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Real-time Video Disinformation
slaytanic killer writes "Stalin-like realtime filtering of live video has recently been demoed. This article on Tech Review analyzes the myriad uses of this technology, from disappearing Nancy Kerrigans (shadows, ice & all), to dynamic product insertions of Win98 in 'Frasier.' Each frame rendered in less than 1/30th of a second, regardless of motion or changing camera angles."
while i really don't care much about your arguement with fluxrad, I gotta say that I find your (implied) belief that the American government wouldn't take away personal liberties if they feel the need. Ever heard of FEMA?
Pax, Romana or Americana, doesn't do anything great for the world. All it means is the dominant world power considering its own people more important than anyone else's, even when its citizens are on someone else's territory...
Like fluxrad said, most people are fairly intelligent, on an individual basis. Many even fail to act as part of the mob when given the opportunity. Most people don't bother thinking for themselves in their day-to-day lives, and just go with the flow because its easier. "People are stupid, panicky animals" -- sheep in particular for the most part. And no, I don't exclude myself. I play nice with society's rules, even though I feel that our society is seriously flawed. So do most people who say how stupid people are...
Intolerant people should be shot.
Max Headroom was doing ths for years. It made Simon Peller sound like he was going to release all those detained blanks, and instead of a Trojan horse, it was a Trojan sheep
No, you idiot, I'm saying that you can't just make a convincing lie in a couple minutes... or seconds.. it takes time to fool people.
fluxrad, as much as I detest the ignorance (apathy) of the world around them, American's aren't unique in being fucking idiots when it comes to group behaviour. Hell, its looking like we Canadians might just elect rabid capitalists next federal election, which should be a within a year of Dubya "I can't name 3 countries without getting one's name wrong" gaining power of the dominant power on the planet. I wish all the people like that prick in the new Molson ad were Americans, but there's just as many anywhere else...
Intolerant people should be shot.
Actually, that UNIX system in Jurassic Park was using a real interface. It's called "fsn", and it was developed by SGI. Unfortunately, it's only available for Irix...
Two people have already given pretty accurate translations. What interests me is why you attribute something you can't even read to a "Fourth Reich Fanatic", just because it happens to be in German. The posted text is actually a lyric from a song (see http://private.freepage.de/schdreu/slimecd3.htm) by a band that protests against fascism.
And a few years back, Fox, during baseball games, started to insert their own ads on the backstop when seen by the center field camera. I believe they stopped the practice, when baseball/stadium owners threatened to sue them.
this information was available in the most recent (July/August) issue of MIT Technology Review... it's even available online! http://www.techreview.com/artic les/july00/amato.htm and by the way, it's katerina witt, not nancy kerrigan
-ravat'iklan
One thing I've also noticed is the not so obvious removal of Sony logos on TVs and logos on shirts, giving the attitude from the producers that "If you don't pay for your logo to be on TV, we'll take it off" even for simple things like a television or a shirt.
I wonder if the makers of the T-shirts could claim copyright infringement, since you're copying their shirt design. Sure, without modification this would fall under fair use, but with modification?
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I live in a society where there is a thing called ethics. We all trust one another to varying degrees, but we have ethical standards. As a result of these standards, people within our society tend to believe what we tell each other, and we vigorously denounce those who we discover lying. Surely you've noticed a lot of vigorous denunciation of WJ Clinton, as an example. By this process of following a common ethic, we are able to establish a society. It's sometimes called 'civilisation.'
There are people who seek to tear down this society, some of whom are known as nihilists. There's in fact a social revolution of sorts going on right now. Liars are being tagged and denounced, and even the party of the liars feels compelled to champion candidates who have the appearnce of having an ethical base to their personal philosophy.
I won't go into a lot of proper nouns, because that always stirs up a fight. But be aware that there's a cultural revolution brewing, and nihilists, postmodernists, and other relativists of various stripes are coming down.
It's a failed philosophy.
We need to get this technology extended to real life. Then the next time I'm on a date and it's going bad, I can substitute in Nicole Kidman, on the fly.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
People are marveled this technology, advertisers love it and free-thinkers worry about the possibility of changing history or even live video broadcasts. Nobody else seems to have raised the point that this technology produces video that is pretty much always NOTICEABLY FAKE. You can be wowed by J.F.K appearing in Forrest Gump, or yellow lines across the football field, or John Wayne peddling beer...but all of this looks fake as hell. Yes, the technology will get better but this isn't anything new. Technology has existed to edit still photos for decades, and it has become very sophisticated. But bad fakes are easily spotted, and experts can spot even the best fakes. Experts won't always be able to analyze live video as it's being broadcast on CNN, but that'll force journalists to do something that they've almost forgotten how to do: check their facts.
There have been people who have gone to the moon and you can ask them. Failing that you could take a telescope and see the American flag that is there.
Respond to s
Where can I buy one? I want to put my head on Walker Texas Rangers body.
When I went to tech school (Brown Institute) us Electronic tech types had to deal with the kind of people who were taking the 'broadcasting' course. BI has put many eminent 'broadcating professionals' into the market.
My feeling in being around those airheads is that to be a broadcaster you have to be coached in having a proper voice. One particular advantage is if you start out with a head with the proper resonance characteristics. It also helps if you can learn to read the material smoothly without letting the content affect you.
Needless to say, mindless drones do well at that sort of thing. They rise to the top of their field.
TV news is pap, anyway. Anyone who trusts the likes of Bryant Gumbell and Ted Koppel, not to mention Geraldo, to give them an accurate picture of reality probably won't be affected by editing and product placement. Every time I happen to catch one of the TV "news" shows, I want to throw a hammer through the TV just like the runner in the 1984 Apple ad. They are all smear artists with some type of agenda. I don't care if I agree with the agenda or not -- it's still not the news, it's an opinion and entertainment show. Mind control. Kill your television. </cynic>
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
"Let it happens"
I wonder if such tech could fix things like this on the web or ordinary people?
Why not TV?
Lots of it on TV already. Watch any Sci-Fi show. But it is not acceptable on the news (not that what's on TV is really "news").
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Welcome to a brave new world. :P
http://gabrielcain.com/
people have been doing all kinds of live censoring of TV/Radio for years. Putting broadcasts on delays to filter out cusswords or other "inapropriate" uses of the media. This is just another logical extention of that. Much like the old insertion of "buy coke" frames in movies back in the 40's and 50's.
my advice, don't discount the media...just be wary of the source.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
oh the HORROR!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
und Arafat er steht vor Dir
Dienstag gibt es Probealarm
Paranoia in der Straßenbahn
Mittwoch ist der Krieg sehr kalt
Breschnew lauert in der Badeanstalt
Donnerstag, Du weißt es schon
tausend Agenten in der Kanalisation
Freitag gehört der Mafia
das Ravioli kommt aus Florida
Samstag Abend Irrenanstalt
KGB im deutschen Wald
Sonntag, da ist alles tot
im Golf von Mallorca der Weltkrieg droht
Stalingrad, Stalingrad
Deutschland Katastrophenstaat
Wir leben im Computerstaat
It seems that every piece of video shot by or broadcast by MTV has the clothing logos (actually all logos) blurred out.
(This is an observation from 1-2 years ago, I don't watch MTV much anymore)
Maybe I was over-sensitive but I noticed something else. Instead of bluring out all logos and ofensive behavior (eg. making a pot-smoking gesture) I noticed that MTV does this explicitly in rap videos. While Primus had a cartoon charachter puffing away on a monster joint, Nas got blurred for putting his hands to his lips. While brit pop acts were all decked out in Adidas, Puma and Nike hiphopers became a blur as all their clothes were blocked.
As I recall, one of the ways to get arround being 'censored' was to show your logos backwards. One of the hits od 97 or 98, 'If I Ruled The World' was shot almost entirely right-to-left so nothing was blurred, even while the camera rolled through times square.
Jedrek
-- polish ccs mirror
I don't think this is fully real-time yet.
I mean I expected some cybernanny-like program that could just analyze the frames political correctness in real time and just erasing/modify "shocking" details.
I actually think a porno film viewed with that should be really funny.
By the way, it will be some time before they can accurately wash up the sound too (I don't mean "beeping").
But once they can do it, nobody will even be able to harangue the masses on TV without being potentially either censored, adapted, etc.
Frightening times, when themass-media are about to become even more powerful ever.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
It adds a lot of excitement, instead of watching the clock, you see the swimmers fingers just behind, or in front of the record. No confirmation, but I think they'll by using it in Sydney at the Olympics.
Obviously this tech could be be ported to a lot of other sports. A line in the sand for long / triple jump, a moving line for running track races, ghost cars in motor sport, etc. Adding ads is boring; adding value by showing records I think is very interesting- it effectively combines many events / races into one, if we can see the best result everyone's trying to beat.
We had this problem last year is Australia with the football. What the broadcasteing chanel would do was cover real billboards on the ground with virtual ones of higher-paying competitors. It eventually got to the state where certain media company names were covered-up by the chanel as they weren't in the same media group. The solution we found here was to stop the chanel in question from filtering out what was going on on the actual ground. If I remember correctly, they also started covering-up sections of the crowd.
-There is no
...during their own baseball games tune in wednesdays or sundays to watch "first and ten technology" (the system that allows a yellow line indicating where the first down markers are to be shown on the field without overlapping players, refs, or the ball) they have begun to edit in ads behind home plate, that look so seamless you can't tell they are being rendered by 12 superfast computers in a van outside the stadium!
Even in the 1930's we didn't have this much nihilism. The most likely source is a bunch of disgruntled foreigners who insist (to everyone they ever meet out of the street) that the reason their lives are crappy is because of America and it's evil influences.
The world is not comming to and end. There are always nasayers but they usually become like the bitter old man who just waits by the door for the mail to come every day just so he can redicule it to himself. Usually they write most of the complaint letters and die with more ulcers than swiss cheese.
The toils and privations of this world aren't that extreme unless you happen to be a person who finds and critizes all of them daily.
Respond to s
I'd just like to congradulate Hemos for actually using the word 'myriad' correctly! About 9 times out of 10 that I encounter that word in use, it's used as an adjective. Even on the fucking radio or TV they fuck it up! Don't they have editors or something? Thank you.
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The words "Wag The Dog" come to mind.
If you are inserting logos in video streams, I wonder if it would eventually be possible to include border information and a url. Maybe it could add these to known logos it spots. The cable settop box of the future may allow you to click on a logo in a live video broadcast and fire up a web browser.
"This soaps boring but I wonder where I can get a shirt like the one the lead character is wearing - Click"
I think The Truman show just got a bit closer.
Bob.
Isn't this the same thing that happened 8 months ago with NBC and CBS? Remember when CBS' coverage of Time Square NY digitally
covered NBC' ads in every shot it real time? Slashdot even posted a story about it.
Sooner or later this will be cheap enough that local station can buy it and start putting in local product placement. Imagine Buffy sporting
a "Jerry's Bait Shop" t-shirt, or Frasier having a "Mike's Lube and Go" poster on the wall.
Maybe they can make changes to people in the shows, and make the women on Ally McAnorexia look like something other than Stick Figures.
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
And it's about time, too.
Bob.
Pseudonews: Better than the real thing.
------------------------
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Albert Einstein is fair game pretty much because of two reasons.
1. He is dead.
2. His estate (if he has one) dosn't care or is dead as well.
Respond to s
Sarnoff are advertizing a lot what they are doing, but they were not the first ones to do that in real-time. The patents on such a method are owned in Europe and Japan by a company called Symah Vision. American patents are currently being opposed, I guess. See http://www.epsis.com
Whome ever controls your information controls you. Wait a min, this could be cool, how long untill we get to see political ads with the opposition doing the nasty with farm animals?
haha, sorry, this was my pathetic attempt at humor, in that microsoft used this technology to fix what I was typing. Ah well.
I can see it now. I take a photo of the Wife and little Johnny on Times Square, on our vacation.
I don't notice it, but a sinister van follows along behind us. When we reach our hotel there is a man waiting in the lobby. He hands us a legal writ, forbidding us to do anything to modify the billboards in the photograph I took.
Later, when we are back from the vacation, another man pays us a visit with a search warrant, and demands to see our photo album, to verify the photo lab didn't insert their advertisement over his client's.
Formerly boring slide shows of people's vacations become exciting legal exhibits, including representatives (with implements of enforcement) from various interests whose ads are featured in the slides on hand to insure the proper message is delivered.
Eventually big 'Generic' amusement parks spring up all over the world, where people are guaranteed a fun vacation with no high-risk corporate logos in sight anywhere.
Shall we work out a rough draft of the script? Sounds like a fun 'cult' film.
The link to the article seems to not work as of 11:34PM Eastern, might be a temp. glitch but it gives a 404 Not Found...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
People can only get so powerful before they are forcefully felled from the outside. Also why does he have to take it to just his paper? I say get a web site registered and then put it up as a link for people to access. Then give the details out to everyone in the whole earth. That would be pretty hard to quash.
Just like the DeCSS code I would never dissappear and would eventually filter all the way through American society to it's very core.
Like the fameous Thomas Jefferson era quote "Here sir, the people govern".
Respond to s
The subject of the article is "Lying with Pixels", and what is dangerous is not _ONLY_ the erasing part, but also the possibility of "adding on" what-was-not-there !
Just imagine, if the power-that-be (big brother ?) want to frame somebody, they can get a footage of some horrible crime, and then insert the image of that poor fella into the whole thing, make it so real that it works from all camera and/or light angles, with shadows and all the other FXs !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I read a totally other article at the link postulating Saddam Hussein using manupilation techniques....or has real-time text-manupilation taken over the Internet.
vinylat33
sig. : (censored)
This could be the greatest thing since....well since anything? We no longer need real brand name athletes, their obscene payouts, criminal records and constant bickering with owners. We no longer need owners or even teams at all. Just create a bunch of player agents and slap somebody's face on it. Imagine we could finally know if Ty Cobb is better than today's players, or if Walter Johnson could beat Randy Johnson. Swap out different stadiums like wallpaper. Hell auction off the rights to build your own players. Give them fishheads and metal arms and whatnot.
wink wink wink wink. Seriously, this could signal the end of 'city' sponsorship in Baseball. You could just paste up corporate logos on stadiums on uniforms on anything and instead of for example the Seattle Mariners you would have the eBay/Coke/Nike/AT&T Mariners. It's what's sports are about anyway.
Imagine superimposing all youre favourite supermodels on the people you have around you. :-)
Hey, Slackware is cool, brother.
The Red Hat is actually just a dark shade of pink.
Offtopic, yes, but one of the best offtopics I have ever seen. That was definitely worth reading. As it says on the page, if you read only one, read "SARGE" - after a while, he just flies off the handle...
You are also right that many of the targets were not hit. Also the 'ethnic cleansing' by both sides were exaggerated.
In 10 years or so.. when it is politically correct to question the Kosovo conflict, I'm sure it will be classified as one of the biggest propaganda efforts ever.
Most american individuals are fairly intelligent; Americans, as a group, are fucking idiots.
nice to see you still haven't fixed your HTML formatting difficulties.
oh and BTW - i'm sick of trying to elucidate the sarcastic nuances of my own and others' posts for you. If you don't get the relevance, then that's your own damned fault professor.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
don't forget "Bob"...His name should always be in quotes (:
Hmmm, never tried that one..... Might be a laugh!
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
I just discovered this a few minutes ago, but it's a pretty impressive-looking plugin for the Gimp that can automatically remove objects from images - I imagine it works in a vaguely similar way.
:)
It's here. I haven't tried using it yet (I'm not at a Linux box, sadly) but it looks like it'll be bloody useful for texture manipulation for Half-Life stuff.
Ford Prefect
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Please, just shut up. This is a web site run by real people with thoughts and opinions and... aww screw it, just shut up right now, and continue to shut up into the foreseeable future.
---
Slashdot: News For Zealots. Stuff That's Hypocritical.
iANAL:
Articles of clothing cannot be copyrighted as they are considered "useful articles" under US copyright law.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
So what if they put Pepsi logos on everything that looks like a can, I'll just set up a filter of my own to replace it with a "Bawls" logo or something ;)
That is a bit disingenious. Afterall, the underlying assumption is that the signals will be digial. Thus, the talking head can be watermarked (and thus signed) separately from the PIP graphic in the corner. Furthermore, the composition could be separately signed.
As we move to product placement, it would be easy for the product-placement part to be signed by the manufacturer, and the rest of the sportscast by ESPN. Just like HTML pages, the client does the superpositioning. It is the obvious way to go.
I don't think anything could "certainly add excitement" to NBC's tape delayed broadcasts of the Olympics except perhaps for Eric Rudolph. Isn't he still out there?
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
I will not recognize your existence beyond this post.
Ah, but will Slashdotters recognize you amoungst the sea of 'You Lose', 'Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these', and 'Beer is good' posts?
I make quite a bit of money, writing Ass-Recognition software for high tech toilets which automatically clean the arse just in the right spots.
They are supposed to be doing this on Formula 1, and one reason there is the attempt by the EU to regulate tobacco advertising who are one of the principle sponsors.
All you do is have a chroma-key blue strip and just paint in the ads allowed on a per-market basis.
It would have been nice of them to mention the Libertarians as well as the Green Party. Last I checked, the Libertarians were polling ahead of Pat Buchanan.
Pacifica probably doesn't like the Libertarians, though...
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
(Scoop from a friend in the closing ceremony: Roy Slaven and HG Nelson will be MCing it!)
With this technology, no rocket's eye view of a train full of Kosovar civilians getting blown up, since they can edit the train off the bridge before releasing anyghing to the media
Remember how throughout the Kososvo this-is-not-a-war, allegations of civilians killed by NATO would surface, NATO PR flaks would deny everything, often long past the point where anyone believed them, and then the footage would surface. Not going to happen anymore, is it?
Who will be the next Olly North?
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Since when is Asus a German company? Dude, if you're looking for excuses, at least get your facts straight.
Which of course would be done by anyone altering the video for nefarious purposes. This is really the "trusted client" problem in reverse, with your TV as the server and the remote camera as the client. Just like a Quake server can't be certain a client's binary hasn't been hacked, you can't be sure that the video hasn't been modified.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
If only there were such a thing as tamper-proof... Blind trust in digital signatures is much more dangerious than image tampering for the purposes of disinformation. At least you can analyse an image for fakery. But who will believe your key was stolen?
capitolism describes the main economic policy, NOT the government architecture.
yes, i am well aware of this. however, the point i was trying to make is that there are no communist countries in the world today. To my knowledge, there never really have been.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
What scares me is that the article failed to mention even one constructive use of this technology (and, no, I don't consider adverts constructive).
can anyone suggest a potential 'good' use of this? Or is it just a digital A-Bomb?
Wonder why it has not caught on here? The closest thing might be that Croft woman, or MTV's Max Headroom?
This being slashdot I suppose I should add room for a conspiracy theory about how the MPAA together with MS are replacing celebrities with Idorus everywhere. And voters. And politicians! (oh that is why the DMCA went through) and... oh wait a minute. What is that black van doing outside? Oh someone's at the door, better answer. Be right ba...
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I can read l33t speak just as easily as the h4x0rZ themselves. I am incredibly smart, which makes sense, considering the number of best-selling games I've written.
- J. J. J. Julius, author of a considerable number of best-selling games
I would think that to alter something like a video that one would still need to make human imput and the like constantly and rather anonyingly; if not this is one of the best AI jobs that anyone has done in ~30 years. But I still don't buy it's effectiveness or it's applicabiity to a stallinist regime. Internet kooks have been trying for years to think of crazy paranoid things that people can do and the like and it gets rather anoying and irritating for the mass majority of level headed people. To be frank Joseph Stalin and his cronies were a tad more effective in their work and their tools were also crude. Also this smacks of basically trying to convince people that in fact nothing but pure books are safe (told to me by one of the above mentioned kooks). I think people better realize that at least being skeptical and actual critical of what they see goes a long ways. Usually if almost every indepedent source says it's true chances that it is by logical deduction.
Respond to s
This sort of thing scares the bejeebers out of me. Not because it's intrinsicly bad, but because it brings us one step closer to the world of John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar". How long before we see a real-life Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere? (Sponsored by all the "with it" brand names, of course.)
Now, I don't see a problem with "Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere" per se. But I don't want to live in Brunner's future! And every year I see that more and more of the things he wrote about are coming true...
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
This was done during the 2000 Times Square New Years Eve broadcast. NBC replaced CBS's logo on a large screen with that of their own.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
Except that not all cameras are digital. There are also D/A conversions aplenty.
Simple brightness and color adjustments along with scene switching makes this technology useless, as it changes the checksummed data.
The way technology is from the camera to the TV was never designed with data integrity in mind. Unfortunately that is the way things are.
[...] and even the party of the liars [...]
Umm, that kinda implies the other party isn't composed of liars... you don't really mean that, do you?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
i know this is a wild thought, but when always read scifi books and see movies that work the idea of alternate dimensions existing at all points in time in parallel plans. In fact physicists are using that idea to determine the likelihood of life forming at all in the environment given by our universe...
but we have never experienced this empirically because it seems impossible. but now, as crazy as it seems, we are all able to experience not just a different point of view but a completely different scene!
we could each watch a baseball game and see a different ad based on the network provider for our television or if we were at the game
it is the same game, alternate reality.
and who is to determine which one was real?
the one with the ad in the background (as is shown in the article) or the one with the radar results?
even the people at the game couldnt say unless they were to walk right up to the display and feel it.
that is just amazing to me.
People actually have done radar soundings of the affected are. There was an English diving team that was sent to investigate. You could actually talk to the Russians themselves and maybe ask if they have any missing subs. All are sure ways to determine for sure.
Respond to s
Great, this is just what we need--another way to get more advertisements shoved in our face. Just imagine the possibilities, considering the baseball game example shown in the article.
Unrelated to that, I can see some neat new philosophical arguments that could arise from examples of this technology. We already know how our sense can deceive us, which in turn makes it harder for it to affirm reality, but this new twist of technology used to deceive the senses is interesting. I bet Hume never thought of this one... Sorry for my philosophical blabber.
-=MeMpH1St0=-IIRC all he said was that he was one of the early promoters, which he was. He also is said to have coined the phrase "Information Superhighway" which he probably did.
I don't like algore either.. but let's be accurate in our critiques of him.. there are much more important things to critique...
There have also been struggles between corporations for brand marketing. Since networks started embedding watermarks on their screens, rival networks have tried everything to remove them (from whiting them out to blowing the screen up a few inches). Even early TV networks would sometimes try to hide huge corporate logos of other networks (CBS's attempt to hide the NBC logo on one of the video cameras in Vietnam footage is a good example).
I say let it go. We've already accepted computer generated foolary in movies and in video games. Why not TV?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
How can a group of people who are in the business of helping flood/tornado/hurricana/desert/fire victims be an evil government arm?
How is disaster relief in the least evil? I sure would like to be helped if my house were wiped out.
Respond to s
Besides the obvious Big Brother aspect of this technology, I can see some fun little bells and whistles that could come out of this and be rather entertaining, if not worthwhile. For instance, right now we have the ability to put still pictures behind our terminals and overlay the text on top of it, why not have something where you are running the TV in the back of your terminal while you type away in the front, that way when you want to break a tad, you just shift your focus to the background rather than the foreground.
Imagine the productivity problems that would ensue at work. You've technically got your terminal screen up, but in actuality you're watching TV!!! :-)
Hey, what did I ever do? I haven't gotten to make this joke yet. Jon Stewart stole my name! I'm suing the RIAA, the MPAA, the NBA, the CIA, and the TLA for unfair use of my God(ok, Parent)-given name. Who's with me?
(Don't stop him, he's rolling.)
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Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
I think the main point is that it's getting harder and harder to trust anything you see as technology improves.
In the early days of photography, you could generally trust a photo, as it was extremely difficult to mess with a photo after it had been taken. Nowadays every second Joe with a scanner/digital camera and Photoshop and a bit of artistic talent can bring you falsified photos, and almost every photo you'll ever see in any magazine published in the last five years has been through software like Photoshop at some point (unless you really believe that the Cosmopolitan cover girl has such perfect, plastic skin ..)
Up until recently it was a lot easier to trust movies, especially live footage, very recent footage etc, because it took a fair amount of time, money, skill and special equipment to do decent video "retouching".
This new technology (actually just improvements on existing technology) makes it possible to do something that has never actually been possible before - manipulate live footage. Not to mention making it easier to manipulate any video. Each new technology increment allows for a greater percentage of what we see to be imaginary .. it's just gone from, say, 80%, to, say, 95%, with these new techniques.
I generally abide by the "believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see" adage, but I know that a huge proportion of the gullible masses actually trust what they see, trust the media, trust what they read, trust what they see (yes there are people who really believe those infomercials telling you of the latest super-easy way to lose weight, gain muscle etc.). If anything this technology might be a good thing, as it may teach even these people that they can't actually trust everything they see.
(Incidentally, I was watching one of those informercials recently for a skin-care, and they were showing the usual "before/after" photos .. they boldly displayed on the screen each time they showed a set of photos "UNRETOUCHED PHOTOS" .. only problem is, it was plainly obvious that it was the exact same photo being used for "before" and for "after" - just retouched. That takes some gall for them to do that, not to mention a huge amount of stupidity and gullibility for the majority of people to not realise it.)
...but seriously....how DO you tell if a british man is gay?
-Andy Martin
-Andy Martin
If y'all don't like me, blow me.
I will guess that this instant artificial product placement, like the network show mentioned, will be common place within a year or two, and annoy the heck out of consumers. However, it may reduce the number of distinct commercials as product placement becomes more common and as Tivo and Replay make it easier to ignore separate commericals.
I agree that in a year or two there will be a lot of instant artifical product placement, and it will continue to grow over time. I do not think it will lead to a decrease in the number of rude commercials (didn't we all learn it was rude to interrupt as children? Obviously the network executives did not take the lesson to heart...) but rather simply to an increase in adds altogether.
We'll need a junkbuster for video, just to keep the dreck of the marketers from clogging up our already over-sensed minds.
On another note, I fear the use of this product in the hands of the government (read: corporate america). How soon until the police beat demonstrators who are (hypothetically speaking) protesting Exxon's pollution of the Alaskan coastline after another accident senseless, then manufacture the footage showing said protestors rampaging and rioting, to justify their actions to the public after the fact?
The future, such as it is, is growing increasingly ugly. I only wish I could punch the amoral idiots who are developing this technology in the nose -- just because we could do something doesn't mean we should, much less that we have to do it.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Si tu penses que ça c'est du français...
While I found your post to be well written and outlined the Kennedy theories nicely, I do have a small correction regarding the U2 incident.
The U2 flights were authorized during the Eisenhower administration and it was during his watch that the infamous Garry Powers incident occurred.
While Kennedy may not have been directly involved with that incident, it caused a great loss of face for the office of the President for years to come...
The Doctor is In...(his room watching the History channel)
article comment
Combined with data-mining services by which browsers' individual likes, dislikes and purchasing patterns can be relentlessly tracked and analyzed, virtual insertion opens up the ability to shunt personally targeted advertisements over phone lines or cables to Web users and TV viewers. Say you like Pepsi but your neighbor next door likes Coke and your neighbor across the street likes Seven-Up--the kind of data harvestable from supermarket checkout records. It will become possible to tailor the soft-drink image in the broadcast signal to reach each of you with your preferred brand.
poster's comment
I would love if information specific to me was able to be incorporated into my everyday sensorium.
truth
yeah, right. the truth of the matter is that any chance any moron who chose a career in TV-land gets, they will try and sublimated our wants/desires for some crap that they sell. ads that you want? shit, try ads that you hate. the author of the article seemed to think that if you drank Pepsi you'd get Pepsi ads...why? the whole purpose of ads is to sell you shit you don't already buy. more Pepsi? sure, but wouldn't Coke love to have all of your business and wouldn't they pay handsomely for that?
it's the rare ad that is *somehow* wittier than Wazzzzzup! i would love to pay for the things you mention - yeah, my own personal stock streamer would be cool (i like to see how much XRX has screwed me this week,) but the chance that some firm will offer it to me? hmmmmm - slim? none.
sorry, but i have very little faith in marketers and their ilk. lowest common denominator and such.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Wow... think what men would pay to see Cindy Crawford in a hard core porno, or what women might pay to see Tom Cruise doing whatever they pleased... (and of course we'd want to throw in the Coke cans/Win98 boxes in the background...)
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
One of the major networks, CBS I think. Replaced all of the NBC/ABC billboards and screens with CBS replacement bilboards and video during thier live covarge of new years 2k in times square. So the first demo was not a demo.
Government is the abdication of your responsibility to a faceless bureaucracy. Anarchy(absence of government)is the a
We have done some research and found that you have never written a game in your entire pathetic life. We, at the institute, also have learned that you have scored poorly on several IQ test, yet you keep trying to take them. Our records also contain several refrences of you trying to get into intellectual and aristocratic parties, often only to be refused based on poor grooming.
Sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up here.
This type of technology is being used for many obvious purposes and not just subtle uses for product placement. Watch a baseball match today on television and the mat behind the batter will be overlaid with video advertisements which change every few minutes and sometimes animate, or show the speed of the ball thrown. In the real stadium all you see is a blank mat. One thing I've also noticed is the not so obvious removal of Sony logos on TVs and logos on shirts, giving the attitude from the producers that "If you don't pay for your logo to be on TV, we'll take it off" even for simple things like a television or a shirt.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Seriously, i think it would be really cool to watch friends or star trek with the script translated into jive on the fly.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
...or let's make another field: Fourth Reich Fanatic.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Pretty much any piece of video that has ever been recorded is becoming clip art that producers can digitally sculpt into the story they want to tell, according to Eric Haseltine, senior vice president for R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, Calif.
The questions this brings up about authenticity aside, what if (when!) it becomes cheaper to recycle media stars, actors, newscasters, etc... than to produce a genuine piece of work with real people? Would there be a dearth of new faces or will viewers tire of the same old people? This recycling concept accepted as a given, I wonder if this would lead to a "freezing" of culture? With no new material being produced, will people bother changing the mood and and social reflections in these recycled adaptions? Out there, I know, but worth consideration. Brings to mind Ronald Reagan in the Cafe 80's in Back to the Future II.
This explains all those African-Americans at the Republican convention!
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." - General William Westmoreland, during the war in Viet Nam
Right now I imagine it takes a fair amount of cpu power to do this, so only networks can afford it. However, in 5 years or so, it will probably be within reach of ordinary folk -- like you!
I imagine junkbuster will be much different then, zapping out product placement ads, replacing bilboards with your email summaries, and so on. I haven't thought about this much yet.
I will guess that this instant artificial product placement, like the network show mentioned, will be common place within a year or two, and annoy the heck out of consumers. However, it may reduce the number of distinct commercials as product placement becomes more common and as Tivo and Replay make it easier to ignore separate commericals. In 5 years, it will be the ordinary way to do things. Then -- Gnoview! It will start out primitive and for geeks, get better, then proprietary programs will jump in, and it will be a war between the new junkbuster trying to find ads to zap, and the producers trying to get ever more tricky with placement to make the ads harder for a program to spot.
This sounds like a lot of fun!
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Infuriate left and right
We desperately need that troll classification.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Remember that Canadian outfit that netcast tv shows and got sued to death? Remember those framing lawsuits, claiming that putting someone else's content inside a frame with your own ads in other frames was copyright infringment?
How long before a stadium advertiser sues the network for eliminating their ad? After all, the big audience for that stadium ad is not the in-person crowd, but the tv audience. Suddenly they are paying rates for millions of eyeballs and getting just thousands.
I smell lawyer fodder!
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Infuriate left and right
I agree.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
There's a parallel happening here on the internet, ISP's are using border caches, most of which have the capability to rewrite URL's or change content.
These caches are transparent and unavoidable.
Does anyone know (for the paranoid) of any trusted proxy servers, and how do we know they're to be trusted.
-- Don't believe everything you read, hear or think
Hey, that's not bad! That used to be an english post! Amazing what they can do on the fly!
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If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Moderation Totals:Troll=1, Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Total=6.
Now, personally I'm looking forward to they incoroprate this in glasses, so you can get rid of things you don't want to look at :)
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If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Instead of windows, we'll have flat screens! (Perhaps the new ones mentioned in the slashdot story, which you could print out )
Picture that, we've seen it in scifi movies,now it could be real. A flat screen which doubles as a window, your view would mostly be what is there BUT you can add this technology to change something.
Ugly buildings in the distance? They are gone! Replaced with a pretty lake perhaps! Or 7of9 clones strutting around. The windows in the kids room shows UFOs and spaceships flying around out there
Infact lets not stop there, have this installed in your glasses as well. Apart from having information displayed, you could have certain things removed or replaced (just becareful not to walk into things!)
Of course if you read the entire article it also mentions them using it to track locations of things, it seems to be implicit in the technology. This might meen you could incorporate range finders, in the glasses or perhaps also in windshields. Or better yet, zoom parts of the view (follow that intersting posterior a few blocks! :)
Using portable panes, either in glasses or larger frames could be usefull in a hospital - imagine the computer would allow doctors to "look into" a patient realtime?
This also explains why the Universal Translator in Star Trek manages to mane the aliens seem to speak english, it simply rerenders their mouth movements :-D
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If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Do you know any hiphop fans? If they see wearing or using they are very likely to buy . Hiphop fans are, advertising-wise, the most easily led people in the universe.
I give my friends a really hard time about this.
Capitolism is trillion dollar drug companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists and advertisments to convince Americans that cheap, price-restricted drugs is a bad thing.
Capitolism isn't progress, it's simply an economic ideal (that alot of people who have plenty of money already want to push toward).
While it can facilitate progress, it is, in and of itself, just an idea. It happens to be one that many people are distrustful and suspicious of. Rightly so, in many cases. I have no problem with people advocating capitalism as a good method of improving life for a population. What I don't like is people advocating capitalism for its own sake, which is all that things like the private health care crap that Klien and Harris are pushing. (If you don't know the names, you shouldn't be telling me how close my country is or isn't to being communist.)
Intolerant people should be shot.
Some villain had his brain inserted in a clone body just before death. Months later, Cap storms into the villain's new stronghold (still not knowing that particular baddie is alive) and is greeted with a video screen in which the villain says something like "Greetings, ha, ha, I'm alive and I'm gonna conquer the world blah blah".
Cap's reaction (still skeptical about the villain's comeback): "Video images can be faked".
My reaction: "Geez, real-time video editing? With face movements and all? Indistinguishable from the real thing? Human cloning is more credible than that in comparison."
Silly me.
I imagine all this came about because people like Britney Spears insist on forcing their ample breasts into push-up bras, then get upset when they "accidentally" spill out when all the live cameras are focused on their racks? :)
Heh. This still won't help. It won't help until either a) there's no more hornballs left behind the lenses, or b) there's nothing left of interest to point cameras at :)
Please, feel free to moderate this down. I just thought I'd snicker about this rather useless technological idea.
Read my stuff.
When someone is removed from a scene with a moving background, and objects moving across the foreground (like from the middle of a crowd). Or when a static object is removed from a static background (without adequate information to fill the hole, of course). Inserting things onto stadium walls, and shelves in the background (BTW, why couldn't Microsoft have just paid to have the product placed when the show was shooting?), and removing someone from a flat, even surface with nothing else on it...these aren't very impressive. (Even if it looks perfect.) Oh, and I won't worry about not being able to tell real video from fake until objects which interact with other objects in the video can be inserted automatically. Hmm...and when rendering becomes perfect (although that only applies to high-quality video and images). There are a lot of ways to spot effects. Incorrect lighting and motion, usually.
In principal the veracity of the internet's informational archive is usually better equipped to deal with problems as they arise then print media. Think of it this way. Suppose you live in a small town in California or the Midwest. You have one small town newspaper or perhaps you are lucky and have out of town newspapers delivered to your door. Well all of these can be falsified in some manner as the publisher wishes. Contrary to popular belief Willian Randolph Hurst isn't controlling the world's newspapers but the chance sitll remains for censorship. With the internet publishing is even more democratized and it's harder to control the presses easily. What must also be destinctly understood is that allowing the ineternet to become a transatory fly-by-night source of information is our own fault. In fact slashdot contributes to this. It feels fit to generate Gigs of information a year that eventually sooner or later is deleted (I think I do know that it's as hard as hell to determine the flow of a discussion when it disappears into archived mode). The best way to determine that things are in fact have been falsified is to check around and look at *all* the sources included IRC, newsgroups, Freenet, Gnutella, Napster, FSP, ftp, whois, finger, etc. We will never live in a negative utopia because at some level peole will feel the injustices they themselves cause. People rat others out for money, spying happens, etc. The best thing to do is just keep multiple reference points. Also crawling web sites and keeping said data on your new and improved drive technology isn't a bad option either. Just go through and crawl the web on your cable modem or DSL connection (yeah I am still stuck with a modem) and make sure that data remains unaltered without your notice. In fact if you are really in for a job crawl slashdot and then archive it on multiple sets of CD-RWs and keep them in storage. Or perhaps keep an extra drive array and use that. Also there's the tried and true method of paper media. I still have HOWTOS for linux in binders from early June of 1998 that I have lying around. Remember in a world where you are paranoid about data paper is a good thing.
Respond to s
And they don't cooperate I think that alone would disprove that statement.
Respond to s
Been a while since I really thought about it.
Respond to s
Just because its a secret doesn't mean that anyone's going to tell. Who was Deep Throat?
Deep Throat wasn't a conspiracy, he was an individual. The larger the conspiracy, the harder it is to keep secret, especially ~40 years after the event as in the Kennedy assassination. You would think if a lot of people knew about it, at least one would leave a deathbed confession or something of that nature.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
"I am gross and perverted. I'm obsessed and deranged. I have existed for years, but very little has changed. I'm the tool of the Government, and Industry too, for I am destined to rule and regulate you. I may be vile and pernicious, but you can't look away. I make you think I'm delicious with the stuff that I say. I'm the best you can get. Have you guessed me, yet? I'm the slime oozing out from your TV set. You will obey me while I lead you. And eat the garbage that I feed you. Until the day that we don't need you. Don't go for help, no-one will heed you. Your mind is totally controled. It has been stuffed into my mold. And you will do as you are told, until the rights to you are sold...That's right folks, don't touch that dial!"
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
Say you like Pepsi but your neighbor next door likes Coke and your neighbor across the street likes Seven-Up--the kind of data harvestable from supermarket checkout records. It will become possible to tailor the soft-drink image in the broadcast signal to reach each of you with your preferred brand.
Am I the only one who finds this silly? Think about it logically. I buy Product X. I like Product X. Therefore, they insert lots of advertisements for Product X into the TV stream. And that changes my buying habits how exactly?
Who pitched this idea to their boss? "I know, we'll try to sell them stuff they already buy! That's a good use of our advertising budget!"
(Yes, I know force-feeding you ads for complementary goods to Product X would be the "proper" use for this technology. But you would've though they would have said THAT instead. Gotta love marketers' logic....)
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The real Captain Derivative has a Slashdot ID.
This is obviously why people are still watching MTV's 'Real World'. Their version was obviously edited in real time to contain naked petrified Natalie Portmans! /.er in troll's clothing!
Note: I am not a real troll just a
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Crudely Drawn Games
2 words:
Travel, dude!
Hmmmm.....
I am thinking of putting the Roadrunner in a Nascar race. That would make it much more interesting. How about it? Coyote and Roadrunner chasing each other around in the Indy 500 race. Elmer Fudd shooting at Tiger Woods in the Master's. This could improve things tremendously!
I especially like the idea of tiny gremlins messing around at a political debate.
Ciao
nahtanoj
uhh, see the subject line.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
You didn't even understand a word of what he was saying, did you?
The article about the CBS digital editing controversy is here. I know it's done a lot, but I think it's pretty contemptible for a supposedly legitimate news program to do it for something as petty as removing a rival's advertisement.
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It seems they'll be a need for new live video checksum technology. Maybe transmitted along an audio channel the way other meta-data is. You'd also need a place to verify that checksum in some central repository.
Peter Horoszowski Children's Television Workshop
It takes just one reporter who was watching CNN and then checks his notes later that day to screw the censorers. Later that same day legislation is passed banning the technology to be utilized unless by authorization of a presidential directive. Simply put it would kill their own invention. Then everyone is against it and it gets corrected as a public injustice.
Respond to s
true. because - lets face it - live video looks like shit. ever tried filming a movie with a hand camera - its sucks rocks. if any /.er wants to see something really impressive look at http://405themovie.com for an example of how much you can digitally introduce.
I admit, I was a little prejudiced by seeing Stalingrad and Deutschland in the same song. It's too hard not to be predujiced, with all the things German companies have been doing (prime example: ASUS leaking out the See-Through drivers; average Counter-Strike round down by 30 seconds; coincidence? no.)
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Or, at least, I have: the new Ikea advertisements that claim "If we can update this old classic..."
I've seen two: one that have "Eight is Enough"(?) and one that has "Gilligan's Island."
I won't go out on the limb and say it was done in real-time, but I'll betcha it was done using the PVI technology.
It's bloody impressive. *Really* really impressive.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Very true you could put it up on the web. The question is who is going to believe you over CNN?
Hey wait, I never posted that! Someone must be trying to implicate me with a real-time ASCII filter!
Please guys, HELP ME FIGHT real-time disinformation!
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
How about non-realtime though? Isn't it getting computationally feasible to make a video showing someone commiting crimes they didn't do?
> This is the same technology used to replace the billboards you saw during the 2000 New Year's shoots of Times Square. They replaced the advertisements with ones the TV agencies wanted to run.
Have any of the billboard renters filed suit over this? What's the point in renting a board in a prominent place/time if all the newscos are going to filter it out? There's gotta be gounds for an IP suit in this somewhere.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Unfortunately, due to the hundreds of devices which alter video signals, digital or otherwise, this would be very very very hard to do. Even in an event that is "live", there are literally tens of devices which process and alter the signal. For example, in the nightly news, you'd have cameras, their CCU's (which colour and time the camera signals), which feed into a SEG/Switcher (which cuts between cameras) which is keyed with graphics and text (for titles etc), then the entire thing may be adjusted in a proc amp, plus the sequence of transmission, compression (MPEG2, DVB) and distribution systems that come after the pipe.
--Calum
Kennedy wasn't exactly part of a conspiracy about much of anything about his death.
There are several popular theories that were investigated by the Warren commission by the United States congress:
1. Oswald acted alone --- The best theory that has actually stood the test of time.
2. Governmental faction assassinated the president --- Not too likely. Far easier to do it at an embasy dinner, private party, apply bomb in car traveling in unpopulated area, etc. Not too likely if you wanted to remain anonymous.
3. Oswald acted with support of the KGB -- Best one of the kook theories and would be a nice addition to the first. Oswald did indeed travel to Russia and did marry his wife from out of the ranks of the KGB. It could be likely that because of possible anti-government leanings that he wouldn't have batted an eye at the prospect of killing Kennedy. Also the Russians didn't exactly care for Kennedy at all. Basically he already had several strikes against him from the Russians. The shooting down of the U-2 carrying Garry Powers and his subsequent capture during the time of Krutchev, the bay of pigs invarion of Cuba by supporters of the United States (Cuba was essentially allied with the USSR), and numerous assassination attempts on said dictator, Korea, and revent intervention of "advisers" in the former French republic of indochina (Vietnam). A very nice one.
4. Oswald acted as a tool of organized crime -- Not too thoroughly explored. Various reform acts that removed some of the former corruption of the presidency made that governmental branch hostile to crime syndicates. Harry truman came from Kansas City and actually was proposed as a candiate for US Senate from a local political crime boss. Truman was a relatively honest man (that we know of but was also a Republican and thus not sympathetic in many ways to the mob. Kennedy also was supposed to have created a new gold standard of monetary support which could have hurt them.
5. Grassy Knoll attack -- At least one person thought that perhaps allies with Oswald was another man who would also fire shots at the president if Oswald's Manlicher Carcano riffle didn't do the job (it wasn't the best for rapid assault snipping which was what Oswald tried to do). Also never been proven to logical ends.
No there are few conspiracies that actually work because eventually rats them out. COnspiracies are usually the domain of the X-files.
Respond to s
Two thoughts on this...
Thought One.
People have brought up the idea that we will have filters that will keep out "bonus additions" to our video feeds, this kind of thinking is targeted twords commercial applications of the technology.
Now if the government wanted to fake something do you think it would include a watermark? Neither do I.Well, of course the people who want to make the commercial additions will be against this but due to public outcry over the veracity of what we see I think it's quite possible that some sort of watermarking will be built into the hardware that makes these scenarios possible (there'd have to be watermarking of some kind or verification would be impossible as the technology progresses). All consumer electronics will have this, um, feature so that us we can't spoof the public eye as well as it being used in adding in-line commercials. Of course the companies that make these virtual commercials will lobby quite hard against any sort of filtering so it'll be only the minority (slashdot readers) that will have access to work-arounds. But that will be enough to make sure that obvious fakes aren't perpatrated.
Thought Two.
The possibility that is brough up of small organizations using this technology to manufacture footage to bolster claims is a valid one I'm sure (integrity rarely gets in the way of idealism).
However it's the exact opposite that concerns me the most.
Example:
The Very Honest Coalition of Nice People Against Psychopathic Murderers - "We just got this video of that man killing one meelion (pinky in mouth) people, let's make sure to send it to all the news channels and show it on our website.
The Evil Government Plus Puppet Media Sources - "The video that was sent to us and that you might find on the internet is a total fake, we have lots of valid reasons to say this and a plethora of witnesses that are all very credible that will back us up.
Hmmmm, so much for ever getting the word out about anything that people dont want to believe is true.
-artistX
I swear, whoever moderated the parent of this message as a "Troll" must have done it so that it had one of each. It's been modded as Interesting, Insightful, Informative, Funny, Overrated, and now Troll.
Can someone do me a favor and mod it Flamebait and Redundant as well so I can have a full house?
Thanks!
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Well, on the last, uhh, 22, I can see why. But the first ones should've been there, I agree.
Did those last ones come out of rage?
By the way, I have a cockatiel, but I've never tried to let him sit on my, uhh, you know, decor forbids, the perl script would kill me if I typed it? I might try it, but he loves to bite things, so then again, maybe not.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
OK- Here's an easy fix... assuming nobody's said this already... All video cameras are to be equipped with public key encryption so that their output has a unique digital signature. The encryption device & related optics must be sealed in a tamper resistant package, so that it will be obvious if the device has been opened or messed with. Any camera that does not have this feature (or is unavailable for physical inspection) IS NOT ADMISSABLE AS EVIDENCE. All unencrypted video is to be distrusted. It's not perfect, but at least _some_ cameras will be trustworthy.
Uhm.....you seem to imply that capitolism is a sin? Capitolism is progress. It tends to let things work themselves out in good and bad. Rather than socialism/communism that Canada is close to. Don't think communism is evil? Look at the acts EVERY communist country has done on those who oppose it.
Believe none of what you hear and only half (or maybe less) of what you see.
you make the mistake of thinking that the USSR or China, or (insert another "communist" country here) are/were communist. This is highly arguable...
it's just as false as saying the american system of government is "capitalism" - technically, we're a democratic republic.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
well if you understood more than 2% of it, then would you be so kind as to translate?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
capitolism describes the main economic policy, NOT the government architecture.
I would love if information specific to me was able to be incorporated into my everyday sensorium. I'd really like it if, for example:
Of course, this is just the beginning. Soon, commercials and then sitcoms would be prepared in VXML (video-extensible-markup-language) so that you could choose whatever theme you want and personalize the show to you.
For example:
You get the picture...
but of course we won't see this, because the dollars are driven by the ads.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
I have a really simple method for creating fake video that fools the eye: shoot your spoof, insert the word, "LIVE" over it, and viola! That will cost you a lot less than $80,000, and is far more effective.
Seriously, as a professional animator and compositor in television post-production, all of this is not as easy as they say, regardless of the hype. You can't change pixels without something to work from, and if the technology were that damn good already, I'd be out of a job.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Seriously, you didn't anticipate technology like this? To hell with the "digital lies department" there has to be some cool uses for this...
Cigarette Smoking Man is hatching a plot again!? Nay, that's not CGB, it's CmdrTaco laying out disinformation for Mulder and... Hemos?!
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
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Perhaps to liven up a documentary or a schoolish intructional video just have a random porno scene or perhaps replace Professor Frink with Ammy Bubbles (appropriately non-attired). "Now what happens if we take CaC03 and mix..wait this bra is getting too tight...there. And then add HCl to it?"
Respond to s
I was suprised when I first joined the special effects industry at just how many products and items are "enhanced" prior to viewing on the TV. To give you an idea of just how advanced most of the visual effects work is, the guys at my company routinely live by the motto: "If you notice the effect, we didn't do our job right".
--Nothing is real.--
--It's Pimptastic!--
Hee hee hee... remember the "Cokie Roberts is reporting from the Capitol Bldg. steps wearing a raincoat because of the weather - oops, I mean, she's standing in a studio" controversy? Sounds a little like the fox guarding the henhouse...
this just makes me mad. Now I'll have to expose Malda's laziness: I now demonstrate to you how the perl script automatically rates the post:
Linux Linux Linux:
I installed my Debian Linux,
Installed and ran okay,
I started up Enlightenment,
And found the JDK.
There, plenty of HTML code used, and even a Linux poem. I might even continue that one later. Let's see how this fares on the ratings.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I think that is rather insulting seeing as I am a human being and I have college educated people in my family.
In general there is not a vast cartel to control the media and what it's content is. This was made expresely clear in my class in American government many years ago. In general there are different interests which control what the media prints. Just like the government you have various factions competiting for what will be done, where, how, how, with how much money, and in what manner.
The news has to pay for it's airtime somehow and they do that through that commercials and tailoring content to fit what them deem as a suitable demographic through a system that I dont' exactly know about but I am sure involves statistical samples and taking the mean of said samples with low standard deviation.
Also the people who actually act as anchors are probably not wanting to have their content tailored to foolish levels.
The system works and will continue to work. People are becomming more and more educated as the tech boom continues. Peple are entering colleges at a good rate. That's better than back in the 40's-50's when television started. Drop out rates are also lower.
I think you better look at the stats and then come back and claim that people are stupider now than they were before. Focus has shifted. Maybe the fact that a number of the skilled people are spending more time on the internet and reading books and working more might just be an answer.
Even if I have a doctorate degree I can't alter the content that I see on television or the radio until I own them.
PS. Actually I didn't have a televion for many years in my house as a child and then it broke and we didn't have one for a number more. I know that constitutes good and bad television and I have seen things that I don't currently like. But I don't act like a nihilist and bemoan my fate. Please if you think they should do better by all means get into broadcasting. They need less pretty boys weith pretty armani suits and nice teeth and hair. In fact by being on slashdot you have probably taken the first step into becomming more informed. Excelsior to you sir!
Respond to s
Have you ever been overheard a conversation between a couple of your coworkers/family/etc. full of concern, speculation, and drama, only to find out that they were talking about soap opera characters rather than real people? As many people, including Pat Cadigan, I believe, have noted this seems to be a fine indicator of the level of "reality" that people ascribe to television. It's not just video either, but television. Odds are if you show it on the news there are a whole lot of people who will believe it. I'm not quite sure when we ended up in a culture that's quite so trusting of media (heck, maybe it's just human nature), but it's quite disturbing.
"Live" TV was one of the last forms of broadcast that I felt had any integrity, but now that's going the way of the evening news. Where, exactly, does that leave me for finding out what's _actually_ going on in the world?
--
Behold the Power of Cheese!
because of all of the people that walk by it every day. Perhaps your expectation that all of the network news crews would film and show your billboard were unfounded.
I don't mind the ads in most papers, since we've got the Sun here to show us how low a paper can get and still pretend its not a tabloid. What bugs me is environmental or international stories getting two inches in the sidebar while Fashion and Travel are 30 page sections once a week.
The Associated Press does seem to be behind most of those non-stories, don't they? I hadn't really thought about it. Knight Ridder shows up a lot too, although I'm not really sure who they are...
Intolerant people should be shot.
Don't tell me about Steve Woston. I am Steve Woston. I make best-selling games. I am the smartest and richest slashdot user ever!
- J. J. J. Julius, author of a considerable number of best-selling games
That filler material is usually pieces that are from such areas like the Associated press and the like (at least in my paper). All the meaningless driver like "Billy's cat coughed up a hair ball" or "Hammers are getting more sleek in the 21st century" are usually in the area you would expect news. Ads are also the way yhe paper is paid for. Classified ads pay for about 90% of the fees in the paper and the rest is in professional advertising that is also but there.
Respond to s
The Freedom of Information Act (FoIA in gov speak) is actually a good means of getting data from various agencies. I have seen form letters that you can use to get your entire dossier (assuming you are important enough to have one) from the FBI. Ever heard of things like the Pentgon papers back in the 70's. What about the recent scans from area 51. Also the recent release of data about individuals spying in Iran as well. Modern people have more information than did their parents before them. Really most of the "secrets" and "conspiracies" in three letter agencies are usually things like military hardware hostiles shouldn't have and how much the NSA spends for floppy disks. Spying and assassinations usually are rarer events since the CIA was scentured a while back for their misdeads.
Respond to s
Do not correct me. When you are as smart or as rich as I am, I might listen to you. Between the two of us, I am the only one who makes best-selling games.
- J. J. J. Julius, author of a considerable number of best-selling games
But you get the idea. (-1 Offtopic)
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Do not tell me how to be myself. When you are as rich as I am, I will listen. For now, though, I will continue to create best-selling games.
- J. J. J. Julius, author of a considerable number of best-selling games
You know, the porno industry's really going to be the force driving this one. Who cares about geopolitics and mind-games carried out on a national scale: politicians and the non-apathetic, that's who. But porno... there's a universal audience in that one. Think about it... anyone, any time, doing anything. No longer need to wait till they're legal either. There'll be fake movies going around the net that look just as good as the real thing. Fantasies about the neighbor? Take a 10 minute film of them in the backyard and turn it into an orgy before it leaves the camcorder. This is frightening, yet somehow intriguing...
OH BOY! imagine the fun stuff you could do with this kind of technology:
... political campaign covergae just got 1500% more interesting...
1) tap the live feed of a political convention;
2) remove background, load desert sunset slide;
3) insert giant bananas in cowboy suits;
4) roll DAT of "heeyaws!", whipcracks, and gunshots...
BAM!!!
er... wishful thinking?
What were the final numbers on the number of actual targets hit in Kosovo? Something like 13 actual tanks hit? (Off the top of my head) And if this piece of gadgetry is so wonderful, how is it NATO missed so much... or worse, hit the wrong targets (Chinese Embassy, Kosovars)? In my mind, basically just goes to show that the best eyes are still in the sockets of the soldier.
As for the idea of manipulating news and stuff... does that guy, Pike, truly believe the media will use self-restraint in order to maintain a good image? Bah. We already see how the media reports the news and can change perceptions of people by reporting things out of context, 5 second sound clips, spinning a story. For example, this latest flap with the Grand Jury leak was reputed to have come from dirty GOP tricks... networks huffed and puffed about it... turns out it was a Federal Judge who made a slip. The retraction and correction? Virtually nil. Even worse, outright lying. Tailwind and the massacre at No Gun Ri. Both of them have had faulty witnesses and numerous inconsistencies. Do you really believe that the major news organizations will bat more than an eyelash at the prospects of live video imagery? My guess is that they're absolutely drooling over this type of technology.
On the other hand, this could make a weekly episode of the Weekly World News very funny. :-)
Humorless sig goes here.
Then again, perhaps a bunch of us thought your last line, something about the messiah, etc. etc. was way, way out in left field. Posters need to write good (not weird) stuff too.
Americans are not stupid. They have actually grown smarter in the years that we have had television and all.
I am not going to be bullied by an arrogant social darwinist who thinks that Americans are stupid and everyone else is just an oracle.
Nothing personal buy I disagree with your seemingly contradictory statements about Americans being stupid and their *eeeeevvvvvviillll* televisions.
If you aren't an American you are bordering on being racist, if you are you are very bigoted. That's like the people who say all people are dumb but in the final analysis they exclude themselves.
This has nothing to do with your occupation unless you are actively implimenting video editing techniques or are actively acting against them in yopur professional life what you do is irrevelent.
This is my area of expertice and yours is running computers for a companies. I have studied social trends formally and informally for most of my life. CS is more of an expected career jaunt for me. I could easily be a professor.
When do mp3s get into the conversation anyway? I just don't follow you. But now that you have made it a topic I quite frankly don't care. They way I see it if the evil US government is bad then perhaps you need to as a keen phrase back in the McCarthy era "Get your red ass back to Russia". Believe me most other countires only create an illusion of security and freedom for so long until they are threatened. The pax romana "roman peace" (for non latin speakers) lasted almost as long as the US is old now. That's one long time to have peace and liberty. But even then they got midevil (or more accurately ancient) on the asses of dissidents and barbarians alike.
Another nation when pressed could and (I feel strongly) would take away personal liberties of the peseants when things get harsh. Or failing that if they don't the next conqueror down the road will take them away too. The world is not in a giant conspiracy at all. Conspiracies such as the infameous "new world order" and such and individuals who think this is some conspiracy and the like. People who think that the whole world is out to get them. Firstly utopian ideals have given sentiments like "one world order" for centuries. The Summerians used things like this, the Bablyonians, the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Phonicians, The Turks, Russians, Germans : unification of german state under pseudo-military governor in 1871 and with Hitler in 1939), USSR under communism, Post WWI Europe undewr such peole like Woodrow Wilson and the like.
You post was actually totally irrelevent to the topic at hand in any way. Personal feelings and logic and topicality are several seperate areas. I invite measured proof of your statements.
And please don't tell me how to conduct myself in relation to your comments that is just against Patrian mannerisms and Emily Post frowns on such things.
Respond to s
Physical wealth, as you would say, is far more important. Therefore, I am still richer than you are. After all, I, Steve Woston, am the man behind several best-selling games!
- J. J. J. Julius, author of a considerable number of best-selling games
Slashdot's paranoid ramblings about unfounded information make Mulder look like a conservative man.
Truth be told advertising is not exactly a big deal. What to I care that the cast of some crappy sitcom are running windows? I don't get that easily persuaded to do something. I make a choice because it's my choise not someone elses.
Respond to s
The Daily Show is a Show on Comedy Central. They aren't looking for a Tom Brokaw. If you want Tom Brokaw, then by all means watch NBC Nightly News... I watch the Daily Show because its hosted by a doofus and because it is unprofessional. Its funny. I always thought Craig Kilborn had a pole up his ass, but that kinda added to the attraction of the show... Jon Stewart just has a different style that relies more on naivete rather than arrogance.
When you can't verify the data itself, you've only got the reputation of the source to go on.
Soon it may not be the video itself, but the digital signature on it, that carries veracity and inspires trust. Maybe tamper-proof (or at least tamper-evident) digital video cameras will each have a unique private key and will sign the video with the reputation of the manufacturer; maybe the operator will provide his key to the camera and sign the data himself.
Digital signatures don't guarantee truth; but they stake the reputation of the signer (whether named or psudononymous) on the contents. In a data-driver world, your reputation as a source of good bits becomes vital. (Look at how excited peoplke get about /. karma, only a pale and distorted reflection of reputation.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Why would they give their strategy away? All Koresh would have to have do was watch TV.
That being said I agree with the difficulty angel. It would take an AI or an army of artists and raytracing machines to do real time changes without intervention.
Respond to s
Alterations of the pixels in a TV broadcast is an ideal candidate for digital checksums.
Imagine a live broadcast being streamed to your TV with a checksum attached to it from the video cameras. When the frame reaches your TV it also computes the checksum of the frame and sees if it matches the one sent from the camera. If it does, then the frame is authentic and hasn't been altered. If not, well...
Unless of course they compute the checksum after they digitally alter the frame and then send it would this fail.
Evan Klinger evan@domainclerk.com
President DomainClerk
Getting a perfect harmony and scale of a random person's voice is not a trivial task in and of itself. Personally I don't see how it could be flawless without repeated samplings of the president's voice in different cirsumstances. Also auditory emissions change to match their surroundings so that if you were to say something people could pick up on it.
Also this isn't exactly news when people have had control of newspapers. What was to stop an editor from taking a lieing about the content of the president's speech about the Treaty of Versailes? Well usually it was much more effective to denounce and interpret things very broadly out of context such as the fameous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephan A. Douglas. That was a result of verbal trickery to make what would be known then as the Missouri Doctrine.
Also that's what libel suits are for. How would Ted Turner react if he suddently got slapped with a libel suit, an audit, and an investigation by the NSA (things which have been known to happen with even the best presidents to political and personal enemies aka Richard Milhouse Nixon).
Respond to s
He who controls the past, controls the future! And now we even control the present.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I do not need to prove anything to a measly nobody like yourself. When Steel Justice is out, I will become even richer than I already am.
- J. J. J. Julius, author of a considerable number of best-selling games
actually are incredibly misquoted and cast in bad lights.
I don't like Albert Gore but I don't think he is an idiot for something probably one of his personal speech writers wrote for him. That's one little fact you forget. Politicians usually don't write their own speeches. It's considered foolish and a good way for flub ups to occur. And actually if he was supposedly a network planner for AOL or whatever he was then for some people he did make the "Internet".
Internet is a broad term. I personally don't think that a strict interpretation of it should be used. In fact common usage dictages that World WIde Web and "Internet" are virtually the same.
It would be better to say that perhaps he didn't invent "networking" nor did he invent the underlying HTTP protocol but he did do things that to some are quite large scale.
Respond to s