| Thursday,
April 13, 2006
Subject: Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard
Probably not viable for a touch typist, but the cool
factor is undeniable..
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8193/?cpg=29T
Tracy Walters
Wow. It says they are out of stock. I
wonder how the sensor knows what you are typing on the virtual keyboard?
Wonderful if it works, but I can't figure out the mechanism.
==========
Subject: Vote Early, Vote Often...
Elections in Pennsylvania apparently
are...interesting, Dr. Pournelle.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110008225
"...many liberals insist fraud isn't an issue in
Pennsylvania. "Show us the fraud," said Elizabeth Milner, chairman of the
state's League of Women Voters, urging a veto of voter ID. Well, Donna Hope
of Philadelphia can show her, because in 2004 an organizer for Voting is
Power, an offshoot of the Muslim American Society, registered her to vote
despite her admission that she was a noncitizen. Although she was turned
away from the polls for that reason that November, someone eventually voted
in her name."
Charles Brumbelow
And you are surprised? See the Sanchez
election in Orange County, etc.
Today we rally, tomorrow we vote. Tomorrow
is to be taken literally.
==========
Subject: The Last Island of the Savages and Satellite
Anthropology
The Sentinelese have long struck me as a people who
are best studied from afar. They want other people's to keep their distance
and express that desire quite forecefully. But it may be possible to satisfy
our curiosity about them whiile keeping our distance.
Satellite archaeology is a fairly new field: why not
satellite anthropology? There are limits to what we can learn from that, but
we can probably get an good idea of how many people are on the island and,
by going back and looking at older images taken by spy satellites (which, if
not already declassified, can probably be obtained by a Freedom of
Information Act request. provided the area for which one wants photos is
kept narrow) and commerical satellites (SPOT, et. al.), we can get an idea
of what numbers used to be and have been over time.
Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with camera
feeds and sound mikes is also a possibility, though I'd expect the
Sentinelese to attack UAVs if they saw them (they attacked helicopters with
arrows after the 2004 tsunami), and there would be the possibilty that the
UAVs could bring some disease to the island that the Sentinelese would have
a hard time with.
Marty Busse
Satellite anthropology; an interesting
concept. And as accurate as Margaret Meade's on-site tale collecting in
Samoa...
==============
Subject: I guess history didn't end, after all
Jerry
I guess history didn't end, after all:
In Villages Across India, Maoist Guerrillas Widen
'People's War' - New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/world/asia/13maoists.html?ei=5094&en=94c5809dd6aa1bc6&hp=&ex=1144900800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all
Ed
SoooPrise!
==========
Subject: on the global warming mess
Subject: global warming data
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
I worked on a government ship in the late 1960's. Each
day the weathermen on board would throw a bucket on a rope over the side,
then retrieve the bucket full of sea water. The temperature was measured
with an ordinary thermometer, then duly recorded on the ship computer. This
was our continuing record of sea temperature, kept over about half the
globe.
One remembered news article from this period mentioned
the actions of a small town government. The weather service moved the
measuring station from the park in the town square to a more isolated
location as part of an improvement program. Some city politician noticed
that moving the measuring station away from the lawn sprinklers resulted in
summer readings that were a few degrees higher. The politician felt that
these higher readings would drive tourists away, and wanted the measurement
station returned to the park.
These isolated incidents are the basis of my opinion
of the "Chicken Little" types that want to spend billions fighting global
warming, recently reported as a rise of one degree in this century. I agree
with you, the science so desperately needed now cannot be heard for the
yammer of bureaucrats.
regards,
William L. Jones
Precisely
==========
Global Warming
a little something I sent Holly Lisle after she
acknowledged todays WSJ article on her web site.
As to Mr. Hewell's question, I have been thinking
about that. This "global average temperature" figure is something that is
accumulated from data with systematic variations, periodic and irregular
time series variations, random variations, and measurement errors. Despite
the Central Limit theorem, none of these parameters are more than
approximately normal (and the systematic and time series variations are not
properly statistical data (i.e. are not true random variable) at all) .
Certainly just a straight T = sum (T)/N is not a good
representation of this data, but I'm willing to bet that it is what the
results come to.
I think it very likely that this estimated average
temperature is not trustworthy.
Jim Woosley
=
The global warming controversy hingers on four
key questions:
1. Is there a sustained, long term increase in
global average temperatures? 2. If this increase exists, is it due to
natural environmental factors (including the observed warming of the sun
over the past few decades), to human influences (e.g. industrial carbon
dioxide, agricultural methane, etc.), or to a combination of these factors?
3. Is this environmental change likely to be, on the whole, beneficial or
detrimental to human society? 4. If the change is likely to be detrimental,
what actions should be taken to mitigate or eliminate the deliterious
effects.
Briefly, in turn:
1. Is there a sustained, long term increase in
global average temperatures?
a. Experimentally observed temperature effects
are, at present, well within the historical data base of measured
temperature extremes, which include cyclic patterns on scales of a year, two
to three years (the El Nino/La Nina cycle), twenty-two years (the "normal"
solar cycle), 80-odd years (natural the hurricane cycle which peaked in the
1930s and which is peaking again now) and several hundred years (the cycle
that left Lief Erikson's Greenland as an agricultural paridise, then created
the "mini ice age" in Europe in the late Middle Ages. These cycles are their
interactions are poorly understood, and the possible forcing (or retarding)
effects of manmade influences even less so.
b. Most of the evidence for long-term "global
warming" is a consequnce of computer models which, of necessity, oversimply
some (or many) aspects of the global environment. All of these models
systematically predict warming of from 2 - 9 degrees C (3.5 - 16 degrees F)
over the next century. This is noteworthy, but is is evidence -- even after
the fact given the not yet understood cycles noted above? In any event, a
lot of people think that if the most sophisticated weather models we can
produce are in error by several degrees after five to seven days, why should
we worry about climate models over the period of a century, and there is
much to be said for that position.
2. If this increase exists, is it due to
natural environmental factors (including the observed warming of the sun
over the past few decades), to human influences (e.g. industrial carbon
dioxide, agricultural methane, etc.), or to a combination of these factors?
The pro-warming factions maintain that their
models hold that only 30% of observed warming is due to the solar warming,
and that the balance is due to human influences. However, the "observed"
warming -- against a baseline of mid-1940's temperatures -- is something
like 0.2 degrees C (0.4 degrees F), which as noted above is well within the
limits of historical temperatures of the past. Even that observed warming is
questioned by many researchers, because our most direct temperature
measurements are associated with urban areas, which are known to be heat
traps due to the replacement of naturally cooling foliage by
high-heat-retaining pavement (plus the waste heat of human activities). To
some extent (this is being debated rigorously) this effect is skewing the
underlying effects of the observed warming.
The solar variations are discussed at sites in
the list of references below, and the average variation over the sun's
normal 22 year cycle is approximately 0.2% -- which for a normal surface
temperature of 300 degrees Kelvin (27 degress C) amounts to a cyclic change
of 0.6 degrees -- agaisnt which we are trying to detect a systematic 0.2
degree effect against a two-cycle background. Ask me again in a century.
3. Is this environmental change likely to be,
on the whole, beneficial or detrimental to human society?
It is an open question whether meteorological
"forcing" by increased temperatures would normally result just in warmer
days and warmer nights by the same amount, by increased violent weather, or
by a combination of these effects. There are also scare scenarios about
Arctic or Anarctic ice melting, ignoring that for every section of the ice
pack that is weakening, another is strengthening.
The worst case scare scenarios warn of costal
inundation as the ice packs melt, combined with desertificaiton from
increased heat. On the other side, in temperate climates, growing seasons
will be longer. On the whole, the global effects are hard to predict and
must more sophisticated modeling is required. Believable modeling, which I'm
not sure we have yet. (See note 1).
4. If the change is likely to be detrimental,
what actions should be taken to mitigate or eliminate the deliterious
effects.
It is an open question as yet that the change
is likely to be detrimental. Yet, it is clear that a solution that punishes
the US and Europe while allowing China and India to pollute without
restriction, such as Kyoto, is properly a non-starter. The impact on the
American standard of living of Kyoto would be significant. Maybe we do have
a too-luxurious lifestyle -- but I don't see many pro-Kyoto activitists
renouncing their suburban homes, TVs, computers, and SUVs to return to
subsistence organic agriculture. Would you be willing to do that? Today? In
ten years?
References
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.
jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml
&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA203.html
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/ftpsolarirradiance.html#composite
and references therein
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/3/6/9/1
===========
From Monty.
Is this a picture of the future?
(Alas, the WSJ does not allow public posting of the link; I'll see if I
can find something.
Title: Top High Schools Fight New Science As Overly Simple
Author: ROBERT TOMSHO )
Whatever means you use to access this, if
you have any interest in the future of education and how that impacts the
nation, this is important.
San Diego is bankrupt due to illegal
aliens. There may be other problems associated with this situation.
Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation
for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.
============
Subject:
Laser virtual keyboard
I Googled for more information on the laser virtual
keyboard.
The device has both a laser and an infrared camera.
The laser draws the virtual keyboard, and the camera watches the area
bounded by the virtual keyboard. The camera sees fingers in the area and
figures out where the fingers are, and translates that into a keypress. Some
sort of algorithm crunches the camera data and decides which keys were
"pressed". Since there is no way for it to tell how hard you are pressing,
it must measure how long the fingers stay in the virtual key area; if you
move your finger quickly you don't get a keypress. Audio feedback lets you
know when it has recognized a keystroke.
I'd guess that you would not be able to "press" keys
on this keyboard with, say, a thin glass rod; but ordinary fingers should
work well.
Looking at the photo of the device, initially I
thought you had to suspend it over the surface. Now I understand: you set
the device down, and it projects on the flat surface from the top end of the
device.
Here are some reviews:
http://mobilitytoday.com/article.php?a=000063&p=ibiz_virtual_keyboard
"It took us about an hour to get used to the typing
style and also for us to get the feel of typing on a flat surface." "...the
classic two fingered hunt and peck style of typing works best with the
Virtual Keyboard."
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/review.php?reviewId=720
"Every keystroke is accompanied by a sound effect,
informing you that the system has successfully registered you intended
action. Sensitivity of the keyboard can be tailored to individual
preferences, in the menus on the device you have attached. The users action
is detected when the light dots at the rear of the character-denoted area
are fully obscured."
http://www.pocketpccanada.com/pages/
Reviews/Virtual%20Keyboard/virtualkeyboard.asp
This one includes a video of the keyboard in use!
This device is very interesting for computer use
inside sterile labs. You could seal this device away behind glass, and wash
the flat typing surface with the germ killer of your choice. This would also
be good for clean room or industrial use. Car mechanics with greasy hands
could use a computer and just wash the flat typing surface later.
If and when I get around to buying a portable
Bluetooth keyboard, it will probably be this one:
http://www.thinkoutside.com/products/xtbtue/stowawaybt_product.html
I already have a keyboard similar to this, but with a
physical connector instead of wireless. The way it folds in half is really
slick. You need to press a function key to get numerals; this let them leave
off one row of keys, which in turn let them make the remaining keys bigger
and thus easy to type upon.
-- Steve R. Hastings
"Vita est" steve@hastings.org
http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
Well I will be swoggled. I suppose I
should have figured it out. One of the good things about this place is that
even when I am harassed and haven't time to look things up, someone will.
Thanks!
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW Thursday |
