Damn! I remember buying one of the very first flash drives, back in about 2000 or so. $50 for an IBM-branded 8 MB. 8 Megs, no typo.
If you don't mind me asking, what did you do with that drive that made it worth $50?
(I'm asking because I like hearing about 'doing more with less', not because I'm challenging you. I'm probably going overboard in explaining that but I'm not sure how my tone's coming across.:) )
Likewise, when someone says 'Hey, smell this,' never, NEVER do it. It will not end well.
Man I learned that lesson too late. I had a friend of mine hand me a bottle of hydrochloric acid and said "Take a whiff!" It smelled like... burning. I'm being unclear, let me rephrase that. My nose reported that it was on fire.
Go to Panera Bread. They have free wi-fi there, too. The food is quite a bit better, and healthier, than all that fried and preprocessed crap that McDonald's dishes out,...
Just about all video game consoles for the last decade or so have been sold at a loss for market share.
I'm not claiming to be an expert on this topic or anything but the last time I heard about this the key ingredient was whether or not they were selling it at a substantially lower price in one region than in another. Like selling the PS3 in Japan for $500 USD but $75 USD in the United states, that'd be dumping.
Right, I live in central New York. Mind telling me who I should call to get 100 Mbit like other similar cities in the world? Or is New York not crowded enough for you?
They still have to support the non-crowded areas. Money an infrastructure are still being spread a lot further.
The United States is a difficult country to wire. This didn't stop being true when it became fashionable to bash Americans.
When I take my first teaching job, assuming I do it here in Nebraska, I will go from ~$32,000/yr to ~$28,000 if I don't do anything but teach. That's a huge cut when a person has three kids to feed, but it is what I love doing. Sure, I'd love to get paid more, but I also want kids to learn from people who LOVE teaching.
Please forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't you have 3 months a year to do some other work to make up a chunk of that difference? Or do teachers end up working during summer break?
You clearly have not tried to play rhythm or fighting games with an LCD.
I clearly have not played the one game you're thinking of, no. I have, however, played quite a few games and the LCD display hasn't even lightly come up on the radar as being an issue. I would love for you to provide a specific example so I could give it a try.
Until I can see that first hand, I can only assume you've either been exposed to old or really cheap LCDs. I can't even get a viewing angle shift in contrast with my monitor.
They have not improved, and it is unlikely that they will in the future.
How are you measuring that? I'm sitting here in a bullpen surrounded by 2 year old ~$600'ish (at the time, they're like $200-$400 now) LCDs and a couple of really expensive CRTs. The CRTs are blurry and dim in comparison, by a sickening amount I might add. Actually they bloom a bit, making everything a bit soft. There's not one aspect of those CRTs I'm envious of, and these aren't cheapies.
I haven't even had a laptop in the last two years with display that makes me look fondly at CRTs. The closest I've come is ghosting on the PSP.
What I'm trying to say is 'easier said than done'. The IR technology has gone quite a ways. I think they'd all love to have something that's just as capable without occlusion problems or expensive solutions. Really, though, that many actors in that big of space with a minimum of 40 markers each, that's a tall order no matter which technology you use.
Mobile Phones and GPS would like a word. Both have been working for years without many problems.
You don't strap 40 cell phones to a human and expect them to, at 60fps, provide accurate position and rotation data down to the millimeter. That's about like saying "we landed a man on the moon several decades ago, there's no reason we can't get people to Mars."
I honestly don't know why IR is chosen over radio.
It bogs down the actors with either cables or batteries. Also, radio requires a smaller volume and requires such a high frequency that it ends up becoming line of sight, anyway.
In short: It's inferior to IR and optical capture in real-world scenarios./
How exactly are radio/wifi/wimax/bluetooth at all relevant in relation to a motion capture camera?
It's not. It sounds like he's confusing the use of IR with an IRDA port on a laptop. (BTW: His question wasn't off-topic. He asked an interesting question.)
IR is used to illuminate the balls on the mocap suit so that the cameras in the volume see little else but bright white specks to track. They use IR in particular because they can make those balls really bright for the volume, but still retain normal lighting on the stage. Besides not requring actors to act in the dark, they also do this so they can have regular video cameras capture the action for reference.
What he might have meant is using a technology where instead of looking at where sensors are from the outside, use sensors that transmit where they are via radio or something. There is some sense in that, provided the technology exists. I saw demos years ago of a suit sort of like that. I don't know if it transmitted translational data (as opposed to just rotational data...), but even if it did, there was a nice big cable coming from the actor to a computer somewhere. Useless for stunt work. Anyway, he might be thinking of that, but you cannot really tell from the way he positioned his rant. But, yeah, stunt work is done quite often with mocap and once you start putting wires and blinkie on actors you start losing flexibility.
His complaint, as it is stated, is akin to bitching about cars using petroleum when nuclear technology has proven to be a lot better. If you're really vague with the details and throw practicality out of consideration you can make a compelling-sounding rant.
because goodness knows in these troubling times, our society needs to concentrate our technological progress into the betterment of movie special effects, and a better cost structure for producers of action blockbusters.
Yeah, you wouldn't want people spending tons of money on frivilous things during an economic downturn.
My provider in Romania in 2005, four years ago and in a much less developed country, offered speeds sufficient to download a film in about 10 minutes (there was no HD then, but we were happy) for all of 15 euro a month.
But you can say the same about the people who don't want to be pharmacists: "Do you shun the practice of medicine because you want to live among the sick?"
I can speak for myself: A big reason I didn't pursue being a doctor is because I don't want to be around sick people. Not out of worry of being sick, but because it's depressing.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn! I remember buying one of the very first flash drives, back in about 2000 or so. $50 for an IBM-branded 8 MB. 8 Megs, no typo.
If you don't mind me asking, what did you do with that drive that made it worth $50?
(I'm asking because I like hearing about 'doing more with less', not because I'm challenging you. I'm probably going overboard in explaining that but I'm not sure how my tone's coming across. :) )
And how exactly is this "Entertainment"?
It'll make more sense if you ever work in an office environment. Also, when that happens, you'll discover Dilbert is actually funny.
Likewise, when someone says 'Hey, smell this,' never, NEVER do it. It will not end well.
Man I learned that lesson too late. I had a friend of mine hand me a bottle of hydrochloric acid and said "Take a whiff!" It smelled like... burning. I'm being unclear, let me rephrase that. My nose reported that it was on fire.
Go to Panera Bread. They have free wi-fi there, too. The food is quite a bit better, and healthier, than all that fried and preprocessed crap that McDonald's dishes out,...
As cheap and as quick?
Just about all video game consoles for the last decade or so have been sold at a loss for market share.
I'm not claiming to be an expert on this topic or anything but the last time I heard about this the key ingredient was whether or not they were selling it at a substantially lower price in one region than in another. Like selling the PS3 in Japan for $500 USD but $75 USD in the United states, that'd be dumping.
I now have plenty of time to bleeeeed.
Right, I live in central New York. Mind telling me who I should call to get 100 Mbit like other similar cities in the world? Or is New York not crowded enough for you?
They still have to support the non-crowded areas. Money an infrastructure are still being spread a lot further.
The United States is a difficult country to wire. This didn't stop being true when it became fashionable to bash Americans.
When I take my first teaching job, assuming I do it here in Nebraska, I will go from ~$32,000/yr to ~$28,000 if I don't do anything but teach. That's a huge cut when a person has three kids to feed, but it is what I love doing. Sure, I'd love to get paid more, but I also want kids to learn from people who LOVE teaching.
Please forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't you have 3 months a year to do some other work to make up a chunk of that difference? Or do teachers end up working during summer break?
You clearly have not tried to play rhythm or fighting games with an LCD.
I clearly have not played the one game you're thinking of, no. I have, however, played quite a few games and the LCD display hasn't even lightly come up on the radar as being an issue. I would love for you to provide a specific example so I could give it a try.
Until I can see that first hand, I can only assume you've either been exposed to old or really cheap LCDs. I can't even get a viewing angle shift in contrast with my monitor.
They have not improved, and it is unlikely that they will in the future.
I don't understand either side of this statement.
How are you measuring that? I'm sitting here in a bullpen surrounded by 2 year old ~$600'ish (at the time, they're like $200-$400 now) LCDs and a couple of really expensive CRTs. The CRTs are blurry and dim in comparison, by a sickening amount I might add. Actually they bloom a bit, making everything a bit soft. There's not one aspect of those CRTs I'm envious of, and these aren't cheapies.
I haven't even had a laptop in the last two years with display that makes me look fondly at CRTs. The closest I've come is ghosting on the PSP.
And does their program eliminate motion blur and the poor contrast of LCD to make it looks like a CRT?
No but the 21st Century did.
What I'm trying to say is 'easier said than done'. The IR technology has gone quite a ways. I think they'd all love to have something that's just as capable without occlusion problems or expensive solutions. Really, though, that many actors in that big of space with a minimum of 40 markers each, that's a tall order no matter which technology you use.
Make it work in a 70' square volume with 18 actors moving in it and patent it.
Mobile Phones and GPS would like a word.
Both have been working for years without many problems.
You don't strap 40 cell phones to a human and expect them to, at 60fps, provide accurate position and rotation data down to the millimeter. That's about like saying "we landed a man on the moon several decades ago, there's no reason we can't get people to Mars."
It's a more difficult problem than it looks.
I honestly don't know why IR is chosen over radio.
It bogs down the actors with either cables or batteries. Also, radio requires a smaller volume and requires such a high frequency that it ends up becoming line of sight, anyway.
In short: It's inferior to IR and optical capture in real-world scenarios./
How exactly are radio/wifi/wimax/bluetooth at all relevant in relation to a motion capture camera?
It's not. It sounds like he's confusing the use of IR with an IRDA port on a laptop. (BTW: His question wasn't off-topic. He asked an interesting question.)
IR is used to illuminate the balls on the mocap suit so that the cameras in the volume see little else but bright white specks to track. They use IR in particular because they can make those balls really bright for the volume, but still retain normal lighting on the stage. Besides not requring actors to act in the dark, they also do this so they can have regular video cameras capture the action for reference.
What he might have meant is using a technology where instead of looking at where sensors are from the outside, use sensors that transmit where they are via radio or something. There is some sense in that, provided the technology exists. I saw demos years ago of a suit sort of like that. I don't know if it transmitted translational data (as opposed to just rotational data...), but even if it did, there was a nice big cable coming from the actor to a computer somewhere. Useless for stunt work. Anyway, he might be thinking of that, but you cannot really tell from the way he positioned his rant. But, yeah, stunt work is done quite often with mocap and once you start putting wires and blinkie on actors you start losing flexibility.
His complaint, as it is stated, is akin to bitching about cars using petroleum when nuclear technology has proven to be a lot better. If you're really vague with the details and throw practicality out of consideration you can make a compelling-sounding rant.
because goodness knows in these troubling times, our society needs to concentrate our technological progress into the betterment of movie special effects, and a better cost structure for producers of action blockbusters.
Yeah, you wouldn't want people spending tons of money on frivilous things during an economic downturn.
I for one welcome our oscillating polymer overlords.
Are all of you people that write this joke former SNL writers trying to sharpen your skills?
My provider in Romania in 2005, four years ago and in a much less developed country, offered speeds sufficient to download a film in about 10 minutes (there was no HD then, but we were happy) for all of 15 euro a month.
How many potential customers did they serve?
by Anonymous Coward
The name is Bahnhof. Why is it so hard for some people to get the name right?
This from a guy who didn't get his login name right!
You've gotta point. However, I seriously seriously seriously doubt this guy checked the other posts before declaring it a dupe.
I will concede, though, that I'm being unfair to him in particular.
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/01/1259203
Still, it's open source and the DoD - what's not to like?
Dupe!!
It's amazing how much people live in fear these days.
Between it happening once already and having a monkey for a president piss off the world by invading two countries since, what's so amazing about it?
of fuckin' wussy people.
Yeah, they'd be so much cooler if they didn't learn lessons in life.
But you can say the same about the people who don't want to be pharmacists: "Do you shun the practice of medicine because you want to live among the sick?"
I can speak for myself: A big reason I didn't pursue being a doctor is because I don't want to be around sick people. Not out of worry of being sick, but because it's depressing.