Computer Scientists Scour Your Holiday Photos

Barence writes "Hundreds of thousands of images on Flickr are being used to teach a program to determine the geographic location of an image, simply by looking at it. The program attempts to mimic the way that humans can deduce the location of an image by searching for visual clues, such as similarities to pictures or locations they have seen previously. In its current state it can guess the location of a photo to within 200km, 16% of the time — extremely accurate given the complexity of the problem."

Comments

Anthropomorphism

[sm62704]

Hundreds of thousands of images on Flickr are being used to teach a program to determine the geographic location of an image, simply by looking at it.

teach Audio Help /tit/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[teech] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, taught, teaching, noun
-verb (used with object)
1. to impart knowledge of or skill in; give instruction in: She teaches mathematics.
2. to impart knowledge or skill to; give instruction to: He teaches a large class.
-verb (used without object)
3. to impart knowledge or skill; give instruction.
-noun
4. Informal. teacher.

look Audio Help (lk) Pronunciation Key
v. looked, looking, looks
v. intr.
To employ one's sight, especially in a given direction or on a given object: looking out the window; looked at the floor.
To search: We looked all afternoon but could not find it.
To turn one's glance or gaze: looked to the right.
To turn one's attention; attend: looked to his neglected guitar during vacation; looked at the evidence.
To turn one's expectations: looked to us for a solution.

To turn one's glance or gaze: looked to the right.
To turn one's attention; attend: looked to his neglected guitar during vacation; looked at the evidence.
To turn one's expectations: looked to us for a solution.
To seem or appear to be: look morose. See Synonyms at seem.
To face in a specified direction: The cottage looks on the river.

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, natural and supernatural phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts. Subjects for anthropomorphism commonly include animals depicted as creatures with human motivation able to reason and converse, forces of nature such as winds or the sun, components in games, unseen or unknown sources of chance, etc. Almost anything can be subject to anthropomorphism. The term derives from a combination of Greek (anthrpos), human and (morph), shape or form.

Humans seem to have an innate capacity to project human characteristics in this way. Evidence from art and artefacts suggests it is a long-held propensity that can be dated back to earliest times. It is strongly associated with the art of storytelling where it also appears to have ancient roots. Most cultures possess a long-standing fable tradition with anthropomorphised animals as characters that can stand as commonly recognised types of human behaviour. The use of such literature to draw moral conclusions can be highly complex.[1]

Within these terms, humans have more recently been identified as having an equivalent opposite propensity to deny common traits with other species - most particularly apes - as part of a feeling that humans are unique and "special." This tendency has been referred to as Anthropodenial by primatologist Frans de Waal.

Re:Automatic Carmen San diego

[gstoddart]

Where's Goatse?

Divide by zero error. Program halted.

Be careful with that coffee

[davidwr]

Make sure your coffeemaker uses a good filter.