I do UI/UX/HCI (both full-time and freelance)... it's been my experience that they're hard to find because almost no one starts out in UI. You're either a graphic designer or a coder who moves towards designing interfaces.
I think that's mainly because very few university programs with a full HCI track in their comp sci (or ID or graphic design) programs.
In general, it seems like there is a shortage- I'm constantly asked if a I know of any good UI designers who are looking for a job.
Ironically, it's the civilian sector that's limiting this research to the DoD. The FAA has very strict regulations on flying autonomous drones outdoors (basically, you're not allowed to do it), so this has seriously hobbled a lot of research into UAVs, etc. Israel, Canada, Western Europe and other places are far ahead now in terms of commercial autonomous drones.
I work with the exact same setup. You're looking at 100-250k for the "Vicon" (motion capture) setup and 4k+ for the quad rotor (an Ascending Technologies Hummingbird).
That sounds like a lot, but the motion capture system can accurately track things with sub-millimeter precision at, at least, 100fps. The Hummingbird is very sophisticated, with a 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis magnometer, 3-axis gyro and high performance brushless motors, and of course, the R&D cost for developing all of it.
DIYDrones has a lot of good info on hacking these together, but you won't get the performance you're seeing in that movie.
I've talked to people who are trying to build a poor man's version of these and they're aiming for 600-800, but it's not going to be as high performance.
On a side note, books/magazines/newspapers have changed dramatically over the centuries. For example, until (relatively) recently, a lot of books required you to cut open each page, and bindings weren't that great until the 1800s or so.
Agreed, but I don't think you can draw any definite conclusions. I think the iPad has a blue screen behind it and they dropped in photos of people's legs, etc. The angle/ways people are holding the iPad is too perfect, the legs are perfectly still and the rotation at 0:17 is way too smooth to be done by hand- they must've had it mounted.
I'm not saying Apple's bad for blue screening, it would've been difficult to setup those shots in real life, but like the "big hand" and shortened sequences for the iPhone, it's basically bordering on false advertising from my point of view.
Thank's Avand, your article is really hip and all. I'd really like to agree with it, and then go about back behind the school yard and smoke a cigarette and tell The Man go to hell.
However, I really can't do that.
Let's start with your high school experience. Going to a prep school in Boston means you (most likely, not assuredly) come from a privileged background. I went to a high school prep school too, and like you, I wanted to have the "too cool for school" attitude.
That didn't really happen though, instead of being bored, I got something that was challenging (athletics, which I sucked at). Yea, it was way cool at the time to pretend that all those classes I was acing (well almost, shouldn't have slept through AP Chem as much as I did), didn't matter and that I knew what I wanted to do as a jock 17 year old. Looking back, I was damned lucky to have such good classes and not be in some (unfortunately) underfunded public school. And also, it turns out now that I'm glad someone forced me to take French, I'm heading to France next month to work with a client. Didn't see that one coming as a 17 year old either.
Avand, likewise your take on college is quaint. I understand now that you've been successful with no college degree it's cool to keep rolling with the same theme of "skoolz lame!" It's actually kinda shame you're so biased though that you think college is just about increasing the number of facts you know, otherwise I'd bet you'd do well at the real point of college- giving you the tools to think about difficult problems in a number of different ways.
But that's cool, I've met plenty of intelligent/motivated/successful people who didn't go to or complete college (or went all the way and got a PhD). However, if you really were the intelligent person, motivated person you claim to be, I don't think you'd be half-assing it just taking night classes and then writing with such supposed authority on how college is worthless.
Here's what it really comes down to- you seem to be doing well marching to your own song, Avand, and that's great, keep it up! However, don't confuse your half-finished experiences as showing that school is worthless and expensive. You simply don't have any real authority to talk on the subject.
> Thank's Avand, your article is really hip and all. I'd really like to agree with it, and then go about back behind the school yard and smoke a cigarette and tell The Man go to hell.
I almost didn't read the post because you made it sound like mindless rebellion. The tone of discussion was a bit higher than you made it out to be.
> Here's what it really comes down to- you seem to be doing well marching to your own song, Avand, and that's great, keep it up!
In all seriousness - can you cut this out? You've got valid and good points, but adding snark/sarcasm doesn't help them. I've seen more of this lately here on HN, and I don't think it's a good trend. There's a lot of valid critique/counterexamples of the author's post, and I'd really enjoy hearing more of your perspective and others who disagree, but the sarcasm/snark takes away from the point more than adds.
Ha ha ha, I'd sure hope so. The tilt controls are only intended for fine-grained control of moving a little ways... otherwise the user navigates the MAV around by specifying waypoints.
Someone once aptly described to me how Microsoft handles standards as "they take a normal, rational standard that everyone agrees upon, then they screw it up just enough that only their products will work with it."
To be fair- GMail doesn't display background colors either.
The NYT's content is generally very good, so I have no argument against paying a subscriber fee. Their iPhone app is another problem though- it's definitely the buggiest iPhone app I've used and needs a lot more stability before I'm willing to pay a subscription for something which crashes 1 out of 3 times I use it and has blatantly broken features.
Please do use lightboxes _if_ your site will not work on that browser. A perfect example of when you want to interrupt the the natural flow! I've found ie6-upgrade-warning works well- http://code.google.com/p/ie6-upgrade-warning/ for what you might be trying to do.
Most importantly, look at how many of your users are using IE6, or anything other than FF. Will the better experience for your FF (or simply IE6+) users outweigh losing almost all of your IE6 users? Keep in mind that many people who use IE6 now simply can't upgrade because of hardware or administrative constraints.
I think that's mainly because very few university programs with a full HCI track in their comp sci (or ID or graphic design) programs.
In general, it seems like there is a shortage- I'm constantly asked if a I know of any good UI designers who are looking for a job.