Just for giggles, I found an image from the web and tried the technique I described. The only thing I did different was I used Threshold on top of it to make it 1-bit B&W. Have a peek.
This example does illustrate the distortion problem, though. I don't know if an OCR could actually read this. (I'd be impressed!)
"Simple level adjustment only works well if you've got a very even lighting, otherwise the greys representing the background at the other end of the sheet end up too close to the greys representing the text at the other end of the sheet. I know, I've tried scanning by digital camera myself, and you need a lot of lighting to get it right."
Any possibility of providing an example? I'd be curious to take a stab at it and see if I could offer a tip or two that'd help. The reason I think this would work is that you only need for the text to be black and the BG to be white. You could go very extreme with the Levels Adjustment and still get what you want, provided the dark areas of the page don't get very close to the black level of the text. Even with uneven lighting, you can use the Levels Tool (in this context, anyway) to remove the difference of the gradiated light from the text... in effect, filtering out all but the text. I've had good luck with this in the past, but I'd also have to admit I haven't tried this particular example before. You may need to get it close then use the Threshold filter to send the image back to 1-bit B&W. (or levels adjust it twice.. once to exagerrate the difference between the text and the gradiated light and one to finish it off down to B&W.)
"If I were a whizz with Photoshop/GIMP/etc, I suppose I could have done some sort of correction to the picture, but..."
Getting rid of distortion is tricky, but making the image a proper B&W is easy.
- Image/Adjust/Desaturate - Image/Adjust/Levels.. Just under the Histogram, grab the middle arrow and drag it left or right. Use this to even the contrast... Grab the left arrow and drag it right, that'll make the darks darker... Grab the right arrow and drag it left to make the lights lighter.
Since text is black and just about every other shade of gray can be turned to white, this'll work 90% of the time for you. This particular step isn't hard and wouldn't take more than 30 seconds to do. The process in GIMP should be similar.
This isn't a rebuttal, per-se. It doesn't fully address the problem. I just wanted to point out that that particular step isn't the difficult part.:)
"This is a console with about the same horsepower as the original XBOX"
More like double.
"with a new age powerglove for a controller,"... with 20 years of technological advancements and plenty of people who have tried it and given it a thumbs up.
"all selling at a premium price."
$250 (+ pack-in game) is a premium price? What do you call $599?
"This thing will be a museum piece long before it reaches the traditional console end-of-life cycle. It's just not worth it."
Enjoy playing your FPS and racing sequels with the 10 year old controller in High Definition.
"* Expensive console - 250 dollars for a souped up GameCube"
$150 cheaper than its closest competitor.
"* Expensive controllers - so much for having three or four friends over all using Wii controllers without shelling out big bucks"
$60 for a nunchuck and Wii-mote. Hardly 'big bucks'.
"* Ho-hum games - A whole lot of Wii titles look to be "GameCube game with some pointing"
Yeah, you've posted this a couple of times already, everybody knows that's not true. The sky isn't falling, Mr. Little. None of your complaints even comes close to "$599".
Ugh, you're right, I didn't phrase that very clearly. I apologize, it wasn't my intention to make it sound like it was a blessing. I was trying to say that there are different people in management, but mentioning his death wasn't the best way to do it. Sorry.:/
"I was not attempting to say "NINTENDO IS F-ING US AGAIN!" or anything of that nature, but simply to express that in my view, after some simple and quite forgiving tests, that the Wii controller still has some questionable design aspects that give me pause when I find myself tempted to join the chorus of praise for their latest innovation."
*sigh*
I wish I had read this one before your other one. I wouldn't have been as snide.:)
Listen, I did not read that as an attack on Nintendo. I didn't reply to it to defend Nintendo. Heck, I have RSI, and I have similar concerns that you do. However, it was the rationale I had a beef with. I'm short on time, so I'll just give you a brief summary of why the VB doesn't sway me much in this argument:
- The designer for it passed away. He personally will not be around to make that mistake. - There's no possible way Nintendo would have a fiasco like the VB and not learn from it. - The VB was not a flagship product with near the development budget that a console has. - Nintendo has a good history with making controllers. More recently, the DS has been well recieved. - 1 mistake 10 years ago is not indicative of a pattern. 9 years without such mistakes, however...
"Your corporate loyalty seems to be getting in the way of analyzing my original statement."
Your petty misconceptions are getting in the way of analyzing my statements. Try re-reading my post again as a post expressing a legitimate reply to your concern. I'm not interesting in playing fanboy wars.
Depends on what the argument is. If the argument is that any company can make a mistake, sure, okay, thanks for using up the ol' bandwidth Captain Obvious. If the argument is that Nintendo has a propensity for making mistakes like that, then no, it is not 100% valid.
Re:Months Of Wii Hype Go Up In Flames
on
The Wii Takes NYC
·
· Score: 1
"I don't think there would have been as much of a negative reaction if Nintendo had more interesting games to show, but so far they have an awful lot of standard console games that have been slightly tweaked to use the Wii controller."
Lots of games using lots of ways to use the controller. Lots of ways for you to know this already. Zero ways to take your post seriously.
"Wii're not interested in all these Wiivertisements..."
I'm not interested in FireFox, but I don't bitch about FF stories. Wanna know what I do instead? If you click on the scrollbar and give it a little nudge downards, the Wii story will disappear.
On a side note: The Wii-mote could provide similar functionality.:P
Troll? I'm trying to explain some of the skepticism surrounding the Wii controller, not predict doom and gloom for it. I'm a foaming-at-the-mouth Nintendo fanboy. I know the Wii-mote will be cool. But I cannot blame somebody for being skeptical after all of the vaguely similar attempts at controllers over the last two decades. They're not crazy or stupid, they've just got years of history to draw from. Sorry for not making that clearer the first time around.
"I simply can't understand how someone can be so blinded that they can't see the benefit of the Wiimote; name a better (existing) controller for Tiger Woods Golf, or a better console controller for a FPS, or even just tell me how a racing game is better with an analogue stick."
Though I do get a sense of headdus-up-buttus from some people regarding the Wii-mote, it is fair to point out that over the years we've seen a large number of 'innovative controllers' (especially for the PC) that all quickly faded into obscurity. I don't think there has been a successful controller yet that features motion sensing or a sensor bar. Heh.
"...but so far all they've shown is a whole bunch of stuff that is your everyday console game with some pointing control added."
That is not true. Look at Pilot Wings, ExciteTruck, Red Steel, Metroid, the sports pack, Wario Ware, etc. All of those games would be far different if they only used the pointer control.
"Every time I see people talking about the Wii controller I think of how the questions and commentary would be different if it was the exact same controller but made by a different company. The reactions would almost certainly be completely different and negative for a company trying to sell such a gimmick."
You're right, any other company would get poo poo'd. That, however, doesn't say a thing about the usefulness of the controller. What seperates a feature from a gimmick is how it is used. Nobody's calling a DS a gimmick anymore.
"before Microsoft starts charging more for multi-core installations? Seriously, if quad core means fewer boxes in the rack, it means fewer licenses."
Microsoft had this problem before multi-core. Just having faster CPUs every year means fewer boxes on the rack. Every time they make a move like this they open the door wider for OSS. They know this.
"I'd rather have a 0.00000001% chance of being blown up by terrorist events..."
You sure about that? Shortly after 9-11 lots of people lost their jobs and it took quite a while for the market to heal itself. I knew programmers that were out of work for over a year.
That may have little effect on your view (I don't want to live in a fascist world, either.) but you do need to understand that terrorism is more than the odds of you spontaneously dying one day.
Isn't 7 years a bit long in comparison to more serious crimes of violence and fraud? Perhaps 7 years is average for a fraud conviction, but I don't understand why rapists [in Canada at least] get about 5 year sentences, mercy killers [Robert Latimer] 10 years, and serial killers [Karla Holmolka] gets 9 years. Where is the equity?
I doubt this'll make much difference, but I'll throw it out there: The article says he was charged with two counts. Would I be correct in assuming that if it had been one count, his sentence would be shorter?
This isn't a rebuttal, simply a nitpick. If you're viewing your DVD on a computer, you're getting all 720 pixels. What you view on a TV is cropped a little. On a lot of TVs, the best you'll get is 640 wide.
Again, I'm not posting this to invalidate your point. It's just one of the stupid little things I learned when I did graphics for TV. It's a pain in the butt to put text at the bottom or the top of the screen. You have to stay within the 'safe area'. It's fun watching DVDs of 80's shows on a computer because you'll start seeing boom mics etc at the top of the screen, something you wouldn't catch on the TV. Heh.
Slashdot Mirror
Just for giggles, I found an image from the web and tried the technique I described. The only thing I did different was I used Threshold on top of it to make it 1-bit B&W. Have a peek.
This example does illustrate the distortion problem, though. I don't know if an OCR could actually read this. (I'd be impressed!)
"Simple level adjustment only works well if you've got a very even lighting, otherwise the greys representing the background at the other end of the sheet end up too close to the greys representing the text at the other end of the sheet. I know, I've tried scanning by digital camera myself, and you need a lot of lighting to get it right."
Any possibility of providing an example? I'd be curious to take a stab at it and see if I could offer a tip or two that'd help. The reason I think this would work is that you only need for the text to be black and the BG to be white. You could go very extreme with the Levels Adjustment and still get what you want, provided the dark areas of the page don't get very close to the black level of the text. Even with uneven lighting, you can use the Levels Tool (in this context, anyway) to remove the difference of the gradiated light from the text... in effect, filtering out all but the text. I've had good luck with this in the past, but I'd also have to admit I haven't tried this particular example before. You may need to get it close then use the Threshold filter to send the image back to 1-bit B&W. (or levels adjust it twice.. once to exagerrate the difference between the text and the gradiated light and one to finish it off down to B&W.)
"If I were a whizz with Photoshop/GIMP/etc, I suppose I could have done some sort of correction to the picture, but..."
.. Just under the Histogram, grab the middle arrow and drag it left or right. Use this to even the contrast. .. Grab the left arrow and drag it right, that'll make the darks darker. .. Grab the right arrow and drag it left to make the lights lighter.
:)
Getting rid of distortion is tricky, but making the image a proper B&W is easy.
- Image/Adjust/Desaturate
- Image/Adjust/Levels
Since text is black and just about every other shade of gray can be turned to white, this'll work 90% of the time for you. This particular step isn't hard and wouldn't take more than 30 seconds to do. The process in GIMP should be similar.
This isn't a rebuttal, per-se. It doesn't fully address the problem. I just wanted to point out that that particular step isn't the difficult part.
"Anyone else finding that the Wii prefix on everything is getting hideously annoying?"
Anoy-wii-ing, you mean?
Okay, that joke was totally stupid. I was just seeing if I could get you to type obscenities.
"I am pretty sure that Nintendo has made more money off the GC than Microsoft has off the XBox."
My sister's lemonade stand made more money than the XBOX.
"This is a console with about the same horsepower as the original XBOX"
... with 20 years of technological advancements and plenty of people who have tried it and given it a thumbs up.
More like double.
"with a new age powerglove for a controller,"
"all selling at a premium price."
$250 (+ pack-in game) is a premium price? What do you call $599?
"This thing will be a museum piece long before it reaches the traditional console end-of-life cycle. It's just not worth it."
Enjoy playing your FPS and racing sequels with the 10 year old controller in High Definition.
"* Expensive console - 250 dollars for a souped up GameCube"
$150 cheaper than its closest competitor.
"* Expensive controllers - so much for having three or four friends over all using Wii controllers without shelling out big bucks"
$60 for a nunchuck and Wii-mote. Hardly 'big bucks'.
"* Ho-hum games - A whole lot of Wii titles look to be "GameCube game with some pointing"
Yeah, you've posted this a couple of times already, everybody knows that's not true. The sky isn't falling, Mr. Little. None of your complaints even comes close to "$599".
"nice to know that nintendo is using cheap parts"
/sarcasm
Yeah because Nintendo is widely known for releasing consoles you have to turn upside down just to get them to work.
Ugh, you're right, I didn't phrase that very clearly. I apologize, it wasn't my intention to make it sound like it was a blessing. I was trying to say that there are different people in management, but mentioning his death wasn't the best way to do it. Sorry. :/
"Yet you are a self proclaimed "foaming-at-the-mouth Nintendo fanboy""
So?
"I was not attempting to say "NINTENDO IS F-ING US AGAIN!" or anything of that nature, but simply to express that in my view, after some simple and quite forgiving tests, that the Wii controller still has some questionable design aspects that give me pause when I find myself tempted to join the chorus of praise for their latest innovation."
:)
*sigh*
I wish I had read this one before your other one. I wouldn't have been as snide.
Listen, I did not read that as an attack on Nintendo. I didn't reply to it to defend Nintendo. Heck, I have RSI, and I have similar concerns that you do. However, it was the rationale I had a beef with. I'm short on time, so I'll just give you a brief summary of why the VB doesn't sway me much in this argument:
- The designer for it passed away. He personally will not be around to make that mistake.
- There's no possible way Nintendo would have a fiasco like the VB and not learn from it.
- The VB was not a flagship product with near the development budget that a console has.
- Nintendo has a good history with making controllers. More recently, the DS has been well recieved.
- 1 mistake 10 years ago is not indicative of a pattern. 9 years without such mistakes, however...
Have a good afternoon.
"Your corporate loyalty seems to be getting in the way of analyzing my original statement."
Your petty misconceptions are getting in the way of analyzing my statements. Try re-reading my post again as a post expressing a legitimate reply to your concern. I'm not interesting in playing fanboy wars.
"But still a 100% valid argument."
Depends on what the argument is. If the argument is that any company can make a mistake, sure, okay, thanks for using up the ol' bandwidth Captain Obvious. If the argument is that Nintendo has a propensity for making mistakes like that, then no, it is not 100% valid.
"I don't think there would have been as much of a negative reaction if Nintendo had more interesting games to show, but so far they have an awful lot of standard console games that have been slightly tweaked to use the Wii controller."
Lots of games using lots of ways to use the controller. Lots of ways for you to know this already. Zero ways to take your post seriously.
"Joke all you want, but the Virtual Boy proves Nintendo - like almost every company - doesn't always think things through as well as it should."
The Virtual Boy argument is 10 years old.
"I'll wait for the PS3. I can get one of them for less than the cost of an XBox 360 + a Wii. And there's some serious innocvation going on there."
Like real-time weapon switch?
"Wii're not interested in all these Wiivertisements..."
:P
I'm not interested in FireFox, but I don't bitch about FF stories. Wanna know what I do instead? If you click on the scrollbar and give it a little nudge downards, the Wii story will disappear.
On a side note: The Wii-mote could provide similar functionality.
Troll? I'm trying to explain some of the skepticism surrounding the Wii controller, not predict doom and gloom for it. I'm a foaming-at-the-mouth Nintendo fanboy. I know the Wii-mote will be cool. But I cannot blame somebody for being skeptical after all of the vaguely similar attempts at controllers over the last two decades. They're not crazy or stupid, they've just got years of history to draw from. Sorry for not making that clearer the first time around.
"I simply can't understand how someone can be so blinded that they can't see the benefit of the Wiimote; name a better (existing) controller for Tiger Woods Golf, or a better console controller for a FPS, or even just tell me how a racing game is better with an analogue stick."
Though I do get a sense of headdus-up-buttus from some people regarding the Wii-mote, it is fair to point out that over the years we've seen a large number of 'innovative controllers' (especially for the PC) that all quickly faded into obscurity. I don't think there has been a successful controller yet that features motion sensing or a sensor bar. Heh.
"...but so far all they've shown is a whole bunch of stuff that is your everyday console game with some pointing control added."
That is not true. Look at Pilot Wings, ExciteTruck, Red Steel, Metroid, the sports pack, Wario Ware, etc. All of those games would be far different if they only used the pointer control.
"Every time I see people talking about the Wii controller I think of how the questions and commentary would be different if it was the exact same controller but made by a different company. The reactions would almost certainly be completely different and negative for a company trying to sell such a gimmick."
You're right, any other company would get poo poo'd. That, however, doesn't say a thing about the usefulness of the controller. What seperates a feature from a gimmick is how it is used. Nobody's calling a DS a gimmick anymore.
"before Microsoft starts charging more for multi-core installations? Seriously, if quad core means fewer boxes in the rack, it means fewer licenses."
Microsoft had this problem before multi-core. Just having faster CPUs every year means fewer boxes on the rack. Every time they make a move like this they open the door wider for OSS. They know this.
"I'd rather have a 0.00000001% chance of being blown up by terrorist events..."
You sure about that? Shortly after 9-11 lots of people lost their jobs and it took quite a while for the market to heal itself. I knew programmers that were out of work for over a year.
That may have little effect on your view (I don't want to live in a fascist world, either.) but you do need to understand that terrorism is more than the odds of you spontaneously dying one day.
I doubt this'll make much difference, but I'll throw it out there: The article says he was charged with two counts. Would I be correct in assuming that if it had been one count, his sentence would be shorter?
"Serves him right. (Score:-1, Informative)"
Dude, you got a -1 Informative on Slashdot. Put that on your resume!
"btw, standard dvd's are 720 wide, not 640"
This isn't a rebuttal, simply a nitpick. If you're viewing your DVD on a computer, you're getting all 720 pixels. What you view on a TV is cropped a little. On a lot of TVs, the best you'll get is 640 wide.
Again, I'm not posting this to invalidate your point. It's just one of the stupid little things I learned when I did graphics for TV. It's a pain in the butt to put text at the bottom or the top of the screen. You have to stay within the 'safe area'. It's fun watching DVDs of 80's shows on a computer because you'll start seeing boom mics etc at the top of the screen, something you wouldn't catch on the TV. Heh.