davidy - Slashdot User

Submission + - How to eFlatten Photographed Book

Submitted by

davidy

on Saturday September 26, 2009 @07:01AM

davidy writes: "I have photographed some pages of a book for reading on my pda. This is much faster than scanning and I don't have to carry the heavy books. However, the photographed books are not as nice: curved and skewed, and shadowed, as opposed to the much flatter, cleaner scanned books. I have searched for software that can flatten the pages for better reading on the pda. So far I have come across Unpaper and Scan Tailor. Unpaper doesn't seem to have a windows GUI, and Scan Tailor doesn't unskew well. I remember reading about Google's technique of converting books to eBooks with a camera and a laser overlay. Are there any home user software that can do a similar job without the need of a laser overlay or other sophisticated technology?"

Computers Key To Air France Crash 911

Posted by kdawson on Monday June 08, 2009 @10:06PM from the who-or-what-do-you-trust dept.

Michael_Curator writes "It's no secret that commercial airplanes are heavily computerized, but as the mystery of Air France Flight 447 unfolds, we need to come to grips with the fact that in many cases, airline pilots' hands are tied when it comes to responding effectively to an emergency situation. Boeing planes allow pilots to take over from computers during emergency situations, Airbus planes do not. It's not a design flaw — it's a philosophical divide. It's essentially a question of what do you trust most: a human being's ingenuity or a computer's infinitely faster access and reaction to information. It's not surprising that an American company errs on the side of individual freedom while a European company is more inclined to favor an approach that relies on systems. As passengers, we should have the right to ask whether we're putting our lives in the hands of a computer rather than the battle-tested pilot sitting up front, and we should have right to deplane if we don't like the answer."

Competitors Cry Foul At Windows XP, 2K Service Packs 519

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 19, 2002 @12:39PM from the consider-the-source dept.

caudron writes "According to an article at ZDNet, a trade group partly funded, not surprisingly, by Microsoft's competitors is claiming that WinXP SP1 and Win2k SP3 contain 6 separate violations of both the letter and spirit of the proposed DOJ Settlement. Equally unsurprising, Microsoft disagrees with them. And so the Case-That-Wouldn't-Die drags ever onward."

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