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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Stick-Tight | ||
| A general term for surveillance devices that will follow a subject and record speech or video. |
Vance provides an interesting variety of spy devices, both mechanical and animal.
| Suthiro knit his furry brown eyebrows in puzzlement, glanced for the most fleeting instant upward.
Gersen continued, "There is a stick-tight watching us, although I have not yet located it. Its microphone probably registers our conversation... |
| From The Star King,
by Jack Vance. Published by Berkeley in 1964 Additional resources -
|
According to Vance, the stick-tight comes in at least five different variations:
Thanks to an anonymous reader for providing the source and the quote.
You might want to take a look at a tiny modern-day device that seems to be just what Vance was talking about with his servo-optical stick-tight - the uFR-II micro flying robot. It even has image recording capability!
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Star King
More Ideas
and Technology by Jack Vance
Tech news articles related to The Star King
Tech news articles related to works by Jack Vance
Stick-Tight-related
news articles:
- Wing-Morphing Micro Air Vehicles
- Aeryon Scout UAV Gets Upgrades
- Eye-bot Lands On Your Ceiling
- Drones Stick Tight, Remember Your Face
| LA Subway Scanner, As Seen In 'Total Recall' |
| Amazon's Rekognition System Sees Criminals In Congress |
| IJOP Integrated Joint Operations Platform China's Minority Report? |
| Kuri Robot Roams Your Home, Taking Pictures |
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'I'm afraid to tell you this Mr. Quaid, but you have suffered a schizoed embolism...'
'It drew its power from six square yards of sunpower screens on its low curved roof.'
'...lifted themselves to skimming flight upon whirling helicopters."
'Twenty rocket tugs towed it from its Earth hangar out into space.'
I don't need it to go fast, it just needs to amble along.
'The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting and coloring.'
