Is it more important to get technology such as the Internet into the hands of residents of the 3rd world, or to use more traditional approaches to increasing their welfare, such as food donation, education, transfer of farming tech, etc?
The problem is that you'd probably get a *shitty* picture. Or at best, it wouldn't reproduce "what you saw" any more than a regular camera does.
The majority of what you "see" is exactly because of the post-processing your brain does, as well as your eye and optic nerve. This occurs both in the optic realm (shading, motion, etc), and because your brain applies all kinds of cognitive processes to the visual signal. It isn't simply a passive sensor like a CCD.
Yes, this is hysterically funny. These guys are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Where have they been for the past 13 years? My first reaction was: walk??? CD???
I wasn't comparing TIA with the atomic bomb. I was comparing building collaborative software with working on the atomic bomb. That's what Groove does, they don't "build TIA". They are an equivalent to the guys who sold the steel that went into the casing.
I find your opinion of Mutual Asssured Destruction (i.e. "MAD") rather interesting. At the time, MAD was just a theory -- it only worked in retrospect (and there were many times when people wondered if it WOULD work -- for instance, Cuba and Viet Nam). Apropos of that, it was MAD that led to many of the bloody proxy wars between the US and the USSR: Nam and Afghanistan.
So here's an interesting question. If you learned that the Soviet Union were building a "TIA", would it become OK?:-)
Far be it for me to tell people where to draw their own moral boundaries. If Mitch felt he had to do that, no problem there.
However, if you place your cutpoint too far to one side, you are going to have an awfully hard time getting up in the morning. Someone further down in the posting thread asked a good question: What if TIA decides to start using his whizzy new open-source PIM? Does he pack up and leave that too? You can say "I worked on this, and this is NOT what I had in mind" without washing your hands of the whole thing every time it doesn't go the way you envisioned.
And, a lot of people out there work on things where the DON'T (or might not) know all the plausable uses of their product. I work for a Large East-Coast Telephone Company (tm). It would not surprise me if we provided phone lines to TIA employees. Should I quit?
I wasn't holding it up as one. But for some people, it might be.
I was simply using it to demonstrate the fact that software can be used for purposes far afield from the purpose a developer envisoned when it was written. Certainly, being shocked when that happens is rather naive.
Does Kapor think that the DoD has no need for desktop collaboration? If not, does it matter what organization? Is the Army a "good" user and the NSA a "bad" user? What about if the actual user is an Army person, who is doing some duties for the NSA (this is frequently the case)? It gets grey pretty fast.
This whole thing is rather silly. Are people here equating building a P2P collaboration app with shared whiteboads and calendaring with building the atom bomb? I'm sorry, but the two things aren't even CLOSE to morally equivalent.
If they are, all you hackers out there better put down your keyboards, because this is a wakeup call. Practically everything written out there in software-land could be used for nefarious purposes -- whether open source, closed source, or you name it. Remember the Marine training program using Doom?
Bah -- that architecture is but a child! You can STILL run programs written on the IBM/360 on the mainframes of today! Of course, technology-wise, there is no comparison, but the core instruction set is the same!
Well, you've been marked "insightful", so you clearly aren't taking the karma hit you should:-)
Saying "get over it", however, is an interesting form of denial. I get 20-30 spams/day at my corporate address, despite the fact that I've been careful about using it (but hey, I have published papers out there with my email address, and they are available in electronic form).
Probably 30% or more of the spams I receive are completely vile pornographic spam. I don't have any kids, but I don't want my son or daughter getting a spam with a picture of a woman with a $$*&&@ shoved in her #*&$&. No one should have to put up with this, regardless of their stance on pornography! It's just wrong.
They didn't *win* anything. All "they" are required to do is issue a report to congress in 90 days detailing the system's function and scope. They aren't required to stop anything, assuming they file the appropriate paperwork.
A better version of the article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/12/politics/12PRIV. html (the one cited by the poster is a boiled-down version).
Not particularly any more or less than any other Microsoft technology. In fact, if you do any Microsoft-centric work in your shop,.Net is a significant improvement over (COM | ASP | etc). If you live for cross-platform portability, you won't be using any of these anyway.
The attitude of people who say this is stupid blame-the-victim krapola. Furthermore, it denigrates the whole of the open source movement to something analagous to a hobby shop. "Oh, you don't like how this soapbox derby car runs? Well why don't you go whittle your own!?!?!"
99 and 44 100ths% of people don't really want to crucify themselves just to get something done. Hey, if video for Linux isn't there, no biggie. Rome wasn't built overnight, and maybe JWZ should lighten up. But he calls them as he sees them. The *current* state of the world is crap, and fscking around with skins doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you really want to just solve a simple problem.
Re:Good move, hope they don't get in trouble
on
Cryptome Log Subpoenaed
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I don't get it. What amount of mojo does the Attorney General for Mass. have in NY? Can't he just tell them to go pound sand?
If you can tell me how to run a business with only 20% overhead, I'd like to know about it. Employer contributions to Social Security is 7% alone; health insurance can run 10+%; don't even mention 401(k). And that's before you get to office space, computers, and the like.
Well, that's a bit of a contrived problem. It's unlikely you'd ever only remember that about the show. When was the last time you searched for a web page only knowing a single phrase with almost no content words or names, out of context, without any idea of the context?
In the case of the NPR show, it's likely you'd know the general topic, or a speaker, or some proper names that were mentioned. All of these can be used to augment your search, and all of them can contribute to the accuracy of your results.
You can search reliably because of the redundancy of language. You don't need 100% accuracy because people repeat themselves, names are more distinct than common words, etc.
It really depends on the problem. If you want to guarantee that if a person says "frobnitz" that you're going to find it, yes, you need 100% accuracy. But even human listners aren't going to give that to you. If you want to find people mentioning words associated with terrorism, your accuracy rate can drop somewhat. If you want to find people talking about the *topic* of terrorism, your accuracy can drop even more.
Your comment about context is very perceptive, however -- I would say that NO current ASR system has essentially ANY real-world context, and as you said this is a tremendous boost in how humans interpret speech. Once that breakthrough is made, NLP in general will take a quantum step forward.
I dunno, why don't you try it. Go to Google and do a search on 'bomb'. Was that very useful or appealing to you? I imagine not!:-)
Now, try that same tactic on every conversation in America. The utility would be some order of magnitude LESS than the crap you got back from google! (if you can have utility less than zero, that is!)
One thing not obvious from the InfoWorld article is that the FastTalk system does NOT leave you with a transcribed version of the speech. It is *SEARCH ONLY* -- meaning, it can tell you that the word "frobnitz" was spoken at 1'30 into a particular article, and then you have to go and listen.
This is of somewhat limited utility. Perhaps if you had 2000 hours of John Gotti talking about lasagne, and one minute where he was talking about rubbing out Sammy the Bull, you could speed forward to find that bit. But if he talks about Sammy a whole lot, it's going to be easier to *read* and skim than listen.
The nice thing about using speech recognition for an application is that the reco rate doesn't HAVE to be 100% accurate. After all, YOUR speech recognition system (the one in wetware, between your ears) isn't 100% accurate, and that doesn't stop you from understanding people, right?
Dictation (the only application where you need/want 100% accuracy) is only one small application for speech recognition.
It's not an issue of policy at all. There was no little "midnight is noon" sign on the web site, was there? So then the theatre (or the online service -- Fandango?) sold you the wrong item. There are basic legal codes of commerce that apply here.
First, you're going to have to live up to the fact that you aren't likely to see the movie at midnight:-)
Second, try calling the online ticket service and see where you get. After that, for god's sake, call the credit card co! It's 99% likely you will get a refund! (in fact, I would simply have made that your first stop).
Last, if that doesn't work, write to one of those consumer complaint columns they have in practically every newspaper in the US.
Yea, I did a search after I posted and found that... Hmm, maybe it's time for me to get a region-free DVD:-) (I'm in the US, home of the fascist entertainment lobby)
Slashdot Mirror
Is it more important to get technology such as the Internet into the hands of residents of the 3rd world, or to use more traditional approaches to increasing their welfare, such as food donation, education, transfer of farming tech, etc?
REST WINS! FLAWLESS VICTORY!
The problem is that you'd probably get a *shitty* picture. Or at best, it wouldn't reproduce "what you saw" any more than a regular camera does.
The majority of what you "see" is exactly because of the post-processing your brain does, as well as your eye and optic nerve. This occurs both in the optic realm (shading, motion, etc), and because your brain applies all kinds of cognitive processes to the visual signal. It isn't simply a passive sensor like a CCD.
Yes, this is hysterically funny. These guys are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Where have they been for the past 13 years? My first reaction was: walk??? CD???
Well, it is flamebait :-)
:-)
I wasn't comparing TIA with the atomic bomb. I was comparing building collaborative software with working on the atomic bomb. That's what Groove does, they don't "build TIA". They are an equivalent to the guys who sold the steel that went into the casing.
I find your opinion of Mutual Asssured Destruction (i.e. "MAD") rather interesting. At the time, MAD was just a theory -- it only worked in retrospect (and there were many times when people wondered if it WOULD work -- for instance, Cuba and Viet Nam). Apropos of that, it was MAD that led to many of the bloody proxy wars between the US and the USSR: Nam and Afghanistan.
So here's an interesting question. If you learned that the Soviet Union were building a "TIA", would it become OK?
Far be it for me to tell people where to draw their own moral boundaries. If Mitch felt he had to do that, no problem there.
However, if you place your cutpoint too far to one side, you are going to have an awfully hard time getting up in the morning. Someone further down in the posting thread asked a good question: What if TIA decides to start using his whizzy new open-source PIM? Does he pack up and leave that too? You can say "I worked on this, and this is NOT what I had in mind" without washing your hands of the whole thing every time it doesn't go the way you envisioned.
And, a lot of people out there work on things where the DON'T (or might not) know all the plausable uses of their product. I work for a Large East-Coast Telephone Company (tm). It would not surprise me if we provided phone lines to TIA employees. Should I quit?
I wasn't holding it up as one. But for some people, it might be.
I was simply using it to demonstrate the fact that software can be used for purposes far afield from the purpose a developer envisoned when it was written. Certainly, being shocked when that happens is rather naive.
Does Kapor think that the DoD has no need for desktop collaboration? If not, does it matter what organization? Is the Army a "good" user and the NSA a "bad" user? What about if the actual user is an Army person, who is doing some duties for the NSA (this is frequently the case)? It gets grey pretty fast.
This whole thing is rather silly. Are people here equating building a P2P collaboration app with shared whiteboads and calendaring with building the atom bomb? I'm sorry, but the two things aren't even CLOSE to morally equivalent.
If they are, all you hackers out there better put down your keyboards, because this is a wakeup call. Practically everything written out there in software-land could be used for nefarious purposes -- whether open source, closed source, or you name it. Remember the Marine training program using Doom?
...or vice-versa... it's so hard to tell sometimes :-)
Bah -- that architecture is but a child! You can STILL run programs written on the IBM/360 on the mainframes of today! Of course, technology-wise, there is no comparison, but the core instruction set is the same!
Well, you've been marked "insightful", so you clearly aren't taking the karma hit you should :-)
Saying "get over it", however, is an interesting form of denial. I get 20-30 spams/day at my corporate address, despite the fact that I've been careful about using it (but hey, I have published papers out there with my email address, and they are available in electronic form).
Probably 30% or more of the spams I receive are completely vile pornographic spam. I don't have any kids, but I don't want my son or daughter getting a spam with a picture of a woman with a $$*&&@ shoved in her #*&$&. No one should have to put up with this, regardless of their stance on pornography! It's just wrong.
Well, whether it can or can not is rather open to interpretation, unlike the IRS, which can freely snoop into people's privacy (!!!)
They didn't *win* anything. All "they" are required to do is issue a report to congress in 90 days detailing the system's function and scope. They aren't required to stop anything, assuming they file the appropriate paperwork.
. html (the one cited by the poster is a boiled-down version).
A better version of the article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/12/politics/12PRIV
Not particularly any more or less than any other Microsoft technology. In fact, if you do any Microsoft-centric work in your shop, .Net is a significant improvement over (COM | ASP | etc). If you live for cross-platform portability, you won't be using any of these anyway.
Oop, silly me :-) You're right!
Heh.
Amen, brother.
The attitude of people who say this is stupid blame-the-victim krapola. Furthermore, it denigrates the whole of the open source movement to something analagous to a hobby shop. "Oh, you don't like how this soapbox derby car runs? Well why don't you go whittle your own!?!?!"
99 and 44 100ths% of people don't really want to crucify themselves just to get something done. Hey, if video for Linux isn't there, no biggie. Rome wasn't built overnight, and maybe JWZ should lighten up. But he calls them as he sees them. The *current* state of the world is crap, and fscking around with skins doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you really want to just solve a simple problem.
I don't get it. What amount of mojo does the Attorney General for Mass. have in NY? Can't he just tell them to go pound sand?
If you can tell me how to run a business with only 20% overhead, I'd like to know about it. Employer contributions to Social Security is 7% alone; health insurance can run 10+%; don't even mention 401(k). And that's before you get to office space, computers, and the like.
You'd be lucky to be burdened at 2x.
Well, that's a bit of a contrived problem. It's unlikely you'd ever only remember that about the show. When was the last time you searched for a web page only knowing a single phrase with almost no content words or names, out of context, without any idea of the context?
In the case of the NPR show, it's likely you'd know the general topic, or a speaker, or some proper names that were mentioned. All of these can be used to augment your search, and all of them can contribute to the accuracy of your results.
You can search reliably because of the redundancy of language. You don't need 100% accuracy because people repeat themselves, names are more distinct than common words, etc.
It really depends on the problem. If you want to guarantee that if a person says "frobnitz" that you're going to find it, yes, you need 100% accuracy. But even human listners aren't going to give that to you. If you want to find people mentioning words associated with terrorism, your accuracy rate can drop somewhat. If you want to find people talking about the *topic* of terrorism, your accuracy can drop even more.
Your comment about context is very perceptive, however -- I would say that NO current ASR system has essentially ANY real-world context, and as you said this is a tremendous boost in how humans interpret speech. Once that breakthrough is made, NLP in general will take a quantum step forward.
I dunno, why don't you try it. Go to Google and do a search on 'bomb'. Was that very useful or appealing to you? I imagine not! :-)
Now, try that same tactic on every conversation in America. The utility would be some order of magnitude LESS than the crap you got back from google! (if you can have utility less than zero, that is!)
One thing not obvious from the InfoWorld article is that the FastTalk system does NOT leave you with a transcribed version of the speech. It is *SEARCH ONLY* -- meaning, it can tell you that the word "frobnitz" was spoken at 1'30 into a particular article, and then you have to go and listen.
This is of somewhat limited utility. Perhaps if you had 2000 hours of John Gotti talking about lasagne, and one minute where he was talking about rubbing out Sammy the Bull, you could speed forward to find that bit. But if he talks about Sammy a whole lot, it's going to be easier to *read* and skim than listen.
The nice thing about using speech recognition for an application is that the reco rate doesn't HAVE to be 100% accurate. After all, YOUR speech recognition system (the one in wetware, between your ears) isn't 100% accurate, and that doesn't stop you from understanding people, right?
Dictation (the only application where you need/want 100% accuracy) is only one small application for speech recognition.
It's not an issue of policy at all. There was no little "midnight is noon" sign on the web site, was there? So then the theatre (or the online service -- Fandango?) sold you the wrong item. There are basic legal codes of commerce that apply here.
:-)
First, you're going to have to live up to the fact that you aren't likely to see the movie at midnight
Second, try calling the online ticket service and see where you get. After that, for god's sake, call the credit card co! It's 99% likely you will get a refund! (in fact, I would simply have made that your first stop).
Last, if that doesn't work, write to one of those consumer complaint columns they have in practically every newspaper in the US.
Yea, I did a search after I posted and found that... Hmm, maybe it's time for me to get a region-free DVD :-) (I'm in the US, home of the fascist entertainment lobby)