XBox Media Center (XBMC). Cannot go past it. Buy an original XBox, chip it (a fun excercise), and download and install XBMC (sourceforge). Look it up... I now have two and will never look back.
Maybe it is time for new browsers to be made for people with disabilities. A 'blind browser' that interprets the content of a webpage and translates to a specified output device. A blind person would be able to maintain their own equipment (don't the rest of us do this anyway) and the thousands (if not millions) of online businesses don't have to spend a fortune, constantly accommodating 100% of the surfing population.
A possible problem is that the source for flash may have to be released so the browsers may interpret.
Similar could work for the deaf, dumb, etc.
What is your University's policy on the handicapped? What about those 'good' students (as per above comments) that are unable to attend for a week or two because they lost a leg (or something)? Should they be unable to retrieve material because they did not attend?
Sure, you may have some really cool software (likely expensive and time consuming) to track students and their individual needs, but, in my limited experience, there is always a case that has not been handled before. By the time the student chases this all down, as it is usually a case of guilty until proven innocent, the semester can be up. Then what about any legal issues attached to this.
The university I work for by-passes all of this by making everything available.
I work for a university in the southern hemisphere (sorry, don't want to say which or where as I am not an official spokesperson [although may not be too difficult to find out {insert curse here}]) and here we make all lecture material available, regardless of attendance. The main reason for this is similar to the handicap issue; a student may have some sort of handicap/circumstance for him/her (it) not attending. This includes all electronic copies of lecture notes, practicals, tutorials, solutions, extra notes made in class, videos, links, extra reading material, podcasts, etc.
Personally, I rarely attended lectures. Sometimes the lecturer would just read off the material, and, I'm sorry, but I can do that in my own time. I'd sit at home, read the notes/extra reading and do plenty of exercises in the same time that some dude would stand there and babble on, boring everybody stupid. This is not always the case and there are certainly sometimes where you cannot afford to miss a lecture (you want a 'feel' for the lecturer's 'attack').
All this said, only staff (all university staff) and students enrolled in that subject may view this material.
[Insert sniff here] Makes me a little sad that it all has come to this.
Good to see your firewalls are erect (pun in "sexual harrassment jackpot" not originally intended). Shame about the good-will factor.
Bravo! It may appear to be wasteful but little research is. You may research something that may be a pretty dumb idea, but then at least you know. Besides, knowing exactly why something is a dumb idea can lead to great innovations.
Not one of the grandest but has certainly left his mark w.r.t. communication. Decent sci-fi prophet as well [sentiment classification: subjective; +4.67].
Hitlab (NZ [hitlabnz.org] but also an American office [somewhere]) also have come out with some pretty funky motion tracking. Beit for other purposes, but the source is available (via SourceForge: ARToolkit).
It may not be exactly what you are wanting, but with a little modification it should, and, importantly, is CHEAP.
Good luck. Hope to see some break-through gaming experiences. Hooroo
I have two undergraduate degrees; IT (Software Dev.) and a Science (Computational Mathematics [Numerical Analysis to the hard arses]) [from Australia, American system may be somewhat different]. I have thought about doing more study, but have since realised that, at present, I don't need to. I think it depends on a couple of things. Firstly, just how enthusiastic you are about what you do. Employers here seem to almost rate that a little higher than post-graduate study. Secondly, a couple of interviews I did recently (while browsing around to see what kind of cash the private sector was offering [was impressed, but was worried about loss of intellectual freedom]), the employers were relieved to hear that I did not have post-graduate degrees. I'm not entirely sure why. These jobs were code optimisation and parallelisation ones... not simple tasks.
What? Find the solution of a matrix (dim = 5x10^7) using some Krylov subspace iterative method with some suitable parallel preconditioning strategy to accelerate convergence on a cluster? Think again.
"Have you ever..... Ever had to compile that wretched toolkit."
Frequently.... on many platforms. I suggest your compile first on Windoze. Get a feel before you compile on a RH4 64bit linux cluster. Yes, can be a little tough the first time. But the light at the end of the tunnel more than makes up for it (Compiling with Mesa3D was a little tricky though).
There is more than enough documentation (esp. on their wiki). Also, a hint... do not link against any 32bit libraries.
I'd hardly call VTK (Visualisation Toolkit) a failure. It's made my job a lot easier. It is a wonderful piece of software as well as all the bells and whistles of being an open source project.
There is also something about the way they archive published papers that is apparently leading world.
For a university/organisation to remain competitive, especially today, there is a lot of housekeeping involved before progress can be made. I congratulate Los Alamos. They seem to be doing a bang up job to me.
Slashdot Mirror
XBox Media Center (XBMC). Cannot go past it. Buy an original XBox, chip it (a fun excercise), and download and install XBMC (sourceforge). Look it up ... I now have two and will never look back.
Maybe it is time for new browsers to be made for people with disabilities. A 'blind browser' that interprets the content of a webpage and translates to a specified output device. A blind person would be able to maintain their own equipment (don't the rest of us do this anyway) and the thousands (if not millions) of online businesses don't have to spend a fortune, constantly accommodating 100% of the surfing population. A possible problem is that the source for flash may have to be released so the browsers may interpret. Similar could work for the deaf, dumb, etc.
Thanks for that link perkr .... another interesting thing to play with.
What is your University's policy on the handicapped? What about those 'good' students (as per above comments) that are unable to attend for a week or two because they lost a leg (or something)? Should they be unable to retrieve material because they did not attend?
Sure, you may have some really cool software (likely expensive and time consuming) to track students and their individual needs, but, in my limited experience, there is always a case that has not been handled before. By the time the student chases this all down, as it is usually a case of guilty until proven innocent, the semester can be up. Then what about any legal issues attached to this.
The university I work for by-passes all of this by making everything available.
I work for a university in the southern hemisphere (sorry, don't want to say which or where as I am not an official spokesperson [although may not be too difficult to find out {insert curse here}]) and here we make all lecture material available, regardless of attendance. The main reason for this is similar to the handicap issue; a student may have some sort of handicap/circumstance for him/her (it) not attending. This includes all electronic copies of lecture notes, practicals, tutorials, solutions, extra notes made in class, videos, links, extra reading material, podcasts, etc.
Personally, I rarely attended lectures. Sometimes the lecturer would just read off the material, and, I'm sorry, but I can do that in my own time. I'd sit at home, read the notes/extra reading and do plenty of exercises in the same time that some dude would stand there and babble on, boring everybody stupid. This is not always the case and there are certainly sometimes where you cannot afford to miss a lecture (you want a 'feel' for the lecturer's 'attack').
All this said, only staff (all university staff) and students enrolled in that subject may view this material.
Can somebody mod the above conversation up please?
[Insert sniff here] Makes me a little sad that it all has come to this.
Good to see your firewalls are erect (pun in "sexual harrassment jackpot" not originally intended). Shame about the good-will factor.
Bravo! It may appear to be wasteful but little research is. You may research something that may be a pretty dumb idea, but then at least you know. Besides, knowing exactly why something is a dumb idea can lead to great innovations.
Not one of the grandest but has certainly left his mark w.r.t. communication. Decent sci-fi prophet as well [sentiment classification: subjective; +4.67].
Advantage of being one who is alive.
Howdy,
Hitlab (NZ [hitlabnz.org] but also an American office [somewhere]) also have come out with some pretty funky motion tracking. Beit for other purposes, but the source is available (via SourceForge: ARToolkit).
It may not be exactly what you are wanting, but with a little modification it should, and, importantly, is CHEAP.
Good luck. Hope to see some break-through gaming experiences. Hooroo
I have two undergraduate degrees; IT (Software Dev.) and a Science (Computational Mathematics [Numerical Analysis to the hard arses]) [from Australia, American system may be somewhat different]. I have thought about doing more study, but have since realised that, at present, I don't need to. I think it depends on a couple of things. Firstly, just how enthusiastic you are about what you do. Employers here seem to almost rate that a little higher than post-graduate study. Secondly, a couple of interviews I did recently (while browsing around to see what kind of cash the private sector was offering [was impressed, but was worried about loss of intellectual freedom]), the employers were relieved to hear that I did not have post-graduate degrees. I'm not entirely sure why. These jobs were code optimisation and parallelisation ones ... not simple tasks.
Just posting a few thoughts and experience.
Haha ... [ Wipe tear from eye ] ... beautiful.
Bravo!
... learn to declare variables in the appropriate spot.
I'm also with eolson@mit.edu (above)
What? Find the solution of a matrix (dim = 5x10^7) using some Krylov subspace iterative method with some suitable parallel preconditioning strategy to accelerate convergence on a cluster? Think again.
"Have you ever..... Ever had to compile that wretched toolkit." Frequently .... on many platforms. I suggest your compile first on Windoze. Get a feel before you compile on a RH4 64bit linux cluster. Yes, can be a little tough the first time. But the light at the end of the tunnel more than makes up for it (Compiling with Mesa3D was a little tricky though).
There is more than enough documentation (esp. on their wiki). Also, a hint ... do not link against any 32bit libraries.
I'd hardly call VTK (Visualisation Toolkit) a failure. It's made my job a lot easier. It is a wonderful piece of software as well as all the bells and whistles of being an open source project. There is also something about the way they archive published papers that is apparently leading world. For a university/organisation to remain competitive, especially today, there is a lot of housekeeping involved before progress can be made. I congratulate Los Alamos. They seem to be doing a bang up job to me.