Those damn Commies (once a Commie, always a Commie);) are making Starship Troopers a reality!! In fact, with the Bear Suit and a personal jet-pack a'la Fall Guy (you know the one), all you really need are Aliens style weapons and a bunch of tactical nukes, and we can go to war with another species!
Actually, M$ has done quite a bit of study in the area of UI usability.
One particular conclusion I recall is that the UP and DOWN buttons on a scrollbar should be on the same side of a scrollbar. Sounds weird, but that's mental inertia: The reason for this is that clicking on these buttons moves the window content by a line, while clicking inside the scrollbar moves contents by a page... The finely grained movement, coupled with the very small target area of the UP and DOWN buttons tend to be difficult for users who need to alternate between these buttons often. Placing them close to each other makes for one precision/proximal movement only, not a macro-movement along the scrollbar and a proximal movement to hit the button.
This came out of M$'s Usability labs and is documented in an M$ Press book on UI design (forgot title). Of course when the M$ market drones got a hold of this idea, it mutated, and M$ products now have small PGUP and PGDN buttons on the bottom of the scrollbar, which is redundant since the scrollbar already provides these functions implicitly.
Another 'betterment' (which M$ 'extended' just to be different) is the NeXT (and other UNICES) convention of putting the scrollbar at the left side of the window, instead of the right. The reason for this is that most languages are read from left to right, and the beginning of a line of text provides more information (lists etc) than the end of a line. Sliding the window off-screen to the right, to make space on the desktop, would be more usabe is you could still scroll, and still read the beginning of the lines of text contained in the window - hence, the scrollbar should be on the left, not right edge of the window. A similar case may be made for placing the horizontal scrollbar at the top of the text area instead of at the bottom.
Much research is being done on UI conventions. So much so in fact, that the EU (European Union) has a Standards Document for UI designers that all companies selling software (in certain areas of software, i.e. safety and fiscal) need to comply with for reasons of non-ambiguity and legal responsibility. A friend in Germany will be forwarding this doc to me, and I'll make it web-available as soon as I receive it.
The doc outlines things such as standard wording that is easily translated between languages, standard button layouts, the upper-bound for the number of controlls that should/may appear in a single interface container (dialog box etc), standard icons that appear on pop-up dialogs, color schemes... I'll know more after I actually read it.
In the mean time, do a/. search for OS X. A recent criticism of the Aqua interface mentions many UI considerations that Apple people completely ignored when Aqua was developed.
A working PC with Internet access and/or available video games are bad for learning because they are a distraction to young minds. Young minds often lack the self-discipline to pay attention when there are MORE FUN things to do. This applies as much to grade-school as it does to college.
That said, computers are a tool, a delivery mechanism. One could just as easily ask if colored pens in the classroom are bad for learning, and conclude that they are since they encourage kids to make pretty colorful doodles instead of memorizing their multiplication tables.
Computers make memorizing such things as math tables, rulles of spelling, and readily referenced information unnecessary (right or wrong is another topic)... They CHANGE the learning process.
Arguing if some thing or another is good or bad in the immediate sense is shortsighted - it's like fleas arguing about what breed of dog they happen to be on, and whether this is good or bad.
Are books in the classroom bad, just because they make it possible for kids to no longer have to learn everything from oral tradition?
There is one reason why this question maight have needed to be mentioned explicitly: If an organization wants any benefit from M$ by being a 'member' of the FIN then they might be obligated to agree with FIN dogma at every turn, or they would not be eligible for some perks of membership. Sort of like a legal contract or political party membership.
By saying that you do not have to hang on the FIN's every word, M$ is saying that you only agree when you really agree - which is obvious, and makes FIN membership pointless; except as a petition body-count M$ can use in petitioning the Fed.
Perhaps I need to put the little smily at the end of that statement in bold next time. It's so hard to be both subtle and unambiguous at the same time.
Computer geeks playing games at 30? How is that different from 30 year old non-geeks (we really need a term here, too bad Gentile is taken) watching football or any other sport? And how is THAT different from a 30 year old non-male (we DO have a term here, WOMAN) watching a soap opera or a talk show?
Please - show me a woman who is not into emotionally laden 'Movies of the Week', and I'll show you a fully grown woman?? Come on - branding a geek as a child, just because they play video games rather than stare at the idiot box is wrong.
And for the record, plenty of retirees play bridge and bingo, a complex and simple game, respectively. Does that make the aged children as well?
An argument this flawed just blows the whole of the original post out of the water; I'm glad EVERYONE who responded objected to exactly this point. Feh!
Brain Sex is a book on the subject of gender differences - focused on the development of mental abilities, gender alignment, physical development and sexual attitudes based on the in utero development of the brain given certain hormonal stimulation. Excellent read.
"My customers can buy a Model T in any color they want, as long as they want BLACK."
It may be funny in retrospect, when considering Ford cars, and sad in prospect when considering Transmeta processors but...
Just look around when driving. How many different colors do you see on Ford cars? How many different models does Ford make today?
Give Transmeta some time.
The pace of microprocessor evolution is much faster than that of cars. Give them a year or three, and we'll see not only more chip models, but also more supported emulations.
Still, the previous point holds. How does a developer justifiy a mini flight sim in Excel? How did the "netscape engineers are weenies" EVER get past a code review?
The project was originally expected to take 15 years. That was what? 5 years ago?
Three months ago, I went to a seminar on Bioinformatics - and it was stated that the project would probably require another two years to complete.:) I love this field; six months ago qualifies as ancient history.
Nothing like paying a little extra for firmware logic that causes wear and tear on your hardware.:) The dotmatrix symphony uses the technology as it's meant to work, so does (arguably) the HP scanner hack. But what about hard-drive races?? (I wish I had the link handy.. it's probably in the Jargon File somewhere.)
Next: New from Nvidia, a graphics driver that sets your monitor sync out of range, to the tune of "Flight of the Bumblebee".
Really, it makes me wonder. Are these Easter Eggs the reason why most software is late? Or do they just get written out of boredom when someone else drops the ball, and coders have nothing better to do.
This is a product that integrates with windows using XML to store all of your information on Microsoft servers, so any computer in the world can be used as "your" computer.
Umm, more like: This is a product that integrates with windows using XML to store all of your information on Microsoft servers, so any data in the world can be used as THEIR data.
Sheesh! You'd think people would have learned by now. The only thing M$ 'innovates' is new means of leeching money from consumers under the false pretense of convenience.
Open source is more likely to be free from intentional 'features' which compromise security, because the source has been stared at by hundreds of eyes without the same nefarious goal. Contrast with Microsoft, where "Netscape Engineers are Weenies!"...
However, if the source is open, your own developers can put in whatever 'features' they want.
Are you more worried about external intrusion by a monopolistic corporation, or internal moles and unhappy workers?
What policies would you place on open source code that would keep it 'secure'?
Man has made God in his own image, except that the clear-cut faults are explained away as miracles of the Faith, and not questioned under the pain of excommunication. We should all be so lucky. The Christian God is guilty of every crime in the book, in one way or another - for He is us, and we are He and we are all together, yea verily!
Is there a God? Well, if there was not a God, what would life mean? Nothing! Is life meaningless? Do you want your life to mean nothing? I sure don't! Therefore, there is a God.
So what you're saying is that God exists solely to add meaning to your otherwise worthless and meaningless life? Sounds like He has quite a job in front of Him.
Are you also saying that people who have meaningful lives without Deity live in a Universe sans same? Are we beings from parallel Universes, occupying the same space-time continuum; some of us made in God's own image and some being naturally occuring phenomena?
When I was 5, when I first heard about evolution, I asked my grandmother if people evolved from apes, or if they were made by God. She said that it depended on the person - God made some, the rest are directly related to monkeys. I finally grok what she meant.:)
Once you see the light, follow me over and try Jesus for yourself.
I personally prefer www.askjesus.com myself, but then again God smiles onto some and frowns onto others.
will an OS ever be native for Transmeta Crusoe, or will everything run in code morphing, basically old x86 code?
Probably not. Transmeta stands to benefit by NOT releasing the Crusoe instruction set for general consumption, and it also makes technological sense. Here's why:
Crusoe does it's morphing in software and translates the results into native instructions. This is all done in software, and results in lower power consumption and slower performance.
Transmeta could possibly develop a series of processors aimed at the desktop, where power consumption is less important than speed - they could move the morphing logic onto the chip. Check out the Transmeta write-up on ArsTechnica for deep info.
If things were chip-native, you'd have a natural fork in the road, applications and the OS would be written for the desktop hardware or the portable hardware, but not both. By keeping the native instructions close to their vest, Transmeta is maintaining platform integrity. The counter-example is Windows with it's NT on the desktop and WinCe on portables.. What a mess!
Transmeta can easily support other architectures this way as well, not just x86 but maybe i386 or 68k and PPC as well, without worry about supporting a 'portable' or 'professional' (buzzword alert) version of each. Hell, maybe we'll be lucky enough to see a Crusoe JVM as well, but I for one hope that there will not be native Crusoe apps, ever.
Besides, they're a chip company, not an OS company, regardless of what Linus does in his spare time.:)
Robert Maplethorpe is/was a photographer (mostly black and white) who in recent years caused quite a furor with a Federally funded (National Endowment for the Arts) exhibit of work that many people considered 'objectionable'.
Images presented included "Piss Christ" which was a photo of a crusifix in a jar of Maplethorpes own urine, a gay male wearing leather biker clothes with a whip inserted butt first into his anus so that the whip hung to the floor, and multiple variations on the sado-masochistic themes.
The uproar was over several things: Whether such work is artistic. Whether it should be displayed publicly in an art museum where children can view it. Whether tax money should be used to fund such efforts.
Maplethorpe caused people to question the line between arguable Art and arguable Smut (do your own search, since my work firewall is a bit too smart:) ).
I don't think that www.newswire.com.au/0006/brown-paper-wrapper.htm would draw any less attention.:) As arivanov said, it stinks of an advertisement. So much for unbiased journalism, eh? Surprised? Didn't think so.
We don't give 'the children' enough credit in seeking out information for themselves. They'll lear, whether we want them to or not - the only sensible thing to do is to tell them the truth.
Just as we tell them to 'be careful when driving', and 'don't speed'; we should also be telling them useful, practical information. "When making a left turn at an intersection, keep your wheels pointed straight - so if you get rear-ended, you will not be pushed into oncoming traffic." is the sort of common-sense knowledge which they need, and which we have (from experience) to give them.
Same goes for matters of sex. You may have different opinions than I but here's as good an example as any: Rule #1: Whatever you do, I'll still love you because you are my child. Rule #2: Don't hate or hit anyone just because they're different. Rule #3: If someone hurts you, it isn't your fault - carry mace, just in case. Rule #4: No means No! Rule #5: Use a condom, whomever you do. Rule #6: Your friends know as little as you do. If you don't know, ask me. If I don't know, we'll find out together.
You're far from 'ranting'. It's common sense - education is the key to solving most, if not all, of the world's problems. The worst thing we can to is stay silent while some self-appointed, holier-than-thou glory seeker defines a moral baseline for all of society (not just their own kids, unfortunatelly), including ourselves and our childern.
My goodness.. If I could pull buzzwords out of thin air like that, I'd be a CIO by now...
The Dogbert World Domination Police have been dispatched to your location, and have been instructed to give you a brutal wedgie!:)
Interesting post, but I had to read it a few times to cut through the thicket. For future reference, the Bottom Line is called an Executive Summary and goes at the beginning.
This whole thing reminds me of an ancedote on image recognition using neural networks in the early 90's.
The military was developing a neural net to optically identify tanks hiding in brush and trees. They trained the net on photographs, and noticed exceptionally good performance. Then they tried a new set of photographs, and the success rate of the network suddenly fell flat.
It turned out that in the first set of photos, all the 'with tanks' pictures were taken on a sunny day, and all the 'no tank' pictures were taken on an overcast day. In the second photo set, this was reversed, and the network continued to correctly tell sunny and cloudy apart...
So I have to wonder what this new development holds in store. Will we be graced with filtering software which discriminates between gaudy, tacky motel room backgrounds rather than drunk co-eds on crack taking it in the ear? Will it be intelligent enough to tell if someone trims their hair, and is therefore a professional, versus those fat and hairy amateurs?
Hey, maybe it will finally be able to tell if the subject of the questionable photo is in fact "barely legal", or has the stretchmarks of a few litters of puppies to suggest the contrary.
Your point on skin color is well taken, and opens up the question: What does ALL porn have in common that can possibly be quantified and filtered? The answer, I'm afraid, is nothing at all.. One man's porn is another mans art.
Aside: I, for one, didn't consider the Maplethorpe photos to be obscene. They weren't artistic either. They were just 'for shock', to cause a furor, and get more attention through objection than through inherent value.
My strong suspicion is that whoever is behind this effort is a lot smarter than they seem at first glance. They are trying to bleed the "Religious Right" of money by getting 'upstanding' Bible-thumpers to fund this research - all the while knowing that it can not possibly be successful.
"Oh look, that girl is wearing a schoolgirl outfit - this is a porn pic, filter it!" -- so much for all the Brittney Spears fan pages..
All forms of naked women are to be filtered, except when their arms are missing, in which case it's Venus de Milo, and therefore a bona fide work of art.
Clears the way for amputee fetishes, I think.:)
Boticcelli's Venus, the image of a naked woman coming out of the surf, that has been used as the box art for Adobe Illustrator (IIRC) would of course be flagged. She has nipples and a 'patch of hair', as do most nudes painted during that time period....
Hell, the Sistene Chapel ceiling is offensive, it shows Adam (naked youth) and God (Old man) touching fingers.... There's a bunch of naked little boy cherubs flouncing around them to boot. What horrific kinkiness!!
Image recognition, refined enough to filter porn, will not be around for a VERY long time. I'm not that imaginitive, and I can easily picture all sorts of "unnatural" positions which an automated system would have a hard time recognizing as porn.:)
It will take an AI with the understanding of what "porn" means, with an appreciation for the human body's full range of motion, and with the comprehension of the latest fetishes - else National Geographic and CNN.com will find themselves filtered out of libraries and schools. After all, what is the difference between an image of a 'man riding a horse' and that of a 'man riding a horse'?
But the research being put into this sort of image recognition has an even seedier and more sinister side. It can/will filter based on LOGO. That's right.
Imagine Time-Warner/AOL being 'unable to connect' to sites which feature their competitor's logos.. Imagine ISPs who show Reebok ad banners suddenly disabling links to pages that display the Nike "swoosh". Imagine your favorite web-site suddenly not letting you click through to any other site that does not proudly wear a "VA" on it's 'sponsors' page.
And all this technology is being developed... (oh, say it with me) "In the name of the children!". BS - all the children I know would get a kick out of looking at porn, and are being damaged more by advertising than by sexual content.
Personally, I think we should assist in the development of this technology, and make sure that it only filters on Red Maple leaves on white backgrounds! Blame Canada!! Hooyah!
Slashdot Mirror
Heinlein in spinning in his grave right now.
;) are making Starship Troopers a reality!! In fact, with the Bear Suit and a personal jet-pack a'la Fall Guy (you know the one), all you really need are Aliens style weapons and a bunch of tactical nukes, and we can go to war with another species!
Those damn Commies (once a Commie, always a Commie)
Bugs Mr. Rico! Zillions of 'em!!
Actually, M$ has done quite a bit of study in the area of UI usability.
/. search for OS X. A recent criticism of the Aqua interface mentions many UI considerations that Apple people completely ignored when Aqua was developed.
One particular conclusion I recall is that the UP and DOWN buttons on a scrollbar should be on the same side of a scrollbar. Sounds weird, but that's mental inertia: The reason for this is that clicking on these buttons moves the window content by a line, while clicking inside the scrollbar moves contents by a page... The finely grained movement, coupled with the very small target area of the UP and DOWN buttons tend to be difficult for users who need to alternate between these buttons often. Placing them close to each other makes for one precision/proximal movement only, not a macro-movement along the scrollbar and a proximal movement to hit the button.
This came out of M$'s Usability labs and is documented in an M$ Press book on UI design (forgot title). Of course when the M$ market drones got a hold of this idea, it mutated, and M$ products now have small PGUP and PGDN buttons on the bottom of the scrollbar, which is redundant since the scrollbar already provides these functions implicitly.
Another 'betterment' (which M$ 'extended' just to be different) is the NeXT (and other UNICES) convention of putting the scrollbar at the left side of the window, instead of the right. The reason for this is that most languages are read from left to right, and the beginning of a line of text provides more information (lists etc) than the end of a line. Sliding the window off-screen to the right, to make space on the desktop, would be more usabe is you could still scroll, and still read the beginning of the lines of text contained in the window - hence, the scrollbar should be on the left, not right edge of the window. A similar case may be made for placing the horizontal scrollbar at the top of the text area instead of at the bottom.
Much research is being done on UI conventions. So much so in fact, that the EU (European Union) has a Standards Document for UI designers that all companies selling software (in certain areas of software, i.e. safety and fiscal) need to comply with for reasons of non-ambiguity and legal responsibility. A friend in Germany will be forwarding this doc to me, and I'll make it web-available as soon as I receive it.
The doc outlines things such as standard wording that is easily translated between languages, standard button layouts, the upper-bound for the number of controlls that should/may appear in a single interface container (dialog box etc), standard icons that appear on pop-up dialogs, color schemes... I'll know more after I actually read it.
In the mean time, do a
Depends on what you're learning, doesn't it?
A working PC with Internet access and/or available video games are bad for learning because they are a distraction to young minds. Young minds often lack the self-discipline to pay attention when there are MORE FUN things to do. This applies as much to grade-school as it does to college.
That said, computers are a tool, a delivery mechanism. One could just as easily ask if colored pens in the classroom are bad for learning, and conclude that they are since they encourage kids to make pretty colorful doodles instead of memorizing their multiplication tables.
Computers make memorizing such things as math tables, rulles of spelling, and readily referenced information unnecessary (right or wrong is another topic)... They CHANGE the learning process.
Arguing if some thing or another is good or bad in the immediate sense is shortsighted - it's like fleas arguing about what breed of dog they happen to be on, and whether this is good or bad.
Are books in the classroom bad, just because they make it possible for kids to no longer have to learn everything from oral tradition?
IMO, FIN is a sad joke, but...
There is one reason why this question maight have needed to be mentioned explicitly:
If an organization wants any benefit from M$ by being a 'member' of the FIN then they might be obligated to agree with FIN dogma at every turn, or they would not be eligible for some perks of membership. Sort of like a legal contract or political party membership.
By saying that you do not have to hang on the FIN's every word, M$ is saying that you only agree when you really agree - which is obvious, and makes FIN membership pointless; except as a petition body-count M$ can use in petitioning the Fed.
Perhaps I need to put the little smily at the end of that statement in bold next time. It's so hard to be both subtle and unambiguous at the same time.
Computer geeks playing games at 30?
How is that different from 30 year old non-geeks (we really need a term here, too bad Gentile is taken) watching football or any other sport?
And how is THAT different from a 30 year old non-male (we DO have a term here, WOMAN) watching a soap opera or a talk show?
Please - show me a woman who is not into emotionally laden 'Movies of the Week', and I'll show you a fully grown woman?? Come on - branding a geek as a child, just because they play video games rather than stare at the idiot box is wrong.
And for the record, plenty of retirees play bridge and bingo, a complex and simple game, respectively. Does that make the aged children as well?
An argument this flawed just blows the whole of the original post out of the water; I'm glad EVERYONE who responded objected to exactly this point. Feh!
Brain Sex is a book on the subject of gender differences - focused on the development of mental abilities, gender alignment, physical development and sexual attitudes based on the in utero development of the brain given certain hormonal stimulation. Excellent read.
Mineral Oil, in a styrofoam cooler, with an A/C condenser coil submerged in the oil and the mobo at the bottom of the cooler...
:)
Anyone with that kind of time needs to get a job, so they could afford a faster CPU that they don't have to OC, IMHO.
That used to be Henry Ford's gimick:
"My customers can buy a Model T in any color they want, as long as they want BLACK."
It may be funny in retrospect, when considering Ford cars, and sad in prospect when considering Transmeta processors but...
Just look around when driving. How many different colors do you see on Ford cars? How many different models does Ford make today?
Give Transmeta some time.
The pace of microprocessor evolution is much faster than that of cars. Give them a year or three, and we'll see not only more chip models, but also more supported emulations.
Still, the previous point holds.
How does a developer justifiy a mini flight sim in Excel? How did the "netscape engineers are weenies" EVER get past a code review?
The project was originally expected to take 15 years. That was what? 5 years ago?
:) I love this field; six months ago qualifies as ancient history.
Three months ago, I went to a seminar on Bioinformatics - and it was stated that the project would probably require another two years to complete.
Now, about that protein folding problem...
Nothing like paying a little extra for firmware logic that causes wear and tear on your hardware. :) The dotmatrix symphony uses the technology as it's meant to work, so does (arguably) the HP scanner hack. But what about hard-drive races?? (I wish I had the link handy.. it's probably in the Jargon File somewhere.)
Next: New from Nvidia, a graphics driver that sets your monitor sync out of range, to the tune of "Flight of the Bumblebee".
Really, it makes me wonder. Are these Easter Eggs the reason why most software is late? Or do they just get written out of boredom when someone else drops the ball, and coders have nothing better to do.
This is a product that integrates with windows using XML to store all of your information on Microsoft servers, so any computer in the world can be used as "your" computer.
Umm, more like:
This is a product that integrates with windows using XML to store all of your information on Microsoft servers, so any data in the world can be used as THEIR data.
Sheesh! You'd think people would have learned by now. The only thing M$ 'innovates' is new means of leeching money from consumers under the false pretense of convenience.
Open source is more likely to be free from intentional 'features' which compromise security, because the source has been stared at by hundreds of eyes without the same nefarious goal. Contrast with Microsoft, where "Netscape Engineers are Weenies!"...
However, if the source is open, your own developers can put in whatever 'features' they want.
Are you more worried about external intrusion by a monopolistic corporation, or internal moles and unhappy workers?
What policies would you place on open source code that would keep it 'secure'?
Man has made God in his own image, except that the clear-cut faults are explained away as miracles of the Faith, and not questioned under the pain of excommunication. We should all be so lucky. The Christian God is guilty of every crime in the book, in one way or another - for He is us, and we are He and we are all together, yea verily!
:)
Is there a God? Well, if there was not a God, what would life mean? Nothing! Is life meaningless? Do you want your life to mean nothing? I sure don't! Therefore, there is a God.
So what you're saying is that God exists solely to add meaning to your otherwise worthless and meaningless life? Sounds like He has quite a job in front of Him.
Are you also saying that people who have meaningful lives without Deity live in a Universe sans same? Are we beings from parallel Universes, occupying the same space-time continuum; some of us made in God's own image and some being naturally occuring phenomena?
When I was 5, when I first heard about evolution, I asked my grandmother if people evolved from apes, or if they were made by God. She said that it depended on the person - God made some, the rest are directly related to monkeys. I finally grok what she meant.
Once you see the light, follow me over and try Jesus for yourself.
I personally prefer www.askjesus.com myself, but then again God smiles onto some and frowns onto others.
will an OS ever be native for Transmeta Crusoe, or will everything run in code morphing, basically old x86 code?
:)
Probably not. Transmeta stands to benefit by NOT releasing the Crusoe instruction set for general consumption, and it also makes technological sense. Here's why:
Crusoe does it's morphing in software and translates the results into native instructions. This is all done in software, and results in lower power consumption and slower performance.
Transmeta could possibly develop a series of processors aimed at the desktop, where power consumption is less important than speed - they could move the morphing logic onto the chip. Check out the Transmeta write-up on ArsTechnica for deep info.
If things were chip-native, you'd have a natural fork in the road, applications and the OS would be written for the desktop hardware or the portable hardware, but not both. By keeping the native instructions close to their vest, Transmeta is maintaining platform integrity. The counter-example is Windows with it's NT on the desktop and WinCe on portables.. What a mess!
Transmeta can easily support other architectures this way as well, not just x86 but maybe i386 or 68k and PPC as well, without worry about supporting a 'portable' or 'professional' (buzzword alert) version of each. Hell, maybe we'll be lucky enough to see a Crusoe JVM as well, but I for one hope that there will not be native Crusoe apps, ever.
Besides, they're a chip company, not an OS company, regardless of what Linus does in his spare time.
"My God! It's full of nougat!"
Sorry. I'm very very sorry. Must be the beer.
I stand corrected. That was Serrano.
:)
I get my avant-garde confused sometimes.
Robert Maplethorpe is/was a photographer (mostly black and white) who in recent years caused quite a furor with a Federally funded (National Endowment for the Arts) exhibit of work that many people considered 'objectionable'.
:) ).
Images presented included "Piss Christ" which was a photo of a crusifix in a jar of Maplethorpes own urine, a gay male wearing leather biker clothes with a whip inserted butt first into his anus so that the whip hung to the floor, and multiple variations on the sado-masochistic themes.
The uproar was over several things:
Whether such work is artistic.
Whether it should be displayed publicly in an art museum where children can view it.
Whether tax money should be used to fund such efforts.
Maplethorpe caused people to question the line between arguable Art and arguable Smut (do your own search, since my work firewall is a bit too smart
I don't think that www.newswire.com.au/0006/brown-paper-wrapper.htm would draw any less attention. :) As arivanov said, it stinks of an advertisement. So much for unbiased journalism, eh? Surprised? Didn't think so.
"Rant" nothing. It's just common sense.
We don't give 'the children' enough credit in seeking out information for themselves. They'll lear, whether we want them to or not - the only sensible thing to do is to tell them the truth.
Just as we tell them to 'be careful when driving', and 'don't speed'; we should also be telling them useful, practical information. "When making a left turn at an intersection, keep your wheels pointed straight - so if you get rear-ended, you will not be pushed into oncoming traffic." is the sort of common-sense knowledge which they need, and which we have (from experience) to give them.
Same goes for matters of sex. You may have different opinions than I but here's as good an example as any:
Rule #1: Whatever you do, I'll still love you because you are my child.
Rule #2: Don't hate or hit anyone just because they're different.
Rule #3: If someone hurts you, it isn't your fault - carry mace, just in case.
Rule #4: No means No!
Rule #5: Use a condom, whomever you do.
Rule #6: Your friends know as little as you do. If you don't know, ask me. If I don't know, we'll find out together.
You're far from 'ranting'. It's common sense - education is the key to solving most, if not all, of the world's problems. The worst thing we can to is stay silent while some self-appointed, holier-than-thou glory seeker defines a moral baseline for all of society (not just their own kids, unfortunatelly), including ourselves and our childern.
My goodness.. If I could pull buzzwords out of thin air like that, I'd be a CIO by now...
:)
The Dogbert World Domination Police have been dispatched to your location, and have been instructed to give you a brutal wedgie!
Interesting post, but I had to read it a few times to cut through the thicket. For future reference, the Bottom Line is called an Executive Summary and goes at the beginning.
This whole thing reminds me of an ancedote on image recognition using neural networks in the early 90's.
The military was developing a neural net to optically identify tanks hiding in brush and trees. They trained the net on photographs, and noticed exceptionally good performance. Then they tried a new set of photographs, and the success rate of the network suddenly fell flat.
It turned out that in the first set of photos, all the 'with tanks' pictures were taken on a sunny day, and all the 'no tank' pictures were taken on an overcast day. In the second photo set, this was reversed, and the network continued to correctly tell sunny and cloudy apart...
So I have to wonder what this new development holds in store. Will we be graced with filtering software which discriminates between gaudy, tacky motel room backgrounds rather than drunk co-eds on crack taking it in the ear? Will it be intelligent enough to tell if someone trims their hair, and is therefore a professional, versus those fat and hairy amateurs?
Hey, maybe it will finally be able to tell if the subject of the questionable photo is in fact "barely legal", or has the stretchmarks of a few litters of puppies to suggest the contrary.
Your point on skin color is well taken, and opens up the question: What does ALL porn have in common that can possibly be quantified and filtered? The answer, I'm afraid, is nothing at all.. One man's porn is another mans art.
Aside: I, for one, didn't consider the Maplethorpe photos to be obscene. They weren't artistic either. They were just 'for shock', to cause a furor, and get more attention through objection than through inherent value.
My strong suspicion is that whoever is behind this effort is a lot smarter than they seem at first glance. They are trying to bleed the "Religious Right" of money by getting 'upstanding' Bible-thumpers to fund this research - all the while knowing that it can not possibly be successful.
"Oh look, that girl is wearing a schoolgirl outfit - this is a porn pic, filter it!" -- so much for all the Brittney Spears fan pages..
All forms of naked women are to be filtered, except when their arms are missing, in which case it's Venus de Milo, and therefore a bona fide work of art.
:)
Clears the way for amputee fetishes, I think.
Boticcelli's Venus, the image of a naked woman coming out of the surf, that has been used as the box art for Adobe Illustrator (IIRC) would of course be flagged. She has nipples and a 'patch of hair', as do most nudes painted during that time period....
Hell, the Sistene Chapel ceiling is offensive, it shows Adam (naked youth) and God (Old man) touching fingers.... There's a bunch of naked little boy cherubs flouncing around them to boot. What horrific kinkiness!!
Image recognition, refined enough to filter porn, will not be around for a VERY long time. I'm not that imaginitive, and I can easily picture all sorts of "unnatural" positions which an automated system would have a hard time recognizing as porn. :)
It will take an AI with the understanding of what "porn" means, with an appreciation for the human body's full range of motion, and with the comprehension of the latest fetishes - else National Geographic and CNN.com will find themselves filtered out of libraries and schools. After all, what is the difference between an image of a 'man riding a horse' and that of a 'man riding a horse'?
But the research being put into this sort of image recognition has an even seedier and more sinister side. It can/will filter based on LOGO. That's right.
Imagine Time-Warner/AOL being 'unable to connect' to sites which feature their competitor's logos.. Imagine ISPs who show Reebok ad banners suddenly disabling links to pages that display the Nike "swoosh". Imagine your favorite web-site suddenly not letting you click through to any other site that does not proudly wear a "VA" on it's 'sponsors' page.
And all this technology is being developed... (oh, say it with me) "In the name of the children!". BS - all the children I know would get a kick out of looking at porn, and are being damaged more by advertising than by sexual content.
Personally, I think we should assist in the development of this technology, and make sure that it only filters on Red Maple leaves on white backgrounds! Blame Canada!! Hooyah!