it gets better, the police actually doctored photos to make the guy look more like the suspect they were tailing during the investigation and lied about him overstaying his visa (he was legally there at the time he was shot).
Well, this is going to be based on what I can glean from the news, so it's biased at best, but just about all the cases involving the military that I can remember were pretty hard on the lower echelons but the people higher up almost always escaped real punishment.
The guy on the left is the guy that got shot, the guy on the right is the guy they were looking for.
Some other guy a bit further below posted an excellent link to an article in the register that details just how screwed up the situation really was. This should have *NEVER* happened. Really, there is absolutely no excuse for it.
Police apprehend, they certainly do not kill before having a positive id.
The only good thing that came out of it as far as I can see is a very thorough review of procedures and orders and that seems to have had the desired effect (i.e. no repetitions of such blunders to date).
Yes the police was panicked after the 7/7 bombings, there is no doubt about it, but that does not absolve them.
The interesting bit here is that the few times they've had serious trouble nobody caught on to it in time and when they thought there was something up it was a false alarm.
This does not mean that every foiled plot is common knowledge, so there are possibly a lot more foiled plots for that single false positive.
Such statistics dovetail nicely with the general warning issued by the security crowd that if you increase the spying on citizens you'll just raise the number of false positives, and you'll spend so much manpower on that that in the end you'll miss the real issues.
The reason for the headshot btw was given iirc to avoid explosives going off due to bullet impact.
- spying on innocent citizens - gross violations of privacy - numerous violations of the right to speak freely and associate - people are afraid to speak openly about their government - people can be held indefinitely without trial
and so on.
So, just because your police is not guilty of specific crimes that does not mean that there are numerous violations of the charter that the police officially has and that have now become commonplace.
A police state does not really have much to do with the kind of regime (communist, capitalist or whatever) but more with the way the general public interacts with / respects / fears the police.
The person with the gun is the one that pulled the trigger.
Sure his superiors fucked up, and royally so.
But he was the one to make the call, and by the looks of it anybody with a coat on on a warm day is now subject to possible shootings by overzealous police officers.
I repeat, there was *0* and I really mean absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the person they were following was a terrorist. Whoever gets to follow the orders carries part of the blame, you can not be absolved for killing an innocent person by claiming to simply be doing your job, that sort of excuse went out the window a long long time ago, and for a very good reason.
The hand that pulls the trigger is connected to an arm that is connected to a brain, that is supposed to think for itself, not to blindly follow orders, especially not if they're coming from a group of people that have been known to err before.
The whole system of justice is based on evidence, that's not a thing to throw overboard lightly.
The person that was shot had not committed any crime, was not about to commit any crime, was not charged with any crime (regardless of whether they committed one), had no history of committing crimes that would require that person to be stopped with such force.
ESPECIALLY NOT TO BE SHOT IN THE HEAD FROM POINT BLANK RANGE.
well, you sort of made my point for me, *EVERYTHING* casts a shadow, for every lightsource (in fact for every lightray that hits the object)...
Not something you determine or decide to swich on / off per object.
It's precisely in situation like that where for instance light filtering through leaves would look immediately believable in a ray tracing rendering but utterly wrong in a shadow mapped renderer.
Thanks for correcting my idea on how shadow maps (should) work, I figured they were on a per-object basis, but per lightsource makes more sense (less computationally intensive, same effect).
they are not paid to solve crimes, they're paid to protect and serve the general public. That job description obviously does not include harrasment, rape, murder and a whole bunch of other crimes that the police have committed against those they were asked to protect.
If you do not like your job description you're free to change jobs. There are lots of police officers (I don't like the term 'cop') that are fantastic people and there are a very select few that ruin the image of police forces the world over by being power tripping crooks in uniform.
The guy that made the call had *0* hard evidence that he was tailing a terrorist.
He probably also single-handedly did more damage to the credibility of British intelligence than any other event since the weapons of mass distraction.
From what I understood (correct me if I'm wrong!), the movie 'cars' was actually done using a ray tracer, which for pixar was a first.
As for the comments wrt picture quality, yes, I agree with all the comments, but there is some stuff there that would be pretty hard to copy with a rasterizer, and I would expect the quality to dramatically improve if/when they decide to pursue this further.
The impressive thing is not really how well the pig dances, at this stage the impressive thing is that the pig dances at all.
the 'reflecting ball on the checkerboard' is a technology demo to show basic principles, it's not a realistic scene.
In a realistic scene *everything* has a shadow, and every bit of the image interacts with almost every other, making the 'model' (if there is such a thing) a one off for every camera viewpoint and for every object movement. There is no way that you're going to make your model that complicated for a rasterizer. A ray-tracer sidesteps that model complexity issue, complexity emerges from the scene and camera viewpoint, it is not hardcoded to an arbitrary level of precision or specified in the scene.
For computational speed you can limit both models (the one by limiting the scene description, the other by limiting the number of rays cast through a pixel and the number of bounces / splits), for a given amount of horsepower available the rasterization model wins if you're prepared the go the distance and spec your scene.
The nice thing is that all those 'goodies' (shadows, reflection, transmission) come for free (as in you don't need to specify them beyond the basic physical properties of materials). So, the model spec for a ray traced scene of a given accuracy should be less complicated than what you need to do to a rasterizer before it will generate the same image.
As an example, a field of grass would need a shadow map for every blade, and one for every partial transparency. In the case of a fractally generated tree or landscape that can get tedious real quick.
I think the fact that it looks fine to you is more or less where the problem lies:)
The contour of the shadow of the shed looks completely unnatural to me (not to mention very poorly anti-aliased). I wouldn't bitch about it too much though, because for one it's a game and it was generated on the fly by hardware not to be compared to that of TFA.
Sure, if you spent as much time as you wanted on that image using the very best of the rasterization algorithms without any optimizations for performance that would impact the image quality in a negative way you could make it (much) better, but it couldn't hold a candle in terms of photo-realism to a similarly unconstrained ray traced image.
That would be comparing apples to organges though, because even at that level I'd expect the ray tracer to burn through at least an order of magnitude if not more computing cycles.
The only way to really tell is to take the exact same scene and lighting model, run both algorithms, then compare the results side by side, and in those comparisions, ray tracing wins hands down, at the expense of a vast increase in computing resources used.
From what I know (which isn't much) even high end shops like Pixar only recently started using ray tracing, before that it was all rasterization using procedural textures and fairly complicated lighting models.
I think the answer is yes, take a look at the mirror in the green car demo shot (bottom right, at high res), that's a pretty impressive following of the contours of the car by the shadow, a 'straight' computed shadow would never ever do that, compare this shot:
Better yet, you have to have a way to prune that which is not reflecting into an area that is visible!
And then there's all kind of colour-bleed effects, they can also come from objects that are out of the directly visible area. Light sources, particles in your simulated atmosphere that light can scatter off and so on. There's a lot that goes into deciding which parts of your scene are 'active'.
I think you're missing the shadows bit completely, and they make a *HUGE* difference in what is intuitively right and what is definitely computer generated. I have a hard time with some ray traced images to tell them from the real thing (usually they're just a bit too perfect), but rasterization, no matter how well done feels 'wrong' right away.
Raytracing simply comes much closer to how things actually work and so has a much better chance of appearing natural.
Once things start moving those differences reduce, but they're still quite present.
It isn't. More casts per pixel means that more rays are cast at slightly different angles through each pixel, and those are then averaged to yield the actual pixel colours.
Three bounces per ray simply means that a single ray can bounce three times before it's colour values are known.
well, since they took it down first when they should have stood tall and given the IOC an 'up yours' they definitely did bend. After all, it's the IOC's decision not to pursue a DMCA claim that made them re-instate the video, not because they suddenly grew a pair.
they took it down first, that's something that should have *NEVER EVER* happened, DMCA or not. Bad laws are there to be broken, the DMCA is as bad as it gets.
Slashdot Mirror
it gets better, the police actually doctored photos to make the guy look more like the suspect they were tailing during the investigation and lied about him overstaying his visa (he was legally there at the time he was shot).
I know you're just joking, but something like that may not be such a bad idea.
Well, this is going to be based on what I can glean from the news, so it's biased at best, but just about all the cases involving the military that I can remember were pretty hard on the lower echelons but the people higher up almost always escaped real punishment.
yeah, well I have some news for you too, look at these two photos side by side and tell me if you can tell the difference:
http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2005/08/17/menezes_osman_wideweb__430x253.jpg
The guy on the left is the guy that got shot, the guy on the right is the guy they were looking for.
Some other guy a bit further below posted an excellent link to an article in the register that details just how screwed up the situation really was. This should have *NEVER* happened. Really, there is absolutely no excuse for it.
Police apprehend, they certainly do not kill before having a positive id.
excellent link, thank you !
The only good thing that came out of it as far as I can see is a very thorough review of procedures and orders and that seems to have had the desired effect (i.e. no repetitions of such blunders to date).
Yes the police was panicked after the 7/7 bombings, there is no doubt about it, but that does not absolve them.
The interesting bit here is that the few times they've had serious trouble nobody caught on to it in time and when they thought there was something up it was a false alarm.
This does not mean that every foiled plot is common knowledge, so there are possibly a lot more foiled plots for that single false positive.
Such statistics dovetail nicely with the general warning issued by the security crowd that if you increase the spying on citizens you'll just raise the number of false positives, and you'll spend so much manpower on that that in the end you'll miss the real issues.
The reason for the headshot btw was given iirc to avoid explosives going off due to bullet impact.
Let's run a little checklist ok ?
- spying on innocent citizens
- gross violations of privacy
- numerous violations of the right to speak freely and associate
- people are afraid to speak openly about their government
- people can be held indefinitely without trial
and so on.
So, just because your police is not guilty of specific crimes that does not mean that there are numerous violations of the charter that the police officially has and that have now become commonplace.
A police state does not really have much to do with the kind of regime (communist, capitalist or whatever) but more with the way the general public interacts with / respects / fears the police.
The person with the gun is the one that pulled the trigger.
Sure his superiors fucked up, and royally so.
But he was the one to make the call, and by the looks of it anybody with a coat on on a warm day is now subject to possible shootings by overzealous police officers.
I repeat, there was *0* and I really mean absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the person they were following was a terrorist. Whoever gets to follow the orders carries part of the blame, you can not be absolved for killing an innocent person by claiming to simply be doing your job, that sort of excuse went out the window a long long time ago, and for a very good reason.
The hand that pulls the trigger is connected to an arm that is connected to a brain, that is supposed to think for itself, not to blindly follow orders, especially not if they're coming from a group of people that have been known to err before.
The whole system of justice is based on evidence, that's not a thing to throw overboard lightly.
The person that was shot had not committed any crime, was not about to commit any crime, was not charged with any crime (regardless of whether they committed one), had no history of committing crimes that would require that person to be stopped with such force.
ESPECIALLY NOT TO BE SHOT IN THE HEAD FROM POINT BLANK RANGE.
well, you sort of made my point for me, *EVERYTHING* casts a shadow, for every lightsource (in fact for every lightray that hits the object)...
Not something you determine or decide to swich on / off per object.
It's precisely in situation like that where for instance light filtering through leaves would look immediately believable in a ray tracing rendering but utterly wrong in a shadow mapped renderer.
Thanks for correcting my idea on how shadow maps (should) work, I figured they were on a per-object basis, but per lightsource makes more sense (less computationally intensive, same effect).
hilarious ! Pot, kettle, black. The US is every bit as much a police state as the UK is, and in some jurisdictions far more so.
Really, was that meant sarcastic and did I miss your joke or did you mean that ?
what's a 'chav' ?
In other news, the Swiss Alps are overrun by terro(u)rists.
they are not paid to solve crimes, they're paid to protect and serve the general public. That job description obviously does not include harrasment, rape, murder and a whole bunch of other crimes that the police have committed against those they were asked to protect.
If you do not like your job description you're free to change jobs. There are lots of police officers (I don't like the term 'cop') that are fantastic people and there are a very select few that ruin the image of police forces the world over by being power tripping crooks in uniform.
I don't know who modded you flamebait, there is (unfortunately) nothing but fact in your post.
He was shot by a total moron.
The guy that made the call had *0* hard evidence that he was tailing a terrorist.
He probably also single-handedly did more damage to the credibility of British intelligence than any other event since the weapons of mass distraction.
Rest in peace dr. Kelly...
From what I understood (correct me if I'm wrong!), the movie 'cars' was actually done using a ray tracer, which for pixar was a first.
As for the comments wrt picture quality, yes, I agree with all the comments, but there is some stuff there that would be pretty hard to copy with a rasterizer, and I would expect the quality to dramatically improve if/when they decide to pursue this further.
The impressive thing is not really how well the pig dances, at this stage the impressive thing is that the pig dances at all.
the low shed central in the picture
the 'reflecting ball on the checkerboard' is a technology demo to show basic principles, it's not a realistic scene.
In a realistic scene *everything* has a shadow, and every bit of the image interacts with almost every other, making the 'model' (if there is such a thing) a one off for every camera viewpoint and for every object movement. There is no way that you're going to make your model that complicated for a rasterizer. A ray-tracer sidesteps that model complexity issue, complexity emerges from the scene and camera viewpoint, it is not hardcoded to an arbitrary level of precision or specified in the scene.
For computational speed you can limit both models (the one by limiting the scene description, the other by limiting the number of rays cast through a pixel and the number of bounces / splits), for a given amount of horsepower available the rasterization model wins if you're prepared the go the distance and spec your scene.
The nice thing is that all those 'goodies' (shadows, reflection, transmission) come for free (as in you don't need to specify them beyond the basic physical properties of materials). So, the model spec for a ray traced scene of a given accuracy should be less complicated than what you need to do to a rasterizer before it will generate the same image.
As an example, a field of grass would need a shadow map for every blade, and one for every partial transparency. In the case of a fractally generated tree or landscape that can get tedious real quick.
I think the fact that it looks fine to you is more or less where the problem lies :)
The contour of the shadow of the shed looks completely unnatural to me (not to mention very poorly anti-aliased). I wouldn't bitch about it too much though, because for one it's a game and it was generated on the fly by hardware not to be compared to that of TFA.
Sure, if you spent as much time as you wanted on that image using the very best of the rasterization algorithms without any optimizations for performance that would impact the image quality in a negative way you could make it (much) better, but it couldn't hold a candle in terms of photo-realism to a similarly unconstrained ray traced image.
That would be comparing apples to organges though, because even at that level I'd expect the ray tracer to burn through at least an order of magnitude if not more computing cycles.
The only way to really tell is to take the exact same scene and lighting model, run both algorithms, then compare the results side by side, and in those comparisions, ray tracing wins hands down, at the expense of a vast increase in computing resources used.
From what I know (which isn't much) even high end shops like Pixar only recently started using ray tracing, before that it was all rasterization using procedural textures and fairly complicated lighting models.
I think the answer is yes, take a look at the mirror in the green car demo shot (bottom right, at high res), that's a pretty impressive following of the contours of the car by the shadow, a 'straight' computed shadow would never ever do that, compare this shot:
http://www.gamershell.com/static/screenshots/9451/264393_full.jpg
from crysis, where the shed shadow meets the terrain contour.
That's exactly the kind of thing I meant.
Better yet, you have to have a way to prune that which is not reflecting into an area that is visible!
And then there's all kind of colour-bleed effects, they can also come from objects that are out of the directly visible area. Light sources, particles in your simulated atmosphere that light can scatter off and so on. There's a lot that goes into deciding which parts of your scene are 'active'.
I think you're missing the shadows bit completely, and they make a *HUGE* difference in what is intuitively right and what is definitely computer generated. I have a hard time with some ray traced images to tell them from the real thing (usually they're just a bit too perfect), but rasterization, no matter how well done feels 'wrong' right away.
Raytracing simply comes much closer to how things actually work and so has a much better chance of appearing natural.
Once things start moving those differences reduce, but they're still quite present.
It isn't. More casts per pixel means that more rays are cast at slightly different angles through each pixel, and those are then averaged to yield the actual pixel colours.
Three bounces per ray simply means that a single ray can bounce three times before it's colour values are known.
You're just sore that you didn't get to annoy a lot of people with your frist post or gnaa rubbish.
well, since they took it down first when they should have stood tall and given the IOC an 'up yours' they definitely did bend. After all, it's the IOC's decision not to pursue a DMCA claim that made them re-instate the video, not because they suddenly grew a pair.
they took it down first, that's something that should have *NEVER EVER* happened, DMCA or not. Bad laws are there to be broken, the DMCA is as bad as it gets.