sparhawk

In my opinion this is just a matter of hair splitting. Just like there are people who would never accepts robots to be capable of feelings just because we designed computers in the first place. Not MAY, it's a fact. just look at religions and the concepts of god. Daniel C. Denett as an intersting book about how consciousness is generated which goes in a similar direction "Consciousness Explained". Quite an interesting read, especially because he doesn't use the vailed mystical aspect or the quantum fluctuation crap that is often used (like Hofstaedter does). Rather he uses a mathematical statistical concept which works entirely on it's own, instead of relying on some unknown hidden features like the above. Most of these theories at the core have no real explanations and try to hide it with a lot of math and words. Communication takes time and of course you need to have the physical entity that is able to communicate it. The coin is different, but it's not costless, so I assume that's why you put it in quotes. Well the process might be faster, but that can also happen in a individuals. Consider bacterias. You start with two, thwo two replicate and so on and you have also exponential growth. Not very different IMO. AFAIK Orang Utans can, and also other animals. They just don't use it as extensivelly as we do. Just like genes which are not (always) expressed. Funnily enough, there are studies which seem to indicate that this "unused" stuff is not as useless as it was though in the beginning. Not really surprising though, as you can't really expect that scientists can make a good guess as to what is really needed and what not as soon as they start. But that's how knowledge gathering works. Reminds me a bit of the claim "we are only using 10% of our brain". Exactly.

What I meant is, that if humans are part of a bigger entity, which evolved, we wouldn't be able to really understand all the implications of it, just like cells don't even though they may have a basic understanding of their immediate environment. The whole is bigger then just the sum of it's parts. Personally I wouldn't qualify that as evolution, more similar to the process of becoming adult from a child, but maybe that is a tiny evolution. Well, why is this no evolution? I mean we evolved our immune system to aid and protect us, and having implants and modern medicine is just another step. I see that differently, because the abillity to use tools is definitely a evolutionary process. And once a pupolution becomes such an integral part with it's tools that they depend on it, you can not realistically seperate it anymore. An ant hill is just as integral a part of the ant society as are the indivudals. I think most people would agree that this would be a perfect example of why evolution is NOT a scientific theory if it can be proven just by hindsight. As a matter of fact Astrology works the same. You can only proof the claims with hindsight. Personally I think that this is a shortcoming of the scientific definition, because I don't really believe that evolution is not a scientific theory. That's no proof that are just the setup which you need to find the proof. Wrong. A good example is VHS and Beta. There are other examples but that's the one that immediatley comes to my mind. There are far more parameters that just being better. It's the same in evolution. For example, from what I read I'm of the opinion that Orang Utans have similar abillities as we do, but we were first. Time is critical in evolution. Also wrong.

The question is wether we would realize that. Personaly I don't think that HUMANS will change that much, and if they change it's questionable wether it's still HUMANS as we think of it today. Consider this: So you have a fly and because of environmental pressure they start to change and grow four wings. Now biologists in a few years would term this four winged flies with a different name thus essentially making it a new species. But what about the original set of flies? They still can exists in some environment that hasn't forced the adaption, but of course we wouldn't see them any different then now, because that's what they are. Same things with any other species. If computers become conscious on a large scale level it is not neccessarily so that we might recognize this, just as a cell is most likely not aware of their fellow cells being a human being. It would just see a large collection of fellow cells with different "jobs". To recognize that this colleciton of cells is something different in it's entirety the cell would have to step out of it's experience level, which of course can not do, as it would be something different then. Don't know if "better" is the correct term. Evolution tends to enforce a stable equilibrium until the environment changes and needs a different equilibrium. Wether this is "better" is only a matter of conception, because the dying species will experience it as bad while the adapted species will experience it as normal or good. See above. "Good health" is relative. Good for what? As you said yourself, in a jungle environment it might not be sufficient, but in a city it is, so why should this be a problem? It could only be seen as a problem in relation to "the old ways". On the cell level this is not true, because cells don't need to die. Only the particular process that came up for us, includes dying. Of course there are still casualities and other forms of killing which also would decimate the population and require erplacement, but that would be a different society evolved to the needs of that environment. How can evolution be dead? Social safete nets are also part of the evolution.After all, they were not jumping into live on it's own and suddenly where there because of quantum fluctuation. They were developed and are still under development. Which is also a selection mechanism, jsut on a different level than before. For evolution it doesn't matter HOW the selection takes place, only THAT it happens. So if the selection is that I must like it, then this is what the evolution will gravitate around. If the selection process is the average of millions of poeple and how they want their babies, then this is what the evolutionary processes are gravitating around. And this is a kind of feedback process, because of those selection is not successfull in terms of reproduction then there will survive a set of genoms that may tend to not mess so much around, or mess in "the correct" way so that more individuals of that mindset will reproduce. And the nice thing about it is, that there is no "right" or "wrong" because individuals will just do what they "know" is "right".

I never understand why anybody could think that civilisation can fail and humanity will fall back to some barbarian mode. The very fact that civilisation exists in the first place is, that it will also continue in case of a war. Simply because humans are a social species and therefore tend to go back to a civilisational behaviour. Also I don't see why there are some people thinking that we are suddenly "outside evolution", whatever that is supposed to mean. Of course evolution continues. We just don't see it always. And you should consider that evolution can take place in fast and slow steps, but the evolution of a species takes a very long time. And personally I think we are currently seeing quite a rapid evolution of the next level, i.e. computerised species.

Cool! Now the mirrors should be moved closer together and than mounted to a camera.

Ah! Now I understand how such a setup should work. When I read your comment about the mirrors, at first I thought about a setup that reflects two slightly offset images into the camera, such that you have a similar picture as the one that you get when you watch that flickering 3D image on the screen. Of course this doesn't work. Now I realized, the setup of the mirrors must be such that two images are projected in such a way that you can fotograf the side by side directly from the mirrors, right? I hope you understand what I mean. Probably not, because when I think more about it, I think creating my first idea of a setup might be impossible anyway.

From the sakteboard? That might be a bit extremly fast. Thanks for the tip! That might also help to ensure that the camera is only moved a small amount, because I had the problem that I shifted the camera way to much in the beginning. Actually I had the impression that, when I shifted the camera by about the amount of my eyedistance, the result were much worse. Yeah, but there is still a large amount of error. Well, but then you probably need some software that extracts the single images, right? Don't laugh! I was actually thinking of that for taking video shots. With video my approach doesn't work. I wanted to try to move the camera sideways and then copy the movie and shift one of them a few images and see if that works, but still this is extremly limited as you can not take normal video movies. So I was thinking, maybe getting another very slim video camera and tape them together. Should basically work as well. You have to press the buttons at the same time, but you can still remove the extra frames with a program as you probably will not be exact and the if the cameras are of different brand the speed might also differ a bit. However, once both are running, then the resulting footage in the middle should be fine.

The major reason why I actually noticed it is because I try to learn russian, so I'm reading russian text to learn the alphabet. So at first I noticed it because the first character reminded me of some russian character, but it felt somehow wrong. And that feeling of wrongness got me always to look at it again, until I realized it because I remembered the logic lessons that I had many years ago. I move it rather slow and try to keep it steady. And even with a rather slow shutter speed there is not any noticable motion blur. Canon EOS 350D with the standard lens 35-70. The series that I took was done with fstop 4.5 and 1/50 which is not really fast. I tried to take shots with higher speeds to see if there is a difference, but the light was not good enough. If you are interested in the result I can upload a JPS file that I created with GIMP out of them. Of course the quality is not perfect as it is taken without a tripod and my first test, but I considered the resulting 3D image acceptable enough. The major advantage of that continuous shooting is, that the Z axis is more stable then when I try to take my time for two independent shots. In my previous attempts I always had the problem that there was not only the left/right movement but also a small up/down movement. I tried to take a reference point so that I knew how high the shot should be but that didn't really work well. And because of that, those images have more ghosting then the later ones with the movement. And of course if you have three or four shots you can pick the best of them.

Actually I thought that this should happen and tried it with my photos as well, but I don't really see a difference. BTW: Nice avatar. Took me some time to figure out what it means, because at first sight I thought it's some kind of greek alphabet or such but always ha the feeling that I know it. Yeah, that's indeed a problem. I got around this to some extent though. Because at first I took two shots after the other, which takes quite some time. Then I got the idea to switch my camera to continous mode. So I press the button and keep it pressed and the camera continously takes shots. The I move the camera slightly sideways and take five-six while moving. I was quite surprised, because I didn't expect good results, but actually they were better than when I took time to take two shots. Another benefit is that I have several images to choose from and the time between two shots is much shorter. Of course it doesn't work for realy moved scenes, but slow movement and such are taken quite well. Yeah, I was thinking that it would be really cool to see such shots frozen in 3D dynamically. I wanted to experiment with this as well to see how good (or rather bad) it gets without a real 3D camera. On the other hand, a 3D camera now costs about 300-400 Euro which is probably affordable. So who knows, maybe I can buy such a thing next year or so and they will get cheaper anyway in the meantime.

I don't see how this should translate into a 3D image. From what I understood this sounds like those double images that are often used for kids, so when you tilt the foto you see a different one. Yes, and I hope that it's developed fast enough so that I can enjoy it.

With the Elsa Revelator I could even play Thief in 3D. Was pretty cool, but the image got really dark, so it was not comfortable to play. Half Life was much brighter and it looked really cool. Well, that's exactly what I do with the camera anyway. However I wanted to take a few screenshots from TDM just to see how it would be looking. To bad it can't be played that way though. Well, of course it works in a way, but the objects are not 3D really. It just looks as if there were offset from the background a bit, because they lack the detailed information. I wonder why. I mean the technique is pretty old. But the anaglyph method doesn't work very well IMO. The current technology looks much better and yields crystal clear images. Maybe that's the reason. Don't know if they tried it earlier only with anaglyph. When they did those TV broadcasts back in the early eighties I was not really impressed. In fact I didn't even notice an effect. With modern 3D television sets it would be much better if that Nvidia experience is similar.

I'm just experimenting with it. I switch on the serial feature so that the camera shoots as long as I press the button. I took several fotos in a row by moving the camera along, so I wonder how this will look like. If it works well enough, it's faster then aligning manually. I also took shots with different apertures and different focus from the same image to see if it makes a different when putting it in 3D. However I got the impression that a realistic eye distance causes the final 3D image to look a bit strange. When I moved only a small amount it looked better, but with those serial shots I can test it and see if this is really the case. Wow! I never mastered that. Well, with the 3D lens it's most comfortable though. Actually I thought about this as well. I wanted also to see if Blender can support this easily as well. I think using a 3D app, making the images should be much easier because you have full control over the scene. I tried that as well, but when I take the same image then there is no 3D effect (what is to be expected). Or am I missunderstanding something here? I hope that this 3D hype really takes off. At the moment it looks good, but I hope it doesn't die out as a fad. I really love it to watch a movie in the cinema with this. Yes. Only DirectX support, unless you have a Quadro card. Some games look strange, that depends on how they use the 2D overlays. This can give really strange images up to the point where your head starts to hurt. But most modern games work quite nice.

So I bought this 3D Nvidia shutter lenses a few weeks ago and yesterday I had the idea to try creating my own images. I was surprised that it is actually that easy. I took two fotos from my kids with the camera slightly shifted and put them side by side in GIMP and lo and behold, when I watched it with the stereoscopic viewer it really worked. Well, the quality is not the best because I shot it just with the hand, no tripod or such aid, but still. The 3D effect is really good visible. The best thing is, that you can watch those side by side imaged also without any aids, just by using the cross eyed or parallel looking technique. I never mastered the parallel technique, which probably would be better on the eyes, but the cross eye one also works perfectly. Only my eyes start to hurt when I do this to long. Of course with a single camera you can take no moving images, or images snapshots, so you can only take pictures where the scene is static enough to take the second foto.

Cool! Thanks!

If this is still really a topic, I'd love to see some picture of the final tshirt if possible (even if it's just a mockup. I would defintely like to have one of those. A hooded sweater would even be better.

A nice little adventure has been released. The artwork reminds me a little bit of Monkey Island, though it is not. The website is here (german): http://www.ghost-pirates.de/ Don't know if there is an english version as well, because I got the impression that it is acutally an english game, but not sure about that. And here is a trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRCjni3nf1o

Is this Peter Smith really an employee of Eidos? Or ist he "just" a moderator of the forum?

Piranha Bytes doing it? That sounds good. What I really would love to see is also a good strategic game based on mechwarrior. To carry over the feeling when you play the tabletop. I somehow miss that. I would like this much more than an action shooter.

Yeah, I found out that ZM also supports USB cameras. I don't know if there is a kind of standardized protocol, so I have to look and see if I can use any USB camera or just some special brands. I also have to see if my server has an USB connection. Not sure about that...

Thanks. I found Zoneminder and it looked lilke the kind of software I'm looking for. What I couldn't find out for the moment is, wether it only works with cameras that stream via networkcards. And if so, if there are some cameras, which can send their data over a radio connection. I don't want to put cables all over the place and also be able to move the camera easily around.

SInce here are some people with linux experience as well, I was wondering if somebdoy has some suggestion which hardware and software I can use for a surveillance camera. I would like to put a camera somewhere, but it should transmit the data wireless, so that I don't have to connect stationary via a cable. Then I would like to install some software that can take a shot i.e. every second or so, ideally with a timestamp on the image as well. Well, this can be done via scripts probably as well, but at least I would need a camera that works with linux.

LOL! I used to like read Anthony quite a lot. Became a bit repititive after some time, but when I was young I read almost all his books.

Congratulations! I'm really happy for you! And the foto really looks great! Nice little guy. Reminds me when my own kids were born and how happy I was then. I think the name is cool. If all names were blocked just because a protagonist of a game was happen to use it, I guess we constantly would have to come up with new ones. And Garrett is not really that strange a name. Would be bad if you had called him Wolverine or some other obsucre game name, but that name is really fine!

Having more objects to choose from is always a good idea. You might contact Springheel to ask if we are short on specific things though.

That should be put on the quote list.