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Eigenfaces Online Service
nordicfrost writes "At Norways largest online newspaper, they're doing the beta test of an Eigenface service. In short, it takes a portrait picture, treats it with some filters and analyzes the vectors in it. This is used for crimestopping and generic Big Brother activities. In this database, however, your mug is compared with celebrites to find which one that matches you the most. I match, among others, Brad Garrett. This site is pretty self-explaining, upload a portrait pic of yourself taken right in front of your face, closely cropped to the face and use the up arrow to see your top ten list of celebrity matches. You have to agree to some terms first, like giving permission to use your pic in promotions and other stuff and not to upload indecent stuff."
I'm quite certain that this is a front for the "Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste"!
And it suggested This picture ...
WHO IS MR. SPARKLE?
Mr. Sparkle is everybody's favorite Japanese pop-culture soap logo. His soap is made only from the purest of plants from the mysterious forests of Hokkaido, Japan. He appears frequently in commercials for his soap, and can be seen on billboards, and outside of the Mr. Sparkle plant. According to his box, Mr. Sparkle is a "magnet for foodstuffs", and he banishes dirt to the land of wind and ghosts. If you are further interested in Mr. Sparkle soap, you can contact the factory in Japan for a videotape on distributing Mr. Sparkle in your home prefecture. http://www.geocities.com/chuckhoyt/mrsparkle.html
This explains a LOT of strange things that have happened to me over the years!
-j
Those bastards! They matched me with goatse!
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
A facial recognition system like EigenFace looks for the dominant modes of variation among a population of faces to find predictors that help distinguish among the different faces. By ignore the ways that faces are more similar and accentuating the ways that faces are most different, they can craft identification algorithms. The only challenge is getting enough data to understand the full range of facial variations -- hence this solicitation for more facial data.
But I wonder if people can game this system to make themselves unrecognizable. For example, a member of the tin-foil hat brigade might submit multiple mugshots of themselves under mutliple assumed identities. By using slight variations in facial expression, makeup, lighting, and camera angle they would make the system think that a large fraction of the population "looks like" the person who seeks anonymity. The system would then have a hard time identifying the tin-foil hat wearer because he/she matches so many people in the test data.
Anyone can make themselves "look average" if they can bias the dataset that defines the average.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
FORBANNET Slashdot!
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
For fun, I put my cat's face into one of these things, and it kept returning Scott Baio as the celebrity he most resembles.
[sarcasm]
;) )
This is a GREAT idea! What will be next? See how closely your fingerprints match the fingerprints of your favorite celebrities? See how well your password stacks up against other users?
Just fill out this form, put in your SS#, mother's maiden name, US address, credit card numbers, and the last 3 tax returns, and we'll show you if you look like Fred Flintstone... and we won't do anything else with your information... HONEST!
[/sarcasm]
(For the humor impaired, and there seems to be an inordinate number of you, I'M KIDDING!
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
"My first attempt matched me up to a very nice looking female."
The possible ways to respond to this are numerous, but I think that what you need to do, is to make sure that under no possible circumstance you find yourself in a prison...
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Translation:
Subject: Dear God, what has happened to our bandwidth?
Comment: DAMN Slashdot!