Actually Photosynth started off as a PhD project called Photo Tourism. You can download the source code of Bundler (GPL license) as well. The idea of using geo-tagged photos to create a 3D view of the world is really cool. However there are various challenges: occlusion, moving objects (people, foliage,...), changing illumination, different cameras, cameras with distortion. The software needs to be robust and discard those "outliers".
SceneLib is a software for simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) which essentially is a similar problem. However here the assumption is that the camera is always the same.
Creating a panorama with and Enblend on the other hand only allows pictures taken from a single view point.
When seeing a picture of a two-thousand ton manned space ship next to a space telescope with a huge nanometer accuracy mirror being repaired by a crew of people in space suits all whizzing through space with a class G star looming in the background, "simple" was not exactly the first thing which came to my mind.
Competitive advantage on a global scale could be much more easily achieved by patent and copyright reform. Furthermore there should be a rule that all results from publicly funded research (even if only partially funded) are made publicly available.
Faster internet is nice but it won't help the economy if the relevant information is locked up legally!
Interesting story. I'm surprised that this rather tentative expression of concerns caused such a reaction.
Myself I am more familiar with what's going on in universities (of "developed" countries). At high-profile universities (i.e. prime targets), students get free licenses for Office products. In other universities the situation has deteriorated to a point, where you need support from higher management if you want to get internet access for a computer which is not running Windows.
What the government doesn't get is that who owns your infrastructure, owns your country. If the African government would avoid other country's mistakes, not only would it serve best the interest of their citizens, but it would also help create genuine competition.
Like Richard Stallman said at the WSIS Tunis panel discussion 2005: This is electronic colonization, i.e. the Africans are supposed to pay for foreign products and remain ignorant and dependent.
In 2050 a customer walks through a home robotics store. He is approached by a salesman.
Salesman: Would you like to purchase a robot razor? Customer: But I have a razor already. Salesman: A robot razor is more convenient to use and much faster. Let me show you.
The salesman shows a demonstration video.
Customer (impressed): That's a really close shave. I don't understand how this works. Doesn't every person have a different face? Salesman: Only at the first time.
As a retirement hobby he plays with viruses. Even so he creates one of the most well known pharmaceuticals by just using bird shit as ingredient. For lack of a challenge he then creates a virus which is able to mutate eight times faster than the best natural virus. And now he is the leading expert at solving the challenge he himself has set.
As far as I know it is quite normal that an employment contract forbids you to talk negatively about your company in public (during and after your employment). So they have a legal means of firing you if you simply expose corporate malpractice to the public. That can make it difficult for employees to defend themselves especially if they depend on their income.
The Kindle looks nice and it has a high resolution (1200x824). But I am looking forward to upcoming products such as the txtr reader: Linux-based, hackable, and proper support of DRM-free formats.
Angband is awesome. Because the text display is rather simple, it allows the developers to focus on the game play. There are even text animations when throwing a ball of fire. Unfortunately it's difficult to play Angband on Slashdot because of all the input filters:( ##### #.>.# #.... #.@.# #####
If Ubuntu/Kubuntu was merely about attempting to create a free replacement of the Windows API, it would be like skipping the embrace part altogether. It's impossible to stay compatible with Windows software (just think about the ODF perversion) and there always will be a new API with undocumented/patented/DMCAed extras such as DirectX 11, DotNet 4.0, WMA,...
I think Shuttleworth has said something like this in the past: We need to be good at things where proprietary software can't or doesn't want to go and we need to do this again and again.
Most of you will know this anyway:
multi-level APIs which are not trying to hide the inner workings of the implementation
well-designed tools (no feature creep to justify high licensing costs)
import and export of data (vendor lock-in unnecessary)
use compiler optimization (processor-dependent optimization, profile-based optimization) since the source code is available
There is a new entry in the filter list of the Adblock preferences. One can disable the "Noscript development support filterset". The entry also shows textual documentation.
They seem to use Gray code sequences (only one bit differs between to neighbouring codes). Johnny Chung Lee (the Wiimote Whiteboard guy) already demonstrated the use of structured light and optical fibers in his thesis. He used it to rapidly locate projection surfaces.
Depends what business adoption means. If I would want distributors like Microsoft and Apple to adopt my software, I clearly would not use GPL. But if I want to stay involved (i.e. have access to their modifications), using the GPL is definitely recommended. Maybe something like the Apache license (or even BSD without patent clause) is globally the winning strategy. But that's a small comfort for the individual developer getting sidelined.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually Photosynth started off as a PhD project called Photo Tourism. You can download the source code of Bundler (GPL license) as well. The idea of using geo-tagged photos to create a 3D view of the world is really cool. However there are various challenges: occlusion, moving objects (people, foliage, ...), changing illumination, different cameras, cameras with distortion. The software needs to be robust and discard those "outliers".
SceneLib is a software for simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) which essentially is a similar problem. However here the assumption is that the camera is always the same.
Creating a panorama with and Enblend on the other hand only allows pictures taken from a single view point.
When seeing a picture of a two-thousand ton manned space ship next to a space telescope with a huge nanometer accuracy mirror being repaired by a crew of people in space suits all whizzing through space with a class G star looming in the background, "simple" was not exactly the first thing which came to my mind.
Competitive advantage on a global scale could be much more easily achieved by patent and copyright reform. Furthermore there should be a rule that all results from publicly funded research (even if only partially funded) are made publicly available.
Faster internet is nice but it won't help the economy if the relevant information is locked up legally!
Interesting story. I'm surprised that this rather tentative expression of concerns caused such a reaction.
Myself I am more familiar with what's going on in universities (of "developed" countries). At high-profile universities (i.e. prime targets), students get free licenses for Office products. In other universities the situation has deteriorated to a point, where you need support from higher management if you want to get internet access for a computer which is not running Windows.
What the government doesn't get is that who owns your infrastructure, owns your country. If the African government would avoid other country's mistakes, not only would it serve best the interest of their citizens, but it would also help create genuine competition.
Like Richard Stallman said at the WSIS Tunis panel discussion 2005: This is electronic colonization, i.e. the Africans are supposed to pay for foreign products and remain ignorant and dependent.
In 2050 a customer walks through a home robotics store. He is approached by a salesman.
Salesman: Would you like to purchase a robot razor?
Customer: But I have a razor already.
Salesman: A robot razor is more convenient to use and much faster. Let me show you.
The salesman shows a demonstration video.
Customer (impressed): That's a really close shave. I don't understand how this works. Doesn't every person have a different face?
Salesman: Only at the first time.
As a retirement hobby he plays with viruses. Even so he creates one of the most well known pharmaceuticals by just using bird shit as ingredient. For lack of a challenge he then creates a virus which is able to mutate eight times faster than the best natural virus. And now he is the leading expert at solving the challenge he himself has set.
Well, it's a violation of the contract. Of course there may be cases where you can argue that another law overrides this.
As far as I know it is quite normal that an employment contract forbids you to talk negatively about your company in public (during and after your employment). So they have a legal means of firing you if you simply expose corporate malpractice to the public. That can make it difficult for employees to defend themselves especially if they depend on their income.
I think it's about time to seriously start working on a community-owned mesh network. Like Eben Moglen says:
In the 21st century, we must make the equal right to communication an engineered fact.
(full transcript)
When the sexy Stewardess is checking in in front of you, I guess the brain scan will be a blank slate.
If the German government would take the same stance, what would the meaning of installations such as ECHELON be?
Hypocrites!
A lot more of those shops will switch to GNU/Linux when they realise that they can install Linux Genuine Advantage instead.
The Kindle looks nice and it has a high resolution (1200x824). But I am looking forward to upcoming products such as the txtr reader: Linux-based, hackable, and proper support of DRM-free formats.
Angband is awesome. Because the text display is rather simple, it allows the developers to focus on the game play. There are even text animations when throwing a ball of fire. Unfortunately it's difficult to play Angband on Slashdot because of all the input filters :(
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The article and the video seem to suggest that all of Twitter is using Macs. I just wonder what hardware Twitter itself is running on.
If Ubuntu/Kubuntu was merely about attempting to create a free replacement of the Windows API, it would be like skipping the embrace part altogether. It's impossible to stay compatible with Windows software (just think about the ODF perversion) and there always will be a new API with undocumented/patented/DMCAed extras such as DirectX 11, DotNet 4.0, WMA, ...
I think Shuttleworth has said something like this in the past: We need to be good at things where proprietary software can't or doesn't want to go and we need to do this again and again.
Most of you will know this anyway:
From TFA:
Interesting. This actually allows you to compute the TCO of a PC running Windows Vista Ultimate: $249 / (100% - 60% - 15%) = 996$
The only real expense for these things is in editing or moderating, which I think probably can be done in a cost-effective way.
Comment moderated as "Insightful"
So you mean it's like chroot?
There is a new entry in the filter list of the Adblock preferences. One can disable the "Noscript development support filterset". The entry also shows textual documentation.
I clearly would prefer opt in though.
And the US Air Force lost this fight.
and create a WHO video clip featuring Dustin Hoffman who explains that nobody needs to be worried.
They seem to use Gray code sequences (only one bit differs between to neighbouring codes). Johnny Chung Lee (the Wiimote Whiteboard guy) already demonstrated the use of structured light and optical fibers in his thesis. He used it to rapidly locate projection surfaces.
Depends what business adoption means. If I would want distributors like Microsoft and Apple to adopt my software, I clearly would not use GPL. But if I want to stay involved (i.e. have access to their modifications), using the GPL is definitely recommended. Maybe something like the Apache license (or even BSD without patent clause) is globally the winning strategy. But that's a small comfort for the individual developer getting sidelined.