I can think of a few useful applications that have nothing to do with gesture recognition; the z-depth would allow you to cut the image of the user away from the background, which could be useful for videoconferencing if you want to chat with someone but don't want them to see your surroundings or the other people in the room with you.
Close-field Kinect on a laptop would probably allow you to do very accurate head / eye tracking, so you can do things like the '3d window' effect demonstrated in this video by Jonny Lee.
3D object scanning. Microsoft already have a version of this for the Xbox with the Kinect Fun Labs, but it's rather limited in resolution. A close-field sensor would provide better resolution.
It's possible you could use facial recognition for security. Unlike most webcam-based facial recognition systems, this couldn't be fooled by a paper mask.
I think it must have been 1993; possibly 1994 - I was shown Mosaic by another student. I remember thinking it was like some kind of mix between Hypercard and gopher. I can't remember what the first site I visited was. I do remember that all web pages were grey and left-justified, though.
You say it made it infeasible for Great Britain to support the IRA's enemy, but surely Great Britain *was* their enemy. It's not like Northern Ireland was a country to which Britain was supplying military aid; it was (and still is) part of the United Kingdom.
Over a third of the people they killed were civilians. About half were military - most of the rest were police and other paramilitary group members. Perhaps in these days of regular drone attacks in Pakistan 33% collateral damage equates to 'the best fire discipline of all times', but it doesn't sound all that great to me.
no, i think a good grasp of history would put a proper amount of proportionality between waterboarding terrorist assholes whose duty in life is blowing up civilians
You say they're terrorists, but out of 775 people taken to Guantanamo since October 2001, only three have ever been convicted of any crime. A lot of them just seem to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of them seem to have just been held because they had useful intelligence, not because they did anything wrong. Some of them were children.
Some of those being held will have just been defending their country from a foreign occupation force. Some will have fought just because they or their families would have been in danger from the Taliban if they hadn't. Some will have just desperately needed some money.
Now sure, the scale level of human rights violations in China is much higher than in the US, but let's not pretend that Guantanamo isn't super fucking shitty and not something to be ashamed of.
I like the idea of a robot-driven car, but I think the difficult thing is that in the case of a death or an injury, people want to be able to hold a person responsible. It's difficult to know exactly how that would pan out with a robot car. However, I guess one advantage is that you would probably have a 'black box' that could give you a much better idea of exactly what happened.
To be honest, people probably worry about this more than they should. We already have the situation where injuring or killing people with a car is very lightly punished. It's exceptionally rare (at least in the UK) for anybody to do jail time for killing people. You can do all sorts of idiotic things in your car, kill someone and get away with a fine of a few hundred pounds.
his opinion also seems to contradict his own drive toward open source. if the thing you like only works with one vendor, how do you anticipate ever FLoSS'ing your code?
Why would writing his code to target DirectX prevent it from being open sourced?
I have a data-capable plan for my smartphone that costs £20.50 a month. That's about $33. It's a low-end plan, so I only get around 100 minutes + 100 texts or something like that, but that's fine as I don't make a lot of calls on it. I get 1GB of data per month.
The really expensive plans in the uk are around £45 / month (around $70).
Oh, that's a great idea. Grab a bunch of researchers, give them a buglist, and throw them at an enormous codebase like Windows which they've never seen before. They're sure to fix more bugs than they create.
Oh, I just looked at that last link - I think it deserves 'reprinting' here:
"We see in a telegraphic despatch from across the boundary line that a store was "burglarized" a short time ago. We are sorry that any thing so dreadful should have happened to any of our inventive cousins. Truly the American language is "fearfully and wonderfully made." Just fancy the horror of an English judge reading an indictment charging a prisoner with having "feloniously burglarized and entered, &c. If it were robboriously burglarized the expression would be complete and without a parallel."
Slashdot Mirror
I can think of a few useful applications that have nothing to do with gesture recognition; the z-depth would allow you to cut the image of the user away from the background, which could be useful for videoconferencing if you want to chat with someone but don't want them to see your surroundings or the other people in the room with you.
Close-field Kinect on a laptop would probably allow you to do very accurate head / eye tracking, so you can do things like the '3d window' effect demonstrated in this video by Jonny Lee.
3D object scanning. Microsoft already have a version of this for the Xbox with the Kinect Fun Labs, but it's rather limited in resolution. A close-field sensor would provide better resolution.
It's possible you could use facial recognition for security. Unlike most webcam-based facial recognition systems, this couldn't be fooled by a paper mask.
You don't get it do you? I've been posting here since the nineties and none of you useless meat-sacks ever realised I was a machine!
... it had set its Facebook status to 'single'.
So.... seeing as Bethesda and id Software are both now arms of Zenimax, can id Software employees be part of the Bethesda team?
Shoulda stuck with counter-strike, Notch!
I think it must have been 1993; possibly 1994 - I was shown Mosaic by another student. I remember thinking it was like some kind of mix between Hypercard and gopher. I can't remember what the first site I visited was. I do remember that all web pages were grey and left-justified, though.
You say it made it infeasible for Great Britain to support the IRA's enemy, but surely Great Britain *was* their enemy. It's not like Northern Ireland was a country to which Britain was supplying military aid; it was (and still is) part of the United Kingdom.
I'm not sure why it matters which side of the Irish Sea the killings happened on.
Over a third of the people they killed were civilians. About half were military - most of the rest were police and other paramilitary group members. Perhaps in these days of regular drone attacks in Pakistan 33% collateral damage equates to 'the best fire discipline of all times', but it doesn't sound all that great to me.
no, i think a good grasp of history would put a proper amount of proportionality between waterboarding terrorist assholes whose duty in life is blowing up civilians
You say they're terrorists, but out of 775 people taken to Guantanamo since October 2001, only three have ever been convicted of any crime. A lot of them just seem to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of them seem to have just been held because they had useful intelligence, not because they did anything wrong. Some of them were children.
Some of those being held will have just been defending their country from a foreign occupation force.
Some will have fought just because they or their families would have been in danger from the Taliban if they hadn't.
Some will have just desperately needed some money.
Now sure, the scale level of human rights violations in China is much higher than in the US, but let's not pretend that Guantanamo isn't super fucking shitty and not something to be ashamed of.
I wonder if you could take them to the small claims court?
I like the idea of a robot-driven car, but I think the difficult thing is that in the case of a death or an injury, people want to be able to hold a person responsible. It's difficult to know exactly how that would pan out with a robot car. However, I guess one advantage is that you would probably have a 'black box' that could give you a much better idea of exactly what happened.
To be honest, people probably worry about this more than they should. We already have the situation where injuring or killing people with a car is very lightly punished. It's exceptionally rare (at least in the UK) for anybody to do jail time for killing people. You can do all sorts of idiotic things in your car, kill someone and get away with a fine of a few hundred pounds.
*rimshot*
his opinion also seems to contradict his own drive toward open source. if the thing you like only works with one vendor, how do you anticipate ever FLoSS'ing your code?
Why would writing his code to target DirectX prevent it from being open sourced?
I can't think of a surer portent of End Times.
Has it improved greatly over the last few years? Last time I used it (admittedly half a decade ago), it didn't come close to Visual Studio.
Seriously though; is there anything that compares with it?
How is a studio uploading a video any less 'genuine' than anyone else?
I have a data-capable plan for my smartphone that costs £20.50 a month. That's about $33. It's a low-end plan, so I only get around 100 minutes + 100 texts or something like that, but that's fine as I don't make a lot of calls on it. I get 1GB of data per month.
The really expensive plans in the uk are around £45 / month (around $70).
These prices include 20% VAT (sales tax).
Why is it so expensive in the US?
Even if they were able to able to switch to GPLv3, it would just result in a fork of Linux. Who's to say which one would end up being more successful?
I apologise - your post was actually quite thought provoking.
But to be honest, for many people (myself included) it'll take *years* for us to get into that position. It's almost like requiring Jedi Powers ;-)
This, and many similar workplace situations:
1. Have the power of the force.
2. Use Jedi Mind Control during negotiations.
When these two conditions are true, conversations with your boss will tend to take a very different tone from most people's expectations.
Oh, that's a great idea. Grab a bunch of researchers, give them a buglist, and throw them at an enormous codebase like Windows which they've never seen before. They're sure to fix more bugs than they create.
The British Go Association would capitalise Go, Chess and Checkers, although it would be more likely to refer to the last one as Draughts.
I don't know whether they're correct.
Oh, I just looked at that last link - I think it deserves 'reprinting' here:
"We see in a telegraphic despatch from across the boundary line that a store was "burglarized" a short time ago. We are sorry that any thing so dreadful should have happened to any of our inventive cousins. Truly the American language is "fearfully and wonderfully made." Just fancy the horror of an English judge reading an indictment charging a prisoner with having "feloniously burglarized and entered, &c. If it were robboriously burglarized the expression would be complete and without a parallel."
Robboriously Burglarized. Perfect.
Good work, fatphil!