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Comment Stereo vision, simply? (Score 1) 66

I want to do stereo vision with synchronized images. I know the cm3 (compute module) can take two cameras at the same time, but I don't want to design my own circuit around it. Does anyone have experience with doing it any other way, e.g. having two RasPis properly syncrhonized somehow (GPIO or NTP or whatever) so that they trigger their camera captures at exactly the same time?

Comment Re:Very slow news day (Score 2) 216

> Do the extra architectural registers in x86-64 really make that much difference in practice?

For tight computations, they do. Most people run memory and i/o bound loads, so the memory overhead (64-bit pointers instead of 32-bit pointers) tend to cancel that out, and you only see modest speed gains.

And the 2GB limit of addressable memory is much more than a working set limit; it's easy to hit a fragmentation limit if you "only" need 1.5GB with some workloads. And the ability to mmap() every file and let the OS handle caching etc for me is also something I miss when I need to do 32 bit work.

Comment Re:Trolling (Score 1) 130

> I know many people here are outraged when a company actually enforces their patent and calls the company in question a patent troll but the truth is they are simply enforcing their rights as a patent holder, as is their right.

Of course it is their right. The outrage is that is actually IS their right. Yourself said "copyrights are out of control" -- but all copyright holders are doing is enforcing their (bought-and-paid-congress-for) rights. Where's the difference here?

> Non-practicing entities, however, aren't protecting their intellectual property. They aren't protecting their innovative edge over their competitors. They are leaches. That's it. That's all.

I've recently had this discussion with a successful investor who has had success in investing in companies developing technology with the intent to sell it later. They are NPE. Whoever buys something from them will be a PE. But if they as an NPE cannot protect the value of their research through patent, why would anyone buy it from them?

Saying NPEs have no right to sue means that you disagree with the concept of "company doing research in order to sell research results rather than sell product", because it becomes non viable. That might be fine, but most people don't think of that consequence when targeting NPEs. We need a different test to discriminate trolls from non-practicing but otherwise legitimate entities (universities, research shops).

e.g., ARM don't produce anything real. Only copyrighted and patented designs. They are an NPE.

Comment Re:OTA, Netflix (Score 1) 479

> It's unfortunately due to licensing restrictions and international copyright laws rather than them "not wanting to" or being technically unable to do it.

Actually, it mostly IS them not wanting to.

The majority of the BBC programming is either owned by the BBC or commissioned for the BBC and gives the BBC worldwide distribution rights (e.g. on BBC America or BBC Middle East). Basically, if it ever becomes available on BBC America, they have the copyright assignment or equivalent, and they could start offering it for sale from day one.

It is "not wanting", in the sense that it might sour their distribution partners and some of their content sources. But if they wanted it, they could.

[That's not true for almost any broadcasting service, but it is true for the BBC]

Comment Re:Annoyed customer (Score 0) 155

Don't take the description at face value.

I think it is more probably a premature application of some anti-bank-run version. There are financial earthquakes coming soon to Europe, one way or the other, and that always means bank runs and naked cheques.

I think it is more plausible that they just flipped the "do not trust other counterparty until really verified" switch too early.

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 5, Interesting) 565

> Quick, how many manufacturers have integrated Kinect into their products? I'm unaware of it being integrated into any hardware. Would a Kinect interface in a laptop be interesting?

Microsoft won't license out Kinect technology (which they did not even develop themselves, but rather got an exclusive license for from PrimeSense). Furthermore, at the same time they signed the deal, they bought the only other company to offer similar products (I think 3DVision, not sure about the name), and closed them. So they now own an exclusive license for one technology, and all the patents for a differently implemented technology.

There is no way for anyone to integrate that functionality. And if I were microsoft, I'd buy LeapMotion tomorrow to make sure that stays true for the future.

Comment Re:CRC has its limits. (Score 1) 60

That's apples and oranges.

The 12k limit is more related to just having 32 bits than to cryptographic/non-cryptographic nature.

64k*64k ^=32 bit, so at 64k you are guaranteed that there is at least one two-bit error that is undetected. At 2048, you are also virtually guaranteed of a 3-bit errors that goes undetected -- that's true whether the hash is a plain CRC or a cryptographic one.

A CRC-128 would have been as good for this purpose as MD5 or SHA1.

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