Bill Nye . . . The Science Guy was originally a sketch on Almost Live. He would do things like take vinegar and baking soda and say that mixing these was like putting the superbowl and a wedding anniversary on the same day . . .
I liked his Speed Walker sketches . . . a superhero that walked heel-toe, heel-toe . . . and he was also one of the "High-Five'en White Guys"
From the Lawrence Berkley national lab article:
Images: These two images portray the movement of the nano-sized probes. On the left, a false-color overlay of fluorescence from a cell taken at four minute intervals reveals the dots moving from the green to the red positions. On the right, a large aggregate of immobile dots is indicated with the red arrow, while the circled stars and arrows indicate dots that move.
So if I spill this stuff on my hands, do I get to see a swirling mass of fluorescence with dancing stars and arrows for hours on end? Sign me up!
Thank god that someone recongnizes this . . . 6 months ago I bought a airkine ticket from Travelocity and had it shipped to Spain. . . They completely screwed up the address. They have a country field in their delivery address section, but they seem to have no clue what to do with the rest of the information.
They got the region (state) wrong. Barcelona is not just a city, its also a region (equivalent to a state in Spain). Someone decided that it must be my city (It's not). They seem to have no way of handling the neighborhood (subset of a city but bigger than a street) and of course they didn't put the zip in the right place (before the city).
It took two and a half weeks and several calls to FedEx to sort this out. Travelocity's customer service absolutely refused to take ownership of the problem. They seem to think that they know my address better than I do. Kudos to those of you that recoginize that the US doesn't set the standard for international addressing.
Needless to say, I tell most of the expats I meet to avoid Travelocity like the plague . . .
This shorter summary contains selected excerpts of this must-read article." Come on . ..grow up . . . a "must-read article" That sounds like a troll if I ever heard one.
Does this guy actually think that this article is of improtance and relevance to every single slashdot reader? Sounds like old TV commercials . . . "Tonight a very special episode of Blossom . . . the one you can't afford to miss . . .." This is just poor sensationalized journalism. Does Roland Piquepaille think that/. readers are that gullible or does he think that we're just that stupid?
Oops . . . forgot about that. The same problem with film scanning and grain holds true for many black and white films (T-Max is one that I can think of offhand with a difficult grain) . . . this would have been a better example than Kodachrome.
Depending on how large the color crystals are, I don't think it would be too hard to plot each crystal's location. You could either plot the center, or try to draw the geometric shape of the grain using shape ananlysis algorithms.
Film scanners use different algorithms for constructing images depending on the type of film scanned. For example kodachrome is particularly difficult to scan . . . older film scanners had a lot of trouble and in fact even professional 35mm film scanners did not recommend scanning kodachrome. Nowadays, film scanners typically recognize some of the more difficult films and apply particular algorithms to construct the final image. . . not quite as robust as you describe, but along the same lines . . . compensating for color, density and crystaline structure of different films.
If you want to get really fancy, you can look at the arrangement of the crystals, try to reverse-engineer the light as it struck the film, and virtually re-expose the image by plotting a new grain map on film.
I'm no expert, but I'm not sure how possible this would be . . . Film is intended to collect color data . . . the lense focuses the light onto the film . . . . I would guess that one would need to know the lense before one could guess the directionality of light striking the film . . . in fact in the 35mm photo world DXO already does this for several lenses. Each lens has a particular profile and the software will compensate for distortion imparted by the lens.
No its probably not terminating the right to the patents . . . I'm not even sure that they could do that. They are probably granting the open source community a license to these patents to use them in open source software for the term of the patent.
As the patent holder, they could even license these patents to open source projects only and ban the patents from any non-open source project (e.g. not let Microsoft incorporate these patents into their closed source software).
This is so stupid. They are regulating speech -- and political speech at that! The supreme law of the land says they can't do that.
Come on . . . that's inflammatory and you know it . ..
Congress is able to regulate slander, libel, and defamation. Congress is able to censor public broadcasts. Congress allows local governments to pass laws regulating obsenity. Congress requires public television boradcasters to run public service announcements and a required amount of children's educational programming.
The supreme law of the land does not make this country a free for all. The founding fathers never intended to protect criminals against libel and such. You should bound your comments . . . just like the founding fathers of the US bounded their intentions in the constitution with common law doctrine.
The candidate can still be found liable if parties representing him/her are using foreign servers.
If a foreign group attempts to campaign for a US candidate online, they would face the same hurdles (or lack thereof) that they face now. They would not be able to contribute money (or consideration) to the candidate. If the candidate is found to be knowingly colluding with foreign groups for consideration, they may be in violation of US federal law.
A foreigner that wanted a particular candidate elected would not jepardize this candidate by providing illegal aid. A candidate that was offered foreign aid would not want to accept it for fear of jepardizing eligibilty.
I think that a lot of SUV owners would claim that they would never stop driving their SUV unless gas prices get superduper high . . . but I'd be willing to bet that the many of ones driving the giant SUV's that don't even get double digit mileage in the cities would cave if they knew that gas prices were going to stay at a $2/gallon mark longterm.
Without more information the aforementioned poll is not very useful. Perhaps it doesn't lie, but it certainly smears the truth. Is a Trekker or Scion an SUV? These people get much better gas milage than a Suburban or a Yukon . . . I would think a lot of yukon drivers would cave well before $3/gallon . . . I think we need better data resolution.
And have we determined who the average SUV driver is? If its a macho or stubborn "I'll never driver a rice powered subcompact import!" type person, they're much more likely to exagerate on a poll like the aforementioned one.
And who conducted the poll? A "prophet of doom" trying to cast SUV owners as hardheaded polluters? Or a impartial group?
I remember Usenet fondly. It was a great source of information and discussion, but the signal to noise ratio got way to high.
If the signal to noise ratio gets high, you get lots of (presumably good) signal and relatively little noise. I think that what was meant was that the signal to noise ratio got too low . . . unless spam postings and AOL newbie pollution from Usenet in the 90's is considered signal and original and thoughtful postings from individuals is considered noise.
If you have a big boat (one that uses a lot of gas and that will presumably garner a big gasoline tax rebate) . . . you don't take the boat home. You leave it in the water at the marina.
That's a good point . . . I can understand California's revenue concern, but I think that its time that the tax system got reworked to account for environmental damage.
Those that pollute more should pay more because they presumably do more damage to our environment that our tax dollars have to pay for later (in terms of respiratory health care (ozone and other nasty air pollution), global warming (CO/CO2 type air pollution), etc.).
If this system were implemented properly, one should be able to redistribute the tax burden with no net shortfall of revenue. This proposed "mile tax" policy seems to do exactly the opposite; rewarding the polluters that have the highest social cost. That's the part that concerns me.
Your point is valid, but gasoline tax was sold to citizens in many states as a sort of "use tax." Those that drive more pay more. Those that drive heavier vehicles that (presumably) do more road damage (and presumably get worse milage) pay more.
I think that it will be hard to uncouple this argument and go to set revenue figure that is divided by the number of gallons sold. A lot of politicians that snookered the public into gasoline taxes will have to "eat crow."
I would buy whatever is recommended by the manufacturer of the car. Contrary to what the gas stations want you to think, higher octane is not necessarily better . . . Engines are designed for a specific octane gasoline. Exceeding that rating does not make the car run "better" in fact depending on the vehicle, it could make it run worse.
Some advice for buying automobile gasoline . . . Mix suppliers so that you get a mix of additives in your car (the additives are what differentiate the brands) and don't buy from a station that doesn't have high turnover (slower turnover at the station increases the liklihood of a significant amount of water in the gasoline).
I'm not in the military, just a consultant that travels a lot worldwide . . . Even I can appreciate the emotional difference between IM'ing and hearing the voice of the people you love.
It's easy for me to empathize with the desires of these soldiers . . . they are away from home longer than I am, and they are risking their lives. I can completely understand their desire for something more than IM and cheaper than normal long distance rates for hearing the voices of their loved ones . . .
Yes, our service generally works with DSL Satellite Internet connections or any Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) device (i.e. your home router). DSL requires Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) authentication "username & password" to access the Internet so you will have to configure your Vonage adapter or home router for this service. There may be some latency inherent on a satellite connection or line of sight issues that could affect audio quality when making calls through the Vonage service. Our calls require 90 kbps of consistent upload/download speed to make and receive calls through the Vonage network.
Was this really a surprise? Did anyone think that open osurce software is as a general rule well documented or documented as well as many commercial projects that have project management (for better or worse) and technical writers on staff to do internal as well as external documentation?
These kind of taxes are generally called "use taxes" as the users end up paying the taxes. Gasoline taxes are a use tax in a sense. Many states earmark a large portion of gasoline tax money for road maintenance.
In Texas if one gases up their boat, one can actually send in the receipts to the state government and get their state tax money back from the gasoline purchase . . . because gasoline taxes in TX are earmarked for roads and boats don't use roads.
If one reduces gasoline tax and taxes by the mile instead, there is less incentive to buy a more fuel efficient vehicle . . . you pay the same tax whether you drive 1 mile in a Prius hybrid, a minivan or a hummer. This means that there is less incentive to drive the more fuel efficient vehicle.
Currently, inefficent vehicles that use more gas actually cost more in taxes per mile because gas is taxed by the gallon or by price. Consuming more gas per mile results in more taxes per mile.
Take away this penalty and I'm certain that there will be more gas guzzling SUV's and other less efficient vehicles on the road because it difference in operating cost between fuel efficient and gas guzzling vehicles will decrease.
So the same government that is mandating zero emission and reduced emission car sales is now trying to take away the consumer incentive for high efficiency vehicles? This is blatantly hypocritical . ..
I would be in favor of jacking up the gasoline tax instead. This would put more pressure on the enviromental offenders that drive SUV's and other inefficient vehicles. Afraid that this will punish businesses? Give them a tax credit or tax rebate for business vehicles that are legitimately needed for the business.
Speaking of tin foil hats . . . I'd just get a tin foil hat for the GPS antenae . . . Then as far as CA government is concerned; my car never left home.
After reading your post, I went to the PCMag Dvorak column and read a couple of his previous posts:
He claims that VoIP is something of a fad and the quality is poor. He also claims that MS is great at innovating and poor at marketing.
I couldn't bring myself to read any more of his dribble . . . its poorly written, and I have to agree with you. He seems to take a contrary position merely to get a rise out of the masses and attract a following among career contrarians (the people that provide 'me too' feedback to his column).
Isn't this the same guy that came up with the DVORAK keyboard (The keyboard with the keys in alphabetical order)?
Slashdot Mirror
I liked his Speed Walker sketches . . . a superhero that walked heel-toe, heel-toe . . . and he was also one of the "High-Five'en White Guys"
So if I spill this stuff on my hands, do I get to see a swirling mass of fluorescence with dancing stars and arrows for hours on end? Sign me up!
They got the region (state) wrong. Barcelona is not just a city, its also a region (equivalent to a state in Spain). Someone decided that it must be my city (It's not). They seem to have no way of handling the neighborhood (subset of a city but bigger than a street) and of course they didn't put the zip in the right place (before the city).
It took two and a half weeks and several calls to FedEx to sort this out. Travelocity's customer service absolutely refused to take ownership of the problem. They seem to think that they know my address better than I do. Kudos to those of you that recoginize that the US doesn't set the standard for international addressing.
Needless to say, I tell most of the expats I meet to avoid Travelocity like the plague . . .
Does this guy actually think that this article is of improtance and relevance to every single slashdot reader? Sounds like old TV commercials . . . "Tonight a very special episode of Blossom . . . the one you can't afford to miss . . .
Oops . . . forgot about that. The same problem with film scanning and grain holds true for many black and white films (T-Max is one that I can think of offhand with a difficult grain) . . . this would have been a better example than Kodachrome.
Hmm . . . do you get any flickering due to the different frame rate of the projector and the video camera?
Film scanners use different algorithms for constructing images depending on the type of film scanned. For example kodachrome is particularly difficult to scan . . . older film scanners had a lot of trouble and in fact even professional 35mm film scanners did not recommend scanning kodachrome. Nowadays, film scanners typically recognize some of the more difficult films and apply particular algorithms to construct the final image. . . not quite as robust as you describe, but along the same lines . . . compensating for color, density and crystaline structure of different films.
If you want to get really fancy, you can look at the arrangement of the crystals, try to reverse-engineer the light as it struck the film, and virtually re-expose the image by plotting a new grain map on film.
I'm no expert, but I'm not sure how possible this would be . . . Film is intended to collect color data . . . the lense focuses the light onto the film . . . . I would guess that one would need to know the lense before one could guess the directionality of light striking the film . . . in fact in the 35mm photo world DXO already does this for several lenses. Each lens has a particular profile and the software will compensate for distortion imparted by the lens.
As the patent holder, they could even license these patents to open source projects only and ban the patents from any non-open source project (e.g. not let Microsoft incorporate these patents into their closed source software).
I think that the value of volunteer time is exempted from campaign finance laws . . .
Congress is able to regulate slander, libel, and defamation. Congress is able to censor public broadcasts. Congress allows local governments to pass laws regulating obsenity. Congress requires public television boradcasters to run public service announcements and a required amount of children's educational programming.
The supreme law of the land does not make this country a free for all. The founding fathers never intended to protect criminals against libel and such. You should bound your comments . . . just like the founding fathers of the US bounded their intentions in the constitution with common law doctrine.
If a foreign group attempts to campaign for a US candidate online, they would face the same hurdles (or lack thereof) that they face now. They would not be able to contribute money (or consideration) to the candidate. If the candidate is found to be knowingly colluding with foreign groups for consideration, they may be in violation of US federal law.
A foreigner that wanted a particular candidate elected would not jepardize this candidate by providing illegal aid. A candidate that was offered foreign aid would not want to accept it for fear of jepardizing eligibilty.
people . . . . lie . . . on polls
I think that a lot of SUV owners would claim that they would never stop driving their SUV unless gas prices get superduper high . . . but I'd be willing to bet that the many of ones driving the giant SUV's that don't even get double digit mileage in the cities would cave if they knew that gas prices were going to stay at a $2/gallon mark longterm.
Without more information the aforementioned poll is not very useful. Perhaps it doesn't lie, but it certainly smears the truth. Is a Trekker or Scion an SUV? These people get much better gas milage than a Suburban or a Yukon . . . I would think a lot of yukon drivers would cave well before $3/gallon . . . I think we need better data resolution.
And have we determined who the average SUV driver is? If its a macho or stubborn "I'll never driver a rice powered subcompact import!" type person, they're much more likely to exagerate on a poll like the aforementioned one.
And who conducted the poll? A "prophet of doom" trying to cast SUV owners as hardheaded polluters? Or a impartial group?
If the signal to noise ratio gets high, you get lots of (presumably good) signal and relatively little noise. I think that what was meant was that the signal to noise ratio got too low . . . unless spam postings and AOL newbie pollution from Usenet in the 90's is considered signal and original and thoughtful postings from individuals is considered noise.
If you have a big boat (one that uses a lot of gas and that will presumably garner a big gasoline tax rebate) . . . you don't take the boat home. You leave it in the water at the marina.
Those that pollute more should pay more because they presumably do more damage to our environment that our tax dollars have to pay for later (in terms of respiratory health care (ozone and other nasty air pollution), global warming (CO/CO2 type air pollution), etc.).
If this system were implemented properly, one should be able to redistribute the tax burden with no net shortfall of revenue. This proposed "mile tax" policy seems to do exactly the opposite; rewarding the polluters that have the highest social cost. That's the part that concerns me.
I think that it will be hard to uncouple this argument and go to set revenue figure that is divided by the number of gallons sold. A lot of politicians that snookered the public into gasoline taxes will have to "eat crow."
Some advice for buying automobile gasoline . . . Mix suppliers so that you get a mix of additives in your car (the additives are what differentiate the brands) and don't buy from a station that doesn't have high turnover (slower turnover at the station increases the liklihood of a significant amount of water in the gasoline).
It's easy for me to empathize with the desires of these soldiers . . . they are away from home longer than I am, and they are risking their lives. I can completely understand their desire for something more than IM and cheaper than normal long distance rates for hearing the voices of their loved ones . . .
Vonage says this about satellite internet:
Yes, our service generally works with DSL Satellite Internet connections or any Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) device (i.e. your home router). DSL requires Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) authentication "username & password" to access the Internet so you will have to configure your Vonage adapter or home router for this service. There may be some latency inherent on a satellite connection or line of sight issues that could affect audio quality when making calls through the Vonage service. Our calls require 90 kbps of consistent upload/download speed to make and receive calls through the Vonage network.
Was this really a surprise? Did anyone think that open osurce software is as a general rule well documented or documented as well as many commercial projects that have project management (for better or worse) and technical writers on staff to do internal as well as external documentation?
In Texas if one gases up their boat, one can actually send in the receipts to the state government and get their state tax money back from the gasoline purchase . . . because gasoline taxes in TX are earmarked for roads and boats don't use roads.
If one reduces gasoline tax and taxes by the mile instead, there is less incentive to buy a more fuel efficient vehicle . . . you pay the same tax whether you drive 1 mile in a Prius hybrid, a minivan or a hummer. This means that there is less incentive to drive the more fuel efficient vehicle.
Currently, inefficent vehicles that use more gas actually cost more in taxes per mile because gas is taxed by the gallon or by price. Consuming more gas per mile results in more taxes per mile.
Take away this penalty and I'm certain that there will be more gas guzzling SUV's and other less efficient vehicles on the road because it difference in operating cost between fuel efficient and gas guzzling vehicles will decrease.
I would be in favor of jacking up the gasoline tax instead. This would put more pressure on the enviromental offenders that drive SUV's and other inefficient vehicles. Afraid that this will punish businesses? Give them a tax credit or tax rebate for business vehicles that are legitimately needed for the business.
Speaking of tin foil hats . . . I'd just get a tin foil hat for the GPS antenae . . . Then as far as CA government is concerned; my car never left home.
He claims that VoIP is something of a fad and the quality is poor. He also claims that MS is great at innovating and poor at marketing.
I couldn't bring myself to read any more of his dribble . . . its poorly written, and I have to agree with you. He seems to take a contrary position merely to get a rise out of the masses and attract a following among career contrarians (the people that provide 'me too' feedback to his column).
Isn't this the same guy that came up with the DVORAK keyboard (The keyboard with the keys in alphabetical order)?