Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 22nd Nov 2008 23:05 UTC
When you're diving into the history of computing and its concepts, you rarely have to look much further back in time than the Second World War. It happens sometimes, but not that often. However, there are exceptions - and this is one that really boggles the mind: the pixel? One of those little dots on your screen? It's well over 400 years old.
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Member since:2007-09-08
To be even more precise, J.M. Jacquard "only" automated the pattern transfer into the fabric by using a mechanical device with punched cards.
Manual creation of such fabrics existed for over two thousand years. To make any such fabric, a sketch is necessary, since it is impossible for a weaver to make complex designs out of his/her head.
The "pixels" in textile sketch are rectangular, to reflect the density of weaving. So pixels can also be square, but more often they are not.
Weaving of carpets also requires the same kind of pixel-based sketch.
Check the wikipedia entry on tapestry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapestry
for some pictures of old tapestries.
RE[2]: No surprise there
by sbergman27 on Sun 23rd Nov 2008 18:09
in reply to "RE: No surprise there"
Member since:2005-07-24
Weaving of carpets also requires the same kind of pixel-based sketch.
As does needlepoint. A friend of mine got me into needlepoint (briefly) some years back, claiming that it was "relaxing". Unfortunately, I did not find it so. It's essentially turtle graphics. Invariably, during a session, I would make a mistake, and then do about a hundred more stitches before I noticed... at which point I would have to tediously back the "turtle" up 100 stitches to correct the error and then redo them all correctly. If I wasn't in an aggravated state at the start of the session, I was surely so by the end.
Latch-hook rug making might be more to my liking. I had not considered it before, thinking it similar to needlepoint. But rug making is essentially raster graphics with random access to individual points. Maybe I should try it out?
Edited 2008-11-23 18:11 UTC
Member since:2005-12-09
It sort of reminds me of the article I read once about the Egyptians somehow "using" Pi to construct their pyramids. Turned out that they didn't have direct abstract knowledge of Pi, but were rather using measuring wheels to set the massive construction dimensions. The wheels then forced Pi's relationships into the pyramids. Here you have a craftsman faced with the challenge of making an image from interconnected yet discrete pieces. He does the (repeatedly) logical thing, and bam! You have "pixels".
I wonder if he thought, "Wow! This would look great on a properly-designed OLED screen!"
Nihil nova sub sola.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
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Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
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Member since:
2008-06-07
This is not surprising to me at all. Digital technologies were there for hundreds of years - just look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom">Jacquard .