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User: neonv

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  1. Re:LyX on How To Enter Equations Quickly In Class? · · Score: 0

    You're plotting you're learning curve differently then other people. Most people think of this as the amount learned per task. The number of tasks is the x-axis, the amount of information required to learn the task is the y axis. For each task, a certain amount of information is required to complete the task. A person must learn that information to be able to complete that task. For easy tasks, the information required is low, hence the slope of the curve is low. For difficult tasks, the information required is high, but still only one task, hence the slope is steep. A steep learning curve means the task requires a large amount of learning which is the reason most people say steep learning curve.

    I believe you're using the x-axis as time, which isn't how people usually think of it.

  2. Re:Not Autonomous? FTNWYWCBED* on Stanford's "Autonomous" Helicopters Learn · · Score: 0

    The helicopter autopilot is not deriving a set of control laws on the fly. The control laws and defined and programmed into the autopilot, and most likely not adaptive. The maneuvers are "learned" by observing trajectories flown by the pilot. The autopilot replays the trajectories using trajectory tracking control laws on the autopilot. Parameters are not derived in observing the trajectory, it's simpler than that. The idea is simple and novel at the same time. It's a great idea.

  3. Why not on Ad-Supported Free Music Downloads Doomed to Failure? · · Score: 1, Insightful

    But music downloaders are not going to switch to using a service that costs more than BitTorrent or Limewire, and comes with abominable DRM ...

    It's legal, free, and easy to use. There's three good reasons to switch.

  4. Re:Uberistor? on Frozen Chip from IBM hits 500 GHz · · Score: 0

    There's no reason to believe the materials are superconducting. If they were to make a chip using superconducting technology, that would be a feat in and of itself. A superconductor isn't made by cooling any conductor down to low temperatures, it depends on the material as well. If they're using aluminum, then the superconducting temperature is no higher than 3.7K, a lower temperature than they were using. There is no superconductor here, sorry.

  5. If you want performance, don't use mac on FireWire for 75% Better Mac mini Disk Performance · · Score: 0, Troll

    If you really want a performance boost, don't use a mac, let alone a mac mini. There are very few benchmarks, real or synthetic, that a mac comes even close to a PC. Apple always uses low performance parts (such as a slow hard drive) in it's hardware, and overcharges those who purchase it. Apple tries to make their hardware look like it's great because of a flashy number such as "1 GB of RAM," but it's PC133, or "100 GB Hard Disk," but only 4200 rpm with 50 ms seek time. I've pointed out the hardware problems many times to those thinking apple is a top performer or economical in price. Just find a PC with the same or better hardware and look at the price comparison. The PC performs better in most applications as well. The only good part about a mac is the user friendliness. Don't confuse that with performance.

  6. Re:Go Team Go! on XP SP2 Torrent Shows Legal P2P's Promise · · Score: 1

    Just so you know, there is no way for a browser to retrieve your windows serial number. The only real way for Microsoft to check your serial number is for them to check using the update program itself.

  7. Re:Kick back? on Cornell Builds Autonomous UAV · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm a grad student researching UAV's just like the one that Cornell is using in this articles. There are only a few major differences between what we do and what they do.

    1. We didn't use .NET or any other operating system that costs money. The plane has an embedded system that doesn't need much operating system power. Most of what is run on the processor consists of feedback loops that are run under time constraints that are not hard to meet. Image processing is the only intensive processing and shouldn't be done by the operating system if you're doing research on it, so there is no need for a costly embedded system on the plane. Our hardware consists of a 30MHz processor (on a custom board), 512 KB (not MB) of RAM, an RF modem, and a gps unit. All of this is on a light plane made by a few engineers at the university. Using that, we do everything Cornell does at a fraction of the cost and complexity.
    2. Planes fly themselves by themselves all the time. It's an autopilot. We've had one for a while. It flies and lands by itself. It sends telemetry information back to the ground station so we can monitor it and/or render it in an open source flight simulator that we modified for our use. All the processing on getting from one place to another, however, is done by the plane itself. It does multi-agent coordination by itself as well.
    3. We use our own device drivers. You'll find that in an embedded system, drivers are not nearly as hard to deal with as a PC. Drivers just aren't a problem. You know you're hardware too well to have problems with it. not only that, but there are very few devices to work with in comparison with a PC.
    4. There are lots of other differences, but they're not important. I see Cornell doing is spending a lot of money on fancy gadgets and software that they don't need making their system more complicated.

    However, I do like the fact that they do image processing on the plane. In the case that image processing is needing and a ground station is not available, having onboard processing is needed. But once again, this does not require nearly what they are paying for.