It's not like there are web pages that don't work with Opera that do work with Firefox. Opera isn't some stripped-down-to-run-faster toy, it's a full featured browser. And I'd prefere a full featured AND fast browser.
Anyone else remember when Firefox started as a bloat-free Mozilla? What happened?
Grouped together? Freedom from force? Real lawyers?
You seem to misunderstand the purpose of the ACLU. They're not "anit government", they simply hold the government to the law (i.e., the Bill of Rights), and they're very good at what they do.
The ACLU: Defending the Rights of the Unpopular, so you don't have to!
I've been thinking about that. I think, then, that the best way to attack the problem is to start from the bottom, and work up toward pressident.
Begin by using Condorcet methods with you coworkers to decide where to go for lunch. Then local elections; schoolboard, PTA, town council, mayor. And on up the chain; representative to state house; representative to US house; governor; US senate. Get people used to the idea slowly, don't shock them by going straight for pressident.
The odds of Ron Paul winning his primary are approximately zero. Good luck to him though! If he does, somehow, miraculously, win, I might be tempted to vote Republican.
He, too, would benefit from a voting method that supported third candidates as viable alternatives.
I'm as blue as the next/.er, but the politician who was most recently screaming to "level the playing field" was "censor-crat" Clinton (in the opposite direction from the one discussed in this story, of course).
Heaven knows I'll probably end up voting for her this go-around, but when it comes to technology and censorship, there's no political party (that has a chance of winning) that aligns with the/.-mindset.
The failure of third-party candidates isn't as much about lack of exposure as it is about simple mathematics. The way we count votes actively discourages more than two contenders being in any election.
In order to have any chance, third-parties need to get "first past the post" removed as the voting algorthm, and replaced with something like a Condorcet or even (bleh) IRV system.
After they buy a 99 cent (or $1.39) song from iTunes, people accept that they should pay another 99 cents to be able to have that song play when someone calls them? Why do people keep putting up with this kind of crap?
Oh, right. Modern ISP contracts are one-way non-negotiable. Nevermind.
Well then; I guess you should just switch to a competitor's service. Oh, right... the state of competition in US broadband is crap (thanks FCC!) You're right, nevermind.
Eventually, what's available today on iTunes (or illegally on YouTube or via bittorrent) will be the only way business is done. It's only a question of how long it'll take, and how much it'll cost.
The cheap-o, bottom-line stereo that came in my '06 car has a "compression" option in its menus. So yeah, it's not that difficult or expensive.
If I buy a CD, I want as much dynamic range in the music as the artists intended it to have, so that if I'm listening in a nice, quiet environment, I can hear it like they meant it; if I want to listen to it in a noisey environment, like my car when it's going down the highway, then I'll compress it myself.
Fact is, each medium has its own audible artifacts. Why would those of CD be worse than those of other media? That's just a value judgement.
Because being "less worse" is the reason it was made! One of the driving points of digital audio, of CDs, was to eliminate the physical problems that caused hissing and popping on earlier media. It's called progress; the goal is to make it better. By Nyquist's theorem, 44kHz should be enough for anyone. Now, you could make an argument that 16 bits isn't enough (I suppose those are the artifacts you're referring to for CDs), but that's why this Loudness War thing is so frustrating; it means that those 16 bits are being used less effectively, for no real benefit. Dumb recording execs stomping all over the hard work of audio- and electrical-engineers and musicians, that's what it is.
At one point, I even configured the MIME handlers for images to call through aaview; so if I/really/ wanted to see an image, I could click on it and get a nice color ascii-art view of it. It was glorious. (Since then I changed servers and was too lazy to move the configuration over.)
That be great if it weren't for the fact that RIAA is allowed to collect royalties for music that doesn't even belong to its members, and to collect blank-media fees for media that isn't even used to make copies of their member's works. Oh, and the fact that they'll blame it on a rise in piracy, and use that to lobby for stricter laws and more fees.
They believe that they ARE music; that all music belongs to THEM. So even if you stop buying their stuff, they've entrenched themselves with enough government-backed control (and invested in enough lobbyist to get even more) to make their death-throes damaging to everything around them.
You may kill the RIAA, or some of their members; but they may take fair-use down with them.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. --Thomas Jefferson
You, sir, are either a troll or a fool... or perhaps a shill.
The laws in question aren't some 1820s carry-over into the modern era, but the DMCA, passed, what, 12 years ago? Your assertion that it's "too hard" for copyright holders to police their own work is unsupported, and absurd in consideration of your demand that YouTube police EVERYONE's material. If a copyright holder can't tell what is and isn't placed fairly on YouTube, how do you expect YouTube to tell? That's why the law was written as it is, assigning blame to whoever uploaded the content, not the provider of the content-delivery-platform.
As it stands, ALREADY your poor copyright-cartel members (and merry pranksters) are abusing the law to demand take down of LEGITIMATE fair-uses of content. If anything, the law should be relaxed more, replacing the immediate take-down requirements with a grace period, allowing the offending user to contest (or acquiese) to the take-down request.
The REAL issue here is one of societal benefit; since that is, constitutionally, the reason copyrights exist. And the advantages to society of fast and open communications (be it by posts to Slashdot or video post to YouTube) FAR OUTWEIGHS the "damages" of having a few extra seconds more of some cartel-owned clip than fair use would allow floating on YouTube for a few weeks before the owner notices.
Copyright does not exist to wring the most dollars out of the most "consumers"; it exists to encourage the creation of arts for the benefit of society. YouTube is a net benefit to society.
That's a good point. If a computer can win at Rock-Paper-Scissors (and it can), then poker should benefit from the same ability to predict the oponent's action based on past actions.
It's got nothing to do with population density or the burdens of paying for copper, although the phone companies will be quick to tell you that (don't believe them).
Nope, it's all our bone-headed telecommunications laws and their discouragement of competition and long-term benefit, in favor of a quick profit for the incumbants. (And of course the greedy incumbant telecom companies themselves, but that goes (almost) without saying.)
But what're you going to do? Start your own wireless phone company? How? You can't afford to buy spectrum (all bought by the incumbant's, and their fat wallets gurantee a high barrier to entry). You can't afford to buy reliable backbone bandwidth (owned by, guess who, the incumbants) or to build your own (thanks to sweet-heart deals made with the incumbants; but don't worry, it was all paid for with tax-incentives; so YOU paid for it in taxes, but it's owned by the incumbants now). I guess you could try VoIP, but the overblown-requirements for 911 compliance (forced through by the incumbants's lobbyist) will kill you, assuming you dont get your packets blocked, or your calls mis- and un-routed, or the chips used in your handsets tarrifed and blocked for "patent" issues... all by the incumbant telecom companies.
Voting for 3rd parties is doomed to failure in a majority-rule voting system. The only way 3rd parties will ever have a chance of winning is to change the system. Start small. Use Condorcet-style votes when choosing where to go to lunch with your coworkers; then local elections; then state elections; maybe, MAYBE, in 9 or 13 years, it can percolate up to pressident. Learnmore.
Turing machines aren't (just) proof generators, so the phrase "proofs that a Turing machine can never prove" is somewhat... misleading.
What Goedel showed is that, given any sufficiently complex set of axioms for a system, there will be statements within that system which can be neither proved nor disproved; famously "This sentence is false." This is profoundly different from saying there are statements which cannot be proven; it's not that we can't find the answer, it's that we can show that there is no right answer. The "trick" is self-reference; once a system can talk about itself, (or statements in a system can talk about themselves, or even just about other statements), you're doomed to run up against this problem.
Read Douglas Hofstader's "Godel Escher Bach", or his new book, "I am a Strange Loop", to get the full story.
But that's got nothing to do with computer vision or image searching (AI? maybe); but please don't mod me off-topic!
...Not harder! Are these guys seriously messing around with transparency layers and hand-drawing circles? Just subtract one image from the other. Their way is a waste of time, and time is money; money that could be used to help fight these problems instead of inefficiently-identifying them. (No, I didn't RTFA.)
"They didnt send a n00b out to take the photos."
They got the photos (they said) by searching for "Notre Dame" on Flikr, including plenty of photos taken by "n00bs".
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone else remember when Firefox started as a bloat-free Mozilla? What happened?
You seem to misunderstand the purpose of the ACLU. They're not "anit government", they simply hold the government to the law (i.e., the Bill of Rights), and they're very good at what they do.
The ACLU: Defending the Rights of the Unpopular, so you don't have to!
Begin by using Condorcet methods with you coworkers to decide where to go for lunch. Then local elections; schoolboard, PTA, town council, mayor. And on up the chain; representative to state house; representative to US house; governor; US senate. Get people used to the idea slowly, don't shock them by going straight for pressident.
He, too, would benefit from a voting method that supported third candidates as viable alternatives.
Heaven knows I'll probably end up voting for her this go-around, but when it comes to technology and censorship, there's no political party (that has a chance of winning) that aligns with the /.-mindset.
In order to have any chance, third-parties need to get "first past the post" removed as the voting algorthm, and replaced with something like a Condorcet or even (bleh) IRV system.
(I'm only posting to this thread to get my .sig to show in it.)
After they buy a 99 cent (or $1.39) song from iTunes, people accept that they should pay another 99 cents to be able to have that song play when someone calls them? Why do people keep putting up with this kind of crap?
Well then; I guess you should just switch to a competitor's service. Oh, right... the state of competition in US broadband is crap (thanks FCC!) You're right, nevermind.
Next step, a la carte showpricing.
Eventually, what's available today on iTunes (or illegally on YouTube or via bittorrent) will be the only way business is done. It's only a question of how long it'll take, and how much it'll cost.
If I buy a CD, I want as much dynamic range in the music as the artists intended it to have, so that if I'm listening in a nice, quiet environment, I can hear it like they meant it; if I want to listen to it in a noisey environment, like my car when it's going down the highway, then I'll compress it myself.
At one point, I even configured the MIME handlers for images to call through aaview; so if I /really/ wanted to see an image, I could click on it and get a nice color ascii-art view of it. It was glorious. (Since then I changed servers and was too lazy to move the configuration over.)
--
This post posted via elinks.
They believe that they ARE music; that all music belongs to THEM. So even if you stop buying their stuff, they've entrenched themselves with enough government-backed control (and invested in enough lobbyist to get even more) to make their death-throes damaging to everything around them.
You may kill the RIAA, or some of their members; but they may take fair-use down with them.
How is two-stroke engine repair any more usefull than electronics repair? Sorry grampa; we'll try to keep the kids off your lawn.
The laws in question aren't some 1820s carry-over into the modern era, but the DMCA, passed, what, 12 years ago? Your assertion that it's "too hard" for copyright holders to police their own work is unsupported, and absurd in consideration of your demand that YouTube police EVERYONE's material. If a copyright holder can't tell what is and isn't placed fairly on YouTube, how do you expect YouTube to tell? That's why the law was written as it is, assigning blame to whoever uploaded the content, not the provider of the content-delivery-platform.
As it stands, ALREADY your poor copyright-cartel members (and merry pranksters) are abusing the law to demand take down of LEGITIMATE fair-uses of content. If anything, the law should be relaxed more, replacing the immediate take-down requirements with a grace period, allowing the offending user to contest (or acquiese) to the take-down request.
The REAL issue here is one of societal benefit; since that is, constitutionally, the reason copyrights exist. And the advantages to society of fast and open communications (be it by posts to Slashdot or video post to YouTube) FAR OUTWEIGHS the "damages" of having a few extra seconds more of some cartel-owned clip than fair use would allow floating on YouTube for a few weeks before the owner notices.
Copyright does not exist to wring the most dollars out of the most "consumers"; it exists to encourage the creation of arts for the benefit of society. YouTube is a net benefit to society.
That's a good point. If a computer can win at Rock-Paper-Scissors (and it can), then poker should benefit from the same ability to predict the oponent's action based on past actions.
Nope, it's all our bone-headed telecommunications laws and their discouragement of competition and long-term benefit, in favor of a quick profit for the incumbants. (And of course the greedy incumbant telecom companies themselves, but that goes (almost) without saying.)
But what're you going to do? Start your own wireless phone company? How? You can't afford to buy spectrum (all bought by the incumbant's, and their fat wallets gurantee a high barrier to entry). You can't afford to buy reliable backbone bandwidth (owned by, guess who, the incumbants) or to build your own (thanks to sweet-heart deals made with the incumbants; but don't worry, it was all paid for with tax-incentives; so YOU paid for it in taxes, but it's owned by the incumbants now). I guess you could try VoIP, but the overblown-requirements for 911 compliance (forced through by the incumbants's lobbyist) will kill you, assuming you dont get your packets blocked, or your calls mis- and un-routed, or the chips used in your handsets tarrifed and blocked for "patent" issues... all by the incumbant telecom companies.
Our phones suck because there's no competition.
Voting for 3rd parties is doomed to failure in a majority-rule voting system. The only way 3rd parties will ever have a chance of winning is to change the system. Start small. Use Condorcet-style votes when choosing where to go to lunch with your coworkers; then local elections; then state elections; maybe, MAYBE, in 9 or 13 years, it can percolate up to pressident. Learn more.
What Goedel showed is that, given any sufficiently complex set of axioms for a system, there will be statements within that system which can be neither proved nor disproved; famously "This sentence is false." This is profoundly different from saying there are statements which cannot be proven; it's not that we can't find the answer, it's that we can show that there is no right answer. The "trick" is self-reference; once a system can talk about itself, (or statements in a system can talk about themselves, or even just about other statements), you're doomed to run up against this problem.
Read Douglas Hofstader's "Godel Escher Bach", or his new book, "I am a Strange Loop", to get the full story.
But that's got nothing to do with computer vision or image searching (AI? maybe); but please don't mod me off-topic!
But moderators, before you moderate READ THE ARTICLE! Please! 90% of what's been modded up in this discussion is OFF TOPIC.
Thank you. Rant-mode off.
(Ironically, I've got mod points... but I think this will do more good.)
Oh, gee, you're so right, I bet no one thought of that.
...Not harder! Are these guys seriously messing around with transparency layers and hand-drawing circles? Just subtract one image from the other. Their way is a waste of time, and time is money; money that could be used to help fight these problems instead of inefficiently-identifying them. (No, I didn't RTFA.)
"They didnt send a n00b out to take the photos." They got the photos (they said) by searching for "Notre Dame" on Flikr, including plenty of photos taken by "n00bs".