The ASCII Cam

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The ASCII Cam 122

Posted by Hemos on Friday January 26, 2001 @01:15PM from the dear-lord dept.

griffjon writes "The folks over at Dyne.org have hacked together a method to take live camera feed and turn it into ascii-character video on Linux. You can get the latest release, or see screenshots from a live stream. Y'know, this kinda ascii could be good random noise input for a cipher."

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Re:Encryption! (Score:1)

by Alan ( 347 ) writes:

True, however that's assuming the camera is pointed at a person sitting in front of a computer. Aim it at clouds, or a busy street, or a water fountain or something that's constantly changing. Interesting idea anyway.
He cheats! (Score:1)

by jonr ( 1130 ) writes:

He should only be using mono ascii, using gray characters is cheating!
:)
Or, to quote NTK.NET... (Score:1)

by Paulo ( 3416 ) writes:

"am I naked in this ASCII dump or not" dot com...
OK, But it's the only way to watch sports. (Score:1)

by drowsy ( 4335 ) writes:

A friend used this to alter the display of the World Series in a bar. That was interesting.

http://anux.angel.net/asciicam/
not new (Score:1)

by pergamon ( 4359 ) writes:

Notre Dame once had an ASCII version of a cam that was watching the dome of a building on campus. You could even telnet to some port of some system to see a "movie" of the last 24 hours or so of feed. I think I remember seeing it 5 or 6 years ago...
Re:Mmmmm..... (Score:1)

by IRNI ( 5906 ) writes:

Deep Throat in ASCII [www1.zkm.de]

Don't say I never gave you anything :)

IRNI
Re:someone at SGI developed this 5 years ago (Score:1)

by Y2K is bogus ( 7647 ) writes:

You're such a troll!
re: New pgp sig (Score:1)

by Grell ( 9450 ) writes:

I can see it now,

To send me encrypted mail:

Run the end credits of Debbie Does Dallas backwards through the Elmer Fudd biff filter and use results as pgp key data.

Oh yeah ...

Grell

"May you live In Fortean Times"
Re:been done before (Score:1)

by prijks ( 9686 ) writes:

well, maybe not quite the same thing. I don't think the ascii dome cam is quite live. but it's still tons o' fun.
been done before (Score:1)

by prijks ( 9686 ) writes:

The Lab for Scientific Computing at the University of Notre Dame has, for many years now, had a Dome Cam set up with an optional ascii version. So this isn't that new. http://lisa.ee.nd.edu/DomeCam/ [nd.edu]. Of course, it seems to be down right now...
Text-mode atrocities unlimited (Score:1)

by FWMiller ( 9925 ) writes:

People are starving to death in the world, and you had time for this [mr.net]?!!
Re:Encryption! (Score:1)

by qnonsense ( 12235 ) writes:
- Stick a lava lamp in front of it, and you`re sorted!
You mean like this? [sgi.com]
Neat, but not really new. (Score:1)

by UnkyHerb ( 12862 ) writes:

The gimp I believe has had a plugin to do this, just not on the fly. I'm sure it wouldn't be a super-huge task for any experienced coder to adapt it for this purpose.
Re:Nothing new (Score:1)

by Pope Slackman ( 13727 ) writes:

Is there a page that describes how to do this?
(Even just a man page reference would work...)

I gotta try it on my Indy.

--K
i know (Score:1)

by Nima ( 14762 ) writes:

i know i know cause we can
New meaning.... (Score:1)

by Mtn_Dewd ( 15169 ) writes:

This gives an entirely new meaning to pr0n on webcams ;)
ok ya. (Score:1)

by Mtn_Dewd ( 15169 ) writes:

maybe i should read other's posts before I do ;)

i'm too late all of the time, and i tend to repeat someone else's idea =)
Huh? No it's not. (Score:1)

by DoorFrame ( 22108 ) writes:

I clicked on the link before seeing your warning, it was just a webpage for a lavalamp graphic means for producing random numbers. I didn't find it very exciting, but it certainly wasn't anything like goatsex... what am i missing?
This ain't news ! (Score:1)

by Chep ( 25806 ) writes:

just use something like
acquire_image | anytopnm | pnmscale .5 | \
ppmquant -fs -2 | pnmtopgm | pgmtopbm | \
pbmtoascii -2x4 >foo.txt

(where acquire_image is a suitable program, which spits an image in any format out of the desired source)
Complete (?) list of google screen shot caches (Score:1)

by twdorris ( 29395 ) writes:

Here's a more complete list...open these in a new browser and hit stop as soon as they come up, if possible. Some seem to have stupid auto-reload next tags in them. :-(

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam001.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam002.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam003.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam004.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam005.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam006.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam007.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam008.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam009.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam010.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam011.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam012.html+&hl=en [google.com]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam013.html+&hl=en [google.com]
Re:Encryption! (Score:1)

by EnderWiggnz ( 39214 ) writes:

no... making that emoticon would only make things worse... despair has that trademarked and will sue you...

tagline
Re:Cipher (Score:1)

by seanw ( 45548 ) writes:

actually, I read about a group who was doing just that (in some old issue of wired, I think). they used a bank of video cameras set up in front of lava lamps (good for random input) then hashed the video feeds into a string of nice random noise.

it's actually a clever way to get a reasonable level of randomness (cheaper than renting atmospheric noise collectors, another method I've heard of).

sean
Re:Looks a little fishy... (Score:1)

by QuoteMstr ( 55051 ) writes:

Which characters specifically?
Re:It's About Time... (Score:1)

by QuoteMstr ( 55051 ) writes:

Think about it --- it *is* an 8-bit grayscale, with predefined gray levels. Each character is a different number of lit pixels, and, when used *as* pixels, can be used to simulate gray levels. That's why advanced (i.e., non-linedrawing) ascii art works.
Re:It's About Time... (Score:1)

by jovlinger ( 55075 ) writes:

If you look closely, they also choose which character to use depending on local line features. So you have 4 bits color, 4 bits char choice (just to throw out some numbers).

Arguably, they would be better off with a 2x2 pixel x 2 bit grey decomposition, from a pure fidelity point of view, but using ascii is really cool. I was actually a bit dissapointed there was grey-scale at all. Just using different chars for that (".+*" for light through dark grey, "|-\/" for edge features, f.ex) would have been cooler, IMANHO.
Re:SSH and Telnet (Score:1)

by ffatTony ( 63354 ) writes:

that should be $DISPLAY for telnet...
slashdotted already (Score:1)

by mach-5 ( 73873 ) writes:

No sooner do the first post trolls appear and the site is slashdotted.
What really drives opensource? (Score:1)

by zensonic ( 82242 ) writes:

"gives you the coolest .plan you ever had"

Maybe that what got John Carmack started too? :)
Reminds me of ASCII Doom ... (Score:1)

by smoondog ( 85133 ) writes:

They should replace the cam occasionally with a prerecorded ASCII Doom feed.

-Moondog
Re:Use of Greyscale (Score:1)

by graniteMonkey ( 87619 ) writes:

One might even go so far as to say that greyscale characters could be considered ANSI, not ASCII. One might go even further and say that encoding an ANSI picture as a PNG makes it nothing more than a very low-res graphic.

If this ascii webcam thing is just for fun, though, then hey, nice job. It's probably pretty educational to write something like that.
slashcode web cacheing project (Score:1)

by wharfrat ( 90464 ) writes:

Anyone interested in a project to add cacheing of links in stories to slashcode please email me.

Obviously this is something that is desperatly needed.
Re:MosASCII (Score:1)

by da5id ( 91814 ) writes:

Or you could use this php Image To HTML Text Converter [zend.com] by Markus Dobel.

echo $email | sed s/[A-Z]//g | rot13
Re:Aim camera at senction of transparent sewer lin (Score:1)

by ebyte ( 94664 ) writes:

Sounds like a good place for a webcam.
Re:Nice (Score:1)

by Shagg ( 99693 ) writes:

" | \n | \no|o\n"
Uhm... I think that's a guy.
Re:nifty... (Score:1)

by Count Spatula ( 103735 ) writes:

Don't know about that, man. I'm still twitching from playing textmode quake, and that was last night. It's like listening to a Philip Glass 'opera', only for the eyes rather than the ears. *shudder*
Re:Cipher (Score:1)

by jaromil ( 104349 ) writes:

oh well,
never thought about using hasciicam for chyphering
if you do so be sure to check out the flag into hasciicam.c that says:

ascii_parms.randomval = 0;

further info on aalib documentation (info aalib)
Re:False Advertising (Score:1)

by jaromil ( 104349 ) writes:

slow down

to see asciicam on lynx you need to customize size of rendered html
Re:Looks a little fishy... (Score:1)

by jaromil ( 104349 ) writes:

hey man
i said CONSOLE LIVE MODE screenshots
how can i show you that without images?

png are done with gimp without editing
tell me more about your problems...
Just in time for Supper Bowl XXXV (Score:1)

by garoush ( 111257 ) writes:

Now I can watch the game truly live on my C-Phone.
Where's the hack? (Score:1)

by CaseStudy ( 119864 ) writes:

IANAProgrammer, but isn't this a pretty basic use of aalib?
(OT)JPEG to ASCII conversion and Goatse.cx (Score:1)

by yerricde ( 125198 ) writes:

How long before that goatse guy gets a hold of this?

I used the NetPBM [sourceforge.net] suite to convert goatse.cx [goatse.cx]'s "The Receiver" image to ASCII [slashdot.org]. It didn't look very good.

Oh, and IANTGCG (I am not the Goatse.cx guy).

Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them? [pineight.com]
The Matrix, resolved! (Score:1)

by ClayJar ( 126217 ) writes:

Wow, so, this is more or less what you end up seeing if you look at the Matrix in raw form long enough, eh? (Although I still would have a hard time noticing an agent versus a doberman, but hey, I just need practice, right.)

Incidentally, does anyone know where to get a green filter for my upcoming ascii-cam?

--
(For those who played Acrophobia a long time ago, I'm already crawling toward the couch.)
SGI did it all (Score:1)

by tessellation ( 133537 ) writes:

not only has SGI done the lavalamp for randomness, when Chris Pirazzi was there in 94 or 95 he made something called ttyvideo that works with any video-input-equipped workstation such as an Indy. Downloadable source & info:
http://reality.sgi.com/cpirazzi/ttyvideo.html

but since reality.sgi.com is down more often than not, you ought to hit the google cache at:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:reality.sgi .c om/cpirazzi/ttyvideo.html+ascii+video+sgi+site:rea lity.sgi.com&hl=en
after it fails to load directly.

cheers
Random noise? Maybe not. (Score:1)

by clary ( 141424 ) writes:

I would want to see some analysis of this before I trusted it as a randomness source, for seeding, etc. I see a lot of repeated characters in the screen shot ('#', 'V', etc.). It could be that the ascii imaging translation method introduces too much predictability.
Re: Video takes up too much bandwidth????? (Score:1)

by torokun ( 148213 ) writes:

You know, I'm really tired of people complaining that certain types of media take up too much bandwidth. If everyone on the net were like you, we wouldn't even have FORMS in HTML!!
I started using the net in 1992. I was a sophomore in high school, and I worked over the summer at the Naval Research Lab in Virginia studying solar flares. They had mosaic. But at that time, I believe they had just added support for gifs, and *everyone* was complaining about how certain sites took up too much bandwidth, and about how Netscape was adding all this "proprietary" tag support, for jpegs and other stuff...
I ask you, what happened??? All those people who complained didn't have a clue... The web has evolved for the better, just like everything else. Those people who don't accept the change are not just conservative, they're wrong.
not new (Score:1)

by belg4mit ( 152620 ) writes:

this isn't new. SGI's do ASCII feeds off their cams too...
Nothing new (Score:1)

by Kanon ( 152815 ) writes:

You've been able to do that with SGs for ages. We have a SG cam hooked up to an Indy box that we can record and convert into *animated* ascii that will play back in a terminal.
take another look (Score:1)

by brad3378 ( 155304 ) writes:

If you look closely, you can see a carrot ( ^ ) in that guy's nose.
Random number generator... (Score:1)

by MrClean35 ( 157607 ) writes:

For a really good random number, try this: http://lavarand.sgi.com/
bzzzzzzztttt (Score:1)

by Guignol ( 159087 ) writes:

-------Link established-----------
(==HELLo=Hihi=) GUIGNOLISNOTDEAD(YET)!! YUPIYUPIBORNTOBEALIVEANYWAY +iHOXXHTIii==ii)IIII)i)))THXXHOL; ;i)XOHTii==+;):);):););)++=iILHOXT =iTXXHTi===;;;:::::::::;;;+=iILXXO+ ;i)OXXTi=++;;;::::::::::;;;==i)LHL= :i)OXI)ii))))=;::,:;+)T))))====LHH+ +ii)LiiIii)TI))T)+;TI)iT)TIi===I)ii :iii)ii====+==i))=;)i==+++++=+=i=++ =iiii++;+;;;=)i+;=i=;;;;;;++=i=+ ))i)==++;++=)i++ii=++;;+===i=; :)))ii==)I))T))i)iiii=i====i,, ;))i=i===)I)))i))))+=+++=i:,, ))I))i==iiii=++++i==)iII=, ;ITL)LTii++++++++i))i=i)ITII+ =)ITIL)iiLHIi+==i)H==++=i)I)TII; :)IIII)TIiiiii=+;+++==++==i))=III)))I ...Hello ? ... can you ..read me ???..
feww.. managed to post this as no junk :)
Photo - Ascii (Score:1)

by MaltoMeal ( 162491 ) writes:

When I was in college I used to convert pictures over to acii all the time so I could send pictures to friends who used pine.
Re:Cipher (lavarand actually) (Score:1)

by brad2600 ( 170333 ) writes:

this project was called lavarand. i spoke to the guy who started this about 3 years ago, smart guy.

heres the url for more info:
http://lavarand.sgi.com [sgi.com]

.brad

Drink more tea
organicgreenteas.com [organicgreenteas.com]
Re: Video takes up too much bandwidth????? (Score:1)

by Araneas ( 175181 ) writes:

Back when I was running a 900 baud modem and 2400 was really "hot", gifs were generally a waste of bandwith in terms of time if not content. Useless content regardless of its form is still wasted bandwidth. Good usesful text is still, and will always remain, superior to useless streaming video. Good streaming video will always be superior to unintelligible text.
What people object to is high bandwidth crap. Useless text at least loads quickly. Waiting forever for a page to load only to find it's useless is a pain.
New troll tool (Score:2)

by Anonymous Coward writes:

Great, now the trolls will submit pictures of themselves so we can hunt them down.
Re:Already being used to generate random numbers (Score:2)

by Masem ( 1171 ) writes:

At least we know that one bit from the movie Johnny Mnemonic wasn't far off track with real world science...
For those that avoided this movie (good choice!), our hero as played by Keanu "Whoa" Reeves, encodes a large block of data in his mind by using 3 random images from television. The recieving end would have gotten the images by one means while Keanu's character would have travelled a different route, as such to protect the data. Of course, that's not at all how smoothly it works out...
Neat, but hardly new... (Score:2)

by Manuka ( 4415 ) writes:

There have been camera systems that output to teletypes as far back as the early 1970s, when ASCII was all you could get.
WOW - pictures from beyond the grave!! (Score:2)

by gelfling ( 6534 ) writes:

I swear that guy is Frank Zappa.
Re:255 color gray scale? (Score:2)

by rnturn ( 11092 ) writes:

I had to chuckle over the ``color gray scale'' phrase.
Also, the human eye can not detect much difference in gray levels once you get to about 64 levels; any more than that and your gilding lilies. But then, I supposed it doesn't hurt to go ahead and use the whole byte. :-)
All in all, I've got to say: ``Kudos to the author!'' This is one of the coolest things I've seen in quite a while. Not everyone's got a T1 into their home and this package could make crude but servicable video conferencing available for people on a budget... or can't afford a fat pipe... or live too far away from the CO for ADSL. Now I'm wondering how cheaply I can get a camera for the PCs at home...
\begin{aside}
Back in my grad school days I was doing programming involving image compression techniques (Hadamard, Haar, DCT, etc.), Viterbi encoding, etc. for use over noisy channels and the only output device I had easy access to that could produce a viewable image was the monster IBM band printer. We had some programs to produce output like the hasciicam only it used overstrikes to create much of the gray scale levels. (Other folks eventually got used to seeing before-and-after images hanging from the walls like wallpaper.) We eventually got (for another study) a thermal printer but was a pain to use (serial input from the mainframe, required expensive paper that turned yellow green after a while, etc.) This brings back some memories.
\end{aside}

--
OK, I shoulda been more explicit (Score:2)

by griffjon ( 14945 ) writes:

So you wouldn't want to be filming a blank WALL, but if you took a snapshot of a plant, a messy desktop, of even a face (or other body parts), (i.e. any image with lots of noise) this would be an interesting vector to play with. I haven't read the source to see what size pool of ascii characters they're choosing from, so it may be too small to provide good security. Might be good for the first xor block in a CBC cipherstream.
what is he holding? (Score:2)

by cpeterso ( 19082 ) writes:

looks like he is holding a marijuana cigarette, some of that good ole reefer, maaan!
Encryption! (Score:2)

by gattaca ( 27954 ) writes:

Y'know, this kinda ascii could be good random noise input for a cipher."

IMHO, it would be an extremly bad source of random noise. Large chunks of the image would be the static bits of the image, and the rest of it would be fairly repetitive - the face of whoever sat infront of the computer, or whatever.
Re:You could use it as a CCTV camera.... (Score:2)

by gattaca ( 27954 ) writes:

would you have to battle the grammar nazi's of /.?

Only if they commited a Capital crime.
Re:Encryption! (Score:2)

by gattaca ( 27954 ) writes:

Given the day I've had, two bits would be sufficient - enough to represent ':', '-', and '('
Could it be used... (Score:2)

by gattaca ( 27954 ) writes:

for identifying people with dodgy characters?
Re:Encryption! (Score:2)

by gattaca ( 27954 ) writes:

Clouds tend to be the same shape, streets have a similar, static background. That said, later posts in the thread refer to people who use a lava lamp as a seed for a random number generator. That sounds plausible. Even so, I don't see what the asciiness of the data has to do with anything, it's just a set of wibbly bits - with, apparently, enough randomness to make it hard to reconstruct the random sequence. I'm sure a unicode camera would be just as useful :-)
Re:slashdoted - google cache link for screenshot (Score:2)

by twdorris ( 29395 ) writes:

Here's a google cache link to one of the screenshots:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/hasciicam001.html+&hl=en [google.com]
Maybe they should film the Matrix sequels... (Score:2)

by fluffhead ( 32589 ) writes:

...using this as a video filter. They might turn out cheaper & actually on time (they could just use stunt doubles for the most part). Just have to substitute that funky green Matrix font for plain old ASCII....

#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Wierd (Score:2)

by eric2hill ( 33085 ) writes:

You know, with all the green letters on the sample screenshot pages [dyne.org], I get the feeling I'm watching The Matrix [whatisthematrix.com] live!
Re: (Score:2)

by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) writes:

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Already being used to generate random numbers (Score:2)

by alexjohns ( 53323 ) writes:

http://lavarand.sgi.com/

Train a camera on some lava lamps. Take a picture. Process bit stream. Random numbers.

The processing used to generate the ascii art here would probably reduce the randomness. Sorry. Try again.
--
Re:SSH and Telnet (Score:2)

by ffatTony ( 63354 ) writes:

With ssh you can forward an X11 connection and with telnet you can set the $HOST variable and maybe mess with xhost to do something similiar, thus high quality porn via telnet/ssh has existed almost as long as telnet/ssh.
earliest Video to ASCII tool? (Score:2)

by LinuxParanoid ( 64467 ) writes:

I first saw Video to ASCII back in 1995 done by a free tool called ttyvideo, described and downloadable here [sgi.com] written by Chris Pirazzi at SGI.
Nice to see a full open source release though rather than just an IRIX binary.
--LP
aatv (Score:2)

by matman ( 71405 ) writes:

I was playing with a package called aatv the other day that did this.

I dont have much else to say about it :)

(pls dont mod me down, I'm not logged in and dont have the oportunity to dselect the 'add 1 pt karma thing :)
Re:SSH and Telnet (Score:2)

by suffe ( 72090 ) writes:

Acctualy this has been possible for a long time, even when overlooking the obvious X11 forwarding. The plaympeg program (created by lookigames I think.) can play mpeg encoded data in textmode.
I feel Robbed! (Score:2)

by EXTomar ( 78739 ) writes:

I mean I used the stuff with my web cam and this is what it spit out...

O
-+-
|
^
It's About Time... (Score:2)

by kdgarris ( 91435 ) writes:

I always thought those webcams were a huge waste of bandwidth. At least turning it into ASCII keeps the waste at a minimum.

-Karl
excerpt from early Matrix script draft (Score:2)

by madmancarman ( 100642 ) writes:

INT. HALL
The ship is quiet and dark. Everyone is asleep.
INT. MAIN DECK
The core glows with monitor light. Cypher is in the operator's chair as Neo cones up behind him.
CYPHER Whoa! Shit, Neo, you scared the bejeezus out of ne.
NEO Sorry.
CYPHER No, it's all right.
NEO What are you doing?
CYPHER Midnight watch.
Neo's eyes light up as he steps closer to the screens that seem alive with a constant flow of data.
NEO Is that... ?
CYPHER An ASCII web-cam? Yeah.
The monitors are packed with bizarre characters and fuzzy shapes.
CYPHER I've been watching it so long, I can make everything out. It used to be blonde, brunette, redhead... but now it's nothing more than a bunch of geeks with too much time on their hands.
Neo nods.
CYPHER You want a drink?
He pours Neo a drink from a large plastic jug.
Neo takes a sip and it almost kills him. Cypher pounds on his back.
CYPHER Good shit, huh? Dozer makes it... calls it Jolt. It's good for two things: degreasing engines and keeping coders awake.
Red-faced, Neo finally stops coughing.
Looks a little fishy... (Score:2)

by Christianfreak ( 100697 ) writes:

I mean if the camera outputs ascii, then why are these png images? And if you look closely some of the charachters aren't all there, parts of them have been cut off to make the picture look better.
Still just making a picture look like that deserves some credit

Never knock on Death's door:
Re:someone at SGI developed this 5 years ago (Score:2)

by jaromil ( 104349 ) writes:

nope, i did not used that code

i started coding hasciicam on the code from xawtv's webcam by gerd knorr

the idea to make it html is the new thing
i'm not the first putting ascii into video !
Re:False Advertising (Score:2)

by Ashran ( 107876 ) writes:

The examples I could see before it has been slashdotted were all converted to pictures (i think gif's)
Re:Encryption! (Score:2)

by pallex ( 126468 ) writes:

Stick a lava lamp in front of it, and you`re sorted!
you want random? (Score:2)

by zyqqh ( 137965 ) writes:

Y'know, this kinda ascii could be good random noise input for a cipher.

Same can be said for random irrelevant slashdot taglines...
Why? (Score:2)

by plover ( 150551 ) writes:

All I can think of is that guy's tagline:
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
John
Images to ASCII?? (Score:2)

by scorbett ( 203664 ) writes:

Oh no...
How long before that goatse guy gets a hold of this?

--
Info on Lavarand Patent (Score:2)

by mendepie ( 228850 ) writes:

The patent you are refering to is Method for seeding a pseudo-random number generator with a cryptographic hash of a digitization of a chaotic system [164.195.100.11] which is Silicon Graphics patent on what known as lavarand.
Being one of the Inventors of this (Beer Inspired) technique I have have a a lot of intrest in it.
Also, There will be a new website comming up in the near future http://www.lavarand.org (no link since it is not on the air yet) with new an improved access to a lavarand system.
Note the the intrested, the patent only covers using the data to seed a pseudo-random number generator ...
Cool, but not really ASCII (Score:2)

by tempmpi ( 233132 ) writes:

The ascii cam is cool, but it doesn't really use ascii because if converts the ascii to png. Because of that it doesn't really help to limit bandwidth, a real ascii stream could give a streaming fluent image even to modem users, that is completly imposible with this png streaming, you couldn't watch the stream with lynx,too.
I think they should have used telnet for this stream.
Re:False Advertising (Score:2)

by IdentityCrisis ( 235840 ) writes:

There are also html screenshots, Here [dyne.org]
Use of Greyscale (Score:3)

by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @11:39AM (#479605)

Isn't use of greyscale sort of cheating?

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live-screenz.html (Score:3)

by Saint Nobody ( 21391 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:32AM (#479606) Homepage Journal

screenz? i really have difficultiez respecting those that use z'z to pluralize their wordz.

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You could use it as a CCTV camera.... (Score:3)

by gattaca ( 27954 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:48AM (#479607)

to identify victims of vowel play.

You'd have to keep it running consonantly, of course.

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Re:Encryption! (Score:3)

by EnderWiggnz ( 39214 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @09:01AM (#479608)

ASCII!!!!
UNICODE!!!!
real men would use EBCDIC.
tagline

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nifty... (Score:3)

by bencc99 ( 100555 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:23AM (#479609) Homepage

Now all we need is a way of being able to port the images into ascii quake, so we can frag friends in glorious ascii-colour(tm)
:)

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slashdoted (Score:3)

by Sanctuary ( 124701 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:50AM (#479610)

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ascii.dyne.or g/+&hl=en [google.com]

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PNG really necessary? (Score:4)

by rkent ( 73434 ) writes: <rkent@post.harvard.eYEATSdu minus poet> on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:30AM (#479611)

Why on EARTH is the screenshot encoded to a PNG file? Seems like the most bandwidth-efficient way would be to just send the ASCII!
Oh, wait... I don't have ANSI terminal emulation enabled in Netscape... nevermind :)
Ahh, the good old BBS days. It's great that they now have "live webcam" functionality for systems like that, 10 years after they're useful :)

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randomness from video source: sgi already did it (Score:4)

by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:20AM (#479612)

converting video to random data for seeding random number generators and such has been done:
lavarand! [sgi.com]
walking past a fishbowl at SGI and seeing a bunch of "heat lamps" [sic] was pretty trippy...

--

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Cipher (Score:5)

by rw2 ( 17419 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:19AM (#479613) Homepage

Y'know, this kinda ascii could be good random noise input for a cipher."

Yeah, there's really nothing better for cryptography than a repeating stream!

--

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False Advertising (Score:5)

by Mignon ( 34109 ) writes: <satan@programmer.net> on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:26AM (#479614)

Damn site doesn't work on Lynx. What good is an ASCII-cam that won't work on Lynx?

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someone at SGI developed this 5 years ago (Score:5)

by nrmrvrk ( 89299 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:35AM (#479615)

Linux is only 5 years behind... I used something when I worked at SGI with my Indycam to display the output of the camera in an xterm in ASCII.

I found this webpage (circa 1995) detailing the software. Congrats Linux you've revolutionalized the computer industry again. I hope you at least stole *some* of the code before creating this new and wonderful tool...

http://reality.sgi.com/cpirazzi/ttyvideo.html

no egg!

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SSH and Telnet (Score:5)

by don_carnage ( 145494 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:38AM (#479616) Homepage

So does that mean that I can now watch a video stream over SSH or Telnet?
Finally video Pr0n at work! woohooo!

--

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Nice (Score:5)

by OlympicSponsor ( 236309 ) writes: on Friday January 26, 2001 @08:45AM (#479617)

Hey, she's a hottie! ...or is that a man?

Don't tell amihotornot.com about this technology...
--
MailOne [openone.com]

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There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.

Re:Encryption! (Score:1)

He cheats! (Score:1)

Or, to quote NTK.NET... (Score:1)

OK, But it's the only way to watch sports. (Score:1)

not new (Score:1)

Re:Mmmmm..... (Score:1)

Re:someone at SGI developed this 5 years ago (Score:1)

re: New pgp sig (Score:1)

Re:been done before (Score:1)

been done before (Score:1)

Text-mode atrocities unlimited (Score:1)

Re:Encryption! (Score:1)

Neat, but not really new. (Score:1)

Re:Nothing new (Score:1)

i know (Score:1)

New meaning.... (Score:1)

ok ya. (Score:1)

Huh? No it's not. (Score:1)

This ain't news ! (Score:1)

Complete (?) list of google screen shot caches (Score:1)

Re:Encryption! (Score:1)

Re:Cipher (Score:1)

Re:Looks a little fishy... (Score:1)

Re:It's About Time... (Score:1)

Re:It's About Time... (Score:1)

Re:SSH and Telnet (Score:1)

slashdotted already (Score:1)

What really drives opensource? (Score:1)

Reminds me of ASCII Doom ... (Score:1)

Re:Use of Greyscale (Score:1)

slashcode web cacheing project (Score:1)

Re:MosASCII (Score:1)

Re:Aim camera at senction of transparent sewer lin (Score:1)

Re:Nice (Score:1)

Re:nifty... (Score:1)

Re:Cipher (Score:1)

Re:False Advertising (Score:1)

Re:Looks a little fishy... (Score:1)

Just in time for Supper Bowl XXXV (Score:1)

Where's the hack? (Score:1)

(OT)JPEG to ASCII conversion and Goatse.cx (Score:1)

The Matrix, resolved! (Score:1)

SGI did it all (Score:1)

Random noise? Maybe not. (Score:1)

Re: Video takes up too much bandwidth????? (Score:1)

not new (Score:1)

Nothing new (Score:1)

take another look (Score:1)

Random number generator... (Score:1)

bzzzzzzztttt (Score:1)

Photo - Ascii (Score:1)

Re:Cipher (lavarand actually) (Score:1)

Re: Video takes up too much bandwidth????? (Score:1)

New troll tool (Score:2)

Re:Already being used to generate random numbers (Score:2)

Neat, but hardly new... (Score:2)

WOW - pictures from beyond the grave!! (Score:2)

Re:255 color gray scale? (Score:2)

OK, I shoulda been more explicit (Score:2)

what is he holding? (Score:2)

Encryption! (Score:2)

Re:You could use it as a CCTV camera.... (Score:2)

Re:Encryption! (Score:2)

Could it be used... (Score:2)

Re:Encryption! (Score:2)

Re:slashdoted - google cache link for screenshot (Score:2)

Maybe they should film the Matrix sequels... (Score:2)

Wierd (Score:2)

Re: (Score:2)

Already being used to generate random numbers (Score:2)

Re:SSH and Telnet (Score:2)

earliest Video to ASCII tool? (Score:2)

aatv (Score:2)

Re:SSH and Telnet (Score:2)

I feel Robbed! (Score:2)

It's About Time... (Score:2)

excerpt from early Matrix script draft (Score:2)

Looks a little fishy... (Score:2)

Re:someone at SGI developed this 5 years ago (Score:2)

Re:False Advertising (Score:2)