"We were not created to sit down for long hours, but somehow modern life requires the vast majority of the global population to work in a seated position"
We were not created at all. We evolved, and will continue to evolve until sitting all day is comfortable!
But then again, this is slashdot so we're all free to discuss without watching the video, reading the paper or otherwise knowing what were talking about.
I'm all for making monitors with better contrast but the BrightSide solution is a little silly.
4000 cd/m^2 is their models peak luminance. The nice thing about a standard 300 cd/m^2 monitor is that I can stare at a picture of the sun for as long as I want without blinding myself. I'm not sure I would want to do that with one of these... Not because it's enough to blind you or anything, but it could cause your pupils to dialate so when you turn it off everything would be really dark.
Well I sort of got dragged into Ham Radio last year through school. I was working on a senior engineering design project and we were looking for an easy way to get data from a weather balloon to a ground station. It turns out there are some fancy amature radios available with 9600 baud modems built in, which made our life easier. So a few of my colleges and I got our Tech class licences one weekend and were totaly into the whole ham thing for about 2 months. Then we finished the project and I haven't touched my $200 radio since...
-KG6YZK
Hey if the DoJ wanted to obtain information about google, why didn't they just google for it? This really should have been the response to the initial request.
Interesting enough, some people have done this already for personal use.
Check out www.aprs.net/ old engineers with too much free time on their hands have converted their mobile ham radios and old gps receivers into a wireless tracking system that feeds into the internet through repeater/gateways. Their system costs a few hundred bucks per vehicle/person to setup and requires an amature radio license, which is probably cheep compared to whatever the transportation department is 'considering'.
My connection with aprs is kind of unusual. I worked with a team to put one of these gps trackers on a weather balloon to track atmospheric turbulence data. The aprs system that is already in place will respond to certain radio packet formats and log them for a period of time on the web. So all we had to do to collect our data (we stored real data in the comment section of the packet) was head home and log onto their website.
This reminds me of another trick a friend (who will remain anonymous) of mine once tried to pull. He heard some guys on irc talking about how they would buy new expensive video cards from circuit city, install them, put the old card back in the box and return it for a full refund the next day. Apparently the store clerks just look to see if there is a card in the box, and make you sign something.
So my buddy tried this with a new sound card. He paid cash and decided to forge his name when he returned it. Unfortunately the dumbass forgot do clean his old card off before putting it in the box to return it. So he took the card back and the clerk looked at if for a minute, then called their electronics 'expert' over. He looked at it and said something along the lines of, "it's dusty, I don't know if we can take it in this condition." So my friend panicked and said ok and promptly exited the premises without making the return.
I suppose this isn't quite the same as switching barcodes, but I wonder what the punishment would be if you were caught. Anybody else gotten away with this?
"Although a site for the telescope has not been selected, it is hoped that preconstruction would likely begin in 2008 so that it would become operational by 2015. The plans were unveiled in Vancouver, Canada, where AMEC engineers have been working on the project."
The title of this post is totaly off base. This project has very little to do with Canada. It is primarily a collaboration between CalTech and the University of California. The plans for this have been in the works for almost a decade already, so this really isn't huge news.
I worked on an atmospheric sensing project a few months back that was loosely associated with the Thirty meter telescope through the Center for adaptive optics at UC Santa Cruz. One of postdocs from Caltech that was working with us disappeared for a few months to scout a location for this thing. Apparently they want to build it in the high deserts of South America; the reasons being the lack of rain, less atmosphere to look through, and virtually no light pollution. Keck, the huge pair of telescopes in Hawaii can only operate about half the time because of bad weather.
Fun telescope fact: Without adaptive optics (the thousands of tiny actuators behind the mirrors in big telescopes) no matter how big your lens, you will have the same effective resolution as a 10 inch telescope. This is because the air between the scope and the stars is constantly shifting. It is also why the Hubble can take super clear images despite its small size.
As a computer vision researcher, I thought I'd share a little insight as to why this is helpful for the computer vision community.
Whenever one wants to train an algorithm to detect or recognize an object in a data set, one needs both the data set and the ground truth. The data set is usually a large set of images and the ground truth is some semantic information associated with each image, such as the locations of people and cars, or perhaps a representative word or category. The data set is usually easy to obtain, however the ground truth usually involves manual input. Considering that data sets regularly have more than 10,000 images, this can be quite a challenge since it can't be automated (if it could, your research would be pointless eh?).
This is where the peekaboom application comes into play. Now, the task of annotating the images with semantic information is distributed among thousands of slashdot readers and other assorted nerdy individuals. Not only does this program provide a single ground truth for researchers to analyze, but a statistical description of the ground truth, that is validated by another user guessing the semantic information.
As an aside, a friend of mine is working on a project to turn planetary transit model fitting into a web-based game. Keep a lookout for it in the next few months.
It actually doesn't take that long to become proficient. I can copy morse faster than I can type on my cell phone and I can SMS at about 10 wpm. I learned morse while working on my general class license (I'm still working on it). It wasn't that hard when you try using the koch method. Only took me about 12 hours to learn the first 30 or so characters at 18 wpm.
-KG6YZK
Strong EE background? Where did you hear that? His site states that he has a BS in Journalism and an MS in Computer Science. This project really has no serious EE involved. 95% of the design is in Computer Architechure, Logic Design and compiler software.
I can't imagine how long it took to debug that thing.
I believe the tool is meant to simplify modifying an objects 3d appearance in a 2d image. I imagine you will be able to specify a vanishing point and a ground plane, and then move a selected object around in that ground plane and have Photoshop perform a perspective transform and relighting on your object.
This is not a trivial task which is probably why it has taken them so long to get out. Assuming I'm correct about the nature of the tool that is.
most internet users never heard about this service
That is a bit of an understatement.
I can't think of more than two people I know outside of academia that have ever heard of usenet or newsgroups. Use net has been dead along time. Yes, it still has many users. But theres still people out there browsing the web with netscape 4.1 too, that doesn't mean the old school netscape userbase is flourishing though.
Since when have the RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft been "Left wing" organizations? Last I checked they were all for profit corporations and associations.
I agree that these companies are promoting bad policies, but to say their intention is to enslave the world and promote socialism is out of line. Corporations do what they have to in order to make money; that is their only agenda.
Right now the RIAA and MPAA have the option of changing their profit model or litigating to preserve their existing one. They have taken the later approach because it is safer. If their encroachment on our freedoms is to be stopped we are going to have to show them that the new profit models (iTunes et. al.) are superior to the old.
I think this project could go either way at this point. They have the momentum from the success of Ffox/Tbird and there is a market for an OS calender project. But in order to make this product worth my time would be if it would sync with my palm and share dates with other users. What bugs me about my current software is the that I have to enter in holidays manualy. I'd be nice if I could set it to insert holidays, and local events from some source on the internet like my school's portal site.
Re:eFax DOES support PS
on
eFax Hell?
·
· Score: 1
In my experience, if you don't tell your postscript printer to use ascii coded image data you can get crazy compatibility errors. That is probably why efax screwed up.
Actually, 'that liberal radio network' also know as Air America Radio is still around and doing quite well. Al Franken's show has even managed to beat out Limbaugh in some markets (NYC).
"I would try and find some great master to study under"
That's what we call grad school. Find someone with an interesting research field, and agree to be his/her bitch for the next few years. It usually doesn't pay much, but it's better than unemployment and the experience is better than industry. (You might end up with a ph. d!)
Also, "Another way would be to go to India"
The reason so many US tech jobs are going to India right now is not demand but supply. They have over a hundred thousand unemployed programmers. Stay out of India, stay in school till the economy improves.
* Invade Iraq... * Buy Microsoft... * Develop a 'Star Wars' Missile Defense system... * Give $300+ to every person in the US... * Or, pay a bunch of lawyers millions of dollars to sue copy write violators the world over...
Waterproof? Check
Vaporproof? Check
Shockproof? Check
Idiotproof?...
Guess the jury is still out on that one. After all this is the military were talking about here.
Many DragonBall Z fans will disagree, but what makes DBZ such an addicting show is its "soap opera" like characteristics. Yea sure, there is action, fighting, and cool explosions, but thats just what gets people interested in it. What keeps people hooked is the suspense. Every episode ends as though something really really cool is going to happen in the next episode, but in reality those really cool things only happen like every 8 episodes.
Slashdot Mirror
"We were not created to sit down for long hours, but somehow modern life requires the vast majority of the global population to work in a seated position"
n .jpg
We were not created at all. We evolved, and will continue to evolve until sitting all day is comfortable!
Example:
http://www.wagnerur.hu/computer_internet/evolutio
Since you asked...
o .jsp?osti_id=20516096
n umber=1495587
0 904-T282/research.pdf
The paper he mentioned in the talk: http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.bibli
An IEEE publication on a related topic: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?ar
And finally a recent PhD thesis on a related subject: http://edt.missouri.edu/Fall2004/Thesis/MeyerR-12
But then again, this is slashdot so we're all free to discuss without watching the video, reading the paper or otherwise knowing what were talking about.
I'm all for making monitors with better contrast but the BrightSide solution is a little silly.
4000 cd/m^2 is their models peak luminance. The nice thing about a standard 300 cd/m^2 monitor is that I can stare at a picture of the sun for as long as I want without blinding myself. I'm not sure I would want to do that with one of these... Not because it's enough to blind you or anything, but it could cause your pupils to dialate so when you turn it off everything would be really dark.
Well I sort of got dragged into Ham Radio last year through school. I was working on a senior engineering design project and we were looking for an easy way to get data from a weather balloon to a ground station. It turns out there are some fancy amature radios available with 9600 baud modems built in, which made our life easier. So a few of my colleges and I got our Tech class licences one weekend and were totaly into the whole ham thing for about 2 months. Then we finished the project and I haven't touched my $200 radio since... -KG6YZK
What if they did? What would/could you possibly do with such graphics power on NetBSD? Play FreeCiv at 30,000 fps?
Hey if the DoJ wanted to obtain information about google, why didn't they just google for it? This really should have been the response to the initial request.
Interesting enough, some people have done this already for personal use.
Check out www.aprs.net/ old engineers with too much free time on their hands have converted their mobile ham radios and old gps receivers into a wireless tracking system that feeds into the internet through repeater/gateways. Their system costs a few hundred bucks per vehicle/person to setup and requires an amature radio license, which is probably cheep compared to whatever the transportation department is 'considering'.
My connection with aprs is kind of unusual. I worked with a team to put one of these gps trackers on a weather balloon to track atmospheric turbulence data. The aprs system that is already in place will respond to certain radio packet formats and log them for a period of time on the web. So all we had to do to collect our data (we stored real data in the comment section of the packet) was head home and log onto their website.
This reminds me of another trick a friend (who will remain anonymous) of mine once tried to pull. He heard some guys on irc talking about how they would buy new expensive video cards from circuit city, install them, put the old card back in the box and return it for a full refund the next day. Apparently the store clerks just look to see if there is a card in the box, and make you sign something.
So my buddy tried this with a new sound card. He paid cash and decided to forge his name when he returned it. Unfortunately the dumbass forgot do clean his old card off before putting it in the box to return it. So he took the card back and the clerk looked at if for a minute, then called their electronics 'expert' over. He looked at it and said something along the lines of, "it's dusty, I don't know if we can take it in this condition." So my friend panicked and said ok and promptly exited the premises without making the return.
I suppose this isn't quite the same as switching barcodes, but I wonder what the punishment would be if you were caught. Anybody else gotten away with this?
"Although a site for the telescope has not been selected, it is hoped that preconstruction would likely begin in 2008 so that it would become operational by 2015. The plans were unveiled in Vancouver, Canada, where AMEC engineers have been working on the project."
The title of this post is totaly off base. This project has very little to do with Canada. It is primarily a collaboration between CalTech and the University of California. The plans for this have been in the works for almost a decade already, so this really isn't huge news.
I worked on an atmospheric sensing project a few months back that was loosely associated with the Thirty meter telescope through the Center for adaptive optics at UC Santa Cruz. One of postdocs from Caltech that was working with us disappeared for a few months to scout a location for this thing. Apparently they want to build it in the high deserts of South America; the reasons being the lack of rain, less atmosphere to look through, and virtually no light pollution. Keck, the huge pair of telescopes in Hawaii can only operate about half the time because of bad weather.
Fun telescope fact: Without adaptive optics (the thousands of tiny actuators behind the mirrors in big telescopes) no matter how big your lens, you will have the same effective resolution as a 10 inch telescope. This is because the air between the scope and the stars is constantly shifting. It is also why the Hubble can take super clear images despite its small size.
As a computer vision researcher, I thought I'd share a little insight as to why this is helpful for the computer vision community.
Whenever one wants to train an algorithm to detect or recognize an object in a data set, one needs both the data set and the ground truth. The data set is usually a large set of images and the ground truth is some semantic information associated with each image, such as the locations of people and cars, or perhaps a representative word or category. The data set is usually easy to obtain, however the ground truth usually involves manual input. Considering that data sets regularly have more than 10,000 images, this can be quite a challenge since it can't be automated (if it could, your research would be pointless eh?).
This is where the peekaboom application comes into play. Now, the task of annotating the images with semantic information is distributed among thousands of slashdot readers and other assorted nerdy individuals. Not only does this program provide a single ground truth for researchers to analyze, but a statistical description of the ground truth, that is validated by another user guessing the semantic information.
More information about this project can be found at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/research.html
As an aside, a friend of mine is working on a project to turn planetary transit model fitting into a web-based game. Keep a lookout for it in the next few months.
It actually doesn't take that long to become proficient. I can copy morse faster than I can type on my cell phone and I can SMS at about 10 wpm. I learned morse while working on my general class license (I'm still working on it). It wasn't that hard when you try using the koch method. Only took me about 12 hours to learn the first 30 or so characters at 18 wpm. -KG6YZK
In other news...
As paid content continues to rise in popularity, slashdot can now put the final nail in the coffin of the 'nail in the coffin' story punchline.
Strong EE background? Where did you hear that? His site states that he has a BS in Journalism and an MS in Computer Science. This project really has no serious EE involved. 95% of the design is in Computer Architechure, Logic Design and compiler software. I can't imagine how long it took to debug that thing.
spaghetti sauce, coffee spill, et al.
s
'et al.' is short for 'et alii'. This translates directly to "and others." However it is only used to refer to people, not things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrase
I believe the tool is meant to simplify modifying an objects 3d appearance in a 2d image. I imagine you will be able to specify a vanishing point and a ground plane, and then move a selected object around in that ground plane and have Photoshop perform a perspective transform and relighting on your object.
This is not a trivial task which is probably why it has taken them so long to get out. Assuming I'm correct about the nature of the tool that is.
most internet users never heard about this service
That is a bit of an understatement.
I can't think of more than two people I know outside of academia that have ever heard of usenet or newsgroups. Use net has been dead along time. Yes, it still has many users. But theres still people out there browsing the web with netscape 4.1 too, that doesn't mean the old school netscape userbase is flourishing though.
Since when have the RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft been "Left wing" organizations? Last I checked they were all for profit corporations and associations.
I agree that these companies are promoting bad policies, but to say their intention is to enslave the world and promote socialism is out of line. Corporations do what they have to in order to make money; that is their only agenda.
Right now the RIAA and MPAA have the option of changing their profit model or litigating to preserve their existing one. They have taken the later approach because it is safer. If their encroachment on our freedoms is to be stopped we are going to have to show them that the new profit models (iTunes et. al.) are superior to the old.
I think this project could go either way at this point. They have the momentum from the success of Ffox/Tbird and there is a market for an OS calender project. But in order to make this product worth my time would be if it would sync with my palm and share dates with other users. What bugs me about my current software is the that I have to enter in holidays manualy. I'd be nice if I could set it to insert holidays, and local events from some source on the internet like my school's portal site.
In my experience, if you don't tell your postscript printer to use ascii coded image data you can get crazy compatibility errors. That is probably why efax screwed up.
Actually, 'that liberal radio network' also know as Air America Radio is still around and doing quite well. Al Franken's show has even managed to beat out Limbaugh in some markets (NYC).
"I would try and find some great master to study under"
That's what we call grad school. Find someone with an interesting research field, and agree to be his/her bitch for the next few years. It usually doesn't pay much, but it's better than unemployment and the experience is better than industry. (You might end up with a ph. d!)
Also, "Another way would be to go to India"
The reason so many US tech jobs are going to India right now is not demand but supply. They have over a hundred thousand unemployed programmers. Stay out of India, stay in school till the economy improves.
If they do get that $97 billion they could...
* Invade Iraq...
* Buy Microsoft...
* Develop a 'Star Wars' Missile Defense system...
* Give $300+ to every person in the US...
* Or, pay a bunch of lawyers millions of dollars to sue copy write violators the world over...
Yes, sci-fi I have read has influenced how I think about programming and technology in general.
However, Neil Stephenson is the last person I would draw upon for inspiration.
William Gibson, Arthur C. Clark and Gene Roddenberry are much better examples.
Waterproof? Check Vaporproof? Check Shockproof? Check Idiotproof? ...
Guess the jury is still out on that one. After all this is the military were talking about here.
Many DragonBall Z fans will disagree, but what makes DBZ such an addicting show is its "soap opera" like characteristics. Yea sure, there is action, fighting, and cool explosions, but thats just what gets people interested in it. What keeps people hooked is the suspense. Every episode ends as though something really really cool is going to happen in the next episode, but in reality those really cool things only happen like every 8 episodes.
:: Anime : DragonBall Z
Daytime TV : Soap Opera