Does anybody remember the old (early 90s) DOS game, Stunt Island? Essentially, the game provided an island full of a number of different sets, such as a city, an oil rig, a canyon, and so forth. The player could position cameras and props around these sets, and create event triggers for things like camera pans and object movement. The game also had an editing mode where you could splice together taped footage and insert sound effects. The game had a bias towards airplane stunts, but could be used to film virtually any sort of movie. Back in middle school my friend and I actually used it to create a short documentary about battles from World War II. Stunt Island was greatly loved by those who used it, and it still has somewhat of a cult following.
My question is, why hasn't anybody created something like this more recently? Although FPS game engines work for this, they certainly aren't designed for it, and there's quite a bit of roughness involved when one actually tries to create a movie. 3D animation modelers can also be used, but generally someone creating a movie has to focus on too many low-level details.
I'm actually considering starting up an open-source project this summer to try to create such a movie-creating tool, making heavy use of pre-existing graphics libraries like OGRE. Would anyone else be interested in helping out with such an endeavour?
The way I see it, programming languages of the future aren't going to evolve from spoken language. Instead, the spoken languages of the future will evolve from programming languages.
Actually, a girl I occasionally swing dance with is doing a senior thesis for her English degree studying how the way people structure English language has changed since the advent of programming languages. Basically, she's looking at things like whether or not people have begun using things like conditional statements more often in English. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much she has so far -- she tends to change the topic whenever I bring it up.
Re:I don't get it
on
Cell-Phone Wars
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm beginning to suspect that what really annoys people about public cell phone usage is that they are missing out on half of conversation that they would really like to listen in on in its entirety.
That's actually a big part of the problem. If you can only hear one end of the conversation, it makes it much more difficult for your brain to identify it as background and ignore it. How often do you think somebody next to you is saying something to you, when it turns out they're actually speaking on their cell phone?
Why is it socially acceptable to talk to people but as soon as the person is separated by a bit of technology is it considered obnoxious and socially unacceptable?
Psychologically speaking, it's much more difficult to ignore a conversation if you can only hear one end of it. When you can't hear the other end, mechanisms in your brain start going off signaling that the person is probably talking to you and require your attention. The fact that people on cell phones tend to speak much more loudly enhances the problem.
NASA has software for automatic image mosaicing? That would be really cool. I used to do research in a neurobiology lab, and I remember the people in the lab spent quite a bit of time manually putting together mosaics of pictures of neurons from the microscope. I actually tried to put some code together myself for the problem, but got diverted towards other things.
It's not quite a space elevator, but it looks like the next Mars rover planned is going to be lowered down to the surface by a tether attached to a "Skycrane" craft hovering 5 meters in the air. This is to prevent the potential problem of a rover getting stuck in a landing platform. After lowering the rover the Skycrane will fly off to another area.
At least here at Carnegie Mellon University, we have access to the statistics of Faculty Course Evaluations. Anybody with a login can see how professors were rated by their students in past semester, based on a number of different criteria. This is an incredibly useful tool for determining which classes to take. I'd be surprised if other schools didn't do something similar.
I actually had the exact opposite experience. In a programming project-based course I took recently, most students took the approach you described, where tasks were delegated to each partner and they'd recombine their effort. My partner and I decided to be different, and relied on pair-programming for most of our work.
The pair-programming approach seemed to work much better. Once the deadline came (and passed) other groups were still struggling with trying to get their components to fit together properly, having difficulties tracking down which component a bug originated from. With our code, however, we both understood what was going on, and were able to fix things much more easily.
That's one of the things I love about the addall.com book price search engine -- it also checks prices of non-US stores. On a number of occassions I've purchased books from the UK or Canada at a fraction of the US price, and after I took the course, managed to resell it for more than I bought it for!
Actually, in many of the courses I've taken, the professors have actually suggested purchasing older editions when they're mostly the same as the new ones.
My personal favorite is addall.com, which searches several bookstores for a particular book and gives you back the lowest prices (including shipping). Incredibly handy.
One possibility for somebody with your background is to get involved with medical robotics, perhaps getting an MS or PhD. I know my own university has several projects in the area to create things like robot surgery, robot care assistants, and so forth. I'm sure these sorts of programs probably have a shortage of medical professionals who are also technically astute.
I dunno... I really don't see much of a point in temporarily putting humans in a place just so they can sit around while scientific instruments do their work, then leave. In all the historical examples you described, if the explorers had access to robots and were confronted by the same expected cost/benefit ratios that are found in space exploration, I suspect they'd go with the robots.
Of course, if they were actually going there for colonization, that would be a very different story.
You mean what sort of whacko would want to devote their life to exploring a completely new world, be surrounded by the most sophisticated technology available, and be known for the lifespan of humanity as the first space colonist? I'd certainly consider myself such a whacko, and imagine several other slashdotters would be eager to sign up.
Many people spend their lives in near-isolation devoted to research, or risk their lives as test pilots to advance aeronautical knowledge and experience an incredible thrill. This really isn't that far off.
In any case, it's not like they'd likely be in isolation permanently. The whole point is to send later colonization missions, and if there's already somebody there who can't get back, that gives later efforts all the more focus.
I agree somewhat. Robots should be used for remote exploration and discovery, as they are much cheaper and safer, and research into robotics technologies have direct ground-side benefits. Robots could also be used for autonomous construction of orbital spacecraft and Mars habitats, and then, once everything's ready, you send over human colonists (probably much earlier than you'd have with human construction). With robots you have much lower costs and no potential deaths to cause public panic.
The other day I stumbled upon what could quite possibly be the coolest Java applet ever. Once you start the applet, you assemble "bioblocs," which are 3D creatures assembled from connected blocks. Once you've assembled your creature, you can have it use genetic algorithms to try to learn how to most effectively walk, run, jump, and turn around using the blocks you've given it. I assembled a snake-like creature the other day, and was intrigued to see that it evolved a walking movement very similar to that of a sidewinder's.
In addition to assembling your own creatures, you can also load creatures that others have previously assembled, as well as enter your creatures into contests. A lot of the previously assembled creatures are -very- impressive, with movements quite similar to those evolved in nature.
I'm not so sure about that. I've actually never used Outlook before, but I settled on using Evolution (and Pine) regularly b/c the UI worked well for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anybody remember the old (early 90s) DOS game, Stunt Island? Essentially, the game provided an island full of a number of different sets, such as a city, an oil rig, a canyon, and so forth. The player could position cameras and props around these sets, and create event triggers for things like camera pans and object movement. The game also had an editing mode where you could splice together taped footage and insert sound effects. The game had a bias towards airplane stunts, but could be used to film virtually any sort of movie. Back in middle school my friend and I actually used it to create a short documentary about battles from World War II. Stunt Island was greatly loved by those who used it, and it still has somewhat of a cult following.
My question is, why hasn't anybody created something like this more recently? Although FPS game engines work for this, they certainly aren't designed for it, and there's quite a bit of roughness involved when one actually tries to create a movie. 3D animation modelers can also be used, but generally someone creating a movie has to focus on too many low-level details.
I'm actually considering starting up an open-source project this summer to try to create such a movie-creating tool, making heavy use of pre-existing graphics libraries like OGRE. Would anyone else be interested in helping out with such an endeavour?
Wow, this is probably the best post I've seen in quite a while. I'm just putting a comment here so I can find it easier later. ;)
Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers!
The way I see it, programming languages of the future aren't going to evolve from spoken language. Instead, the spoken languages of the future will evolve from programming languages.
Actually, a girl I occasionally swing dance with is doing a senior thesis for her English degree studying how the way people structure English language has changed since the advent of programming languages. Basically, she's looking at things like whether or not people have begun using things like conditional statements more often in English. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much she has so far -- she tends to change the topic whenever I bring it up.
I'm beginning to suspect that what really annoys people about public cell phone usage is that they are missing out on half of conversation that they would really like to listen in on in its entirety.
That's actually a big part of the problem. If you can only hear one end of the conversation, it makes it much more difficult for your brain to identify it as background and ignore it. How often do you think somebody next to you is saying something to you, when it turns out they're actually speaking on their cell phone?
Why is it socially acceptable to talk to people but as soon as the person is separated by a bit of technology is it considered obnoxious and socially unacceptable?
Psychologically speaking, it's much more difficult to ignore a conversation if you can only hear one end of it. When you can't hear the other end, mechanisms in your brain start going off signaling that the person is probably talking to you and require your attention. The fact that people on cell phones tend to speak much more loudly enhances the problem.
I don't know about physical markings, but I believe right now they have to market them as "cultured" diamonds.
NASA has software for automatic image mosaicing? That would be really cool. I used to do research in a neurobiology lab, and I remember the people in the lab spent quite a bit of time manually putting together mosaics of pictures of neurons from the microscope. I actually tried to put some code together myself for the problem, but got diverted towards other things.
Out of curiosity, which NASA image processing software are you referring to?
It's not quite a space elevator, but it looks like the next Mars rover planned is going to be lowered down to the surface by a tether attached to a "Skycrane" craft hovering 5 meters in the air. This is to prevent the potential problem of a rover getting stuck in a landing platform. After lowering the rover the Skycrane will fly off to another area.
At least here at Carnegie Mellon University, we have access to the statistics of Faculty Course Evaluations. Anybody with a login can see how professors were rated by their students in past semester, based on a number of different criteria. This is an incredibly useful tool for determining which classes to take. I'd be surprised if other schools didn't do something similar.
I actually had the exact opposite experience. In a programming project-based course I took recently, most students took the approach you described, where tasks were delegated to each partner and they'd recombine their effort. My partner and I decided to be different, and relied on pair-programming for most of our work.
The pair-programming approach seemed to work much better. Once the deadline came (and passed) other groups were still struggling with trying to get their components to fit together properly, having difficulties tracking down which component a bug originated from. With our code, however, we both understood what was going on, and were able to fix things much more easily.
That's one of the things I love about the addall.com book price search engine -- it also checks prices of non-US stores. On a number of occassions I've purchased books from the UK or Canada at a fraction of the US price, and after I took the course, managed to resell it for more than I bought it for!
Actually, in many of the courses I've taken, the professors have actually suggested purchasing older editions when they're mostly the same as the new ones.
My personal favorite is addall.com, which searches several bookstores for a particular book and gives you back the lowest prices (including shipping). Incredibly handy.
One possibility for somebody with your background is to get involved with medical robotics, perhaps getting an MS or PhD. I know my own university has several projects in the area to create things like robot surgery, robot care assistants, and so forth. I'm sure these sorts of programs probably have a shortage of medical professionals who are also technically astute.
I dunno... I really don't see much of a point in temporarily putting humans in a place just so they can sit around while scientific instruments do their work, then leave. In all the historical examples you described, if the explorers had access to robots and were confronted by the same expected cost/benefit ratios that are found in space exploration, I suspect they'd go with the robots.
Of course, if they were actually going there for colonization, that would be a very different story.
Oh wow. Do you happen to have links to the articles you mentioned? I tried to find them on cnn, but wasn't successful.
This seems to give a half-decent explanation.
You mean what sort of whacko would want to devote their life to exploring a completely new world, be surrounded by the most sophisticated technology available, and be known for the lifespan of humanity as the first space colonist? I'd certainly consider myself such a whacko, and imagine several other slashdotters would be eager to sign up.
Many people spend their lives in near-isolation devoted to research, or risk their lives as test pilots to advance aeronautical knowledge and experience an incredible thrill. This really isn't that far off.
In any case, it's not like they'd likely be in isolation permanently. The whole point is to send later colonization missions, and if there's already somebody there who can't get back, that gives later efforts all the more focus.
It would certainly be nice to have that sort of money, if only to distribute to Earth-side family mem bers and charities of your choice.
I agree somewhat. Robots should be used for remote exploration and discovery, as they are much cheaper and safer, and research into robotics technologies have direct ground-side benefits. Robots could also be used for autonomous construction of orbital spacecraft and Mars habitats, and then, once everything's ready, you send over human colonists (probably much earlier than you'd have with human construction). With robots you have much lower costs and no potential deaths to cause public panic.
You can't write code to run on a real dog.
The other day I stumbled upon what could quite possibly be the coolest Java applet ever. Once you start the applet, you assemble "bioblocs," which are 3D creatures assembled from connected blocks. Once you've assembled your creature, you can have it use genetic algorithms to try to learn how to most effectively walk, run, jump, and turn around using the blocks you've given it. I assembled a snake-like creature the other day, and was intrigued to see that it evolved a walking movement very similar to that of a sidewinder's.
In addition to assembling your own creatures, you can also load creatures that others have previously assembled, as well as enter your creatures into contests. A lot of the previously assembled creatures are -very- impressive, with movements quite similar to those evolved in nature.
I'm not so sure about that. I've actually never used Outlook before, but I settled on using Evolution (and Pine) regularly b/c the UI worked well for me.