Might be useful in more ways than we can imagine... I mean, without someone who's their own grandparent, how would we stop the giant brains from destroying the universe as we know it!?
I am utterly AMAZED that he actually suggested browsercam. Yeah, the site is a good idea, but who has non-interactive sites anymore? If I want to develop my site with ANY javascript, I need an actual browser to test it in. And no, putting it into windows is not my idea of a solution. Where are all the free javascript/php/html IDE's in windows? OH I'm sorry, most halfway decent packages for windows COST MONEY. Screem is my idea of a decent editor, it's free, and it doesn't work in windows. That's not the only problem... He automatically assumes that "developers" are all hired grunts who have big budgets for services such as browsercam and windows licenses. What about the poor open-source developers like me, who are students, developing with what's effectively a fancy notepad and all opensource tools?
Either way, IE6 works pretty well in wine (ran all of my javascript correctly aside from opacity, aka filters... grr @ microsoft and their "standards"). I've developed stuff with testing on IE7 recently, and to tell you the truth, aside from *marginally* better CSS support and png transparency, it's exactly the same as IE6. I *still* have to use all sorts of javascript and css hacks to get things to show up correctly, even stuff that renders perfectly on Firefox, KHTML, AND Opera. I just hope their next version will have better CSS support.
Sounds like you would be a proponent of the Free State Project. But as with all movements like this, it's very very hard to get people to move from their current home to a new one that's as remote as New Hampshire....
You bring up an EXCELLENT point. I completely believe in your message - most people should try and stay to fight. But I also pose another question - how? During the American Revolution, the American "patriots" had guns - and if they did not, they could actually build an industry around the British-controlled one and produce their own guns. Obviously, hostile overthrow today is politically WAY out there, but it's also technically impossible as well. What liberal American "patriot" now can build a Tomahawk missle? Better yet, how would he build a missle DEFENSE system for when the government decides that he's a big enough threat?
The United States in 1700 is very different from the United States now. A "revolution" like in 1700 is completely impossible because military/violent action is obviously far outstepping the very idea of the country. Also, the controlling country is now itself, not some distant government on today's equivalent of another planet. The country's own government has been pretty damned efficient at brainwashing its citizens. Just to imagine... half of the population actually voted for the guy who said "I like your wife and I've watched your children" during a nationally televised debate.
IMHO, the entire CULTURE of the nation is slowly being perverted to these socipathic ends. Science is to be distrusted - God will give you the answer (such as which countries to invade). Not only is there a new branch of fanatical religion to fight against, we're also fighting the entire capitalistic culture of short-sighted goal-seeking, an ideal even the educated have become indocterinated in. Even the scientists try to stamp out research papers, regardless of whether they're crap or not just so they can have a nice list on their CVs.
I know that I will most likely be staying to "fight" as you suggested (partially because my dad would disown me if I left the country, haha), but increasingly it seems like we're fighting a losing war. The biggest difference today and in the 1700's is that the American population is effectively fighting itself. They hate what they've become, but they can't help continuing in their own one-dimensional path. What would you suggest as a good way of fighting this strange internal war?
In my high school, there was three different levels of just about every class - "College Prepatory", "Honors", and "Advanced Placements". Most of the "jocks" would go into the CP classes, while the "nerds" would go into the AP classes. But there never was a "nerd physical education" class where people get to deal with people of their own skill level, unlike in the science and math classes.
Admittedly, we did get to choose exactly what kind of physical education we wanted in Junior and Senior years. Being a nerd, I choose the least physically intensive one, namely the one doing Golf and archery. That was fun, and I really wish ALL of my gym classes were like that, instead of the grinding at basketball and baseball crap, which I suck at anyways...
Oh god, think of what happens if you leave it there too long... BURN-IN! Can you imagine spending the rest of your life with a Start button permenantly etched into your retina?!
I think you have a slightly skewed view of the world. My hometown sounds very much like yours - you literally can't go anywhere without seeing help wanted signs. The issue is, the place is probably completely inaccessible except via car, and the cost of a car CLEARLY puts you out of reach of these jobs.
After I came to college, I moved from rich suburbs to what amounts to the slums. Baltimore, specifically by Johns Hopkins, is NOT a rich area. Most of the people here are probably on welfare. The first thing I noticed though, was that almost ALL of the jobs are associated with the school. None of the stores had "help wanted" signs. There were no jobs. I think the only thing keeping the area alive was the school, who was basically handing out all sorts of low-wage jobs to students and to the residents alike.
I admit that some people are REALLY lazy. They avoid work at all costs to continue working at low wage jobs. However, some people here simply don't have that option. The only job they CAN work at, no matter how hard, is the low-wage, low-raise job that you currently hold, and if you don't want that job, there's 30 other people in line for it.
I hope you realize that actually writing software takes TIME, with an exponential relationship with complexity. An OS takes a LOT of time to write because it has a LOT of hardware to support, a lot of usage scenarios to take into account. Cobble together that's "new and cutting edge" like NeXT STEP would only yield yet another spectacular business failure, because there would be no time to build, test, and secure such a large chunk of code. As nice as OSX is, it's not end-all be-all in any way shape or form. IMHO, Linux does most jobs much better - opensource drivers and modules allow me to program my own drivers if I need to. Now that OSX closed Darwin source, where do I turn if I have an obscure piece of hardware to plug in?
Apple was never exactly a big sharer to begin with... In fact, IIRC their initial downfall was because the IBM PC clones were open systems allowing you to upgrade, fiddle with the components, purchase them from anyone; whereas you could only buy Apple components from Apple. There's a reason why I never liked Apple. It's because they never liked their customers.
The cipher is probably based on matricies (maybe even some sort of advanced hill cipher?). With 40 known matricies, it's merely a matter of multiplying them with the cipher text (or however it's encoded), and the main key pops out. That's why exactly 40 are needed - it's mathematics.
Ok, fair enough. It seems to be a bit more complex than I thought. I looked at the site, and the first thing that came to my mind is "hash table". A severe oversimplification, it seems. Perhaps I couldn't have done it after 10th grade. But no, I'm not that much of a moron. I CAN do it now, and probably could after AP Bio. The entire paragraph you pasted for me is merely touting the fact that it can optimize the nucleotide sequence of codons based on the existence of restriction enzyme sites at the ends for easy insertion, and a few sites for random mutagenesis. You generate a list of codons that can be used for each amino acid, then you can also assign a "rank" to each codon, based on a list of preferable qualities (such as restriction enzyme sites, gene insertion locations, etc), then pick and choose the best codon sequence (aka the ones with the higest rank). Probably not as simple as just "hash tables", but still not too hard of an application. Not to mention, I've used other apps in my lab before that do just this. But what makes this one so special then? Why does it belong on the front page of slashdot?
btw, if you're the one who made this, I'm sorry that I've offended your application. I'm trying to encourage friendly discussion on more integration between all fields and computer science. I didn't meant to offend anyone, but I just feel it's a bit unfair to put this particular application in the limelight, when many other programs existed before this, and were probably at least as advanced (if not more!) than this one.
Besides, if you are a Hopkins student/faculty/whatever, perhaps we can meet and talk about this. I'm very interested in getting better integration between computers and biology or any other field. It's something that will eventually be necessary in the future, and I hope to meet many like-minded people here!
The skew correction function.
Through an original algorithm, which automatically detects trapezoids in images and corrects them to rectangles, images of such things as blackboards, documents, or time schedules shot at any angle can be corrected so that the image looks as though it were shot from the front. The camera is most effective in business environments where blackboards, overhead projector, OHPs, time schedules; signs, etc. cannot be shot from the front.
Already exists. I think the issue is more resolution - scanners can get 600 dpi (or more!) through an entire 8x10 area, while digital cameras won't even come close to that. And as the other posters are saying, lens abberations become an issue toward the corners.
Heh, I see we have another Hopkins student here:-D
I didn't mean to offend, but I didn't mean that gene design was trivial. I meant that this application is very trivial, and it is. It merely takes your protein sequence, and translates it to DNA sequence. This is something I could have done in javascript back in 10th grade, when I first learned the whole codon thing.
Admittedly, actually doing something USEFUL with this is well beyond my scope of knowledge.
You also can't deny that as much as there is interaction between bio and CS, there isn't enough. There are a few small fields where the incredible power of computers makes it necessary for bio to be involved in CS (protein screening, etc), but I'm amazed that either to Bio or the CS people find this tool so amazing it deserves a front page post on Slashdot. I think that the CS people around should really branch out more; most people here still think of the computer as a big black box that you put words into, and it prints it out neatly. In any case, I didn't mean any harm, and I do commmend Hopkins for at least taking the first steps into this. I'm glad I'm at a school where this is happening!
What I don't understand is why everyone's making a big fuss over this... This kind of stuff is taught in HIGH SCHOOL. Only reason why I didn't make one myself is because I thought it was trivial otherwise.
I think the real thing that bothers me is, why is the biology field so devoid of computer people?! Btw, I am a Hopkins student who's doing Neuroscience major/CS minor.
Reflective retinal backs and wider pupils would massively lower visual acuity. Images reflecting off the back of the retina can be captured twice, once going in, once coming out, creating a very bad ghosting and mirroring effect within our own eyes. In fact, our eyes contain a special pigment in the back specifically to CAPTURE the incoming light, so it DOESN'T bounce off the back and lower acuity. Also, wide pupil ranges mean larger aperatures, which require larger lenses and muscles controlling them. Our eyesight specifically evolved this way in order for us to see with so many colors and with our current acuity - attempting to gain more night vision would sacrifice our color vision (the best in the animal kingdom) or our acuity.
Have you ever considered that that is true because girls enjoy dolls more? My parents have always purchased legos and stuff for my sister because I enjoyed them when I was young. She never touched them. Went straight for the dolls even at 6 months old. Eventually, we just gave up and bought her dolls and stuff. Given a choice between legos and a hairtie, it's not even a question what she'll pick, even at the youngest of ages.
It was very interesting actually - when she was 1 month old, we put a few objects in front of her - a book, a makeup kit, a screwdriver, a doll, and a calculator. She reached for the book first. We predicted that she'll be very scholarly, and even at 9 years old, she still likes books. On the other hand, I picked up the makeup kit...:-p
That is one thing distinctly missing in OO2.0. Charting options are the same as in OO1.0. In fact, almost all the features are the same, but the stability and the looks improved quite a bit.
As a college student in many labs, this lack of advanced graphing features is amazingly annoying- trendlines can't be extended, custom scatterplots are impossible. Hell, gnumeric does a FAR better job with graphing. Quite annoying in the end...
I hope you realize that jabber will need to do some pretty interesting things before it will even compete. I've tried to get a few of my friends to even use gaim. They strongly refused, citing how much fun those stupid little MSN games were. I had no other comments for them, because I know any gaim devs would never even dream of making a stupid little game that can be played over IM (it's not the purpose of IM!) If I can't even get anyone to use an alternative interface that isn't affected by viruses, allowing them to keep ALL their old contacts, how am I supposed to switch them over to a base that requires them to make their friends switch, doesn't have those stupid little games, or anything but the mythical concept of opensource?:-p
Slashdot Mirror
HAHAHA fellow Chinese person! If I had mod points, you'd get a funny rating! :-D
(for the unenlightened, dee dee = little brother)
No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Might be useful in more ways than we can imagine... I mean, without someone who's their own grandparent, how would we stop the giant brains from destroying the universe as we know it!?
Lucky bastard.... Comcast will give me 319.7 and 312 kbps upload...
I wonder if they realize that there are many VALID uses of upload bandwidth, such as remote access? VNC works like crap at 312...
I am utterly AMAZED that he actually suggested browsercam. Yeah, the site is a good idea, but who has non-interactive sites anymore? If I want to develop my site with ANY javascript, I need an actual browser to test it in. And no, putting it into windows is not my idea of a solution. Where are all the free javascript/php/html IDE's in windows? OH I'm sorry, most halfway decent packages for windows COST MONEY. Screem is my idea of a decent editor, it's free, and it doesn't work in windows. That's not the only problem... He automatically assumes that "developers" are all hired grunts who have big budgets for services such as browsercam and windows licenses. What about the poor open-source developers like me, who are students, developing with what's effectively a fancy notepad and all opensource tools?
Either way, IE6 works pretty well in wine (ran all of my javascript correctly aside from opacity, aka filters... grr @ microsoft and their "standards"). I've developed stuff with testing on IE7 recently, and to tell you the truth, aside from *marginally* better CSS support and png transparency, it's exactly the same as IE6. I *still* have to use all sorts of javascript and css hacks to get things to show up correctly, even stuff that renders perfectly on Firefox, KHTML, AND Opera. I just hope their next version will have better CSS support.
Sounds like you would be a proponent of the Free State Project. But as with all movements like this, it's very very hard to get people to move from their current home to a new one that's as remote as New Hampshire....
You bring up an EXCELLENT point. I completely believe in your message - most people should try and stay to fight. But I also pose another question - how? During the American Revolution, the American "patriots" had guns - and if they did not, they could actually build an industry around the British-controlled one and produce their own guns. Obviously, hostile overthrow today is politically WAY out there, but it's also technically impossible as well. What liberal American "patriot" now can build a Tomahawk missle? Better yet, how would he build a missle DEFENSE system for when the government decides that he's a big enough threat?
The United States in 1700 is very different from the United States now. A "revolution" like in 1700 is completely impossible because military/violent action is obviously far outstepping the very idea of the country. Also, the controlling country is now itself, not some distant government on today's equivalent of another planet. The country's own government has been pretty damned efficient at brainwashing its citizens. Just to imagine... half of the population actually voted for the guy who said "I like your wife and I've watched your children" during a nationally televised debate.
IMHO, the entire CULTURE of the nation is slowly being perverted to these socipathic ends. Science is to be distrusted - God will give you the answer (such as which countries to invade). Not only is there a new branch of fanatical religion to fight against, we're also fighting the entire capitalistic culture of short-sighted goal-seeking, an ideal even the educated have become indocterinated in. Even the scientists try to stamp out research papers, regardless of whether they're crap or not just so they can have a nice list on their CVs.
I know that I will most likely be staying to "fight" as you suggested (partially because my dad would disown me if I left the country, haha), but increasingly it seems like we're fighting a losing war. The biggest difference today and in the 1700's is that the American population is effectively fighting itself. They hate what they've become, but they can't help continuing in their own one-dimensional path. What would you suggest as a good way of fighting this strange internal war?
In my high school, there was three different levels of just about every class - "College Prepatory", "Honors", and "Advanced Placements". Most of the "jocks" would go into the CP classes, while the "nerds" would go into the AP classes. But there never was a "nerd physical education" class where people get to deal with people of their own skill level, unlike in the science and math classes. Admittedly, we did get to choose exactly what kind of physical education we wanted in Junior and Senior years. Being a nerd, I choose the least physically intensive one, namely the one doing Golf and archery. That was fun, and I really wish ALL of my gym classes were like that, instead of the grinding at basketball and baseball crap, which I suck at anyways...
Oh god, think of what happens if you leave it there too long... BURN-IN! Can you imagine spending the rest of your life with a Start button permenantly etched into your retina?!
I think you have a slightly skewed view of the world. My hometown sounds very much like yours - you literally can't go anywhere without seeing help wanted signs. The issue is, the place is probably completely inaccessible except via car, and the cost of a car CLEARLY puts you out of reach of these jobs.
After I came to college, I moved from rich suburbs to what amounts to the slums. Baltimore, specifically by Johns Hopkins, is NOT a rich area. Most of the people here are probably on welfare. The first thing I noticed though, was that almost ALL of the jobs are associated with the school. None of the stores had "help wanted" signs. There were no jobs. I think the only thing keeping the area alive was the school, who was basically handing out all sorts of low-wage jobs to students and to the residents alike.
I admit that some people are REALLY lazy. They avoid work at all costs to continue working at low wage jobs. However, some people here simply don't have that option. The only job they CAN work at, no matter how hard, is the low-wage, low-raise job that you currently hold, and if you don't want that job, there's 30 other people in line for it.
Perhaps Microsoft has already lent a "helping" hand :-p
:-p
Anyone know about the Microsoft infiltration of India?
I hope you realize that actually writing software takes TIME, with an exponential relationship with complexity. An OS takes a LOT of time to write because it has a LOT of hardware to support, a lot of usage scenarios to take into account. Cobble together that's "new and cutting edge" like NeXT STEP would only yield yet another spectacular business failure, because there would be no time to build, test, and secure such a large chunk of code. As nice as OSX is, it's not end-all be-all in any way shape or form. IMHO, Linux does most jobs much better - opensource drivers and modules allow me to program my own drivers if I need to. Now that OSX closed Darwin source, where do I turn if I have an obscure piece of hardware to plug in?
Apple was never exactly a big sharer to begin with... In fact, IIRC their initial downfall was because the IBM PC clones were open systems allowing you to upgrade, fiddle with the components, purchase them from anyone; whereas you could only buy Apple components from Apple. There's a reason why I never liked Apple. It's because they never liked their customers.
Correction - In Soviet China, your students kill you...
The cipher is probably based on matricies (maybe even some sort of advanced hill cipher?). With 40 known matricies, it's merely a matter of multiplying them with the cipher text (or however it's encoded), and the main key pops out. That's why exactly 40 are needed - it's mathematics.
Ok, fair enough. It seems to be a bit more complex than I thought. I looked at the site, and the first thing that came to my mind is "hash table". A severe oversimplification, it seems. Perhaps I couldn't have done it after 10th grade. But no, I'm not that much of a moron. I CAN do it now, and probably could after AP Bio. The entire paragraph you pasted for me is merely touting the fact that it can optimize the nucleotide sequence of codons based on the existence of restriction enzyme sites at the ends for easy insertion, and a few sites for random mutagenesis. You generate a list of codons that can be used for each amino acid, then you can also assign a "rank" to each codon, based on a list of preferable qualities (such as restriction enzyme sites, gene insertion locations, etc), then pick and choose the best codon sequence (aka the ones with the higest rank). Probably not as simple as just "hash tables", but still not too hard of an application. Not to mention, I've used other apps in my lab before that do just this. But what makes this one so special then? Why does it belong on the front page of slashdot?
btw, if you're the one who made this, I'm sorry that I've offended your application. I'm trying to encourage friendly discussion on more integration between all fields and computer science. I didn't meant to offend anyone, but I just feel it's a bit unfair to put this particular application in the limelight, when many other programs existed before this, and were probably at least as advanced (if not more!) than this one.
Besides, if you are a Hopkins student/faculty/whatever, perhaps we can meet and talk about this. I'm very interested in getting better integration between computers and biology or any other field. It's something that will eventually be necessary in the future, and I hope to meet many like-minded people here!
Check this passage: Already exists. I think the issue is more resolution - scanners can get 600 dpi (or more!) through an entire 8x10 area, while digital cameras won't even come close to that. And as the other posters are saying, lens abberations become an issue toward the corners.
Heh, I see we have another Hopkins student here :-D
I didn't mean to offend, but I didn't mean that gene design was trivial. I meant that this application is very trivial, and it is. It merely takes your protein sequence, and translates it to DNA sequence. This is something I could have done in javascript back in 10th grade, when I first learned the whole codon thing.
Admittedly, actually doing something USEFUL with this is well beyond my scope of knowledge.
You also can't deny that as much as there is interaction between bio and CS, there isn't enough. There are a few small fields where the incredible power of computers makes it necessary for bio to be involved in CS (protein screening, etc), but I'm amazed that either to Bio or the CS people find this tool so amazing it deserves a front page post on Slashdot. I think that the CS people around should really branch out more; most people here still think of the computer as a big black box that you put words into, and it prints it out neatly. In any case, I didn't mean any harm, and I do commmend Hopkins for at least taking the first steps into this. I'm glad I'm at a school where this is happening!
What I don't understand is why everyone's making a big fuss over this... This kind of stuff is taught in HIGH SCHOOL. Only reason why I didn't make one myself is because I thought it was trivial otherwise.
I think the real thing that bothers me is, why is the biology field so devoid of computer people?! Btw, I am a Hopkins student who's doing Neuroscience major/CS minor.
Reflective retinal backs and wider pupils would massively lower visual acuity. Images reflecting off the back of the retina can be captured twice, once going in, once coming out, creating a very bad ghosting and mirroring effect within our own eyes. In fact, our eyes contain a special pigment in the back specifically to CAPTURE the incoming light, so it DOESN'T bounce off the back and lower acuity. Also, wide pupil ranges mean larger aperatures, which require larger lenses and muscles controlling them. Our eyesight specifically evolved this way in order for us to see with so many colors and with our current acuity - attempting to gain more night vision would sacrifice our color vision (the best in the animal kingdom) or our acuity.
Have you ever considered that that is true because girls enjoy dolls more? My parents have always purchased legos and stuff for my sister because I enjoyed them when I was young. She never touched them. Went straight for the dolls even at 6 months old. Eventually, we just gave up and bought her dolls and stuff. Given a choice between legos and a hairtie, it's not even a question what she'll pick, even at the youngest of ages. It was very interesting actually - when she was 1 month old, we put a few objects in front of her - a book, a makeup kit, a screwdriver, a doll, and a calculator. She reached for the book first. We predicted that she'll be very scholarly, and even at 9 years old, she still likes books. On the other hand, I picked up the makeup kit... :-p
That is one thing distinctly missing in OO2.0. Charting options are the same as in OO1.0. In fact, almost all the features are the same, but the stability and the looks improved quite a bit.
As a college student in many labs, this lack of advanced graphing features is amazingly annoying- trendlines can't be extended, custom scatterplots are impossible. Hell, gnumeric does a FAR better job with graphing. Quite annoying in the end...
DUPE!
Yeah, go slashdot... =p
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=3&url=htt p%3A//gmail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py%3Fans wer%3D13273&ei=Q8gNQ72TD6iY-gG3p6GTBQ
Why not gmail IN thunderbird?
BTW, comparing gmail to Outlook is PITIFUL... :-p
I hope you realize that jabber will need to do some pretty interesting things before it will even compete. I've tried to get a few of my friends to even use gaim. They strongly refused, citing how much fun those stupid little MSN games were. I had no other comments for them, because I know any gaim devs would never even dream of making a stupid little game that can be played over IM (it's not the purpose of IM!) If I can't even get anyone to use an alternative interface that isn't affected by viruses, allowing them to keep ALL their old contacts, how am I supposed to switch them over to a base that requires them to make their friends switch, doesn't have those stupid little games, or anything but the mythical concept of opensource? :-p