i hope this is a sign that consumers are not willing to play with the type of DRM that is unclear and difficult to deal
iPod has DRM that is unclear and difficult to deal with if you want to play your iTunes purchased music and videos on anything but an iPod, but that hasn't stopped consumers from adopting it.
Microsoft Robotics Studio includes a new technology called Coordination and Concurrency Runtime to help make highly concurrent programming easier. You can download the current preview of Robotics Studio at http://microsoft.com/robotics. There is also information on the CCR at http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1435 82.
There is no scientific evidence supporting the existence of a God who rewards you for accepting Jesus Christ as your savior. Similarly, there is no scientific evidence supporting the existence of a God who punishes you for accepting Jesus Christ as your savior.
Rationally, both of these hypothesis must be considered equally likely since there is no evidence to support or invalidate either of them.
Choosing to believe in one of them therefore is irrational (if you have no evidence either way).
Is choosing to believe in neither of them rational? If you believe that hypothesis with zero evidence for or against must be considered, then you must consider ALL hypothesis with no evidence. One of the theories is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Other theories include Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, psychics, luck, cthulu, and an infinite number of other things man has not considered.
If you still choose to believe in God then what you have is faith. Faith is not really rational, but it is what it is.
Science is based on a faith of sorts. It is based on the faith that what we observe is the truth. If one does not have faith that what he observes and senses is true, then he cannot believe in science. If your religion tells you, and you believe, that God is the only truth and that everything on Earth is an illusion created by the devil to tempt you into damnation then science is the work of the devil.
I asked a MEMS researched about this once. He said it comes down to fatigue. If you bend a paperclip back and forth a bunch of times the metal fatigues and eventually breaks. Fatigue occurs because the metal actually migrates around the bend. MEMS components are so small and move so quickly that they do not rest in one position long enough for fatigue to occur. The same principle hold for the springs in accellerometers and the mirrors in DMD projectors.
Not only that, but bringing in inexpensive foreign labor removes incentives for Americans to enter technology fields. The end result is we export all of our expertise.
Speaking of which, a morning radio show in Austin was pushing Myspace pretty hard last year. My wife and I wondered if they were paid to do so. Did anyone else notice the same thing anywhere else?
I do not think it is a scam. I think that they are sincere enthusiasts who are spend all of their free time working on the problems. It is a colossal project and a lot of the technology they need does not exist yet. I do not think they are attracting enough money to make a scam worth their time. I certainly wouldn't give them any money. I just do not think the components needed are close enough to make investment effective. On the other hand, I would consider volunteerting my time. It is a smart group of people working on interesting things and it is always valuable to spend time in environments like that.
At the talk they were selling a book detailing their plans. I think it runs around $15 and is probably available somewhere on the site.
At this point, I do not think there is a final plan. There are a couple of groups working on this and all I know is the one plan I learned about at the Liftport talk.
They plan on using a ribbon made of carbon nano-tubes (which is currently beyond our ability). They will launch a satellite into geo synchronous orbit (which is much, much higher than the orbit most things are put into -- including the space shuttle). The satellite will then begin spooling out a very thin ribbon towards the Earth and away from the Earth (to keep the center of mass at the correct height). At some point, the Earth-side ribbon is caught in the atmosphere and anchored to a mobile platform in the middle of the ocean at the equator. This is the most expensive and difficult part of the operation. Then they begin sending ribbon-climbing robots up the tether. Each robot is capable of repairing holes in the ribbon on the way up. Each robot also increases the size of the ribbon on the way up. With each payload, the ribbon grows. When the ribbon becomes large enough, it is split into two ribbons. One of the ribbons is anchored to a new platform and there are now two elevators. At this point the project is 'safe'. If one of the ribbons fail there is a backup. At some point in the future, there may be enough elevators that the marginal value of sending more stuff up is less than the value of regaining the energy when bringing something down. Until that happens, it will be cheaper to just let things fall.
One interesting thing they pointed out at the talk is that at 62000 miles, the initial velocity needed to reach the moon is very low. One could get to the moon simply by climing the elevator and then letting go at the right time. The climb velocity would provide enough momentum to carry you there if you aim right.
I've posted a couple of other comments to replies to my original post. You may be interested in those.
The elevator cable is 62000 miles long. Multiple payloads will be traveling up at the same time. Bringing anything down means nothing can go up during that time. The lost opportunity cost of taking stuff up is not worth the reclaimed energy that can be recaptured bringing stuff down. It is much cheaper to design for reentry and let gravity bring it down.
I posted a 'cousin comment' to this about Liftport. Their plan is that each upbound launch grows the current cable a little bit. When the cable grows wide enough they split it into two elevators. However, because it is still much cheaper to let gravity bring something down, they plan to use the 2nd elevator to simply double their uplift capability (as well as provide redundancy in case one of the elevators fail).
I recently attended a presentation by the guys at Liftport. I am just repeating what they said. Different companies may have different plans.
Stuff goes up the elevator slowly compared to a rocket. To get any sort of use out of a cable, multiple payloads must be sent up at the same time. I do not know the exact figures, but you can imagine a payload travelling up the cable on every few miles of the cable. Bringing something down means you cannot put anything up. It is much easier and cheaper to drop something from space and have it land intact than it is to put something into space. It makes much more economic sense to only use the expensive elevator to put stuff into space and use cheap gravity to bring stuff down.
Most of the energy of a rocket is used to lift the fuel for the rocket. An elevator is much cheaper since you only have to lift the cargo and vehicle. The ability to reclaim this energy does not offset the lost opportunity cost of the multiple payloads that could be lifted while something decends the cable.
I read an article that suggested we will just move down the food chain. Jellyfish is the next big cash crop. I hear jellyfish salad is already popular in China. It wasn't too long ago that Salmon was considered poor man's food. It was even more recent that shrimp was considered bait, not food. We will just continue consuming down the food chain there is nothing left but blue algae. At that point the food on the space-liners won't seem so bad anymore and we can do it all again on another planet. We will continue replicating and traveling across the universe eating everything in our path until we find something capable of eating us or the universe dies of heat death.
In 96 or 97, the consulting company I worked for was writing a system to help a brick and mortar auction house to manage their auctions. We kept talking about creating an online auction site, but thought that people would scam each other and not pay. The idea was unworkable and we talked ourselves out of it.
They sell wireless webcams. Just fasten a couple of them to the lego bot. If you can modify the light sensor to be a laser pointer you can do that. A blob tracker is nothing but a program that looks for a color range in the image and takes an average position of the colors that match. It doesn't take much effort to figure out how to pull images out of the camera and run a color match filter over the picture. You can coordinate everything using Microsoft's Robotics Studio, which is preconfigured to work with the NXT (although it does not have any vision services).
Lego did release USB camera for the old Mindstorms (that came with simple vision processing software). I'm sure they will release something for the NXT too.
Add two cameras a known distances apart. Write a blob tracker that can locate the point where the laser hits. Use the difference in the laser point positions seen by the two cameras to determine the distance the surface hit by the laser. Now make the laser track back and forth. You now have a poor-mans SICK laser range finder (which cost thousands of dollars).
On the other hand, what if the government created a missivelt expensive and elaborate project (call it project GOOGLE) it index, cache, and analyze all the content on the web, and make it searchable and made it searchable to EVERYONE. Of course, the things that people search for would be high guarded and datamined so that government officials knew what was going on in everyone's lives.
Slashdot Mirror
I have not tried to circumvent DRM in either Apple's or Microsoft's products so I am unqualified to comment further.
i hope this is a sign that consumers are not willing to play with the type of DRM that is unclear and difficult to deal
iPod has DRM that is unclear and difficult to deal with if you want to play your iTunes purchased music and videos on anything but an iPod, but that hasn't stopped consumers from adopting it.
Microsoft Robotics Studio includes a new technology called Coordination and Concurrency Runtime to help make highly concurrent programming easier. You can download the current preview of Robotics Studio at http://microsoft.com/robotics. There is also information on the CCR at http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1435 82.
We had one once. It just wasn't recorded in our history and everyone has forgetten about it.
There is no scientific evidence supporting the existence of a God who rewards you for accepting Jesus Christ as your savior.
Similarly, there is no scientific evidence supporting the existence of a God who punishes you for accepting Jesus Christ as your savior.
Rationally, both of these hypothesis must be considered equally likely since there is no evidence to support or invalidate either of them.
Choosing to believe in one of them therefore is irrational (if you have no evidence either way).
Is choosing to believe in neither of them rational? If you believe that hypothesis with zero evidence for or against must be considered, then you must consider ALL hypothesis with no evidence. One of the theories is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Other theories include Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, psychics, luck, cthulu, and an infinite number of other things man has not considered.
If you still choose to believe in God then what you have is faith. Faith is not really rational, but it is what it is.
Science is based on a faith of sorts. It is based on the faith that what we observe is the truth. If one does not have faith that what he observes and senses is true, then he cannot believe in science. If your religion tells you, and you believe, that God is the only truth and that everything on Earth is an illusion created by the devil to tempt you into damnation then science is the work of the devil.
Or maybe religion? After all, global warming is being caused by a lack of pirates acording to followers of the Flying Spagehtti Monster.
Good point. The original question I asked was in reference to the mirrors on a DMD device. Maybe the same principle does not hold for accellerometers.
I asked a MEMS researched about this once. He said it comes down to fatigue. If you bend a paperclip back and forth a bunch of times the metal fatigues and eventually breaks. Fatigue occurs because the metal actually migrates around the bend. MEMS components are so small and move so quickly that they do not rest in one position long enough for fatigue to occur. The same principle hold for the springs in accellerometers and the mirrors in DMD projectors.
Not only that, but bringing in inexpensive foreign labor removes incentives for Americans to enter technology fields. The end result is we export all of our expertise.
Yes, and having one of those enter your brain along your olfactory nerve can cause serious health issues.
Speaking of which, a morning radio show in Austin was pushing Myspace pretty hard last year. My wife and I wondered if they were paid to do so. Did anyone else notice the same thing anywhere else?
I do not think it is a scam. I think that they are sincere enthusiasts who are spend all of their free time working on the problems. It is a colossal project and a lot of the technology they need does not exist yet. I do not think they are attracting enough money to make a scam worth their time. I certainly wouldn't give them any money. I just do not think the components needed are close enough to make investment effective. On the other hand, I would consider volunteerting my time. It is a smart group of people working on interesting things and it is always valuable to spend time in environments like that.
At the talk they were selling a book detailing their plans. I think it runs around $15 and is probably available somewhere on the site.
At this point, I do not think there is a final plan. There are a couple of groups working on this and all I know is the one plan I learned about at the Liftport talk.
They plan on using a ribbon made of carbon nano-tubes (which is currently beyond our ability). They will launch a satellite into geo synchronous orbit (which is much, much higher than the orbit most things are put into -- including the space shuttle). The satellite will then begin spooling out a very thin ribbon towards the Earth and away from the Earth (to keep the center of mass at the correct height). At some point, the Earth-side ribbon is caught in the atmosphere and anchored to a mobile platform in the middle of the ocean at the equator. This is the most expensive and difficult part of the operation. Then they begin sending ribbon-climbing robots up the tether. Each robot is capable of repairing holes in the ribbon on the way up. Each robot also increases the size of the ribbon on the way up. With each payload, the ribbon grows. When the ribbon becomes large enough, it is split into two ribbons. One of the ribbons is anchored to a new platform and there are now two elevators. At this point the project is 'safe'. If one of the ribbons fail there is a backup. At some point in the future, there may be enough elevators that the marginal value of sending more stuff up is less than the value of regaining the energy when bringing something down. Until that happens, it will be cheaper to just let things fall.
One interesting thing they pointed out at the talk is that at 62000 miles, the initial velocity needed to reach the moon is very low. One could get to the moon simply by climing the elevator and then letting go at the right time. The climb velocity would provide enough momentum to carry you there if you aim right.
Gravity is a perfectly good mechanism for getting down. You do not need a cable for that to work.
I've posted a couple of other comments to replies to my original post. You may be interested in those.
The elevator cable is 62000 miles long. Multiple payloads will be traveling up at the same time. Bringing anything down means nothing can go up during that time. The lost opportunity cost of taking stuff up is not worth the reclaimed energy that can be recaptured bringing stuff down. It is much cheaper to design for reentry and let gravity bring it down.
I posted a 'cousin comment' to this about Liftport. Their plan is that each upbound launch grows the current cable a little bit. When the cable grows wide enough they split it into two elevators. However, because it is still much cheaper to let gravity bring something down, they plan to use the 2nd elevator to simply double their uplift capability (as well as provide redundancy in case one of the elevators fail).
I recently attended a presentation by the guys at Liftport. I am just repeating what they said. Different companies may have different plans.
Stuff goes up the elevator slowly compared to a rocket. To get any sort of use out of a cable, multiple payloads must be sent up at the same time. I do not know the exact figures, but you can imagine a payload travelling up the cable on every few miles of the cable. Bringing something down means you cannot put anything up. It is much easier and cheaper to drop something from space and have it land intact than it is to put something into space. It makes much more economic sense to only use the expensive elevator to put stuff into space and use cheap gravity to bring stuff down.
Most of the energy of a rocket is used to lift the fuel for the rocket. An elevator is much cheaper since you only have to lift the cargo and vehicle. The ability to reclaim this energy does not offset the lost opportunity cost of the multiple payloads that could be lifted while something decends the cable.
Nothing comes down the space elevator. Several payloads go up at the same time. Once the vehicle reaches the top, it becomes part of the anchor.
I read an article that suggested we will just move down the food chain. Jellyfish is the next big cash crop. I hear jellyfish salad is already popular in China. It wasn't too long ago that Salmon was considered poor man's food. It was even more recent that shrimp was considered bait, not food. We will just continue consuming down the food chain there is nothing left but blue algae. At that point the food on the space-liners won't seem so bad anymore and we can do it all again on another planet. We will continue replicating and traveling across the universe eating everything in our path until we find something capable of eating us or the universe dies of heat death.
In 96 or 97, the consulting company I worked for was writing a system to help a brick and mortar auction house to manage their auctions. We kept talking about creating an online auction site, but thought that people would scam each other and not pay. The idea was unworkable and we talked ourselves out of it.
Very nice. I expect that works quite well in most office environments.
They sell wireless webcams. Just fasten a couple of them to the lego bot. If you can modify the light sensor to be a laser pointer you can do that. A blob tracker is nothing but a program that looks for a color range in the image and takes an average position of the colors that match. It doesn't take much effort to figure out how to pull images out of the camera and run a color match filter over the picture. You can coordinate everything using Microsoft's Robotics Studio, which is preconfigured to work with the NXT (although it does not have any vision services).
Lego did release USB camera for the old Mindstorms (that came with simple vision processing software). I'm sure they will release something for the NXT too.
Add two cameras a known distances apart. Write a blob tracker that can locate the point where the laser hits. Use the difference in the laser point positions seen by the two cameras to determine the distance the surface hit by the laser. Now make the laser track back and forth. You now have a poor-mans SICK laser range finder (which cost thousands of dollars).
On the other hand, what if the government created a missivelt expensive and elaborate project (call it project GOOGLE) it index, cache, and analyze all the content on the web, and make it searchable and made it searchable to EVERYONE. Of course, the things that people search for would be high guarded and datamined so that government officials knew what was going on in everyone's lives.