Have you considered using force.com (there is for example the GeoPointe tool to link with google maps) or perhaps Google App Engine (GAE) as a platform for building your own easily scalable, mashup-friendly service? There seems to be something called GeoModel which you can access from within GAE for simple queries like what assets are within a given radius. These services will host it for you so you can save the money of purchasing and renting your own servers too. Here are some jumping off points perhaps..
Perhaps. Though if everyone was using P2P then undoubtedly individuals would achieve lower speeds.
My impression is that Bittorrent is like an updated version of a multicast setup, in other words it belongs to the class of highly efficient delivery mechanisms incorporating some kind of reflectors taking demand off the originating source.
In other words if the ISP ran their own internal tracker they could charge tons of money to their users while enjoying reduced costs to the outside Internet. I actually am having a discussion with a new P2P company that provides just such a setup. It doesn't appear the ISP gets money from sales though. I also just got 2 ads to sign up for fiber connectivity to the home, one offers cheap phone service and the other a free Internet-based video content channel. The only place that works they way you talk about is the U.S.A. where the ISPs have totally stolen all the money they were given to build out their networks. Civilized countries have plenty of fiber. It would even work for nightly couch potatoes. The only problem I expect is having systems in place at the endpoints that can handle high speed downloads and display to TVs.
Nobody has mentioned the effect on libraries. The kind that lend books out for free.
It can be resolved, but currently there is a gap.
Books can indeed be made unencumbered with DRM. The author just has to either release it for free intentionally, or get paid through some mechanism that does not require DRM.
In addition, libraries can be established to lend books digitally. They can buy a certain number of books that can be lent simultaneously. Some questions that need to be resolved: Lending from one library globally How long it takes to read a book, in other words can you say a book has been returned to the library within an hour after it has been downloaded. Is there any reason to enforce scarcity to the point that a user cannot copy a book borrowed from the library for his own use and that of his family and friends, colleagues, etc.? There ought to be no restrictions on allowing the user to keep a copy of the borrowed book on for example a SD card which can be used in any number of devices. Construction of official repositories for cover images, descriptions, isbn lookups, etc. APIs and standard formats, e.g. machine understandable descriptions, dewey decimal or the like for the modern age. Ensuring permanent archiving Enabling mass self publishing for free, including copyright registration, etc. Library lending of music, video, etc. in the same way that books are lent. (Perhaps the period during which a book is considered to be borrowed is the length of time of the shortest audio track on a CD, etc.) Lending of an entire CD or collection, not just one song at a time Use in education - for example ensuring that students will be able to use a book in a course, etc. Online courseware and free textbooks, etc. Actively working to drive prices down - Because once a book has been made there is very little cost associated with publishing it digitally, except when needing to maintain a website with errata or downloadable programs / accompanying extensions to the work. A total rethink on the nasty situation with very expensive textbooks and the power held by ultrareligious constituencies How to ensure professors, engineers, other professionals, etc. can be compensated in some way to ensure that they will work hard to create wonderful books with lasting value, and keep them updated in the future, possibly ensuring that they are open and unfettered. An analysis of the amount of money one can reasonable expect to make with a successful textbook, and how to ensure that amount is paid to the author/editor and then actively drive the price down to zero after that amount has been made. This type of action would make DRM unnecessary as the work would be prepaid / paid by stipend and then become free. How to architect actively open unwalled gardens, and provide incentive greater than the closed garden / single online store / closed format model. How to be able to make a real digital book that tells you and your systems about itself, i.e. should a book file include some special metadata including an ISBN or javascript code, some standard URIs, etc.? Should a publisher be required to provide certain webservices in order to receive grants to compensate authors when making a for profit book free, etc. How to keep unnecessary duplicates from endlessly growing, and also ensure one does not lose / delete books by accident. How to store books and other media, general files, programs, artwork, etc. in one's own collection which is very likely to span multiple computers and disks over the years How to manage one's collection, merge with that of one's friends or family, maintain it into the future, etc.
News today mentioned a number of companies making content (not much out yet I hear) for the iPad in Japan. The one that surprised me was a company selling time-limited viewing rights to a library of comics (manga). The price, about 1 dollar for 48 hours per title, is what I would expect to pay to fully own a manga if you didn't have to pay for paper, printing and distribution.
The engine technology detects piston precision precisely and lets the engine stop before a traffic light allowing restart of the engine to be done using some of the starter but mostly combustion power. Detection of a nearby traffic light would be obviously useful in such a case.
You cannot make parts of a language itself commercial, which is why this is bullshit. Or let's be nice and call it a bastard marketing ploy. How do you know McDonalds did not fund this project? Wet dream of advertising agencies. Control how you think, etc. So you may get icons for fries andshampoo, and Wella, and McDonalds, before you get enough icons to complete the language.
The only way this will succeed is if it is hijacked.
One interesting point is that it does not attempt to make a worldwide unified language as far as representations go, i.e. an iconji's image can be changed. Perhaps this could make it fun but it also makes it useless as a real language unless you refuse to use it in any non-networked medium that can automatically substitute your local graphics.
Similarly the idea of tracking usage of a glyph in a human language is repellent to me. Perhaps the inventor has a different outlook on life.
There is a real need for a minimal universally accepted language and that is a language that could be used in web pages to tell search engines what they are about, not just microformats but a commonly understood logical syntax. I have yet to see whether this iconji language is sufficient, in other words could you write a computer program in it. Although it seems you could create your own icons. Personally I would rather keep the source code in English.
It might be nice for comments in code though which are not always in English. Maybe also for webpages about software packages. That way they could be automatically translated with 0% error rate into (very boring short sentences of) English or whatever your language is.
I would say inclusion of Swatch Time would be useful if you are using this to twitter globally.
One more note. Obviously Japan and China have their own glyph alphabets. Actually this resembles emoji (illustrated, animated glyphs for email between phones in Japan) except in that usage not every single character is an emoji, over half are kanji or kana. Since there are no pictographs in western languages I amwondering whether you will getemails (well no not on phones, but maybe insms or twitterin) that are half emoji and half disemvowled English.Which would defeat the use. Just how easy is it to use? Need to find some middle school girls to try it out..
It may seem a bit hilarious, apparently this kind of crap (like having bucket names conform to DNS) happens when you want to use web services as your OS. Not too hard if you just implement this once.
This bit is just silly, good for giggles but are they serious about requiring zone editing to expose a database table? Nooooo....
For example, let's assume your domain is example.com and you want to make travel maps available to your customers. You could create a bucket in Google Storage called travel-maps.example.com, and then create a CNAME record in DNS that redirects requests from travel-maps.example.com to the Google Storage URI. To do this, you publish the following CNAME record in DNS
I didn't quite catch how you copy data to other domains, since it looks like you use a gs:// prefix to reach google storage but you say gs://cats and it is still in your account not at google's root server.. kind of annoying though maybe there's a way around it?
I think the 1024 byte limit is totally bogus, that's pretty short if it has to hold the URI path through your virtually nested buckets. Although I've seen Windows flake out at 255 character paths.. That and the bit about a "flat hierarchy", which is an oxymoron, and how you can't nest buckets but you can do so "virtually" by putting slashes in your bucket names, as if it isn't just a normal URI, they're just joshing you, a little bit of fun y'know. "Bare metal" indeed, more like stripping the metaphor down to bare CGI.
It is funny you have to allocate your own temporary file as a buffer for uploading a file, though of course that's what happens in Perl CGI. Which then makes you wonder why you cannot set a max upload data size for your app.. Of course the GSUtil command line tool looks pretty simple.
Otherwise, Animats' post is to right to the point. It isn't really that great. Kind of a bare minimum is more like it. And they stick with REST... so you should hope for a nearby library to exist that will save you not have to start implementing wierd HTTP verbs.. you have to really want this as implementing it seems as much fun as pulling teeth slowly.
You should read TFA it does mention a number of different manufacturers.
Has anyone used Robotics Studio? The visual programming language looks kinda neat at a glance.
Do people really build robots with this kind of thing? Looks like maybe it is for easily configuring a robot to follow certain paths and such?
In comparison Willow Garage is open source and has a lot of people getting involved. I'd like to hear from people who have tried both but ROS is a real open source unix development kit, and so is more likely to last into the future as things need to get totally reinvented with new technological insights. It is possible academic and commercial labs together could drive innovation faster through ROS than one company (MS).
One issue I have been wondering about, and which seems to be true from some people I've talked to, is that the most powerful algorithms are commercial not open source. Not that an algorithm ought to be patentable but.. if so, it could be that the recently mentioned open source patent pool would be very useful in this area.
Hello, thank you for the reply. I looked at the link. Yes, I'm familiar with the idea however when Wikipedia assembles a subject area into a book you get somewhat less than Wales' "sausage". Whereas evolution might work in a single page, evolution does not seem to replace an editor who can bring together multiple pages to make an understandable book. Perhaps there are not enough people willing to do it or who yet see the issue, and possibly they will appear once it becomes a more obvious problem.
It would be nice to see a real article about the more interesting sounding things but as it is, I'm not impressed. Check out this page, Paul Haeberli's wonderful old site Grafica Obscura from when he was at SGI. http://www.graficaobscura.com/merge/index.html
This is his famous image merging by projective warp program, where he could take a bunch of snapshots and automatically warp and stitch them together. I think this is from 1995 or so. It references papers from 1991 and this one from 1994: S. Mann and R. W. Picard. Virtual Bellows: Constructing High Quality Stills from Video. IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Mov, 1994.
Many researchers have published about extracting features from blurry views. I remember one ACM Siggraph article I believe from years back about using multiple beams to achieve high resolution images underwater for example.
The deskterity and pseudo-3d sound interesting but honestly there is very little to see in this article.
Wikipedia should make books on specific subjects, with an editor who knows the area, and then sell them on iTunes or iBook. The money would be a good way to support Wikipedia and their might be enough to even hire an expert to contribute to that subject or edit it.
Collecting some ideas in this thread how about this. Not as a perfect solution, there isn't one, but it might cut zombies down greatly. - Home routers by default are protected by a security company or the isp, automatically patched or re-imaged. - A similar strategy is used to create a secure pc used only in the home for financial transactions. - The router is used as a bidirectional filter, to keep the network clean (not letting zombies from inside the house get out) and to keep the pcs in the house clean (not letting dangerous looking things get through any ports, including scary looking email). So the router has to communicate proactively with the user and we need some standard client apps for that perhaps. - Users are given an intrusion detection agent to run on their router (well the router downloads it automatically) and optionally on pcs/macs/linuxes that will detect port scans, attempts to break in via password scanning ftp and ssh services, and all known malware attacks. This will report to the ISP which can block those attackers from entering the ISP's network, or if inside the network then flag for examination. For example when I got my Mac a year ago I had to install things like fail2ban and this sort of thing is beyond the knowledge or understanding of most users. - ISPs provide a way (manual entry via a website, and also via a standardized webservice that third party developers can target) for end-users to report IPs that are attempting attacks. The ISP can ban IPs outside the network that rack up a number of such attempts. - There is a big danger of the ISP taking advantage of this power, and there need to be rules that ISPs can't do that. There is a big danger that by closing lots of ports it could break the net for protocols used by new applications, video conferencing, etc. - Users therefore would be able to select among various providers of filters, allowing the market competition to reward the best providers, independent of the ISPs. No filtering at all (with all done by user) must be an option. - Getting ISPs and third party providers of security profiles and security agents to work together and agree on standards is difficult. It could be assisted by a homeland security czar but the government would be too likely to abuse such a position, sneaking in security policies in lieu of court cases or legislation. So probably security consulting companies and manufacturers should discuss this at industry events and make an online venue to thrash out the ideas. Ideally users would pick the ISP with the best security record but apparently there is not enough competition in that market yet. - Also ideally, statistics on attacks, infections and performance of the system as a whole would also be retrievable via webservices by third parties, in other words the entire system from device to end user to router to isp to corporate systems would form an interlocking, ad-hoc instrumented security system that is transparent enough to understand what is going on and what works, what doesn't. - There is still the danger of unknown vulnerabilities, so there will need to be a big batch of canaries sprinkled about to try and detect them. Perhaps some of these things are already in place through actions of antivirus manufacturers and isps.
Disclaimer: Cub Scouts was awesome and I remember most the warm feeling when the scouts gathered at a parents house. Video games would fit that atmosphere. The requirements are actually not so bad I think for this badge. Whereas I dropped out of Boy Scouts after some years when the bullying overwhelmed the exciting but life threatening campouts (8 miles into the wilderness in freezing winter, other scouts trying to burn down your tent, etc.) loved the hiking though.
Okay in this video merit badge for cub scouts I am worried about these lines:
Choose a game you might like to purchase. Compare the price for this game at three different stores. Decide which store has the best deal. In your decision, be sure to consider things like the store return policy and manufacturer’s warranty. With an adult’s supervision, install a gaming system.
It seems to require you to buy games in a store and the purchasing experience is emphasized. Being aware of the return policy is good but there seems to be a requirement to buy something. What if you want to use Free (or free) Software? Likewise "install a gaming system" could mean install a linux system on an old PC, and download some free games for it. So I think it would be better for cubs to emphasize the noncommercial aspect. Also there is the cost of hardware, whether a console or not. If you can use an existing computer then the "install" could really mean just doing a software install.
I think it would be great if linux distro's sites had a page for Cub Scouts to learn about Free Software and guide them to fulfilling all the requirements for these badges and belt loops using Linux.
Okay I am reading Greg Bear's City at the End of Time, at the same time as I am rereading Charles Stross' Accelerando on my phone. And then saw the BoingBoing story about a two headed lizard that sometimes has one head attack the other. And now this! Got a real shiver of acceleration from this one, and half of it is from the wild names of the scientists. It sounds like the intro to Bunkaroo Banzai and the plot starts from here..
"Top bio-boffin Dr Aziz Aboobaker and grad student Daniel Felix, who carried out the new research, say that the discovery of "smed-prep" unlocks the mechanisms by which..."
This suggests to me that as things accelerate we will have that wierded out thing more and more. Could be low blood sugar though..
And thank you very much, and for finding that link about lasers. As I have 4 family members stuck in Europe waiting to fly home to the U.S., I hope nobody skimps on the safety margins.
We haven't met, but unsolicited advice from a 30 year Apple customer, developer and publisher.
Developers, and also a bunch of executives, investors and publishers, are starting to get pissed off and could use some love as you tighten the screws.
This is an excellent opportunity to build good will. Don't fire the guy. Shit happens, and you will make a lot of points if you forgive him and let him get back to work. He'll take it to heart.
Remember, Google is not the only company that can attempt to "Do No Evil".
One more thing. The front cover of one of the top business magazines in Japan is "Sony vs. Samsung". It used to be in the U.S. anyway, people would buy Sony because of trust associated with the name. My family did. I no longer trust Sony because of all their underhanded tactics.
It would be very interesting if a smart Korean company like LG or Samsung would realize that if you build trust with the consumer, it pays off. Which is Do No Evil. Imagine what if Google bought a consumer appliance company, or a music publishing firm. How would they run it?
I think there is a certain point when you just make life simpler and say, "Let's stop now".
I used to be a big music purchaser. But I decided to stop when in college I realized that CDs were getting very expensive with less good music on them. I could afford it if I really wanted it, but I just stopped. It was much easier than for someone to quit smoking, a no-brainer really. I had some music lying around, and hear music on the radio, and it was fine. I still buy a CD when I hear a live performance I like though, I buy it from the artist.
I also stopped playing video games. By the time a game console dropped in price to where I thought it was worth it, I wasn't really interested anymore. There were not that many good games too.
Look, all you have to do is stop buying from these companies. You will have more money left over to do fun things. You certainly can do without buying from Sony.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you considered using force.com (there is for example the GeoPointe tool to link with google maps) or perhaps Google App Engine (GAE) as a platform for building your own easily scalable, mashup-friendly service? There seems to be something called GeoModel which you can access from within GAE for simple queries like what assets are within a given radius. These services will host it for you so you can save the money of purchasing and renting your own servers too. Here are some jumping off points perhaps..
http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2008/05/app-engine-local-search-maps-making.html
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/articles/geospatial.html#geomodel
http://www.arrowpointe.com/
http://sites.force.com/appexchange/listingDetail?listingId=a0N300000016ZHeEAM
Perhaps. Though if everyone was using P2P then undoubtedly individuals would achieve lower speeds.
My impression is that Bittorrent is like an updated version of a multicast setup, in other words it belongs to the class of highly efficient delivery mechanisms incorporating some kind of reflectors taking demand off the originating source.
In other words if the ISP ran their own internal tracker they could charge tons of money to their users while enjoying reduced costs to the outside Internet. I actually am having a discussion with a new P2P company that provides just such a setup. It doesn't appear the ISP gets money from sales though. I also just got 2 ads to sign up for fiber connectivity to the home, one offers cheap phone service and the other a free Internet-based video content channel. The only place that works they way you talk about is the U.S.A. where the ISPs have totally stolen all the money they were given to build out their networks. Civilized countries have plenty of fiber. It would even work for nightly couch potatoes. The only problem I expect is having systems in place at the endpoints that can handle high speed downloads and display to TVs.
Even when in a military, police security or executive order type situation?
Gray areas are made to order to give room for wiggling and blustering justification after the fact.
Nobody has mentioned the effect on libraries. The kind that lend books out for free.
It can be resolved, but currently there is a gap.
Books can indeed be made unencumbered with DRM. The author just has to either release it for free intentionally, or get paid through some mechanism that does not require DRM.
In addition, libraries can be established to lend books digitally. They can buy a certain number of books that can be lent simultaneously.
Some questions that need to be resolved:
Lending from one library globally
How long it takes to read a book, in other words can you say a book has been returned to the library within an hour after it has been downloaded.
Is there any reason to enforce scarcity to the point that a user cannot copy a book borrowed from the library for his own use and that of his family and friends, colleagues, etc.? There ought to be no restrictions on allowing the user to keep a copy of the borrowed book on for example a SD card which can be used in any number of devices.
Construction of official repositories for cover images, descriptions, isbn lookups, etc.
APIs and standard formats, e.g. machine understandable descriptions, dewey decimal or the like for the modern age.
Ensuring permanent archiving
Enabling mass self publishing for free, including copyright registration, etc.
Library lending of music, video, etc. in the same way that books are lent. (Perhaps the period during which a book is considered to be borrowed is the length of time of the shortest audio track on a CD, etc.)
Lending of an entire CD or collection, not just one song at a time
Use in education - for example ensuring that students will be able to use a book in a course, etc. Online courseware and free textbooks, etc.
Actively working to drive prices down - Because once a book has been made there is very little cost associated with publishing it digitally, except when needing to maintain a website with errata or downloadable programs / accompanying extensions to the work.
A total rethink on the nasty situation with very expensive textbooks and the power held by ultrareligious constituencies
How to ensure professors, engineers, other professionals, etc. can be compensated in some way to ensure that they will work hard to create wonderful books with lasting value, and keep them updated in the future, possibly ensuring that they are open and unfettered.
An analysis of the amount of money one can reasonable expect to make with a successful textbook, and how to ensure that amount is paid to the author/editor and then actively drive the price down to zero after that amount has been made. This type of action would make DRM unnecessary as the work would be prepaid / paid by stipend and then become free.
How to architect actively open unwalled gardens, and provide incentive greater than the closed garden / single online store / closed format model.
How to be able to make a real digital book that tells you and your systems about itself, i.e. should a book file include some special metadata including an ISBN or javascript code, some standard URIs, etc.? Should a publisher be required to provide certain webservices in order to receive grants to compensate authors when making a for profit book free, etc.
How to keep unnecessary duplicates from endlessly growing, and also ensure one does not lose / delete books by accident.
How to store books and other media, general files, programs, artwork, etc. in one's own collection which is very likely to span multiple computers and disks over the years
How to manage one's collection, merge with that of one's friends or family, maintain it into the future, etc.
News today mentioned a number of companies making content (not much out yet I hear) for the iPad in Japan. The one that surprised me was a company selling time-limited viewing rights to a library of comics (manga). The price, about 1 dollar for 48 hours per title, is what I would expect to pay to fully own a manga if you didn't have to pay for paper, printing and distribution.
I haven't got time to RTFA but how about Mazda's i-stop technology which has been demonstrated for years, and development began around 2002-2004.
http://www.mazda.com/csr/download/pdf/2009/e2009_d_p43.pdf [pdf]
http://www.sankeibiz.jp/business/news/100410/bsc1004100501000-n1.htm (Japanese, sorry)
The engine technology detects piston precision precisely and lets the engine stop before a traffic light allowing restart of the engine to be done using some of the starter but mostly combustion power. Detection of a nearby traffic light would be obviously useful in such a case.
You cannot make parts of a language itself commercial, which is why this is bullshit. Or let's be nice and call it a bastard marketing ploy. How do you know McDonalds did not fund this project? Wet dream of advertising agencies. Control how you think, etc. So you may get icons for fries andshampoo, and Wella, and McDonalds, before you get enough icons to complete the language.
The only way this will succeed is if it is hijacked.
One interesting point is that it does not attempt to make a worldwide unified language as far as representations go, i.e. an iconji's image can be changed. Perhaps this could make it fun but it also makes it useless as a real language unless you refuse to use it in any non-networked medium that can automatically substitute your local graphics.
Similarly the idea of tracking usage of a glyph in a human language is repellent to me. Perhaps the inventor has a different outlook on life.
There is a real need for a minimal universally accepted language and that is a language that could be used in web pages to tell search engines what they are about, not just microformats but a commonly understood logical syntax. I have yet to see whether this iconji language is sufficient, in other words could you write a computer program in it. Although it seems you could create your own icons. Personally I would rather keep the source code in English.
It might be nice for comments in code though which are not always in English. Maybe also for webpages about software packages. That way they could be automatically translated with 0% error rate into (very boring short sentences of) English or whatever your language is.
I would say inclusion of Swatch Time would be useful if you are using this to twitter globally.
One more note. Obviously Japan and China have their own glyph alphabets. Actually this resembles emoji (illustrated, animated glyphs for email between phones in Japan) except in that usage not every single character is an emoji, over half are kanji or kana. Since there are no pictographs in western languages I amwondering whether you will getemails (well no not on phones, but maybe insms or twitterin) that are half emoji and half disemvowled English.Which would defeat the use. Just how easy is it to use? Need to find some middle school girls to try it out..
It may seem a bit hilarious, apparently this kind of crap (like having bucket names conform to DNS) happens when you want to use web services as your OS. Not too hard if you just implement this once.
This bit is just silly, good for giggles but are they serious about requiring zone editing to expose a database table? Nooooo....
I didn't quite catch how you copy data to other domains, since it looks like you use a gs:// prefix to reach google storage but you say gs://cats and it is still in your account not at google's root server.. kind of annoying though maybe there's a way around it?
I think the 1024 byte limit is totally bogus, that's pretty short if it has to hold the URI path through your virtually nested buckets. Although I've seen Windows flake out at 255 character paths.. That and the bit about a "flat hierarchy", which is an oxymoron, and how you can't nest buckets but you can do so "virtually" by putting slashes in your bucket names, as if it isn't just a normal URI, they're just joshing you, a little bit of fun y'know. "Bare metal" indeed, more like stripping the metaphor down to bare CGI.
It is funny you have to allocate your own temporary file as a buffer for uploading a file, though of course that's what happens in Perl CGI. Which then makes you wonder why you cannot set a max upload data size for your app.. Of course the GSUtil command line tool looks pretty simple.
Otherwise, Animats' post is to right to the point. It isn't really that great. Kind of a bare minimum is more like it. And they stick with REST... so you should hope for a nearby library to exist that will save you not have to start implementing wierd HTTP verbs.. you have to really want this as implementing it seems as much fun as pulling teeth slowly.
You should read TFA it does mention a number of different manufacturers.
Has anyone used Robotics Studio? The visual programming language looks kinda neat at a glance.
Do people really build robots with this kind of thing? Looks like maybe it is for easily configuring a robot to follow certain paths and such?
In comparison Willow Garage is open source and has a lot of people getting involved. I'd like to hear from people who have tried both but ROS is a real open source unix development kit, and so is more likely to last into the future as things need to get totally reinvented with new technological insights. It is possible academic and commercial labs together could drive innovation faster through ROS than one company (MS).
One issue I have been wondering about, and which seems to be true from some people I've talked to, is that the most powerful algorithms are commercial not open source. Not that an algorithm ought to be patentable but.. if so, it could be that the recently mentioned open source patent pool would be very useful in this area.
Hello, thank you for the reply. I looked at the link. Yes, I'm familiar with the idea however when Wikipedia assembles a subject area into a book you get somewhat less than Wales' "sausage". Whereas evolution might work in a single page, evolution does not seem to replace an editor who can bring together multiple pages to make an understandable book. Perhaps there are not enough people willing to do it or who yet see the issue, and possibly they will appear once it becomes a more obvious problem.
It would be nice to see a real article about the more interesting sounding things but as it is, I'm not impressed.
Check out this page, Paul Haeberli's wonderful old site Grafica Obscura from when he was at SGI.
http://www.graficaobscura.com/merge/index.html
This is his famous image merging by projective warp program, where he could take a bunch of snapshots and automatically warp and stitch them together. I think this is from 1995 or so. It references papers from 1991 and this one from 1994: S. Mann and R. W. Picard. Virtual Bellows: Constructing High Quality Stills from Video. IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Mov, 1994.
Many researchers have published about extracting features from blurry views. I remember one ACM Siggraph article I believe from years back about using multiple beams to achieve high resolution images underwater for example.
The deskterity and pseudo-3d sound interesting but honestly there is very little to see in this article.
Wikipedia should make books on specific subjects, with an editor who knows the area, and then sell them on iTunes or iBook. The money would be a good way to support Wikipedia and their might be enough to even hire an expert to contribute to that subject or edit it.
Collecting some ideas in this thread how about this. Not as a perfect solution, there isn't one, but it might cut zombies down greatly.
- Home routers by default are protected by a security company or the isp, automatically patched or re-imaged.
- A similar strategy is used to create a secure pc used only in the home for financial transactions.
- The router is used as a bidirectional filter, to keep the network clean (not letting zombies from inside the house get out) and to keep the pcs in the house clean (not letting dangerous looking things get through any ports, including scary looking email). So the router has to communicate proactively with the user and we need some standard client apps for that perhaps.
- Users are given an intrusion detection agent to run on their router (well the router downloads it automatically) and optionally on pcs/macs/linuxes that will detect port scans, attempts to break in via password scanning ftp and ssh services, and all known malware attacks. This will report to the ISP which can block those attackers from entering the ISP's network, or if inside the network then flag for examination. For example when I got my Mac a year ago I had to install things like fail2ban and this sort of thing is beyond the knowledge or understanding of most users.
- ISPs provide a way (manual entry via a website, and also via a standardized webservice that third party developers can target) for end-users to report IPs that are attempting attacks. The ISP can ban IPs outside the network that rack up a number of such attempts.
- There is a big danger of the ISP taking advantage of this power, and there need to be rules that ISPs can't do that. There is a big danger that by closing lots of ports it could break the net for protocols used by new applications, video conferencing, etc.
- Users therefore would be able to select among various providers of filters, allowing the market competition to reward the best providers, independent of the ISPs. No filtering at all (with all done by user) must be an option.
- Getting ISPs and third party providers of security profiles and security agents to work together and agree on standards is difficult. It could be assisted by a homeland security czar but the government would be too likely to abuse such a position, sneaking in security policies in lieu of court cases or legislation. So probably security consulting companies and manufacturers should discuss this at industry events and make an online venue to thrash out the ideas. Ideally users would pick the ISP with the best security record but apparently there is not enough competition in that market yet.
- Also ideally, statistics on attacks, infections and performance of the system as a whole would also be retrievable via webservices by third parties, in other words the entire system from device to end user to router to isp to corporate systems would form an interlocking, ad-hoc instrumented security system that is transparent enough to understand what is going on and what works, what doesn't.
- There is still the danger of unknown vulnerabilities, so there will need to be a big batch of canaries sprinkled about to try and detect them. Perhaps some of these things are already in place through actions of antivirus manufacturers and isps.
Just don't buy a PS3, and don't buy Sony.
The message is simple. After the root kit and this, it is clear. Sony expects you to pay them money while they slap you in the face, saying F U.
Disclaimer: Cub Scouts was awesome and I remember most the warm feeling when the scouts gathered at a parents house. Video games would fit that atmosphere. The requirements are actually not so bad I think for this badge. Whereas I dropped out of Boy Scouts after some years when the bullying overwhelmed the exciting but life threatening campouts (8 miles into the wilderness in freezing winter, other scouts trying to burn down your tent, etc.) loved the hiking though.
Okay in this video merit badge for cub scouts I am worried about these lines:
It seems to require you to buy games in a store and the purchasing experience is emphasized. Being aware of the return policy is good but there seems to be a requirement to buy something. What if you want to use Free (or free) Software? Likewise "install a gaming system" could mean install a linux system on an old PC, and download some free games for it. So I think it would be better for cubs to emphasize the noncommercial aspect.
Also there is the cost of hardware, whether a console or not. If you can use an existing computer then the "install" could really mean just doing a software install.
I think it would be great if linux distro's sites had a page for Cub Scouts to learn about Free Software and guide them to fulfilling all the requirements for these badges and belt loops using Linux.
Okay I am reading Greg Bear's City at the End of Time, at the same time as I am rereading Charles Stross' Accelerando on my phone. And then saw the BoingBoing story about a two headed lizard that sometimes has one head attack the other. And now this! Got a real shiver of acceleration from this one, and half of it is from the wild names of the scientists. It sounds like the intro to Bunkaroo Banzai and the plot starts from here..
"Top bio-boffin Dr Aziz Aboobaker and grad student Daniel Felix, who carried out the new research, say that the discovery of "smed-prep" unlocks the mechanisms by which..."
This suggests to me that as things accelerate we will have that wierded out thing more and more. Could be low blood sugar though..
Well.. unless you are viewing Kaku's youtube video where he starts talking about M-branes.
Interesting, thanks I didn't know that.
Matt
Thanks that was a fun read! Hope it's not true though!
Hello! Thank you very much for your insightful comments. I will have to think carefully about what you said.
Very sorry to hear your girlfriend received threats!
Sincerely,
Matt
Hello, and thank you very much for your useful comments!
There certainly seem to be a lot of pitfalls. I'll certainly take your advice to heart.
Thanks again.
Matt
And thank you very much, and for finding that link about lasers. As I have 4 family members stuck in Europe waiting to fly home to the U.S., I hope nobody skimps on the safety margins.
Dear Steve,
We haven't met, but unsolicited advice from a 30 year Apple customer, developer and publisher.
Developers, and also a bunch of executives, investors and publishers, are starting to get pissed off and could use some love as you tighten the screws.
This is an excellent opportunity to build good will. Don't fire the guy. Shit happens, and you will make a lot of points if you forgive him and let him get back to work. He'll take it to heart.
Remember, Google is not the only company that can attempt to "Do No Evil".
Regards from Tokyo,
Matt R.
One more thing. The front cover of one of the top business magazines in Japan is "Sony vs. Samsung". It used to be in the U.S. anyway, people would buy Sony because of trust associated with the name. My family did. I no longer trust Sony because of all their underhanded tactics.
It would be very interesting if a smart Korean company like LG or Samsung would realize that if you build trust with the consumer, it pays off. Which is Do No Evil. Imagine what if Google bought a consumer appliance company, or a music publishing firm. How would they run it?
I think there is a certain point when you just make life simpler and say, "Let's stop now".
I used to be a big music purchaser. But I decided to stop when in college I realized that CDs were getting very expensive with less good music on them. I could afford it if I really wanted it, but I just stopped. It was much easier than for someone to quit smoking, a no-brainer really. I had some music lying around, and hear music on the radio, and it was fine. I still buy a CD when I hear a live performance I like though, I buy it from the artist.
I also stopped playing video games. By the time a game console dropped in price to where I thought it was worth it, I wasn't really interested anymore. There were not that many good games too.
Look, all you have to do is stop buying from these companies. You will have more money left over to do fun things. You certainly can do without buying from Sony.