Well this doesn't quite seem like news, not even cutting edge... currently their are plans in the work to build CELT, a 30 meter telescope with a deformable secondary mirror, while using a laser guide star.
The laser guide star allows us to view the dark portions of space, where as the UofA system requires that the object be near a natural guide star (namely a star big enough and bright enough that we know where it is supposed to be before it is deformed by the atmospher)
Land based telescopes are great, and the only reason for space-based ones is to collect the wavelengths of light that are filtered out by the atmosphere. But getting a telescope as large as the 30-meter CELT into space is a big challenge... however there is a project at Lawrence Livermore National Labs where they have a 15ft. mirror that folds up to the size of a hat box. They brought in an origami expert to figure out how to do this. (Sorry I don't have a URL, I just have a print copy of the monthly LLNL newsletter)
Anyways, the UofA telescope isn't really news... it really needs a Laser guidestar... but there is only working Laser guidestar... which is at Mount Hamilton
Ok... now this guy is the spawn of Satan. And I think everyone else has nicely covered how copy protection and Region encoding is stupid... however I think that the rest of his quote is very telling, and deserves repeating:
" Money, however, is negative--it's corrupting the body politic.... It's a tragedy. "
If even the Spawn of satan thinks that lobby with $$$ instead of facts is bad... don't you think that sends a sign. Of course, I wonder if he is just being hypocritical, and sends his favorite Senators a couple of thousand dollars worth of blow.
Alright resume Valenti bashing (I'll start us off): Even M$ is better than Valenti, b/c when I scratched my M$ Office CD, I called them up, and they sent me a replacement, they didn't even want the original CD back, they just asked me for the CD code.
Dollars to Donuts, the MPAA has a bot that is just flooding the polling server, and accounts for that 18% of the survey. Which just attests to the fact that everyone has responded so resoundingly against the MPAA, that concerned humans (and slashdotters too) are outflooding them.
I mean really are they next going to tell us that to use the fast forward, pause, and rewind buttons are a violation of the copyright, and if we want to get up and go to the bathroom, or make popcorn, we have to miss the movie just like they intended us to do in the movie theater.
Well it is quite obvious that all of the Executives have Au Pairs to watch their kids for them while they are off busy at fancy Hollywood parties. They handle the copyright violations by having a person fastforward through the bad bits for their kids.
All of you have to stop shi##ing on the myth... some guy that used to work in the XBox now has a book out... and was recently on the screensavers... and has made it publicly aware that Microsoft is selling the XBox for a loss.
Now he wasn't specific as to whether Microsoft is amortizing the cost of development into the price of production of the units in order to have a year end loss, and thereby claim a tax refund (wow that was a long sentence... but wait I am not done yet) or has a production/distrution costs larger than the sale cost.
Now I have to get back to playing Splinter Cell... damn that is the best game
watch them start to wield that large arm of the DMCA, saying that there is copyprotection in the BIOS, so modding the Xbox violates the DMCA... wait I shouldn't have said that... one of the monkees just stopped scratching his head.
Lexmark is doing something similar with their Laser Printer cartridges, but Lexmark will find that people will stop buying their printers if they can't find cheap toner solutions...
I don't know if Microsoft will ever completely get the point. But they are right to block out modded Xbox's from Xbox live, if it allows you to cheat (I personally hate cheats... b/c if I ever start using cheats it is about 20 minutes before I stop playing the game for good... being invinsible with unlimited ammo and the Redemmer in Unreal, just isn't any fun)
Not true at all... your rights decrease as you progress. Projects for a done for classes are your property. Research projects funded by the school are shared property. And as a faculty member, the school owns your work, unless they determine that they don't want it. So as research faculty if you have something really cool you want to patent, you have to give the school the option to patent it first. If they pass on that right, there is some standard paperwork you can fill out, to allow you to proceed on the patent as an individual, and retain sole ownership.
This project is slightly different because the dormitory paid for it... so it depends on the employment status. If they were hired as an independent contractor (which I doubt was discussed) the IP (Intellectual Property) is theirs. Otherwise the IP is shared with the dormitory, as in the case of any VC (Venture Capital) operation.
Besides this product is unpatentable... as we have already seen there is plenty of evidence for "prior art". Many casinos already have devices just like this, so they can tightly control their bottom line.
So how come no one has made the Prince Albert in a Can joke yet. I am very disappointed. It only took 12 posts on the French accidental discovery of the TetraNeutron to get the PreEmptive Surrender joke.
Ok who's dad works for NASA... or any other high tech boat/airplane/car production facility
Although I must say Dad's helping kids with the science projects are much better than Dad's kicking the shit out of someone else's Dad at a soccer game.
One of my favorite memory's of time with my dad was building a bridge out of newspaper (It held more weight than they had to test it.)
Nabisco has similar problems with their bakery in Fairlawn. You can smell the fresh baked cookies from as far away as 2 miles, if the winds are right. While their Chips Ahoy may not be as good as fresh-baked Mrs. Fields type cookies, they certainly smell just as good while being baked.
Anyways, the town of Fair Lawn is constantly fining them for polluting the air.
Its incredible how a town can court big business to build factories in their town, and bring jobs to their neighborhood. And as soon as the plant goes up, they start complaining about the (pick you choice of industrial byproducts) noise, heat, smell
1. Approach Large business to build plant in town. 2. Wine and dine exectives 3. Give Building Permits 4.... 5. Fine 6. Profit
What most people forget is that tutition only covers about 1/3rd of the cost of your education, even less if you are going to a State School. Alumni money and grants and other such sources make up the other 2/3rds. I recently graduated from Stevens where they started giving away computers... and they hiked tuition $100 to cover the cost of the computer, which means that over 4 years you are only contributing $800 for the cost of the computer. Keep in mind that it went up across the board, so upperclassmen like myself ended up contributing to freshman laptops... boy was there a lot of resentment... and stolen laptops.
The best part of the deal was the insurance/service plan, they fixed everything including dropped computers, and replaced stolen computers. Of course these were the same people who tried to use a rubber mallet to open my desktop's case, because they could find the release latches.
Not entirely true. When I used to work with 3D shutter glasses, my boss invested about 10 grand in an LCD projector that could do 120 hertz at 800x600... so 60 frames per eye. That said... your average laptop LCD doesn't have the refresh rate, or the video card necessary to utilize these shutter glasses.
It also had the ability to run with a polarized filter, so that instead of shuttering your eyes, the projector polarizes the light. For example: the images to the right eye are vertical and images to the left eye are horizontal. However for this to work you have to have a special silver screen, b/c your average projection screen depolarizes light.
Actually yes, the coolest 3D source that doesn't require stereoscopic vision is the.... museum.
Now I know that is a large stretch for some of us slashdotters, getting out from behind our monitor to go look at static (still, not noisy) pictures.
Anyways go find some good Renaissance art, or anything else that is done with persepective. Note: not all paintings are done in persecptive. Stand close to the painting... as close as your eyes can tolerate (or the velvet rope/guard lets you) say 18", although this completely depends on the size of the painting.
Now here is the trick... cover you DOMINANT eye. Your brain will in fact adjust for the missing information from that eye... and will begin recreating it for you, and actually generates the 3D information as if you were seeing with your good eye.
Now, this might not work if you have lost your depth perception from too much gaming... but if that is the case we don't want you getting in a car to drive to the museum anyways... so just go back to looking at your 2D porn:)
This trick is really cool... and makes going to the museum considerably more fun for a techhead, and is great for impressing your date, who is inevitably in the liberal arts, b/c we are indesperate need of more female gearheads.
Having done research with modeling applications for use with 3D shutter glasses, I can firmly tell you that this "trick" is much cooler than any glasses I have seen.
You can also eliminate all those pesky cooling fans... just use those refreezable ice packs.
Honestly... should we really be trying to put a computer in a lunch box... how about putting it in a keg. Not only can it serve up your DIVX movie collection, it can provide you an all your guests with your favorite frosty beverage. Again the need for the cooling fan is eliminated by the kegerator.
Does anyone know where to get a kegerator with RJ45 and Composite/RCA connections?
It isn't an 18 meter telescope. It is actually an array of four 8-meter telescopes. With three 1.8-meter telescopes for interferometry, and a 2.5-meter auxillary telescope. All of this should provide for relatively wide-field optical imaging.
As for being able to see the lander, it should be able to see objects of about 1.3 meters in diameter. The supporting math: (5e-5 m) / (1.6e4 m) * (3.85e8 m) = (1.2m)
Human hair: ~5 x 10^-5 meters Maximim Distance human hair can be seen by telescope: 1.6 x 10^4m (according to story) Distance to moon: 3.85 x 10^7m
MOD MY LAST POST DOWN (sorry if that last post was empty... so used to using Enter to tab between fields, which I know is really bad... and unfortunately Submit is the default button)
Anyways.. for those of you who drive along Route 80 (aka Capital City Freeway) near Sacramento at night you already love the Ford billboard. It is a full size billboard with active lighting. They choose the advertisements so poorly as to cause drastic color changes. Not so bad, but for the fact that it is immediately in front of you on a left hand turn, compound with the fact that it is brighter than the brake lights on the car in front of you. It seems to be less "flashy" of late... but it still sucks.
Hate to be the bearer of bad-news, but they aren't "pollution-free transit." They need electricity from somewhere to power the electric motors, whether it be oil/coal/nuclear. The only solution might be geo-thermal/solar/wind/wave... but they don't provide a signifigant portion of the world's power yet. There is a threshold of ridership, beyond which they become more environmentally friendly than a car, but we are a long way from "pollution-free" forms of transportation.
I know this comes as a great suprise to all of you driving those stupid little Neighborhood Electric Vehichle... you are just moving the pollution to some other poor-bastards neighborhood, while you get all the really good parking spots at the mall.
Ok Greyhound is faster... but the seats are smaller, the bathrooms reek, there is not snack/dinner car. Their little diner/depots along the way make you wish they served snacks in the toilet at the back of the bus.
Amtrak may be more expensive than flying and busses (at least it on the East Coast)... but at least you can get up and walk around whenever you want, and not have to trip over a stewardess, or worry about the fasten seatbelt sign.
This bodes well for our men in uniform, who don't have the sterile environment and the number of skilled doctors available in a hospital. As one who has worked on 3D visualization projects for Army Surgeons, tele-medicine and robotic surgery are major concerns. Army medics are incredible people who put their lives on the line and their backs to the bullets to save other people... but they don't have the necessary skills.
This is definitely only the beginning, while most of us/.ers are sitting behind our computers screens (assumedly) close to a medical center, our men in uniform don't have the luxury. This can provide solutions to save lives, where previously they would only be put on a morphine drip to ease their last moments.
Well I can see two reasons, and both of them have to do with the fact that M$ employees many Indians, and have coding operations in India.
M$ has Indians IN India working on internationalization of Windows. I doubt RMS has a large team working on internationalizing GNU/Linux for India... although he shouldn't have to (beauty of "free" software)
The biggie. M$ is employing people in India. The Indian Government likes this because they can tax M$, and it employees. They have created white-collar jobs, making them more attractive to other tech companies looking to set up shop. RMS can't do that for India, and until he can the Indian gov't will continue to be nice to BJG, and ignore RMS.
I am sure that China will make/has made similar deals to coax Intel's operartions into China, and keep them there.
All you/. CS majors with any half-assed knowledge should go work on DRM projects. We will flood the job-market with DRM security specialists, who are secret/. agents. Why?
Because you will all go out there and proliferate great pieces of trite on how your algorithm is the greatest thing since the chastity belt. Heck it could even be the perfect DRM algorithm. But remember you are all secret/. agents, you will implement the algorithm poorly in the great tradition of software engineering. You will then leak the information to/. as an Anonymous Coward. But we will all know you are a/. secret agent.
Sorry,/. doesn't have a Q (RIP Desmond Llewelyn), you will have to pick up your secret agent gadgets at Best Buy.
Slashdot Mirror
Well i can understand them dropping out of the market .. can you imagine the development costs for burning on the wrong side of the CD?
Well this doesn't quite seem like news, not even cutting edge ... currently their are plans in the work to build CELT, a 30 meter telescope with a deformable secondary mirror, while using a laser guide star.
... however there is a project at Lawrence Livermore National Labs where they have a 15ft. mirror that folds up to the size of a hat box. They brought in an origami expert to figure out how to do this. (Sorry I don't have a URL, I just have a print copy of the monthly LLNL newsletter)
... it really needs a Laser guidestar ... but there is only working Laser guidestar ... which is at Mount Hamilton
The laser guide star allows us to view the dark portions of space, where as the UofA system requires that the object be near a natural guide star (namely a star big enough and bright enough that we know where it is supposed to be before it is deformed by the atmospher)
Land based telescopes are great, and the only reason for space-based ones is to collect the wavelengths of light that are filtered out by the atmosphere. But getting a telescope as large as the 30-meter CELT into space is a big challenge
Anyways, the UofA telescope isn't really news
And now for something completely different.
... now this guy is the spawn of Satan. And I think everyone else has nicely covered how copy protection and Region encoding is stupid ... however I think that the rest of his quote is very telling, and deserves repeating:
... It's a tragedy. "
... don't you think that sends a sign. Of course, I wonder if he is just being hypocritical, and sends his favorite Senators a couple of thousand dollars worth of blow.
Ok
" Money, however, is negative--it's corrupting the body politic.
If even the Spawn of satan thinks that lobby with $$$ instead of facts is bad
Alright resume Valenti bashing (I'll start us off): Even M$ is better than Valenti, b/c when I scratched my M$ Office CD, I called them up, and they sent me a replacement, they didn't even want the original CD back, they just asked me for the CD code.
Dollars to Donuts, the MPAA has a bot that is just flooding the polling server, and accounts for that 18% of the survey. Which just attests to the fact that everyone has responded so resoundingly against the MPAA, that concerned humans (and slashdotters too) are outflooding them.
I mean really are they next going to tell us that to use the fast forward, pause, and rewind buttons are a violation of the copyright, and if we want to get up and go to the bathroom, or make popcorn, we have to miss the movie just like they intended us to do in the movie theater.
Well it is quite obvious that all of the Executives have Au Pairs to watch their kids for them while they are off busy at fancy Hollywood parties. They handle the copyright violations by having a person fastforward through the bad bits for their kids.
All of you have to stop shi##ing on the myth ... some guy that used to work in the XBox now has a book out ... and was recently on the screensavers ... and has made it publicly aware that Microsoft is selling the XBox for a loss.
... but wait I am not done yet) or has a production/distrution costs larger than the sale cost.
... damn that is the best game
Now he wasn't specific as to whether Microsoft is amortizing the cost of development into the price of production of the units in order to have a year end loss, and thereby claim a tax refund (wow that was a long sentence
Now I have to get back to playing Splinter Cell
watch them start to wield that large arm of the DMCA, saying that there is copyprotection in the BIOS, so modding the Xbox violates the DMCA ... wait I shouldn't have said that ... one of the monkees just stopped scratching his head.
...
... b/c if I ever start using cheats it is about 20 minutes before I stop playing the game for good ... being invinsible with unlimited ammo and the Redemmer in Unreal, just isn't any fun)
Lexmark is doing something similar with their Laser Printer cartridges, but Lexmark will find that people will stop buying their printers if they can't find cheap toner solutions
I don't know if Microsoft will ever completely get the point. But they are right to block out modded Xbox's from Xbox live, if it allows you to cheat (I personally hate cheats
Not true at all ... your rights decrease as you progress. Projects for a done for classes are your property. Research projects funded by the school are shared property. And as a faculty member, the school owns your work, unless they determine that they don't want it. So as research faculty if you have something really cool you want to patent, you have to give the school the option to patent it first. If they pass on that right, there is some standard paperwork you can fill out, to allow you to proceed on the patent as an individual, and retain sole ownership.
... so it depends on the employment status. If they were hired as an independent contractor (which I doubt was discussed) the IP (Intellectual Property) is theirs. Otherwise the IP is shared with the dormitory, as in the case of any VC (Venture Capital) operation.
... as we have already seen there is plenty of evidence for "prior art". Many casinos already have devices just like this, so they can tightly control their bottom line.
This project is slightly different because the dormitory paid for it
Besides this product is unpatentable
thats what aliases and scripting languages are for .. hell I wouldn't want to TYPE that all day long
No ... they had pre-emptively surrendered on reading about the particle in Howard's book.
So how come no one has made the Prince Albert in a Can joke yet. I am very disappointed. It only took 12 posts on the French accidental discovery of the TetraNeutron to get the PreEmptive Surrender joke.
Ok who's dad works for NASA
Although I must say Dad's helping kids with the science projects are much better than Dad's kicking the shit out of someone else's Dad at a soccer game.
One of my favorite memory's of time with my dad was building a bridge out of newspaper (It held more weight than they had to test it.)
Nabisco has similar problems with their bakery in Fairlawn. You can smell the fresh baked cookies from as far away as 2 miles, if the winds are right. While their Chips Ahoy may not be as good as fresh-baked Mrs. Fields type cookies, they certainly smell just as good while being baked.
...
Anyways, the town of Fair Lawn is constantly fining them for polluting the air.
Its incredible how a town can court big business to build factories in their town, and bring jobs to their neighborhood. And as soon as the plant goes up, they start complaining about the (pick you choice of industrial byproducts) noise, heat, smell
1. Approach Large business to build plant in town.
2. Wine and dine exectives
3. Give Building Permits
4.
5. Fine
6. Profit
What most people forget is that tutition only covers about 1/3rd of the cost of your education, even less if you are going to a State School. Alumni money and grants and other such sources make up the other 2/3rds. I recently graduated from Stevens where they started giving away computers ... and they hiked tuition $100 to cover the cost of the computer, which means that over 4 years you are only contributing $800 for the cost of the computer. Keep in mind that it went up across the board, so upperclassmen like myself ended up contributing to freshman laptops... boy was there a lot of resentment ... and stolen laptops.
The best part of the deal was the insurance/service plan, they fixed everything including dropped computers, and replaced stolen computers. Of course these were the same people who tried to use a rubber mallet to open my desktop's case, because they could find the release latches.
Not entirely true. When I used to work with 3D shutter glasses, my boss invested about 10 grand in an LCD projector that could do 120 hertz at 800x600... so 60 frames per eye. That said ... your average laptop LCD doesn't have the refresh rate, or the video card necessary to utilize these shutter glasses.
It also had the ability to run with a polarized filter, so that instead of shuttering your eyes, the projector polarizes the light. For example: the images to the right eye are vertical and images to the left eye are horizontal. However for this to work you have to have a special silver screen, b/c your average projection screen depolarizes light.
Actually yes, the coolest 3D source that doesn't require stereoscopic vision is the .... museum.
... as close as your eyes can tolerate (or the velvet rope/guard lets you) say 18", although this completely depends on the size of the painting.
... cover you DOMINANT eye. Your brain will in fact adjust for the missing information from that eye ... and will begin recreating it for you, and actually generates the 3D information as if you were seeing with your good eye.
... but if that is the case we don't want you getting in a car to drive to the museum anyways ... so just go back to looking at your 2D porn :)
... and makes going to the museum considerably more fun for a techhead, and is great for impressing your date, who is inevitably in the liberal arts, b/c we are indesperate need of more female gearheads.
Now I know that is a large stretch for some of us slashdotters, getting out from behind our monitor to go look at static (still, not noisy) pictures.
Anyways go find some good Renaissance art, or anything else that is done with persepective. Note: not all paintings are done in persecptive. Stand close to the painting
Now here is the trick
Now, this might not work if you have lost your depth perception from too much gaming
This trick is really cool
Having done research with modeling applications for use with 3D shutter glasses, I can firmly tell you that this "trick" is much cooler than any glasses I have seen.
You can also eliminate all those pesky cooling fans ... just use those refreezable ice packs.
... should we really be trying to put a computer in a lunch box ... how about putting it in a keg. Not only can it serve up your DIVX movie collection, it can provide you an all your guests with your favorite frosty beverage. Again the need for the cooling fan is eliminated by the kegerator.
Honestly
Does anyone know where to get a kegerator with RJ45 and Composite/RCA connections?
I hate to appear to be a pacifist ... but wouldn't it be great if modern army's were governed by similar algorithms.
... bomb the fuck out of Afghanistan ... don't send in troops (that would violate the "minimize casulties" algorithm)
That said
Obviously you have never been around sheep. Sure they do nothing most of the time ... but they get pretty nasty with the dogs.
... cute ... but they can be bitchy once you get to know them
Rabbits and sheep are very much female animals
It isn't an 18 meter telescope. It is actually an array of four 8-meter telescopes. With three 1.8-meter telescopes for interferometry, and a 2.5-meter auxillary telescope. All of this should provide for relatively wide-field optical imaging.
Here is a great diagram and description of the VLT
As for being able to see the lander, it should be able to see objects of about 1.3 meters in diameter.
The supporting math:
(5e-5 m) / (1.6e4 m) * (3.85e8 m) = (1.2m)
Human hair: ~5 x 10^-5 meters
Maximim Distance human hair can be seen by telescope: 1.6 x 10^4m (according to story)
Distance to moon: 3.85 x 10^7m
MOD MY LAST POST DOWN ... so used to using Enter to tab between fields, which I know is really bad ... and unfortunately Submit is the default button)
.. for those of you who drive along Route 80 (aka Capital City Freeway) near Sacramento at night you already love the Ford billboard. It is a full size billboard with active lighting. They choose the advertisements so poorly as to cause drastic color changes. Not so bad, but for the fact that it is immediately in front of you on a left hand turn, compound with the fact that it is brighter than the brake lights on the car in front of you. It seems to be less "flashy" of late ... but it still sucks.
(sorry if that last post was empty
Anyways
Hate to be the bearer of bad-news, but they aren't "pollution-free transit." They need electricity from somewhere to power the electric motors, whether it be oil/coal/nuclear. The only solution might be geo-thermal/solar/wind/wave ... but they don't provide a signifigant portion of the world's power yet. There is a threshold of ridership, beyond which they become more environmentally friendly than a car, but we are a long way from "pollution-free" forms of transportation.
... you are just moving the pollution to some other poor-bastards neighborhood, while you get all the really good parking spots at the mall.
I know this comes as a great suprise to all of you driving those stupid little Neighborhood Electric Vehichle
Ok Greyhound is faster ... but the seats are smaller, the bathrooms reek, there is not snack/dinner car. Their little diner/depots along the way make you wish they served snacks in the toilet at the back of the bus.
Amtrak may be more expensive than flying and busses (at least it on the East Coast) ... but at least you can get up and walk around whenever you want, and not have to trip over a stewardess, or worry about the fasten seatbelt sign.
This bodes well for our men in uniform, who don't have the sterile environment and the number of skilled doctors available in a hospital. As one who has worked on 3D visualization projects for Army Surgeons, tele-medicine and robotic surgery are major concerns. Army medics are incredible people who put their lives on the line and their backs to the bullets to save other people ... but they don't have the necessary skills.
/.ers are sitting behind our computers screens (assumedly) close to a medical center, our men in uniform don't have the luxury. This can provide solutions to save lives, where previously they would only be put on a morphine drip to ease their last moments.
This is definitely only the beginning, while most of us
- M$ has Indians IN India working on internationalization of Windows. I doubt RMS has a large team working on internationalizing GNU/Linux for India
... although he shouldn't have to (beauty of "free" software)
- The biggie. M$ is employing people in India. The Indian Government likes this because they can tax M$, and it employees. They have created white-collar jobs, making them more attractive to other tech companies looking to set up shop. RMS can't do that for India, and until he can the Indian gov't will continue to be nice to BJG, and ignore RMS.
I am sure that China will make/has made similar deals to coax Intel's operartions into China, and keep them there.All you /. CS majors with any half-assed knowledge should go work on DRM projects. We will flood the job-market with DRM security specialists, who are secret /. agents. Why?
/. agents, you will implement the algorithm poorly in the great tradition of software engineering. You will then leak the information to /. as an Anonymous Coward. But we will all know you are a /. secret agent.
/. doesn't have a Q (RIP Desmond Llewelyn), you will have to pick up your secret agent gadgets at Best Buy.
Because you will all go out there and proliferate great pieces of trite on how your algorithm is the greatest thing since the chastity belt. Heck it could even be the perfect DRM algorithm. But remember you are all secret
Sorry,