My handle "Evil Twin Skippy" comes from the fact that I have a face with such average features that everyone swears they've met me before. I've had at least one "twin" me in every school I've attended, and every large office.
The problem with face recognition software is that while there are only a finite number of ways in which human faces are assembled. Even if the total combinations number in the millions, there are 250 million people in the United States. The probability of the system having identical signatures for 2 people is 1.
But it's worse than that. Certain groupings of features are a LOT more common than others. If you happen to have a criminal with one of those "everyday man" faces, you are going to be collaring innocent folks left right and center.
We had that happen in Philadelphia with a home invasion rapist and murdere. The police released a really vague composite sketch, that just about matched every white guy in the city. It was chaos.
No. Manuel and Enricho have you beat for burger flipping and Janitor jobs. They are willing to work for less than minumum wage, and in excess of 80 hours a week because they are here illegally and would have to go home if their employer dimed them out.
Considering the Janitors and cleaning staff are increasingly undocumented workers from foriegn shores or south of the border, how exactly does that help US workers again?
Too many executive think that running a business is like running a military campaign. (Conversley too many in this adminstration think that running a military campaign is like running a business.)
The unfortunate fact is they never drill deeper than this loony premise. If the actually read the Art of War, Sun Tsu cautions that war is a dreadully expensive, resource sucking enterprise that should be the last resolrt when all other solutions have failed. When engaged in war you seek quick victory by throwing everything you have at the problem. And you pick your battles carefully so that you will be victortious in every encounter.
The problem is that nobody sits down and outright reads The Art of War. They always read some economist/gladhander/business consultants's take on the Art of War, where they cherry pick choice quotes to make it sound like it's a no holds barred world where you can treat your underlings like conscripts.
(Yes, there are elements of this in the Art of War. Then again there are elements of bigomy, incest, and murder in the Bible.) The crux of the AOW is that you win a war strategically. Ask
anyone who has read one of these corporate raider manuals
and that would say that business is won by having the best
trained troops working at their most efficient with inventorties
delivered just in time...
I'd say its more of a permanent effect of capitalism. Capitalism is all about people constnatly trying to do more and more, and make more and more money, and get higher and higher positions, and get better and better grades and a million other things.
Yes. But in order for it to work, we have to also accept that a vast majority of those that strive will fail. We are really big on exhalting the achievers. We pull the rug out from under any percieved failures. There is nothing to fall back on if you aren't independently wealthy.
Um, I don't think that is really the employee's problem.
I personally have put my foot down about "expectations" on the part of management. My wife and I had a baby and I did not want to be a "virtual dad."
And frankly, even if it didn't work I was prepared to walk. If they are expecting the work of 2 people out of you, they should in fact be hiring 2 people, not making you feel constantly inadaquate.
Re:Sounds familiar...
on
Port-A-Nuke
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· Score: 2, Informative
They've been using sealed reactors like this in Antarctica for decades.
Re:I've got mine on pre-order.
on
Port-A-Nuke
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· Score: 1
I've been using florescent bulbs in my lighting for years. I'm still waiting for one to burn out. Did have one with a bum starter (crib death), and one that was smashed up in a move. But other than that many of the bulbs in my house have followed be from at least 2 apartments.
I did go incadecent with my track lighting. But a) these are huge bulbs on a b) dimmer. Florescent bulbs really don't want to hear about dimmers.
You got to think about that for a minute. Sure having your liver torn out by an eagle would be horrifying for the first couple of weeks. But there has to be a point, after the 5000th day in a row, that you start cracking jokes about it.
Heck, I'd think that after the first century or two the eagle would start to think it was getting old.
"Hey Bird."
"Dude. Wazzup?"
"Same old same old, chained to a rock."
"Man Zeus is such a cheap ass. He could have at least sprung for cable."
"Are you kidding, 80 channels with nothing on. I'd rather have a giant bird suck my liver out!"
Uncomfortable laughter.
"All right, lets get this over with. It's my turn to watch the clutch tonight."
"What on Earth does your wife do at night. I thought Eagles were blind in the dark."
"Have you been chained to a rock for eternity or something. We have lights these day."
If you can't describe the environment in which an experiment can be reproduced reliably, you don't understand the phenominon properly enough to be calling press conferences.
I was trying to train college interns on how to do it. And not "handy with a screwdriver" type interns. The "would bleed to death of a sheet metal cut" interns.
You do realize that the only way to produce an EMP of any size big enough to disrupt the systems on an aircraft is a nuclear explosion.
Small-aircraft crashes are a lot more common than you give them credit. Personal aircraft are often built from low-cost components, and are often not as well maintained as a commercial airliner. They are far lighter and much more suceptible to weather. They often carry one of each instrument whereas a larger plain would have 2 or three redundant units.
Well to be fair, you can't by a Dell workstation without a software license either. And Dell doesn't sell an AMD64 workstation. And even if they sold an AMD64 workstation, Windows can't use most of the advanced features of the chip.
If running Linux is your concern, you have your choice of Gentoo, Yellow Dog, and Debian for PPC hardware, not to mention NetBSD (which is what makes of the underpinnings of OS X anyway.)
I just like being able to close the lid on my damn laptop and have it go to sleep and wake reliably when I open it again. Everything else merely requires installing GCC and automake.
The CPU runs a lower frequency, but the memory bus is actually twice as fast (1.6 GB/s vs the P4's 800MB/s)
I'm presently compiling QT (really huge nasty package) on a 1Ghz G4 iBook in the background. The GUI is still as responsive as when the machine is standing still. Mind you, this is on a single processor system, and a laptop at that. I'm just running the standard OS X Gui. CPU is at about 75% usage.
A lot more than clock-speed goes into the performance of a machine.
Actually the Xserves are headless. I have 3 in the basement I'm slowly migrating our network functions over to. Pretty sweet suite of tools they give you to manage the puppies, and it's got a DB9 serial connector on the back.
I work at a science museum. When I took over the network we had 5 or 10 that had to be upgraded from the whopping 32MB of ram that came standard.
I upgraded one before we figured out it was actually cheaper to send the units to an apple-certifed repair center. Disemboweling those things took hours and practically an electrician's certification. The next model did provide a door to access the RAM and ROM slots, but of course that really doesn't help fix the pile of machines you bought already.
I'm remembering the last time I upgraded the RAM on a first-gen iMac. Nothing like having to pop out the CRT to access the main-board. Fortunately we have an apple-certified repair shop down the street. Sure it can be expensive, but my time isn't exactly cheap either.
Slashdot Mirror
The Swift-Server Veterens for Truth meanwhile has posted a story from Steve Job's cousin's roomate claiming that the Apple IIe did not in fact exist.
Processes
Maybe I'm bitter because I just sent my 6 month old Clie back to Sony so they could fix a defective backlight.
Fsking Pennsylvania! (State law specifically exempts IT workers.)
My handle "Evil Twin Skippy" comes from the fact that I have a face with such average features that everyone swears they've met me before. I've had at least one "twin" me in every school I've attended, and every large office.
The problem with face recognition software is that while there are only a finite number of ways in which human faces are assembled. Even if the total combinations number in the millions, there are 250 million people in the United States. The probability of the system having identical signatures for 2 people is 1.
But it's worse than that. Certain groupings of features are a LOT more common than others. If you happen to have a criminal with one of those "everyday man" faces, you are going to be collaring innocent folks left right and center.
We had that happen in Philadelphia with a home invasion rapist and murdere. The police released a really vague composite sketch, that just about matched every white guy in the city. It was chaos.
Why am I seeing this as an opener to Survivor Season 14: The Ghetto.
You are.
(Hits DVR button, plays video back a second time for added effect.)
Oh wait, did I say that out loud?
No. Manuel and Enricho have you beat for burger flipping and Janitor jobs. They are willing to work for less than minumum wage, and in excess of 80 hours a week because they are here illegally and would have to go home if their employer dimed them out.
Considering the Janitors and cleaning staff are increasingly undocumented workers from foriegn shores or south of the border, how exactly does that help US workers again?
The unfortunate fact is they never drill deeper than this loony premise. If the actually read the Art of War, Sun Tsu cautions that war is a dreadully expensive, resource sucking enterprise that should be the last resolrt when all other solutions have failed. When engaged in war you seek quick victory by throwing everything you have at the problem. And you pick your battles carefully so that you will be victortious in every encounter.
The problem is that nobody sits down and outright reads The Art of War. They always read some economist/gladhander/business consultants's take on the Art of War, where they cherry pick choice quotes to make it sound like it's a no holds barred world where you can treat your underlings like conscripts.
(Yes, there are elements of this in the Art of War. Then again there are elements of bigomy, incest, and murder in the Bible.) The crux of the AOW is that you win a war strategically. Ask anyone who has read one of these corporate raider manuals and that would say that business is won by having the best trained troops working at their most efficient with inventorties delivered just in time...
In other words, it's hooey.
Yes. But in order for it to work, we have to also accept that a vast majority of those that strive will fail. We are really big on exhalting the achievers. We pull the rug out from under any percieved failures. There is nothing to fall back on if you aren't independently wealthy.
Oh brother. More "Strategic meetings"...
I personally have put my foot down about "expectations" on the part of management. My wife and I had a baby and I did not want to be a "virtual dad."
And frankly, even if it didn't work I was prepared to walk. If they are expecting the work of 2 people out of you, they should in fact be hiring 2 people, not making you feel constantly inadaquate.
Little blurb on little reactors around the world.
I did go incadecent with my track lighting. But a) these are huge bulbs on a b) dimmer. Florescent bulbs really don't want to hear about dimmers.
Heck, I'd think that after the first century or two the eagle would start to think it was getting old.
"Hey Bird."
"Dude. Wazzup?"
"Same old same old, chained to a rock."
"Man Zeus is such a cheap ass. He could have at least sprung for cable."
"Are you kidding, 80 channels with nothing on. I'd rather have a giant bird suck my liver out!"
Uncomfortable laughter.
"All right, lets get this over with. It's my turn to watch the clutch tonight."
"What on Earth does your wife do at night. I thought Eagles were blind in the dark."
"Have you been chained to a rock for eternity or something. We have lights these day."
Uncomfortable laughter.
If you can't describe the environment in which an experiment can be reproduced reliably, you don't understand the phenominon properly enough to be calling press conferences.
I was trying to train college interns on how to do it. And not "handy with a screwdriver" type interns. The "would bleed to death of a sheet metal cut" interns.
Small-aircraft crashes are a lot more common than you give them credit. Personal aircraft are often built from low-cost components, and are often not as well maintained as a commercial airliner. They are far lighter and much more suceptible to weather. They often carry one of each instrument whereas a larger plain would have 2 or three redundant units.
If running Linux is your concern, you have your choice of Gentoo, Yellow Dog, and Debian for PPC hardware, not to mention NetBSD (which is what makes of the underpinnings of OS X anyway.)
I just like being able to close the lid on my damn laptop and have it go to sleep and wake reliably when I open it again. Everything else merely requires installing GCC and automake.
I'm presently compiling QT (really huge nasty package) on a 1Ghz G4 iBook in the background. The GUI is still as responsive as when the machine is standing still. Mind you, this is on a single processor system, and a laptop at that. I'm just running the standard OS X Gui. CPU is at about 75% usage.
A lot more than clock-speed goes into the performance of a machine.
Can you say TTY!
I upgraded one before we figured out it was actually cheaper to send the units to an apple-certifed repair center. Disemboweling those things took hours and practically an electrician's certification. The next model did provide a door to access the RAM and ROM slots, but of course that really doesn't help fix the pile of machines you bought already.
I'm remembering the last time I upgraded the RAM on a first-gen iMac. Nothing like having to pop out the CRT to access the main-board. Fortunately we have an apple-certified repair shop down the street. Sure it can be expensive, but my time isn't exactly cheap either.