Well, you wouldn't have to do it all at once - you could just tag books as they're returned by patrons, for example, as part of the reshelving process. Slow, but it would work. Alternately, most large libraries already barcode books on the inside cover, in order to scan them for checkout and checkin - why not put the same barcodes on the spine where the robot can read them? All you'd need is a second copy of the same barcode you already use.
"Once it is in there, it starts using its cameras. By moving the arm with the cameras, it takes an image of the bookshelf," said Professor Pobil.
"It can read the labels and the position of the book using its image processing and optical character recognition software," the professor said.
Wouldn't it be easier just to RFID-tag the books, or give them barcodes on the spine, or otherwise modify them in some way to facilitate the robot's work? I have a sneaking suspicion that either of those would be faster and more reliable than trying to OCR book titles or call-number tags, albeit less "clever". "Clever" solutions that are less functional than more straighforward solutions don't particularly impress me, and I doubt I'm alone on this.
Nothing as precise to offer 5 or 1 increments yet, and no coinage either.
I used to bank at a credit union whose ATMs dispensed $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills, as well as coin. Kind of cool, because you could use the ATM to cash checks that you received, instead of only being able to deposit it or having to take it to the teller....
...there are plenty of popular fish that would be happy at those temperatures.
"Plenty"? "Popular"? Not in your typical Petsmart lineup - which is, let's face it, where your average non-aficionado is going to get his fish. Gouramis, oscars, mollies, angels, whatever, none of those are going to be happy at 85 degrees - bettas and loaches are about the only things I can think of off the top of my head that would tolerate water as warm as 85 degrees, and even they'll be happier with it somewhat lower.
There's a difference between keeping fish, and keeping them well. Even if they don't die immediately, which they probably won't, these are heterothermic animals - you're increasing their metabolic rate and thereby shortening their lifespan when you crank up the temperature. Plus, I strongly suspect that the temperature in this kind of setup is not going to be particularly stable even if it appears to fall into a lower range - even if your fish are happy with anything between 70 to 80 degrees, they will not be happy if the temperature cycles between 70 and 80 degrees every few hours or so.
Also, the larger the tank, the less the heat will affect the temperature.
And the less likely it is that your processor will throw off enough heat to keep the recovery tank from assuming the same temperature as the room it's in - there's a reason that the wattage of fish tank heaters goes up as tank size increases.
Forget the temperature issue for a moment - there's no filtration system, so you'll have to add some sort of biofilter, or watch your fish choke on their own waste. Once that water is live, you'll have all sorts of new fun when you get algae growth in your silicone tubing, and you will get algae in your tubing, which thereby reduces the flow rate of the water traveling through it, which in turn means you'll end up disassembling the thing every so often and snaking it out. That won't do much for your uptime bragging rights, not when you have to shut it down and clean it out from time to time. Your current PC maintenance kit - one can of compressed air and a screwdriver - is going to require some additional equipment, to say the least;)
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It makes a great conversation piece at your next LAN party, I'm sure, but I just don't think it's a long-term solution for keeping fish.
Does the temperature of the water go high enuff to poach them??!
Nope, but it's still probably not suitable for an aquarium. The manufacturer's test results report water temps up to 29.8 degrees celsius, or about 85 degrees fahrenheit, which is about 8-10 degrees too warm for most common freshwater tropical fish. Even their lowest reported temp is 77 degrees, which is at the top end of what you should consider safe for an aquarium.
A write program does a "non-computer thing" - it produces a text. A defrag program does a "computer thing" - you only bother to use it to keep the machine able to run the write program.
What if you use your write program to write about your defrag program?;)
Title? Air date, at least approximate? I mean, if you're covering a live event of some sort, and someone lets one fly, that's one thing - scripting it by design into a dramatic series is quite another.
Funny how you didn't comment on the nudity though.
What do you want me to comment on? The topless tribeswomen of the MbungiBungi tribe that find themselves on National Geographic from time to time? The fact that occasionally the 2 AM showing of Monty Python had a Page 3 type girl on?
What I don't understand -- and what nobody is talking about -- is why is there such an uproar over a few consonants and vowels strung together?
You might as well ask why there's an uproar over public masturbation. After all, masturbation is a perfectly natural act, one that's hardly foreign to the vast majority of people out there, and yet they object to it being on public display. It's a matter of preference - people don't care to have it done in certain places or at certain times, and so society has, by and large, agreed not to allow it. And if the fact that it's a matter of preference bothers you, I would point out that unless you're prepared to argue in favor of natural law or some such, every single law that exists is based in people preferring one thing over another.
In part, but let's not forget that it's also partly taxpayer funded television. Apparently in PBS-land, "censorship" is when the government gives you $390 million dollars for FY 2006.
Profanity and nudity were not uncommon in primetime. Frontline, POV and even NOVA would not censor the audio of interviewees.
The difference is that those are news and documentary-type shows, whereas this is fiction, drama, acting, whatever. The FCC has always been easier on news and informational-type programming than in drama, but in any case "fuck" has never been permitted, your memory notwithstanding. This is not new, nor is it news - PBS and Dreyfuss are simply, cynically spinning this into it somehow being a personal attack on their efforts, when in fact it's the same standards that have been in place for many moons now, the same standards that existed long before "Cop Rock" or whatever this piece of shit is called.
Our university has a cluster of 32 IA64s (which was probably a waste of money).
Depends on how much you paid;)
It's a shame that I2 looks like a dead end - the first batch of SPEC results I saw for AMD64 had them running quite a bit slower than I2. Perhaps the increased interest in 64-bit clean Linux will breathe new life into your cluster.
There is no "out of the box" Windows product (64 bit non-beta OS) out there.
Of course there is. And has been for several years now. That would have made for an interesting test, actually, comparing 64-bit Linux to 64-bit XP on Itanium/I2, but of course the binary availability problem would have reared its head for both systems....
Yeah, and the Windows calculator is also way too big and heavy to hang from your belt loop or put in your pocket.
Seriously, get real for a minute - it's purely a convenience thing, not something intended to be a full-blown replacement for your HP-48 or whatever. People who need full-fledged scientific calculators probably already have one to begin with, and therefore just about nobody is going to care that you can't do arctans in the Windows calc. And the very few who do demand such things on their desktops can readily find more advanced calculators elsewhere.
Except it forces you into the position of having to buy the cover, because the product is poor quality (Or the manufacturer has a poor quality control process)
Not necessarily. Remember, this is an arrangement between you and the store, who wants to sell you such a plan regardless of the quality of the product, whether good, bad, or somewhere in between - the manufacturer and their quality/QC has nothing to do with it. The store, as a matter of fact, is probably even happier to sell you a plan for high-quality merchandise versus low-quality merchandise, because that simply stacks the deck in their favor even more, by making it even less likely that you'll take advantage of the plan by requiring a replacement or repair. They're like any other insurance company - their favorite sort of customer is the one who doesn't actually need insurance, because that guy's premiums are literally free money for them.
...they get to pass the savings onto the legitimate customers.
Riiiiiiiiight. As long as we're pipe-dreaming here, let's dream big and pretend that said savings will be delivered to me on a silver platter by a host of Playboy centerfolds, who will then proceed to sexually pleasure me in ways unknown to mortal men...
Would you want Stanley Kubrick to make a Spider Man movie?
Well, now that you mention it, it would be kind of interesting to see Spidey trade in his suit for a bowler hat and codpiece, and belt out "Singin' in the Rain" while stomping on some bad guy. The cinematography would be beautiful, a la "2001" or "Barry Lyndon", which is good, 'cause you'd get about five minutes between each line of dialog to study it...
Either Seagate holds patents on the technology, or it doesn't, but the fact that they aren't manufacturing products based on patents they might hold is irrelevant. Otherwise, what you're basically suggesting is that it's okay to take someone else's idea, so long as you're faster to build a factory than they are.
India overtakes US in milk production to become largest producer of milk in the world ~= 90 million metric tonnes.
One would hope so. That statistic is much less impressive if you calculate per-capita production. The US produced about 77 million metric tons of milk in 2003, or about 262 kg per person per year - for US readers, that's about 67 gallons per person per year, at 3.9 kg per gallon. Taking your number at face value, India produced 90 million metric tons of milk, or about 84 kg per person per year - about 21 gallons per person per year.
Three words, unis: Sun m.f.-ing Rays. The kids get their own desktop preferences, browser settings, bookmarks and files wherever they go; everyone's happy.
Or, since they apparently already have the Windows machines there and running, they could implement roaming profiles, which have been available since Windows 95.
Sorry, but it's your IT staff that's not giving you what you want, not the OS...
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Well, you wouldn't have to do it all at once - you could just tag books as they're returned by patrons, for example, as part of the reshelving process. Slow, but it would work. Alternately, most large libraries already barcode books on the inside cover, in order to scan them for checkout and checkin - why not put the same barcodes on the spine where the robot can read them? All you'd need is a second copy of the same barcode you already use.
"It can read the labels and the position of the book using its image processing and optical character recognition software," the professor said.
Wouldn't it be easier just to RFID-tag the books, or give them barcodes on the spine, or otherwise modify them in some way to facilitate the robot's work? I have a sneaking suspicion that either of those would be faster and more reliable than trying to OCR book titles or call-number tags, albeit less "clever". "Clever" solutions that are less functional than more straighforward solutions don't particularly impress me, and I doubt I'm alone on this.
I know that that Amsterdam stuff is some good shit, but you should think about putting the bong down for day or so. Seriously.
I used to bank at a credit union whose ATMs dispensed $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills, as well as coin. Kind of cool, because you could use the ATM to cash checks that you received, instead of only being able to deposit it or having to take it to the teller....
"Plenty"? "Popular"? Not in your typical Petsmart lineup - which is, let's face it, where your average non-aficionado is going to get his fish. Gouramis, oscars, mollies, angels, whatever, none of those are going to be happy at 85 degrees - bettas and loaches are about the only things I can think of off the top of my head that would tolerate water as warm as 85 degrees, and even they'll be happier with it somewhat lower.
There's a difference between keeping fish, and keeping them well. Even if they don't die immediately, which they probably won't, these are heterothermic animals - you're increasing their metabolic rate and thereby shortening their lifespan when you crank up the temperature. Plus, I strongly suspect that the temperature in this kind of setup is not going to be particularly stable even if it appears to fall into a lower range - even if your fish are happy with anything between 70 to 80 degrees, they will not be happy if the temperature cycles between 70 and 80 degrees every few hours or so.
Also, the larger the tank, the less the heat will affect the temperature.
And the less likely it is that your processor will throw off enough heat to keep the recovery tank from assuming the same temperature as the room it's in - there's a reason that the wattage of fish tank heaters goes up as tank size increases.
Forget the temperature issue for a moment - there's no filtration system, so you'll have to add some sort of biofilter, or watch your fish choke on their own waste. Once that water is live, you'll have all sorts of new fun when you get algae growth in your silicone tubing, and you will get algae in your tubing, which thereby reduces the flow rate of the water traveling through it, which in turn means you'll end up disassembling the thing every so often and snaking it out. That won't do much for your uptime bragging rights, not when you have to shut it down and clean it out from time to time. Your current PC maintenance kit - one can of compressed air and a screwdriver - is going to require some additional equipment, to say the least ;)
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It makes a great conversation piece at your next LAN party, I'm sure, but I just don't think it's a long-term solution for keeping fish.
If you intend to overpump your system, I recommend water cooling... ;)
Nope, but it's still probably not suitable for an aquarium. The manufacturer's test results report water temps up to 29.8 degrees celsius, or about 85 degrees fahrenheit, which is about 8-10 degrees too warm for most common freshwater tropical fish. Even their lowest reported temp is 77 degrees, which is at the top end of what you should consider safe for an aquarium.
Don't forget to vote ;)
What if you use your write program to write about your defrag program? ;)
How about if I take mine back, and you can give them four? ;)
Title? Air date, at least approximate? I mean, if you're covering a live event of some sort, and someone lets one fly, that's one thing - scripting it by design into a dramatic series is quite another.
Funny how you didn't comment on the nudity though.
What do you want me to comment on? The topless tribeswomen of the MbungiBungi tribe that find themselves on National Geographic from time to time? The fact that occasionally the 2 AM showing of Monty Python had a Page 3 type girl on?
What I don't understand -- and what nobody is talking about -- is why is there such an uproar over a few consonants and vowels strung together?
You might as well ask why there's an uproar over public masturbation. After all, masturbation is a perfectly natural act, one that's hardly foreign to the vast majority of people out there, and yet they object to it being on public display. It's a matter of preference - people don't care to have it done in certain places or at certain times, and so society has, by and large, agreed not to allow it. And if the fact that it's a matter of preference bothers you, I would point out that unless you're prepared to argue in favor of natural law or some such, every single law that exists is based in people preferring one thing over another.
In part, but let's not forget that it's also partly taxpayer funded television. Apparently in PBS-land, "censorship" is when the government gives you $390 million dollars for FY 2006.
The difference is that those are news and documentary-type shows, whereas this is fiction, drama, acting, whatever. The FCC has always been easier on news and informational-type programming than in drama, but in any case "fuck" has never been permitted, your memory notwithstanding. This is not new, nor is it news - PBS and Dreyfuss are simply, cynically spinning this into it somehow being a personal attack on their efforts, when in fact it's the same standards that have been in place for many moons now, the same standards that existed long before "Cop Rock" or whatever this piece of shit is called.
Depends on how much you paid ;)
It's a shame that I2 looks like a dead end - the first batch of SPEC results I saw for AMD64 had them running quite a bit slower than I2. Perhaps the increased interest in 64-bit clean Linux will breathe new life into your cluster.
Of course there is. And has been for several years now. That would have made for an interesting test, actually, comparing 64-bit Linux to 64-bit XP on Itanium/I2, but of course the binary availability problem would have reared its head for both systems....
Presumably his camera has some serious jitter correction built in...
Seriously, get real for a minute - it's purely a convenience thing, not something intended to be a full-blown replacement for your HP-48 or whatever. People who need full-fledged scientific calculators probably already have one to begin with, and therefore just about nobody is going to care that you can't do arctans in the Windows calc. And the very few who do demand such things on their desktops can readily find more advanced calculators elsewhere.
Not necessarily. Remember, this is an arrangement between you and the store, who wants to sell you such a plan regardless of the quality of the product, whether good, bad, or somewhere in between - the manufacturer and their quality/QC has nothing to do with it. The store, as a matter of fact, is probably even happier to sell you a plan for high-quality merchandise versus low-quality merchandise, because that simply stacks the deck in their favor even more, by making it even less likely that you'll take advantage of the plan by requiring a replacement or repair. They're like any other insurance company - their favorite sort of customer is the one who doesn't actually need insurance, because that guy's premiums are literally free money for them.
"Hel-lo, ladies! Hey, what's with the sheep?"
Riiiiiiiiight. As long as we're pipe-dreaming here, let's dream big and pretend that said savings will be delivered to me on a silver platter by a host of Playboy centerfolds, who will then proceed to sexually pleasure me in ways unknown to mortal men...
Well, now that you mention it, it would be kind of interesting to see Spidey trade in his suit for a bowler hat and codpiece, and belt out "Singin' in the Rain" while stomping on some bad guy. The cinematography would be beautiful, a la "2001" or "Barry Lyndon", which is good, 'cause you'd get about five minutes between each line of dialog to study it...
Just take a cue from Mötlëy Crüë - thë mörë ümläüts, thë härdër yøü røck. It's some kind of rule or something.
Or was it "the more umlauts, the harder you suck"? I can never remember...
Either Seagate holds patents on the technology, or it doesn't, but the fact that they aren't manufacturing products based on patents they might hold is irrelevant. Otherwise, what you're basically suggesting is that it's okay to take someone else's idea, so long as you're faster to build a factory than they are.
One would hope so. That statistic is much less impressive if you calculate per-capita production. The US produced about 77 million metric tons of milk in 2003, or about 262 kg per person per year - for US readers, that's about 67 gallons per person per year, at 3.9 kg per gallon. Taking your number at face value, India produced 90 million metric tons of milk, or about 84 kg per person per year - about 21 gallons per person per year.
Or, since they apparently already have the Windows machines there and running, they could implement roaming profiles, which have been available since Windows 95.
Sorry, but it's your IT staff that's not giving you what you want, not the OS...