everybody else is doing. Doesn't matter if you're on Facebook or not....
First, everything in said small town is moderated (through gossip) and not searchable verifiable fact. This can be both good and bad. Second, because people know the limits of their privacy, they tend to behave in a much more conservative manner.
***Disclaimer*** I grew up in a small town, lived in the city for 20 years and just moved back to a small town.
... It's like creating a highly efficient piece of malware on accident....
Not as unlikely as you seem to then. Back in the late 90's one of my classmates tried to create autonomous agents for a multi-player networked game. Took down all network connectivity for the region, by accident. You could argue, as he did when the cops arrived, that it was not so much a case as him having written a highly efficient piece of malware, but rather a case that the telco and isp configured the network poorly.
P.S. Didn't some kid accidentally create a major virus a couple of years ago because he was trying to save his mother's shop.
Yup.. Cue the Dunning-Kruger effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect). Basically it says that ignorant people are to dumb to shut up and knowledgeable people are to clever to speak up. They phrase it a bit more gently.
Why do uneducated people have such a chip on their shoulder? I am taking a break from preparing a thesis for final submission to write this. I have contact with several of my past students and I have never had a post-graduate student contact me to say that they regretted studying. I have had plenty of graduate students contact me and saying how sorry they were that they did not study further.
As long as more than 50% of uneducated people (non cs graduates/post-graduates) are worse off than educated people (cs graduates/post-graduates) this discussion is really pointless (all anecdotal evidence of statistically insignificant anomalies aside).
It's interesting that people complain how Africa is a third world country and how we should help them, but interestingly everyone sets artificial restrictions on them and restricts them from the other world.
Another thing that hurts Africa is that even an intelligent audience like Slashdot thinks of Africa as a third world COUNTRY, when in fact it is a continent with a billion people spread over 61 territories (53 countries), covering about one fifth of the world's landmass.
I'm vegetarian for ethical and environmental reasons, but I do believe there is a place for scientific animal research/testing at this point in time.
I love this. I had a girlfriend who was a vegetarian for "environmental reasons". As we drove through the wheat fields on the way to my dad's "meat farm" I asked her to observe nature. When we got to my dad's farm I asked her to compare the environmental impact.
Wheat fields - lush and green, but no natural vegetation anywhere in sight.
"Meat fields" - dry and arid, with undisturbed nature as far as the eye can see.
I have never understood how any environmentally conscious person can eat wheat, rice, maize or soya. Just for reference, here is meat.
For the uninformed and totally ignorant. Meat is farmed in arid areas. Areas are not arid because meat is farmed there. If you have sufficient rainfall/water and a suitable climate, you bulldoze the place and produce (produce) fruit, vegetables, grain, fiber, etc. If not, you try and preserve nature as best you can so that you can use it for grazing. No flora means no income. As for fauna, while efforts are made to manage fauna in grazed areas, pretty much all fauna is considered vermin in ploughed fields.
A meat farmer may destroy the natural habitat by using poor farming methods, but this will inevitably lead to his downfall. A vegetable, wheat, maize, soy, etc. farmer must destroy the natural environment if he wishes to produce anything. And yes, if you wish to produce vegetables in your rooftop garden or basement, you have still destroyed the natural environment first.
So, if you care about nature, eat meat, be it red meat, white meat or fish.
I got interested in AI in the early 90's and even then the statements made in the article were considered outrageous by people who actually knew what was going on. I use AI on a daily basis, from OCR to speech and gesture recognition. Even my washing machine claims to use it. Not quite thinking for us and taking over the world, but give it some time:).
Same with thin clients. Just today I put together a proposal for three 100 seat thin client (Sunray) labs. VDI allows us to use Solaris, multiple Linux flavors, Minix, Windows, pretty much any OS we wish at the click of a mouse. The biggest problem is guessing what is going to happen now that Oracle is taking over, not the technology/architecture. Yes, Windows (CE) "thin clients" suck and are not very thin, but real think clients are quite handy.
A lot of these technologies were/are hopelessly over-hyped, but that is not a fault with the technology, but a problem with the idiots doing the hyping.
Would a tiny wheel have the same shortcomings as a joystick? I am thinking like remote controls for RC cars. If not, a little wheel that slides forward to accelerate and backwards to brake would seem convenient.
There is a huge difference between a sound that is generated by the interaction of complex machinery with the environment and a prerecorded sound played through a speaker. There are only a couple of reverse and car alarm sounds and therefore it is easy to tune them out.
Having said that, we do tune out the sound of cars. I have lived near major roads and you tune out the sound very quickly. It is only when I visit my parents that live 95km from the nearest town that I realize how loud my environment is.
If this is to warn blind people it makes some sense, but there must be a better solution than deliberate noise pollution.
I assume road noise is not enough. People are very good at tuning out noise. I hardly hear the truck reversing sound any more. Same with car alarms. Wonder how they will get around that.
This form factor will not make it. Comparing my HP6915, N810 and HTC Magic (as partial laptop replacement):
HP 6915
The 240x240 touch screen is okay, except that most WM5 software is written for 320x240. The the device/keyboard can be operated with one hand. The OS (WM5) sucks, but despite this the device is usable and can replace a laptop for a lot of task.
N810
Awesome screen (800x600 touch screen). Nice OS (Meamo). Hard to use with one hand. Hard to use with two hands. Big and heavy.
HTC Magic
Decent screen. Nice OS (Android). Works well with one hand.
The HP 6915 is ancient, so the HTC Magic wins easily, but the N810 places last.
Remove the sliding keyboard and replace it with a proper usb port and vga out. Write a nice thumb pad. The screen is so big that you can even put it on the side in landscape mode. Alternatively, have a slide out thumb pad. Till then, my N810 will spend most of its life in a drawer.
I understand the need for advertising. I wish I did not have to block ads. I understand that it is counter productive, though I don't notice most ads and have hardly ever clicked on one. The ones I do notice tends to be the reason that I do block ads. The problem is the trend to over complicate things.
I know most websites are run by people with no technical skills who use off the shelf products, but do I really have to visit 20 sites to read 5 lines of text?
Take Slashdot.org for example. There is a little check box on top that says that I can disable advertising. I have never done it though, even when I don't have an ad blocker installed. However, I use the same laptop with different Firefox profiles at home and work. At home, slashdot.org forces me to download something from c.fsdn.com that causes Firefox to use 100% CPU every now and then. It does not do this at work. Probably some plugin that causes the problem. I have never bothered to try and find out why. I just put 127.0.0.1 c.fsdn.com in my hosts file. Problem solved. The site renders "correctly" and without freezing at work and looks nice, sharp and "clean" at home.
If I ever need a "feature" provided by c.fsdn.com all I have to do is uncomment and reload. I object to sites hijacking my browser. Unfortunately this leads to an overreaction that means that I will rather block something useful/good than to have my browser hijacked.
I am not suggesting that we go back to static html, but I wish people would simplify things a bit.
I had a student work on this last year. He mounted some CCTV cameras on the roof of his car and stitched the resulting videos together. Not sure if you want to drive around with a PC on your back seat. He tried all sorts of Web and IP cameras, but found that the CCTV cameras worked best because the capture card took the load of the CPU and it was easier to synchronize frames. Unfortunately he could not find a capture card for a laptop, so he had to uses a PC.
The process worked like this:
Extract frames
Correct lens distortions using barrel transformation.
Correct perspective.
Match and stitch frames. He could have used something like Hugin, but chose to write his own stitching software for the sake of the exercise. I seem to recall him using Champher matching.
Create video from frames.
More information about his project can be found at: http://www.cs.uwc.ac.za/~iachmed/index.html.
How is microsoft abandoning patching IE6 any different than Mozilla abandoning patches for Firefox 2?
The problem is software bundling. Mozilla's Firefox 2 site "strongly urges" you to download Firefox 3 instead. Downloading it would therefore be a choice, going against this recommendation. I would guess that not many people still download it. Those who do probably do so knowing that they are downloading an outdated version. IE6 on the other hand is bundled with XP. If you reinstall XP you have IE6 as the default. I suspect a lot of users will never upgrade, because that "is the default that Microsoft recommends." At least, that is how it is viewed by the user. Hence, a lot of machines will still run IE6 and therefore one could argue that it needs to be supported. So, while the difference may be subtle, there is definitely a difference.
We have a network that does not works very well. It was never "designed". There were about 60 stand alone PC's. As time went on these were networked together. There are now over 400 PC's in our department alone. These are spread over multiple segments and subnets. We are not allowed to touch or monitor the network in any way.
I am trying to build a case for having a "proper" network installed.
Slashdot Mirror
You have the wrong definition of diversity. If all speakers are East Asian or Black or any other ethnicity other than White or female or gay or transgender then there is no problem. It is only a problem if they are all White male.
You left off another problem:
3. It never ends. There is no mechanism for saying that AA has been successful, therefore it can never end.
No country [*], no matter how homogeneous the population, has ever had true equality in the sense that jobs were distributed proportionally amongst genders and race and in the real world it will never happen. The mere fact that more women than men give berth to live offspring alone prevents this from happening.
* Maybe something like the Vatican (someone told me it was an independent state and I am too lazy to google it). If they had an all white male population and all the jobs were occupied by white men, then maybe they had true equality.
Well done Osama! You haunt them even from the grave. Way to leave a legacy.
What seems like a sudden blow out normally starts as a much slower leak. For example, a little stone gets stuck in the tread of a tyre. Eventually it works its way through the tread, causing a slow leak. Driving on the under inflated tyre causes it to flex excessively and heat up. Eventually, it fails. To the inexperienced driver this feels like a sudden blow out. Same thing with nails, glass, etc.
Obviously if you kiss a brick or a large stone with the side wall of your tyre and it rips a fist size hole in your side wall, this system will not help. However, if your pick up a nail or something, this might be able to keep your tyre pressure high enough so that you don't get a sudden failure. If you are lucky you will make it to your destination and wake up to a flat tyre the next morning.
With trucks, you have (multiple) double axles. This means that if one of your tyres deflate, you often don't notice it until the tyre completely fails and rips to shreds. I suspect this will save the trucking industry millions in lost tyres, never mind fuel.
I have to agree with you. I have been using Linux since the early 90's and it has been my preferred OS since the mid 90's. It has always done everything I needed and I use it on my personal machines. At work I have Windows and OS X machines, but I only ever use them when, for example, I have to format a document in Word.
I have no need for Linux to dominate the desktop. In fact, using Linux gives me an advantage over most if my competitors, so I don't really want them to use Linux.
I don't understand the need to use the dominant product. If Linux does not do what you want it to do, either don't use it or change it.
Do you marry someone because she is your soul-mate or because she is popular with your friends?
So what happens if he admits guilt and pays the fine?
I am with you. We (http://www.coe.uwc.ac.za/index.php/SASL.html) have been working on this for a while. We are totally ignoring finger spelling for sign recognition and rendering.
They bought it from a company called 3DV Systems. It was then called the ZCam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZCam).
The taste of meat is very strongly influenced by environmental factors. This includes both what the animal eats as well as the conditions under which it is slaughtered, though the latter has less influence than the former. I grew up on a sheep farm on a diet consisting primarily of meat. I avoid lamb and mutton that is not from our farm because it just does not taste the same. I don't mind beef, poultry, pork and venison from other areas.
The vegetation where I grew up is quite flavourful and this provides a distinctive flavour to the meat. Most of our meat is prepared without any spices as there is no need. The vegetation has a bigger influence on the taste of the meat than breed. I prefer a different breed of sheep reared on our vegetation to one of our standard breed reared in a different part of the world. The fact that farmers from our area get quite a high premium for their meat suggests that others agree.
Some abattoirs use trained goats "to lead the lambs to the slaughter". This is to avoid stressing the sheep by herding them unnecessarily. Stress releases adrenalin that definitely affects the quality of the meat, as does lactic acid. Lactic acid is normally more noticeable with venison, but I suspect this has more to do with sheep being tame and game being wild.
Given the right climatic conditions (happens very rarely) on the farm, we get a proliferation of a particularly fragrant flower. When the sheep graze on this it too affects the smell and taste of the meat. My wife finds it quite disturbing when she opens the freezer and it smells more like an air freshener than meat.
The quickest path towards resolving this is genuinely for all non-criminal young Middle Easterners to start ejecting the radical element from within their ranks.
That is right. "They" must change first. "They" can not possibly justify "their" viewpoint in terms we find acceptable. We can justify the way we feel in terms we find acceptable. "They" are just to stupid to get it. In fact, "they" are not even allowed to dislike us because we are free and "they" are not. Opinions are reserved for the free and even then you are only entitled to one if you are right.
"They" just don't seem to get it. We are waging a "War on Terrorism". If one of "their" cowardly children kills one of our brave soldiers during "their" armed conflict, that is murder. If our brave soldiers happen to kill a couple of unarmed civilians/reporters/children, that is unfortunately a consequence our war. While we don't like it, we accept it as the harsh reality of our war to liberate them from themselves.
"They" should look at our society and learn from it. The average westerner who has a family member that becomes a victim of violence does not behave like these savages. No, being educated civilized people, we go through a period of introspection. We try and find out what we could possibly have done to not entice this violence. We change our lifestyle and society so as not to provoke these perpetrators of violence. We reach out to the perpetrators and see how we can rehabilitate them, even at our personal expense. We personally go into the perpetrators' communities and we eradicate the factors that could have contributed to their lives of criminality. "They", would probably demand that such perpetrators of violence be removed from society, imprisoned or even sentenced to death. And if the perpetrator had money, they would probably sue them for some cash.
If our civilized society determines that the perpetrators of violence are supported by organizations, possibly abroad, we do not launch clandestine operations on sovereign soil to rid the world of "evil drug-lords" or coerce foreign governments to do it for us. No, we accept that everybody has a right to their way of life and we should focus on how we can adapt our society to fit in with everybody else.
When we help people in their neighborhood by supplying weapons, money and other support to selected groups, "they" seem to believe that they somehow have the right to be upset with us and take matters into "their" own hands. And "they" have the audacity to not build up a uniformed army, navy and air force. before attacking us. If, and this is a big if, the need ever arose for us to enter another country to say take down an "evil warlord/drug-lord", we would do it by the book. We would seek permission from the country we are about to enter, make sure our soldiers have up to date visas, declare our weapons at customs, etc. We would not just lob a bomb at a country like Libya or coerce the world to impose sanctions on a country like Cuba because we don't agree with the way they think.
These savages. Just because "they" can't appreciate all the good things we are doing for them "they" deserve it if a couple of bystanders get killed. It is time "they" adopted our open-minded approach and see things our way.
Being truly open minded is a very difficult (if not impossible) thing to do. Being an outsider helps. I can follow at least some of the logic of both sides, but that does not make one side right and the other side wrong.
... Move out to a small town and you'll quickly see what a lack of privacy really is. Everybody knows what everybody else is doing. Doesn't matter if you're on Facebook or not. ...
First, everything in said small town is moderated (through gossip) and not searchable verifiable fact. This can be both good and bad. Second, because people know the limits of their privacy, they tend to behave in a much more conservative manner.
***Disclaimer*** I grew up in a small town, lived in the city for 20 years and just moved back to a small town.
... It's like creating a highly efficient piece of malware on accident. ...
Not as unlikely as you seem to then. Back in the late 90's one of my classmates tried to create autonomous agents for a multi-player networked game. Took down all network connectivity for the region, by accident. You could argue, as he did when the cops arrived, that it was not so much a case as him having written a highly efficient piece of malware, but rather a case that the telco and isp configured the network poorly.
P.S. Didn't some kid accidentally create a major virus a couple of years ago because he was trying to save his mother's shop.
Yup.. Cue the Dunning-Kruger effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect). Basically it says that ignorant people are to dumb to shut up and knowledgeable people are to clever to speak up. They phrase it a bit more gently.
Why do uneducated people have such a chip on their shoulder? I am taking a break from preparing a thesis for final submission to write this. I have contact with several of my past students and I have never had a post-graduate student contact me to say that they regretted studying. I have had plenty of graduate students contact me and saying how sorry they were that they did not study further.
As long as more than 50% of uneducated people (non cs graduates/post-graduates) are worse off than educated people (cs graduates/post-graduates) this discussion is really pointless (all anecdotal evidence of statistically insignificant anomalies aside).
It's interesting that people complain how Africa is a third world country and how we should help them, but interestingly everyone sets artificial restrictions on them and restricts them from the other world.
Another thing that hurts Africa is that even an intelligent audience like Slashdot thinks of Africa as a third world COUNTRY, when in fact it is a continent with a billion people spread over 61 territories (53 countries), covering about one fifth of the world's landmass.
Reactions won't help you if you go up against this guy. Hopefully he gets very nervous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLnmvseCseI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hujvVmuLuoM
I'm vegetarian for ethical and environmental reasons, but I do believe there is a place for scientific animal research/testing at this point in time.
I love this. I had a girlfriend who was a vegetarian for "environmental reasons". As we drove through the wheat fields on the way to my dad's "meat farm" I asked her to observe nature. When we got to my dad's farm I asked her to compare the environmental impact.
Wheat fields - lush and green, but no natural vegetation anywhere in sight.
"Meat fields" - dry and arid, with undisturbed nature as far as the eye can see.
I have never understood how any environmentally conscious person can eat wheat, rice, maize or soya. Just for reference, here is meat.
For the uninformed and totally ignorant. Meat is farmed in arid areas. Areas are not arid because meat is farmed there. If you have sufficient rainfall/water and a suitable climate, you bulldoze the place and produce (produce) fruit, vegetables, grain, fiber, etc. If not, you try and preserve nature as best you can so that you can use it for grazing. No flora means no income. As for fauna, while efforts are made to manage fauna in grazed areas, pretty much all fauna is considered vermin in ploughed fields.
A meat farmer may destroy the natural habitat by using poor farming methods, but this will inevitably lead to his downfall. A vegetable, wheat, maize, soy, etc. farmer must destroy the natural environment if he wishes to produce anything. And yes, if you wish to produce vegetables in your rooftop garden or basement, you have still destroyed the natural environment first.
So, if you care about nature, eat meat, be it red meat, white meat or fish.
I got interested in AI in the early 90's and even then the statements made in the article were considered outrageous by people who actually knew what was going on. I use AI on a daily basis, from OCR to speech and gesture recognition. Even my washing machine claims to use it. Not quite thinking for us and taking over the world, but give it some time :).
Same with thin clients. Just today I put together a proposal for three 100 seat thin client (Sunray) labs. VDI allows us to use Solaris, multiple Linux flavors, Minix, Windows, pretty much any OS we wish at the click of a mouse. The biggest problem is guessing what is going to happen now that Oracle is taking over, not the technology/architecture. Yes, Windows (CE) "thin clients" suck and are not very thin, but real think clients are quite handy.
A lot of these technologies were/are hopelessly over-hyped, but that is not a fault with the technology, but a problem with the idiots doing the hyping.
Would a tiny wheel have the same shortcomings as a joystick? I am thinking like remote controls for RC cars. If not, a little wheel that slides forward to accelerate and backwards to brake would seem convenient.
There is a huge difference between a sound that is generated by the interaction of complex machinery with the environment and a prerecorded sound played through a speaker. There are only a couple of reverse and car alarm sounds and therefore it is easy to tune them out.
Having said that, we do tune out the sound of cars. I have lived near major roads and you tune out the sound very quickly. It is only when I visit my parents that live 95km from the nearest town that I realize how loud my environment is.
If this is to warn blind people it makes some sense, but there must be a better solution than deliberate noise pollution.
I assume road noise is not enough. People are very good at tuning out noise. I hardly hear the truck reversing sound any more. Same with car alarms. Wonder how they will get around that.
This form factor will not make it. Comparing my HP6915, N810 and HTC Magic (as partial laptop replacement):
HP 6915
The 240x240 touch screen is okay, except that most WM5 software is written for 320x240. The the device/keyboard can be operated with one hand. The OS (WM5) sucks, but despite this the device is usable and can replace a laptop for a lot of task.
N810
Awesome screen (800x600 touch screen). Nice OS (Meamo). Hard to use with one hand. Hard to use with two hands. Big and heavy.
HTC Magic
Decent screen. Nice OS (Android). Works well with one hand.
The HP 6915 is ancient, so the HTC Magic wins easily, but the N810 places last.
Remove the sliding keyboard and replace it with a proper usb port and vga out. Write a nice thumb pad. The screen is so big that you can even put it on the side in landscape mode. Alternatively, have a slide out thumb pad. Till then, my N810 will spend most of its life in a drawer.
I understand the need for advertising. I wish I did not have to block ads. I understand that it is counter productive, though I don't notice most ads and have hardly ever clicked on one. The ones I do notice tends to be the reason that I do block ads. The problem is the trend to over complicate things.
I know most websites are run by people with no technical skills who use off the shelf products, but do I really have to visit 20 sites to read 5 lines of text?
Take Slashdot.org for example. There is a little check box on top that says that I can disable advertising. I have never done it though, even when I don't have an ad blocker installed. However, I use the same laptop with different Firefox profiles at home and work. At home, slashdot.org forces me to download something from c.fsdn.com that causes Firefox to use 100% CPU every now and then. It does not do this at work. Probably some plugin that causes the problem. I have never bothered to try and find out why. I just put 127.0.0.1 c.fsdn.com in my hosts file. Problem solved. The site renders "correctly" and without freezing at work and looks nice, sharp and "clean" at home.
If I ever need a "feature" provided by c.fsdn.com all I have to do is uncomment and reload. I object to sites hijacking my browser. Unfortunately this leads to an overreaction that means that I will rather block something useful/good than to have my browser hijacked.
I am not suggesting that we go back to static html, but I wish people would simplify things a bit.
I had a student work on this last year. He mounted some CCTV cameras on the roof of his car and stitched the resulting videos together. Not sure if you want to drive around with a PC on your back seat. He tried all sorts of Web and IP cameras, but found that the CCTV cameras worked best because the capture card took the load of the CPU and it was easier to synchronize frames. Unfortunately he could not find a capture card for a laptop, so he had to uses a PC.
The process worked like this:
Extract frames
Correct lens distortions using barrel transformation.
Correct perspective.
Match and stitch frames. He could have used something like Hugin, but chose to write his own stitching software for the sake of the exercise. I seem to recall him using Champher matching.
Create video from frames.
More information about his project can be found at: http://www.cs.uwc.ac.za/~iachmed/index.html.
How is microsoft abandoning patching IE6 any different than Mozilla abandoning patches for Firefox 2?
The problem is software bundling. Mozilla's Firefox 2 site "strongly urges" you to download Firefox 3 instead. Downloading it would therefore be a choice, going against this recommendation. I would guess that not many people still download it. Those who do probably do so knowing that they are downloading an outdated version. IE6 on the other hand is bundled with XP. If you reinstall XP you have IE6 as the default. I suspect a lot of users will never upgrade, because that "is the default that Microsoft recommends." At least, that is how it is viewed by the user. Hence, a lot of machines will still run IE6 and therefore one could argue that it needs to be supported. So, while the difference may be subtle, there is definitely a difference.
Thanks, some good questions and answers.
We have a network that does not works very well. It was never "designed". There were about 60 stand alone PC's. As time went on these were networked together. There are now over 400 PC's in our department alone. These are spread over multiple segments and subnets. We are not allowed to touch or monitor the network in any way.
I am trying to build a case for having a "proper" network installed.