A book recommendation on this subject
on
RNA Computer
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· Score: 2
I've been reading "DNA Computing by Paun, Rozenberg, Salomaa" published by Springer. It goes into great detail on how one might implement a variety of algorithms on DNA and RNA computing. Essential reading! One chapter discusses the practicalities of decrypting DES and there's a good section on solving the well known SAT problem that computer scientists should know well. It gets quite heavy later on but early on it gives formal descriptions of the various DNA computing steps that are available so you can easily go off and start designing algorithms yourself.
Actually it's not. Paul Debevec's software is a semi-automatic (ie. lots of human intervention) way of building *efficient* (low polygon count) CG from photographs. The Minolta camera generates high vertex count height fields completely automatically. The rendering idea is the same - projective texture mapping.
Re:d3 modelling techs could get screwed..
on
Minolta 3D Camera
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· Score: 3
You underestimate how hard this is! The camera will just give you a heightfield relative to the camera - with plenty of error. A table top will appear as a jagged surface. Apply CG lighting to that and it will look like a mess. A table will in fact look like a cuboid if you photograph it from above and don't get the occluded legs. To get something that works from other viewpoints means combining different viewpoints together - not an easy task. The data you get will be a high res cloud of points. Far too much data to work with efficiently. And it doesn't tell you which vertex is connected to which. How do you tell whether the step from the table top to the floor is a continuous surface or a discontinuity when looked at from above. For furniture it's probably much easier to build your own CG table by more traditional methods and use ordinary photos for texture (for example the Trinity's bullet-time 'kick' scene in "The Matrix" was built this way). For caves it's probably much easier to procedurally synthesise the rock texture and displacement.
While I have read a few reports about running Starcraft succesfully under Wine I am yet to actually meet a person who has done it succesfully. Wine seems to be a strange beast working terribly for some and wonderfully for others. Are there lots of other people who've not got anywhere with Wine and Starcraft?
...is the ports collection. I don't mean from the point of view of the selection of software available as ports but how easy they are to maintain. There seem to be agreed standards about where files get installed and it's easy to install and deinstall. I used to use Red Hat and the rpm system gets way out of control. I couldn't keep track of what files where installed. After installing a couple of extra rpms I seemed to get an inconsistent rpm database and from that point no installation or desinstallation would go cleanly. The ports are *super* easy to manage by comparison - and when I need to do a backup I have a far better idea of which files need to be kept and which can be discarded because I know I can rebuild them with a single 'make install'. Ports aren't perfect but they work far better than rpms. This is the number 1 reason for using FreeBSD for me - otherwise I'd be back to Linux so I could play Heroes of Might and Magic III and Myth II (which seems not to run under FreeBSD emulation of Linux:-( ) The FreeBSD ports system could easily be implemented for Linux. I'm waiting for the `FreeBSD' distribution of Linux that does this. Any takers?
"nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." "Again, if you feel there is a difference between physical and intellectual property, I would like to see your reasoning." You've made your case very clear. So here's my case: intellectual property is infinitely replicable. Physical property is not. If I get your food you necessarily lose yours. On the other hand I can use your idea without taking it from you because you still have it. Without 'taking' the constitution does not apply. I look forward to your reply!
Absolutely! Greg Egan handles the subject better than any other author I know. Few authors seem to have the guts to follow through with the logical implications of their science fiction but Egan does and Diaspora has a wealth of interesting thoughts on the subject of brain uploading - the ability to copy oneself, edit oneself and so on. Fascinating.
"Yes, I believe that property is a right you are born with. It is an inalienable right" That's a really interesting point of view. Do any states codify this right in their constitution?
If you create something, then the product you create is your property.
Why? Have you ever thought about why it is that governments choose to enforce intellectual property rights? There was a time when physical property rights were enforced but intellectual property rights weren't. In choosing to grant and enforce intellectual property rights governments had certain goals in mind. Do you think that outlawing `pirated' mp3's furthers those goals. Don't just say "the product you create is your property" unless you believe (1) property is some kind of God given thing so you have no need to explain yourself or (2) you are just making a legal statement (which I assume you aren't because everyone knows that already so why bother saying it). In granting intellectual property rights we sacrifice other rights - for example the right for two consenting adults to do what they like with each other in private (ie. give an mp3 to someone else). Can you always justify this decision?
If you create something, then the product you create is your property.
Why? Have you ever thought about why it is that governments choose to enforce intellectual property rights? There was a time when physical property rights were enforced but intellectual property rights weren't. In choosing to grant and enforce intellectual property rights governments had certain goals in mind. Do you think that outlawing `pirated' mp3's furthers those goals. Don't just say "the product you create is your property" unless you believe (1) property is some kind of God given thing so you have no need to explain yourself or (2) you are just making a legal statement (which I assume you aren't because everyone knows that already so why bother saying it).
Maybe you'd like to explain why record companies and musicians should earn money for something that I can copy at no expense. This isn't meant to be facetious - until one understands what your philosophy of ownership it it's hard to "justify ripping off musicians this way". As I see it intellectual property isn't really a fundamental right of the creator of it but a privilege granted by governments because granting such rights is in the public interest (because it encourages such creation). Is outlawing mp3's in the public interest? Will we get better music as a result?
I'd like to recommend a book on the subject of genetic switches: "The Genetic Switch" by Mark Ptashne. It's one of the most wonderful little books I have read in my life. The whole book is on one subject - a switch in the genome of a lambda phage that determines whether it remains dormant or reproduces. The detailed mechanisms of this little switch are absolutely awesome. It has a beautiful feedback mechanism rather like a bistable transistor circuit. The book goes into a lot of detail but anyone vaguely technical should be able to understand it as it is a model of clarity. A good introduction to genetic switches for a geek. Disclaimer. I am not the author. I don't work for the publisher. I am not a book retailer. I just thought that it was a good book.
Most cultures make reference to their own cultural artifacts when educating their members. Why is it that our culture is made to feel guilty for doing this so that we feel the need to make reference to another culture 2000 years old when we teach?
Anyone who's done computer science should recognise what the oracle is. A (Turing) oracle is any computing device that can calculate uncomputable functions. If you remember your CS the first uncomputable function you come across comes from the halting problem and involves feeding a program to itself and making it deliberately `contrary' (I'm not giving the details because it's in many textbooks). The whole oracle scene in the movie should strike you as similar. The relation of `know thyself' to a Turing oracle is obvious but consider also the incident with a vase. Given that the Wachowskis cite "Godel, Escher, Bach" as a major influence and this book discusses computability I'd say that this use of the term oracle is quite deliberate.
...some science journalist decides "I'm gonna write a story about how life came from Mars". They then scour the universities of the world looking for crackpots who might have something to say on the issue. They then publish these guys comments prepended with the phrase "Scientists say that...". That's all there is to it. There is no peer reviewing of articles in Wired. Wired exists to make as much money as it can. So why are people surprised when they publish crap? Why do people even think it's of any interest?
...configuration. It seems to me this reviewer defines how convoluted something is by how similar it is to what they're used to. I've been running Linux since pre-1.0 days and I *never* got a handle on the logic by which people assigned the location of configuration files. I knew within a few days just where the important files were when I installed FreeBSD.
...and very satisfied with them. I feel sorry for my wife who bought them for me as a present. As a complete non-geek and non-mathematician she had to visit Cliff Stoll's house and put up with 30 minutes of mathematical jokes from someone who seemed to her to be a complete fruitcake making absolutely zero sense whatsoever. Now that's what I call dedication!
I think people underestimate Sony's ambition. The PSX2 is the leading edge of a whole line of technology aimed at killing the PC and Microsoft's monopoly. They are pitting themselves against this giant presence in an attempt to replace it with something that really is a home appliance - something that people really can use at home for their multimedia needs and that isn't hobbled by legacy.
...which I in fact wrote. It's not just exposure differences between different shutters - we were doing *very* short exposures (because we didn't want the motion blur as it would be incorrect (think about it!)) which means you lose out on the time averaging effects of long exposures. This meant that we had problems from flickering light sources too. These effects were localised on particular features so we couldn't do an overall exposure shift but something more complex. Some of the cameras also had beam splitter prisms in them and these changed the overall exposure too. (It looked like on one day's shooting the film wasn't all from the same batch so there were differences there too.) We also had to `stabilise' the images so that they didn't jump about all over the place and then at the end synthesise the motion blur that was missing from the original. All in all a lot of hard work!
The Sparrow is pretty poor
on
The Sparrow
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· Score: 1
I think this reviewer read the reading guide inside the back cover and was taken in by it. This isn't serious literature - it's science fiction of the cheesiest kind. The aliens were straight out of a Star Trek episode - indistinguishable from many humans that inhabit this planet and yet naively intended to be shockingly alien. The humans all seemed to share a delusional belief system that resulted in their suffering self-inflicted psychological traumas that really are of no interest to read about. I can't help feeling the book was marketed in such a way that it might catch a non science-fiction literate audience who have lower expectations of science fiction. Russell needs a good dose of Iain (M) Banks. Still, I managed to finish the book.
I'm completely confused by this story. What's the big deal about finding out where the contours of someone's body are with a scanner? I can deduce approximately where the contours of your body lie just by looking at your clothing. Should my brain be banned? (Doubtless there are many who would say yes.) Anyone can scan me any time.
"No one can own a name... it's just wrong." McDonald is just a name. It's been around for centuries. There may even be a famous action with the name McDonald. But would it be considered right for a new hamburger chain to appear with that name?
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I've been reading "DNA Computing by Paun, Rozenberg, Salomaa" published by Springer. It goes into great detail on how one might implement a variety of algorithms on DNA and RNA computing. Essential reading! One chapter discusses the practicalities of decrypting DES and there's a good section on solving the well known SAT problem that computer scientists should know well. It gets quite heavy later on but early on it gives formal descriptions of the various DNA computing steps that are available so you can easily go off and start designing algorithms yourself.
Actually it's not. Paul Debevec's software is a semi-automatic (ie. lots of human intervention) way of building *efficient* (low polygon count) CG from photographs. The Minolta camera generates high vertex count height fields completely automatically. The rendering idea is the same - projective texture mapping.
You underestimate how hard this is! The camera will just give you a heightfield relative to the camera - with plenty of error. A table top will appear as a jagged surface. Apply CG lighting to that and it will look like a mess. A table will in fact look like a cuboid if you photograph it from above and don't get the occluded legs. To get something that works from other viewpoints means combining different viewpoints together - not an easy task. The data you get will be a high res cloud of points. Far too much data to work with efficiently. And it doesn't tell you which vertex is connected to which. How do you tell whether the step from the table top to the floor is a continuous surface or a discontinuity when looked at from above. For furniture it's probably much easier to build your own CG table by more traditional methods and use ordinary photos for texture (for example the Trinity's bullet-time 'kick' scene in "The Matrix" was built this way). For caves it's probably much easier to procedurally synthesise the rock texture and displacement.
While I have read a few reports about running Starcraft succesfully under Wine I am yet to actually meet a person who has done it succesfully. Wine seems to be a strange beast working terribly for some and wonderfully for others. Are there lots of other people who've not got anywhere with Wine and Starcraft?
...is the ports collection. I don't mean from the point of view of the selection of software available as ports but how easy they are to maintain. There seem to be agreed standards about where files get installed and it's easy to install and deinstall. I used to use Red Hat and the rpm system gets way out of control. I couldn't keep track of what files where installed. After installing a couple of extra rpms I seemed to get an inconsistent rpm database and from that point no installation or desinstallation would go cleanly. The ports are *super* easy to manage by comparison - and when I need to do a backup I have a far better idea of which files need to be kept and which can be discarded because I know I can rebuild them with a single 'make install'. Ports aren't perfect but they work far better than rpms. This is the number 1 reason for using FreeBSD for me - otherwise I'd be back to Linux so I could play Heroes of Might and Magic III and Myth II (which seems not to run under FreeBSD emulation of Linux :-( ) The FreeBSD ports system could easily be implemented for Linux. I'm waiting for the `FreeBSD' distribution of Linux that does this. Any takers?
"nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." "Again, if you feel there is a difference between physical and intellectual property, I would like to see your reasoning." You've made your case very clear. So here's my case: intellectual property is infinitely replicable. Physical property is not. If I get your food you necessarily lose yours. On the other hand I can use your idea without taking it from you because you still have it. Without 'taking' the constitution does not apply. I look forward to your reply!
Absolutely! Greg Egan handles the subject better than any other author I know. Few authors seem to have the guts to follow through with the logical implications of their science fiction but Egan does and Diaspora has a wealth of interesting thoughts on the subject of brain uploading - the ability to copy oneself, edit oneself and so on. Fascinating.
"Yes, I believe that property is a right you are born with. It is an inalienable right" That's a really interesting point of view. Do any states codify this right in their constitution?
...tell you about the reviewers?
Maybe you'd like to explain why record companies and musicians should earn money for something that I can copy at no expense. This isn't meant to be facetious - until one understands what your philosophy of ownership it it's hard to "justify ripping off musicians this way". As I see it intellectual property isn't really a fundamental right of the creator of it but a privilege granted by governments because granting such rights is in the public interest (because it encourages such creation). Is outlawing mp3's in the public interest? Will we get better music as a result?
I'd like to recommend a book on the subject of genetic switches: "The Genetic Switch" by Mark Ptashne. It's one of the most wonderful little books I have read in my life. The whole book is on one subject - a switch in the genome of a lambda phage that determines whether it remains dormant or reproduces. The detailed mechanisms of this little switch are absolutely awesome. It has a beautiful feedback mechanism rather like a bistable transistor circuit. The book goes into a lot of detail but anyone vaguely technical should be able to understand it as it is a model of clarity. A good introduction to genetic switches for a geek. Disclaimer. I am not the author. I don't work for the publisher. I am not a book retailer. I just thought that it was a good book.
Most cultures make reference to their own cultural artifacts when educating their members. Why is it that our culture is made to feel guilty for doing this so that we feel the need to make reference to another culture 2000 years old when we teach?
Anyone who's done computer science should recognise what the oracle is. A (Turing) oracle is any computing device that can calculate uncomputable functions. If you remember your CS the first uncomputable function you come across comes from the halting problem and involves feeding a program to itself and making it deliberately `contrary' (I'm not giving the details because it's in many textbooks). The whole oracle scene in the movie should strike you as similar. The relation of `know thyself' to a Turing oracle is obvious but consider also the incident with a vase. Given that the Wachowskis cite "Godel, Escher, Bach" as a major influence and this book discusses computability I'd say that this use of the term oracle is quite deliberate.
You know modern video cameras perform a low pass filter on skin tones to remove spots without blurring other detail?
Depends on how you define life doesn't it? MD5 (IDEA) = 712dc773358d4af20c8ce2afc383037b
...some science journalist decides "I'm gonna write a story about how life came from Mars". They then scour the universities of the world looking for crackpots who might have something to say on the issue. They then publish these guys comments prepended with the phrase "Scientists say that...". That's all there is to it. There is no peer reviewing of articles in Wired. Wired exists to make as much money as it can. So why are people surprised when they publish crap? Why do people even think it's of any interest?
...configuration. It seems to me this reviewer defines how convoluted something is by how similar it is to what they're used to. I've been running Linux since pre-1.0 days and I *never* got a handle on the logic by which people assigned the location of configuration files. I knew within a few days just where the important files were when I installed FreeBSD.
...and very satisfied with them. I feel sorry for my wife who bought them for me as a present. As a complete non-geek and non-mathematician she had to visit Cliff Stoll's house and put up with 30 minutes of mathematical jokes from someone who seemed to her to be a complete fruitcake making absolutely zero sense whatsoever. Now that's what I call dedication!
I think people underestimate Sony's ambition. The PSX2 is the leading edge of a whole line of technology aimed at killing the PC and Microsoft's monopoly. They are pitting themselves against this giant presence in an attempt to replace it with something that really is a home appliance - something that people really can use at home for their multimedia needs and that isn't hobbled by legacy.
...which I in fact wrote. It's not just exposure differences between different shutters - we were doing *very* short exposures (because we didn't want the motion blur as it would be incorrect (think about it!)) which means you lose out on the time averaging effects of long exposures. This meant that we had problems from flickering light sources too. These effects were localised on particular features so we couldn't do an overall exposure shift but something more complex. Some of the cameras also had beam splitter prisms in them and these changed the overall exposure too. (It looked like on one day's shooting the film wasn't all from the same batch so there were differences there too.) We also had to `stabilise' the images so that they didn't jump about all over the place and then at the end synthesise the motion blur that was missing from the original. All in all a lot of hard work!
I think this reviewer read the reading guide inside the back cover and was taken in by it. This isn't serious literature - it's science fiction of the cheesiest kind. The aliens were straight out of a Star Trek episode - indistinguishable from many humans that inhabit this planet and yet naively intended to be shockingly alien. The humans all seemed to share a delusional belief system that resulted in their suffering self-inflicted psychological traumas that really are of no interest to read about. I can't help feeling the book was marketed in such a way that it might catch a non science-fiction literate audience who have lower expectations of science fiction. Russell needs a good dose of Iain (M) Banks. Still, I managed to finish the book.
I'm completely confused by this story. What's the big deal about finding out where the contours of someone's body are with a scanner? I can deduce approximately where the contours of your body lie just by looking at your clothing. Should my brain be banned? (Doubtless there are many who would say yes.) Anyone can scan me any time.
"No one can own a name... it's just wrong." McDonald is just a name. It's been around for centuries. There may even be a famous action with the name McDonald. But would it be considered right for a new hamburger chain to appear with that name?