As if a fossil would prove anything. First you'll ask for a fossil, then you'll demand that there be no gaps in the fossil record... Honestly, where will your skepticism end?!
I hate to say it, but you're not following the blind faith of science. Are you sure you're feeling okay? Next thing you know, you could be denying the theory of evolution based on the lack of evidence, and other crazy things.
Any contract or promise contrary to the law is null and void.
"It is very little more than a broad statement of support for a general principle without any concrete backup mechanism to ensure that the guidelines will be followed."
This is little more than a PR stunt used to shore up their public image. The agreement language is vague, and there are questions about if it is even binding. It can probably not even be enforced, because in most countries, conspiracy is a crime. So if a company should do anything which would hinder prosecution, they could be charged with:
Conspiracy, if it can be shown that they knew, or should have known, of illegal activity using their systems.
Obstruction of justice (USA) if it can be shown that they destroyed evidence of illegal activity, or failed to comply with mandatory logging requirements.
In the US, their assets could be seized under RICO... While this might sound like a stretch, RICO has been used against political protesters in the past.
In the US, the ability to wiretap voice communications is required under CALEA. The government has made no secret of the fact that even following the law need not be a hindrance when there's a question of terrorism involved, and has punished companies which refused to break the laws regarding limits on surveillance.
Given that there is legislation pending, or perhaps even signed into law, which allows civil forfeiture for copyright violations, trumping up "probable cause" to seize a company's assets is little more than a paper shuffle these days. If the war on drugs is any indication, the government will use laws such as these to ensure that companies are "cooperative" with its surveillance efforts, legal or not.
I'm not counting on this having any effect other than people saying, "Look, Google really isn't evil!". Which is exactly the intended effect.
But the recent civil forfeiture provisions for copyright infringement they're trying to get signed (maybe already signed?) into law will allow them to do the same thing. The Feds can already seize your property on the mere suspicion that it is being used for illegal drug activity, and are not required to even file charges. When said seizure happens, the burden of proof is on the owner prove that it wasn't used for illegal activity.
I agree, it shouldn't be modded troll, but I guess that's just because I've got a wider perspective than many. I don't count honest opinion, however offensive, as troll material. I guess I'm old enough to have a higher standard for trolls, you know, the posts specifically and cleverly crafted to create a particular response... but I digress. Now get off my lawn!
ID is not a hoax - there's no intent to deceive. Regardless of whether you accept the arguments or not, or whether they have any merit, there's never been any scientific fraud going on. Instead, what trips up most people is that ID proponents are scientists arguing philosophical positions based on their scientific knowledge. Some people just can't wrap their head around the thought that a scientist might abandon the scientific method and wax philosophical once in a while...
And on that note, let's not forget that all of science is based on a philosophical fallacy; after the fact, therefore because of the fact.... And does anyone have to harp on correlation does not equal causation? Yet these are the foundation upon which modern science is built, and while it may be a very good model, and even better way to bet, it doesn't prove anything. And in spite of this, some people put it (science) up on a pedestal as if no scientific theory has ever been wrong... If ID is a hoax, then all of science even moreso. It can be wrong, but it is not a hoax - its proponents really, honestly believe it.
There are still people who wish it weren't a hoax. It's an interesting tale in the ways people will ignore evidence of the contrary when it comes to something they want to believe. The signs were obvious - found in a shop with stone cutting tools, yet ignored for years afterward...
Okay, so twitter may be potentially used by terrorists.
But why focus on potential, when you have actual terrorist tools:
Cars, trucks. Very useful for causing higher casualties than the mere explosive alone.
Telephones: used to plan attacks.
Postal mail: used to spread terrorist propaganda. Think about it - our own government is empowering terrorists by allowing them to use the mail system!
Credit cards: stolen credit cards can be used to buy plane tickets, explosives etc...
Cash: the untraceable monetary instrument of choice when stolen credit cards are not available.
I think the solution to terrorism is pretty obvious: We'll all have to give up our cars, telephones, mail, credit, and cash, and go back to living 1850's style.
Or, we could just learn to deal with the fact that the world is a dangerous place, and that no matter what political position we take, some people are going to hate us for it...
But on the other hand it is naive to assume that someone who feeds a particular fantasy fetish would not indulge themselves if the opportunity arose. If someone, knowing the social consequences of getting caught with this particular material, chooses to seek it out anyway, it is more indicative of someone who cannot control their own desires than someone who would respect the rule of law and rights of others. Whether they abuse children or not is probably more a matter of opportunity than their own moral scruples.
You know, I can understand your sentiments, except that hapless Windows users don't have a choice but to have filesharing running on their machines. In fact, most don't even know it's running, or that it's enabled by default. With Linux, I don't have to start Samba, BIND, sendmail, etc... unless I want to. Windows users have much less control over the security of their systems than their Linux running counterparts.
Quite honestly, the insecurity of linux programs is a moot point; I don't have to run that program. The only security of undeniable consequence for the end user is that of the kernel, because everything else can be turned off. With Linux, I get to choose my risk acceptance level; with Windows, Redmond chooses it for me.
They don't have to be found guilty for their property to be seized. That's the problem. Under the civil forfeiture laws, the government can seize a person's property without ever proving that a crime even took place.
In the US, but this is beyond the pale. There are already laws like RICO which can be used to shut down corrupt organizations.
If this is allowed to set precedent, the Feds will literally be allowed to steal a company's trademark if anyone employed by the company does something illegal. I'm reminded of the Steve Jackson Games fiasco where the Feds seized their computers because one of their employees illegally downloaded a document from AT & T that same was selling for $17. (IIRC)
I seriously doubt that seizing a gang's name is going to deter them the least. At worst, they'll just change their name.
This is more about expanding the power of the Federal government than it is about law enforcement. With civil forfeiture laws extending to copyright violations, soon the day will come when police departments will shore up their budgets by seizing computers under the guise of copyright enforcement ("Can you prove that copy of Windows wasn't pirated? I didn't think so...")
I was at first thinking, "Man, I just paid too much for that thing..."
I really do want a pocket linux box. Here's the problem: the keyboard on my EEE PC is just usable. Make it smaller, and you can't really type on it.
And then I learned that it's QVGA. And that it doesn't even have a GB of storage. I think it's a cool gadget, but it's more like a linux PDA than a pc.
Even if his hosting company is brain-dead, they should at least recognize that a signed affidavit that he is, indeed, the copyright holder will get them off the hook if any litigation comes their way. Failing that, he could file charges against them for copyright infringement under the DMCA, and sue for statutory damages. I believe the going rate is around $168,000 per song...
I'll just follow up with one thing. The god in the gaps argument has been gone for a long time. There is a fundamental difference between someone saying, "This data follows the same pattern as other created things..." and "I don't understand it so god must have done it." One is an attempt to gain further understanding of the phenomenon, and the other is an attempt to avoid all future thought about it.
How many applications have library code in them which is not used at all?
How many applications have identical sections of code? (Think: static libraries)
How many applications came into existence of their own volition without any designer or intelligent agent acting as a designer?
Not to tear down evolution, but you do realize that the evidence we do see could be interpreted in a much different light, and still be consistent. The fossil record, DNA, etc... could be explained away as God being an object-oriented programmer. After all, if you already have the DNA for the creation of the basic organs, eyes, lungs, etc... why would you reinvent the wheel? The fact that DNA is shared in the animal kingdom follows the same pattern we've seen emerge in computers with code reuse and object oriented programming. It doesn't preclude ID, but rather, supports it.
I think the part that ID critics too easily dismiss is that the current evidence can support a lot of wildly different theories about the formation of life on this planet, and to dismiss any theory that doesn't agree with your pre-conceived notions of evolution is strangely reminiscent of religious fanatics who reject anything that disagrees with their sacred book. Even the theory of evolution has undergone quite a bit of change with new discoveries, and was, at one point, provably false. Yet that didn't stand in the way of certain minded people from treating as if it were the gospel truth.
Now I personally am not a huge fan of ID because some of its early claims, while strong, were merely statistical in nature and perhaps not the best way to argue the point. However, even failed theories have something to offer in knowing what isn't correct, so I don't see the big problem with its existence as a theory. Science has been notably wrong before (you know, that whole Earth-is-the-center-of-the-universe thing...), and it routinely discovers information which invalidates previous theories. I'm not sure why evolution proponents have such a large problem with this; currently, the evidence is ambiguous (could support either ID or evolution), but as we discover more, will correct itself. To claim now (as some do) that ID is false - without proving so - is simply ignorant. To form a strong conclusion, we just need more evidence, and strangely, some people don't seem to recognize this.
I think there is a suspicion of ID not because of its merits, but rather, because some people fear the implications of the existence of God. If there was scientific proof of God's existence, they'd have to change their entire thought model of the Universe, and that change is particularly scary to them. They don't have the answers to the questions such a discovery would raise. But these people are exactly the kind of people we don't want in science; we want people who are able to look at the evidence dispassionately, and who aren't afraid to change their understanding in light of new evidence. We don't need someone who is going to stick to their dogma because they have a personal stake in the outcome of one particular theory over another. If, as ID critics claim, ID really isn't supported by the evidence, it will end up in the trash bin of history. It wouldn't be the first time a wrong theory has been put forth in science, and it will certainly not be the last. But, if we are really going to take a scientific approach to the formation of life on this planet, we should be content to bear with incorrect theories, knowing that eventually the discovery of additional information will settle the issue.
This is not going to be very difficult to defeat. Sure, there's encryption, but even for the slightly-less-than-completely-paranoid types, the solution is not very difficult.
When you consider the problem the scanner has to solve, and the algorithm that will most likely be used (Google Boyer-Moore string matching for an intro...), the solution becomes almost trivial.
To scan for any of m images, the scanner must merge all of the images into a "tree" of bits. For example, exercise and example would both have their first two characters as the root, and split at the first difference ('a' and 'e'). If the scanner finds first an 'e', 'x' and then an 'a', it goes down the example subtree. If it finds 'e', it goes down the exercise subtree. If it finds neither, it advances to the next position in the image and restarts from zero. With an adaption, it can skip several characters in certain circumstances (but I'll spare the detailed explanation; GIYF).
Now here's the problem: the vast majority of bits won't exactly match any of its patterns, but a lot of them will partially match. It will have to do n times m searches, where n is the number of bits (or bytes) per image, and m is the average depth of the search tree. Think about how many words start with the same letter, and how many of those start with the same prefix. Yes, the amount of work the algorithm must do grows very quickly.
As m - the number of search strings - grow, the number of matches in the early stages of the algorithm will grow as well. Hence, one of the images will likely match the first part of the data in almost every case, and the algorithm will likely have to proceed well into the image before being able to verify that none of the complete files match. If there are only a million "bad" files, statistically speaking, 20 random bits will match at least one of them. That doesn't sound so bad, but when you consider that most image files contain sizeable headers, the problem grows enormously.
As if that's not enough, it has to search at the full bitrate of the host interface. To positively verify that a packet doesn't contain any naughty bits, it will have to reconstruct an image from a packet stream and compare that against the target image tree using the technique above. Now, this algorithm grows at rate analagous to O = N^2. So searching a 15k image for a match will take not 10 times the search of a 1500 byte packet, but 100 times as long. Worse, the server will have to reconstruct the entire image in memory before declaring it clean, rather than simply passing the bits through the hardware.
So you can probably see where this is going. The software will either completely choke the bandwidth of the ISP (not good from an ISPs perspective - they could lose customers), or they're going to do some optimizations. One which immediately comes to mind is to scan only packets containing certain types of data. Another is to simply start the comparison with the beginning of the packet stream, and if there are no matches, to ignore the rest. The workarounds for both of these techniques are fairly simple: dd some random, fixed amount of data to the beginning of your jpgs and the scanner won't even recognize it as an image. Or operate your filesharing app on a different port, or use a different protocol, etc...
Software like this exists to satisfy the "due diligence" aspect of running a business. I'm still surprised that people take this seriously. I mean, how long has warez been around? Has any technical or legal measure ever prevented people from getting the bits they were looking for? It will make things difficult for the average user, and I'm not to keen on the spy-on-everyone, the-sky-is-falling-terrorists-are-everywhere mentality. But ultimately, it means very little for the astute user. The implications for changing society to accept constant surveillance are more worrisome, though.
You know, this is slightly OT, but I think it applies to the bigger picture. My Mom has been hyping prevention.com lately as a nice way to learn about health-related stuff. I just received an email from her today regarding what happened...
In short, prevention.com got hacked somehow, and she got a "nasty rogue-spyware". She spent quite a bit of time cleaning it up. She even warned me not to go there in her email. I wrote a nice reply, stating in effect, thanks for the warning, but we've switched to Linux.
Now I can just imagine how this would play out in a school running a bunch of Windows machines. One teacher hears from another than prevention.com is a good place for health information; teacher recommends it in class, and next thing you know the whole school is owned.
So who is going to clean up the mess? Will it be:
The already overworked teachers who have only the most tenuous grasp of technology?
The volunteer, part time administrator who has to work another job to put food on the table?
The kids themselves? Even assuming there's a few bright bulbs in the lot, is it really fair to take time away from their education to deal with a situation like this?
saving $1000 is nullified if it drops their productivity by as little as 1%...
I can guarantee that no one in Corporate America(TM) actually cares about the efficiency of the users - if solution A is cheaper than B, they'll choose A every time. After all, if the users are inefficient, that's a management problem. Consider, also, that if IT buys junk and people have to work an extra hour a day to do the same work they did before, that:
If they're salaried, the company doesn't bear the cost of the extra work they have to do. So the company actually benefits financially from interfering with their workers' productivity in such cases.
If they're hourly, the loss of productivity is an employee performance management problem, or at worst, falls on their department management. IOW, IT is never responsible for the actual employee performance. Hence, they can make themselves look better by simply buying a cheaper system.
Engine braking doesn't really use fuel, but it's better to wear down your brake pads as opposed to wearing down your engine.
You would be right, if engine braking was a significant factor in engine wear. When you're engine braking, you're pumping cool air through the engine while keeping the oil pressure high. It's actually harder on the engine to return to idle, where the latent heat from that long uphill climb starts to cook the engine, the oil pressure is low and lubrication insufficient (or less efficient - remember, the pistons are splash lubricated; low rpms means less oil on a hotter surface...). Letting the car drive the engine sucks cool air through the engine, uses less gas, and tends to keep the oil well circulated.
Okay, I know it's a little late to post this, but these are the numbers I'm getting from my EEE 900. I'm running a 3-tap FIR filter to average all the pixels in a dummy frame. This doesn't include the time it would take to pull the frame from the CMOS/CCD sensor.
On battery alone:
Resolution: 160 x 120 : 4223 frames, (422.300000 per second) Resolution: 320 x 240 : 849 frames, (84.900000 per second) Resolution: 640 x 480 : 303 frames, (30.300000 per second) Resolution: 720 x 480 : 269 frames, (26.900000 per second) Resolution: 800 x 600 : 171 frames, (17.100000 per second) Resolution: 1024 x 768 : 118 frames, (11.800000 per second) Resolution: 1280 x 1024 : 71 frames, (7.100000 per second) Resolution: 1600 x 1200 : 30 frames, (3.000000 per second)
On AC its a little better
Resolution: 160 x 120 : 5758 frames, (575.800000 per second) Resolution: 320 x 240 : 1675 frames, (167.500000 per second) Resolution: 640 x 480 : 321 frames, (32.100000 per second) Resolution: 720 x 480 : 353 frames, (35.300000 per second) Resolution: 800 x 600 : 276 frames, (27.600000 per second) Resolution: 1024 x 768 : 169 frames, (16.900000 per second) Resolution: 1280 x 1024 : 101 frames, (10.100000 per second) Resolution: 1600 x 1200 : 60 frames, (6.000000 per second)
Given the sensor resolution is 1280 x 1024, it appears their algorithm uses the full resolution. They could probably get much better results if they used 320 x 240. A little speed binning goes a long way.
Respond to this post if you're interested in the code.
Running Linux. And the voice commands actually work!
I'm not sure why I'd bother to chew up my battery with the webcam when I can just talk to the thing. If anything, it seems to me like the voice recognition would be far more promising than using the webcam.
Okay, I know how this is going to sound, and I'm really not trying to troll, so please bear with me. I suppose there's a contingent of people who like the thought of waving their hands in the air to control their computer (Wii users?!), but I just don't see this going anywhere, especially because Microsoft is involved. If you look at their history, they typically get things wrong the first few times. Whatever promise this technology holds, I expect that:
Any really cool technique will be patented by Microsoft and doomed to obscurity by their poor implementation of same; and
It really is easier for most people to talk to their computer, or use the mouse/keyboard to control their computer, than it is to wave.
You know, someone should have really told these guys about this thing called a low-pass filter. It's very easily implemented in hardware (heck, most DSPs can do it rather handily), and uses very little power. A TI dsp would have no problem handling this kind of load.
As for mediocre hardware, yes, the EEE is a little underpowered compared to a desktop. But, when you consider the fact that a 200 MHz dsp can encode NTSC video in realtime, chewing up 60% of the CPU is just poor implementation. That's ~1 GHz on a fully pipelined, superscalar processor, with a heatsink, to do what an embedded DSP can do with oh, say about 50-100 MHz of processing power, without a heatsink, using a RISC processor, running on AA batteries.
And this yet one of the reasons I believe programmers should have to learn hardware. They wouldn't write code so inefficiently if they only understood the typical hardware engineer's approach to these problems.
I don't get charged for incoming calls. Neither should you.
While there are other things I don't like about them (Such as how difficult it is to sign up for unlimited data - the reps can't seem to grasp that I just want a data pipe to my phone!?), in this regard they've been pretty good. Still waiting for a GSM network, though I don't think that's going to happen any time soon...
Slashdot Mirror
As if a fossil would prove anything. First you'll ask for a fossil, then you'll demand that there be no gaps in the fossil record... Honestly, where will your skepticism end?!
I hate to say it, but you're not following the blind faith of science. Are you sure you're feeling okay? Next thing you know, you could be denying the theory of evolution based on the lack of evidence, and other crazy things.
Are you sure you're feeling okay?
Any contract or promise contrary to the law is null and void.
"It is very little more than a broad statement of support for a general principle without any concrete backup mechanism to ensure that the guidelines will be followed."
This is little more than a PR stunt used to shore up their public image. The agreement language is vague, and there are questions about if it is even binding. It can probably not even be enforced, because in most countries, conspiracy is a crime. So if a company should do anything which would hinder prosecution, they could be charged with:
I'm not counting on this having any effect other than people saying, "Look, Google really isn't evil!". Which is exactly the intended effect.
But the recent civil forfeiture provisions for copyright infringement they're trying to get signed (maybe already signed?) into law will allow them to do the same thing. The Feds can already seize your property on the mere suspicion that it is being used for illegal drug activity, and are not required to even file charges. When said seizure happens, the burden of proof is on the owner prove that it wasn't used for illegal activity.
I agree, it shouldn't be modded troll, but I guess that's just because I've got a wider perspective than many. I don't count honest opinion, however offensive, as troll material. I guess I'm old enough to have a higher standard for trolls, you know, the posts specifically and cleverly crafted to create a particular response... but I digress. Now get off my lawn!
ID is not a hoax - there's no intent to deceive. Regardless of whether you accept the arguments or not, or whether they have any merit, there's never been any scientific fraud going on. Instead, what trips up most people is that ID proponents are scientists arguing philosophical positions based on their scientific knowledge. Some people just can't wrap their head around the thought that a scientist might abandon the scientific method and wax philosophical once in a while...
And on that note, let's not forget that all of science is based on a philosophical fallacy; after the fact, therefore because of the fact.... And does anyone have to harp on correlation does not equal causation? Yet these are the foundation upon which modern science is built, and while it may be a very good model, and even better way to bet, it doesn't prove anything. And in spite of this, some people put it (science) up on a pedestal as if no scientific theory has ever been wrong... If ID is a hoax, then all of science even moreso. It can be wrong, but it is not a hoax - its proponents really, honestly believe it.
There are still people who wish it weren't a hoax. It's an interesting tale in the ways people will ignore evidence of the contrary when it comes to something they want to believe. The signs were obvious - found in a shop with stone cutting tools, yet ignored for years afterward...
Okay, so twitter may be potentially used by terrorists.
But why focus on potential, when you have actual terrorist tools:
I think the solution to terrorism is pretty obvious: We'll all have to give up our cars, telephones, mail, credit, and cash, and go back to living 1850's style.
Or, we could just learn to deal with the fact that the world is a dangerous place, and that no matter what political position we take, some people are going to hate us for it...
But on the other hand it is naive to assume that someone who feeds a particular fantasy fetish would not indulge themselves if the opportunity arose. If someone, knowing the social consequences of getting caught with this particular material, chooses to seek it out anyway, it is more indicative of someone who cannot control their own desires than someone who would respect the rule of law and rights of others. Whether they abuse children or not is probably more a matter of opportunity than their own moral scruples.
You know, I can understand your sentiments, except that hapless Windows users don't have a choice but to have filesharing running on their machines. In fact, most don't even know it's running, or that it's enabled by default. With Linux, I don't have to start Samba, BIND, sendmail, etc... unless I want to. Windows users have much less control over the security of their systems than their Linux running counterparts.
Quite honestly, the insecurity of linux programs is a moot point; I don't have to run that program. The only security of undeniable consequence for the end user is that of the kernel, because everything else can be turned off. With Linux, I get to choose my risk acceptance level; with Windows, Redmond chooses it for me.
They don't have to be found guilty for their property to be seized. That's the problem. Under the civil forfeiture laws, the government can seize a person's property without ever proving that a crime even took place.
That from the fat of the overweight American comes the cure for heart disease brought on by his poor diet!
With two thirds of Americans overweight, this is promising news.
In the US, but this is beyond the pale. There are already laws like RICO which can be used to shut down corrupt organizations.
If this is allowed to set precedent, the Feds will literally be allowed to steal a company's trademark if anyone employed by the company does something illegal. I'm reminded of the Steve Jackson Games fiasco where the Feds seized their computers because one of their employees illegally downloaded a document from AT & T that same was selling for $17. (IIRC)
I seriously doubt that seizing a gang's name is going to deter them the least. At worst, they'll just change their name. This is more about expanding the power of the Federal government than it is about law enforcement. With civil forfeiture laws extending to copyright violations, soon the day will come when police departments will shore up their budgets by seizing computers under the guise of copyright enforcement ("Can you prove that copy of Windows wasn't pirated? I didn't think so...")
I looked at the Zaurus, but it was just too expensive at the time. Maybe they've come down since, but I couldn't see spending $600 for it.
I was at first thinking, "Man, I just paid too much for that thing..."
I really do want a pocket linux box. Here's the problem: the keyboard on my EEE PC is just usable. Make it smaller, and you can't really type on it.
And then I learned that it's QVGA. And that it doesn't even have a GB of storage. I think it's a cool gadget, but it's more like a linux PDA than a pc.
I'm feeling better about my EEE PC now.
And a sworn affidavit can't fix.
Even if his hosting company is brain-dead, they should at least recognize that a signed affidavit that he is, indeed, the copyright holder will get them off the hook if any litigation comes their way. Failing that, he could file charges against them for copyright infringement under the DMCA, and sue for statutory damages. I believe the going rate is around $168,000 per song...
I'll just follow up with one thing. The god in the gaps argument has been gone for a long time. There is a fundamental difference between someone saying, "This data follows the same pattern as other created things..." and "I don't understand it so god must have done it." One is an attempt to gain further understanding of the phenomenon, and the other is an attempt to avoid all future thought about it.
Okay, consider this:
Not to tear down evolution, but you do realize that the evidence we do see could be interpreted in a much different light, and still be consistent. The fossil record, DNA, etc... could be explained away as God being an object-oriented programmer. After all, if you already have the DNA for the creation of the basic organs, eyes, lungs, etc... why would you reinvent the wheel? The fact that DNA is shared in the animal kingdom follows the same pattern we've seen emerge in computers with code reuse and object oriented programming. It doesn't preclude ID, but rather, supports it.
I think the part that ID critics too easily dismiss is that the current evidence can support a lot of wildly different theories about the formation of life on this planet, and to dismiss any theory that doesn't agree with your pre-conceived notions of evolution is strangely reminiscent of religious fanatics who reject anything that disagrees with their sacred book. Even the theory of evolution has undergone quite a bit of change with new discoveries, and was, at one point, provably false. Yet that didn't stand in the way of certain minded people from treating as if it were the gospel truth.
Now I personally am not a huge fan of ID because some of its early claims, while strong, were merely statistical in nature and perhaps not the best way to argue the point. However, even failed theories have something to offer in knowing what isn't correct, so I don't see the big problem with its existence as a theory. Science has been notably wrong before (you know, that whole Earth-is-the-center-of-the-universe thing...), and it routinely discovers information which invalidates previous theories. I'm not sure why evolution proponents have such a large problem with this; currently, the evidence is ambiguous (could support either ID or evolution), but as we discover more, will correct itself. To claim now (as some do) that ID is false - without proving so - is simply ignorant. To form a strong conclusion, we just need more evidence, and strangely, some people don't seem to recognize this.
I think there is a suspicion of ID not because of its merits, but rather, because some people fear the implications of the existence of God. If there was scientific proof of God's existence, they'd have to change their entire thought model of the Universe, and that change is particularly scary to them. They don't have the answers to the questions such a discovery would raise. But these people are exactly the kind of people we don't want in science; we want people who are able to look at the evidence dispassionately, and who aren't afraid to change their understanding in light of new evidence. We don't need someone who is going to stick to their dogma because they have a personal stake in the outcome of one particular theory over another. If, as ID critics claim, ID really isn't supported by the evidence, it will end up in the trash bin of history. It wouldn't be the first time a wrong theory has been put forth in science, and it will certainly not be the last. But, if we are really going to take a scientific approach to the formation of life on this planet, we should be content to bear with incorrect theories, knowing that eventually the discovery of additional information will settle the issue.
This is not going to be very difficult to defeat. Sure, there's encryption, but even for the slightly-less-than-completely-paranoid types, the solution is not very difficult.
When you consider the problem the scanner has to solve, and the algorithm that will most likely be used (Google Boyer-Moore string matching for an intro...), the solution becomes almost trivial.
Software like this exists to satisfy the "due diligence" aspect of running a business. I'm still surprised that people take this seriously. I mean, how long has warez been around? Has any technical or legal measure ever prevented people from getting the bits they were looking for? It will make things difficult for the average user, and I'm not to keen on the spy-on-everyone, the-sky-is-falling-terrorists-are-everywhere mentality. But ultimately, it means very little for the astute user. The implications for changing society to accept constant surveillance are more worrisome, though.
You know, this is slightly OT, but I think it applies to the bigger picture. My Mom has been hyping prevention.com lately as a nice way to learn about health-related stuff. I just received an email from her today regarding what happened...
In short, prevention.com got hacked somehow, and she got a "nasty rogue-spyware". She spent quite a bit of time cleaning it up. She even warned me not to go there in her email. I wrote a nice reply, stating in effect, thanks for the warning, but we've switched to Linux.
Now I can just imagine how this would play out in a school running a bunch of Windows machines. One teacher hears from another than prevention.com is a good place for health information; teacher recommends it in class, and next thing you know the whole school is owned.
So who is going to clean up the mess? Will it be:
Windows: who is going to clean up the mess?
saving $1000 is nullified if it drops their productivity by as little as 1%...
I can guarantee that no one in Corporate America(TM) actually cares about the efficiency of the users - if solution A is cheaper than B, they'll choose A every time. After all, if the users are inefficient, that's a management problem. Consider, also, that if IT buys junk and people have to work an extra hour a day to do the same work they did before, that:
Engine braking doesn't really use fuel, but it's better to wear down your brake pads as opposed to wearing down your engine.
You would be right, if engine braking was a significant factor in engine wear. When you're engine braking, you're pumping cool air through the engine while keeping the oil pressure high. It's actually harder on the engine to return to idle, where the latent heat from that long uphill climb starts to cook the engine, the oil pressure is low and lubrication insufficient (or less efficient - remember, the pistons are splash lubricated; low rpms means less oil on a hotter surface...). Letting the car drive the engine sucks cool air through the engine, uses less gas, and tends to keep the oil well circulated.
And my patience for the last 8 years. I don't need any emails for that.
Okay, I know it's a little late to post this, but these are the numbers I'm getting from my EEE 900. I'm running a 3-tap FIR filter to average all the pixels in a dummy frame. This doesn't include the time it would take to pull the frame from the CMOS/CCD sensor.
On battery alone:
On AC its a little better
Given the sensor resolution is 1280 x 1024, it appears their algorithm uses the full resolution. They could probably get much better results if they used 320 x 240. A little speed binning goes a long way.
Respond to this post if you're interested in the code.
Running Linux. And the voice commands actually work!
I'm not sure why I'd bother to chew up my battery with the webcam when I can just talk to the thing. If anything, it seems to me like the voice recognition would be far more promising than using the webcam.
Okay, I know how this is going to sound, and I'm really not trying to troll, so please bear with me. I suppose there's a contingent of people who like the thought of waving their hands in the air to control their computer (Wii users?!), but I just don't see this going anywhere, especially because Microsoft is involved. If you look at their history, they typically get things wrong the first few times. Whatever promise this technology holds, I expect that:
You know, someone should have really told these guys about this thing called a low-pass filter. It's very easily implemented in hardware (heck, most DSPs can do it rather handily), and uses very little power. A TI dsp would have no problem handling this kind of load.
As for mediocre hardware, yes, the EEE is a little underpowered compared to a desktop. But, when you consider the fact that a 200 MHz dsp can encode NTSC video in realtime, chewing up 60% of the CPU is just poor implementation. That's ~1 GHz on a fully pipelined, superscalar processor, with a heatsink, to do what an embedded DSP can do with oh, say about 50-100 MHz of processing power, without a heatsink, using a RISC processor, running on AA batteries.
And this yet one of the reasons I believe programmers should have to learn hardware. They wouldn't write code so inefficiently if they only understood the typical hardware engineer's approach to these problems.
I don't get charged for incoming calls. Neither should you.
While there are other things I don't like about them (Such as how difficult it is to sign up for unlimited data - the reps can't seem to grasp that I just want a data pipe to my phone!?), in this regard they've been pretty good. Still waiting for a GSM network, though I don't think that's going to happen any time soon...