I for one would rather have a few tax dollars spent on a camera system to patrol a large area than have a lot of tax dollars spent hiring a lot of police officers to do the job less effectively.
If you are getting mugged or raped, the camera can't pull the bad guy off you or shoot him. Surveillance may make the cleanup easier for the cops, but I doubt it will make people a lot safer.
If I ever have to blow anyone away, at least there may be a video record proving it was a righteous shoot.
You are correct, that's the real worry. Scanning faces for criminals is a bad start, but it's the convergence and analysis of all data that will make the real police state. That's why it's important to fight this kind of thing at every step of the way.
Just wait until millimeter-wave radar is installed next to the cameras. They'll be scanning for weapons and counting the change in our pockets.
The slippery slope is a cliche, but that doesn't make it any less slippery.
If/when this kind of automated surveillance becomes commonplace the US gov't will probably pass laws protecting the police from various forms of lawsuits. There's precendent for this -- right now, you can't sue your HMO if they misdiagnose you and screw up your medical treatment. It's not such a stretch to add similar protection to the police.
(the HMO thing is currently under attack in the federal legislature, it remains to be seen how it will turn out.)
Masks, or people making themselves up to look like people on the wanted list... that's the civil disobedience I'd like to see. Every geek in Tampa should hit the FBI's 10 most wanted list and see if there's anyone they look like.
Jeebus, this is depressing. And Independence Day just around the corner.
Has anyone ever had a gun stuck down their throat by an MS employee and been forced to purchase MS software?
No, but the next best thing happens a lot. For example, I have seen a lot of job postings that demand resumes are sent in MS Word format. I don't know what the state of the free Word-compatible apps are, but I heard they are pretty poor.
They were working on this kind of image recognition in a JPL lab near my own in the early '90s. (I was an intern working on the flight computer for CRAF/Cassini at the time.) They were using some funktastic optical computer jive and I heard the thing was good... damn good. There was even a toy parking lot full of Hotwheels cars, and they would have the computer try to pick out a specific car, which might be in a group of other similar cars, or partly covered by a building, etc.
If this was going on in an unclassified lab almost 10 years ago, I imagine that the best gov't computers today can easily Spot the Loony, or tank, or asian woman or nearly anything else desired.
Gee, why run everything on local hardware you control when you can subject yourself to the unknown factors in a network connection?:) I agree, this isn't that important. A neat hack but that's it.
I guess if you had a ton of DTV boxes in your home and you wanted hacked TV in every room you could set up a server yourself...
This isn't just key validation. The DTV smart card, which is what is being emulated over a network in this hack, is a computer itself and it decrypts the A/V stream. You need a continuous connection between your DTV box and the emulator -- not a daily dialup.
A DTV emulation setup isn't as hard to get going as you are making out. It is a barrier to the casual pirate, but anyone with slightly above-average computer skills can get it to go. And I do mean "slightly." You only need an old crapbox computer and a couple hundred bucks in other gear, which is easily available. There are written guides and helpful forums to get you going. You just have to Google for it all.
DirecTV made it a bit harder on the pirates, but they have NOT "essentially won" by any means. If you read the DTV hacking boards it's practically back to business as usual... only the people who can't afford the equipment are out of luck, with their toasted cards.
Echostar is currently very easy, a $50 part and some Windows freeware is all you need to "test' Dish.
I have never actually heard about a SC ruling like that, but that's how it SHOULD be. If someone is generating an EM field, and it passes through my property or person, I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with it. If the signal provider doesn't like it, they are free to add more and more complex protection to the data in the signal. Or, they can pay for a bigass Faraday cage that I can put around my place.
It's already illegal to monitor certain radio frequencies... cell phones and cordless phones for example. Building a receiver from a handful of basic components can make you a felon. It's crazy. Crazy. Service providers should protect their data with technology, not new laws.
Side note: even though I am a ham and I am fairly clued in on electronics, I find it AMAZING on some level that crystal radios work. There is enough juice flowing through you RIGHT NOW to DRIVE AN EARPHONE with NO POWER SUPPLY in the circuit. Doing the math is one thing... building a passive circuit that produces sound is something else. Wacky.
Video transfer uses something called "3:2 pulldown," I used to read up on that stuff when I collected LDs. Pretty tricky actually turning a 24FPS non-interlated data format into a 30FPS interlaced stream... but no matter how the frames are sliced and diced a film only hs 24 frames per second of data to offer.
I just want true 30fps in theaters! Maybe in an all digital theater... they do shoot some movies on HD video cameras, don't they? Still haven't been in one of them newfangled digital theaters. Seattle has crappy theaters.
I never liked FF. Big Dragonball style hair, people riding these weird chickens... silly big swords... that's all I ever saw. Well, a friend of mine was playing FF8 and his character had to dress up like a woman to go do something. I guess that's more interesting than a big chicken. I'd rather watch Record of Lodoss War or some other old classic.
The FF movie looks nothing like the video games I have seen, thank goodness. I hope the characters in the movie aren't breeding those giant chicken things...
TV's 30fps is acceptable to me but the 24fps in film drives me BONKERS. It's much less noticeable when watching a film on a TV monitor (for some reason), but in the theater every time the scene pans it all gets blurry for me, too blurry to enjoy. Maybe my brain is miswired. I really wish some higher frame rate standard would replace old-fashioned 24fps film. Uck. They have been experimenting with replacements for years, I guess cost is the final barrier. As usual.
That's a rotten site. There are no music samples. I will have to divine a sense of his musical greatness from the graphic design, I guess.
Ah. Just as I was about to post I found the music. It's hidden on the Gnarly Geezer site. You can't get to it from AH's site directly. So I still maintain that it sucks.
Hmm. The music underwhelms me. I'd rather listen to Dick Dale.
You seem to be arguing that just because a technique is harder it is more valuable. I get tired of the "suffering artist" bit. Gee, it's tough to mix a color. Sorry. It would be even harder if you had to use crappy medieval quality paints that weren't color consistent from batch to batch too. But I don't see you pining for the good ol' days.
All trades use tools that make their lives easier, why should it be different for artists? If a guy prefers working in Fractal Design Painter, he's still an artist. I don't consider myself to be less of a writer because I use a computer instead of a typewriter either.
A friend of mine is a pro illustrator. He does most of his work as acrylic on masonite I think, but he also does some 100% digital work. He'd kick my ass if I told him that digital stuff wasn't art. Because it is. It's just different.
This was actually a big debate inside Wizards of the Coast a while ago. The Magic art director at the time had a blanket no-digital-art policy. This was because most of the stuff he saw was CRAP. But then a guy turns in a pair of digital paintings that were unreal... they were great. They looked totally traditional. An argument raged. They ended up in the card set because they looked good. (No, I don't remember the card set or the artist's name, this was a while ago.)
Just so where clear, I consider computer generated art to be art, just not fine art.
So if the Mona Lisa was created buy a guy with a Wacom pad and Fractal Design Painter it wouldn't be as good anymore?
so a person who sits in front of the computer for hours with a graphics tablet and a natural media paint program (ie Fractal Design Painter) is somehow inferior to someone who uses actual paints? You're nuts. I have seen images produced on a computer that you couldn't tell weren't painted on a canvas without very careful examination. It sure looked like art to me.
Trying to draw a line between "art" and "fine art" is TOTALLY futile as well. It's, you know, subjective.
no kidding! and those damn impressionists, with all their little dots of paint... good thing art has evolved past that stage and we can chuck it all. No one paints like that anymore, so it can't be fine art.
Freelance writers don't make that much in most fields. I should know, I contract work from them. And I am one of them too. It's not like there are millions of freelancers driving around in exotic cars.
If you know some freelance markets where I can be a "pig" and receive ludicrous fees for my work, please post a followup. I'd love to be part of the problem you are describing.
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I for one would rather have a few tax dollars spent on a camera system to patrol a large area than have a lot of tax dollars spent hiring a lot of police officers to do the job less effectively.
If you are getting mugged or raped, the camera can't pull the bad guy off you or shoot him. Surveillance may make the cleanup easier for the cops, but I doubt it will make people a lot safer.
If I ever have to blow anyone away, at least there may be a video record proving it was a righteous shoot.
You are correct, that's the real worry. Scanning faces for criminals is a bad start, but it's the convergence and analysis of all data that will make the real police state. That's why it's important to fight this kind of thing at every step of the way.
Just wait until millimeter-wave radar is installed next to the cameras. They'll be scanning for weapons and counting the change in our pockets.
The slippery slope is a cliche, but that doesn't make it any less slippery.
If/when this kind of automated surveillance becomes commonplace the US gov't will probably pass laws protecting the police from various forms of lawsuits. There's precendent for this -- right now, you can't sue your HMO if they misdiagnose you and screw up your medical treatment. It's not such a stretch to add similar protection to the police.
(the HMO thing is currently under attack in the federal legislature, it remains to be seen how it will turn out.)
Masks, or people making themselves up to look like people on the wanted list... that's the civil disobedience I'd like to see. Every geek in Tampa should hit the FBI's 10 most wanted list and see if there's anyone they look like.
Jeebus, this is depressing. And Independence Day just around the corner.
Has anyone ever had a gun stuck down their throat by an MS employee and been forced to purchase MS software?
No, but the next best thing happens a lot. For example, I have seen a lot of job postings that demand resumes are sent in MS Word format. I don't know what the state of the free Word-compatible apps are, but I heard they are pretty poor.
They were working on this kind of image recognition in a JPL lab near my own in the early '90s. (I was an intern working on the flight computer for CRAF/Cassini at the time.) They were using some funktastic optical computer jive and I heard the thing was good... damn good. There was even a toy parking lot full of Hotwheels cars, and they would have the computer try to pick out a specific car, which might be in a group of other similar cars, or partly covered by a building, etc.
If this was going on in an unclassified lab almost 10 years ago, I imagine that the best gov't computers today can easily Spot the Loony, or tank, or asian woman or nearly anything else desired.
Gee, why run everything on local hardware you control when you can subject yourself to the unknown factors in a network connection? :) I agree, this isn't that important. A neat hack but that's it.
I guess if you had a ton of DTV boxes in your home and you wanted hacked TV in every room you could set up a server yourself...
This isn't just key validation. The DTV smart card, which is what is being emulated over a network in this hack, is a computer itself and it decrypts the A/V stream. You need a continuous connection between your DTV box and the emulator -- not a daily dialup.
A DTV emulation setup isn't as hard to get going as you are making out. It is a barrier to the casual pirate, but anyone with slightly above-average computer skills can get it to go. And I do mean "slightly." You only need an old crapbox computer and a couple hundred bucks in other gear, which is easily available. There are written guides and helpful forums to get you going. You just have to Google for it all.
DirecTV made it a bit harder on the pirates, but they have NOT "essentially won" by any means. If you read the DTV hacking boards it's practically back to business as usual... only the people who can't afford the equipment are out of luck, with their toasted cards.
Echostar is currently very easy, a $50 part and some Windows freeware is all you need to "test' Dish.
I have never actually heard about a SC ruling like that, but that's how it SHOULD be. If someone is generating an EM field, and it passes through my property or person, I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with it. If the signal provider doesn't like it, they are free to add more and more complex protection to the data in the signal. Or, they can pay for a bigass Faraday cage that I can put around my place.
It's already illegal to monitor certain radio frequencies... cell phones and cordless phones for example. Building a receiver from a handful of basic components can make you a felon. It's crazy. Crazy. Service providers should protect their data with technology, not new laws.
Side note: even though I am a ham and I am fairly clued in on electronics, I find it AMAZING on some level that crystal radios work. There is enough juice flowing through you RIGHT NOW to DRIVE AN EARPHONE with NO POWER SUPPLY in the circuit. Doing the math is one thing... building a passive circuit that produces sound is something else. Wacky.
Video transfer uses something called "3:2 pulldown," I used to read up on that stuff when I collected LDs. Pretty tricky actually turning a 24FPS non-interlated data format into a 30FPS interlaced stream... but no matter how the frames are sliced and diced a film only hs 24 frames per second of data to offer.
I just want true 30fps in theaters! Maybe in an all digital theater... they do shoot some movies on HD video cameras, don't they? Still haven't been in one of them newfangled digital theaters. Seattle has crappy theaters.
The bookstore had 20, 25 books about Linux and maybe 3 about FreeBSD. Easy choice :)
;)
maybe easy, maybe not.
Look at the sun through your eyelashes.
MY EYES, GOD DAMN YOU...!
I never liked FF. Big Dragonball style hair, people riding these weird chickens... silly big swords... that's all I ever saw. Well, a friend of mine was playing FF8 and his character had to dress up like a woman to go do something. I guess that's more interesting than a big chicken. I'd rather watch Record of Lodoss War or some other old classic.
The FF movie looks nothing like the video games I have seen, thank goodness. I hope the characters in the movie aren't breeding those giant chicken things...
- Someone Confused by the FF Hype
35mm film is less than 3k x 3k. If this link is right anyway.
TV's 30fps is acceptable to me but the 24fps in film drives me BONKERS. It's much less noticeable when watching a film on a TV monitor (for some reason), but in the theater every time the scene pans it all gets blurry for me, too blurry to enjoy. Maybe my brain is miswired. I really wish some higher frame rate standard would replace old-fashioned 24fps film. Uck. They have been experimenting with replacements for years, I guess cost is the final barrier. As usual.
If you can reproduce limitless numbers of the original, it completely devalues the work of art.
Tell that to Ansel Adams.
That's a rotten site. There are no music samples. I will have to divine a sense of his musical greatness from the graphic design, I guess.
Ah. Just as I was about to post I found the music. It's hidden on the Gnarly Geezer site. You can't get to it from AH's site directly. So I still maintain that it sucks.
Hmm. The music underwhelms me. I'd rather listen to Dick Dale.
If you already have Photoshop why on Earth do you want to migrate to GIMP?
You seem to be arguing that just because a technique is harder it is more valuable. I get tired of the "suffering artist" bit. Gee, it's tough to mix a color. Sorry. It would be even harder if you had to use crappy medieval quality paints that weren't color consistent from batch to batch too. But I don't see you pining for the good ol' days.
All trades use tools that make their lives easier, why should it be different for artists? If a guy prefers working in Fractal Design Painter, he's still an artist. I don't consider myself to be less of a writer because I use a computer instead of a typewriter either.
A friend of mine is a pro illustrator. He does most of his work as acrylic on masonite I think, but he also does some 100% digital work. He'd kick my ass if I told him that digital stuff wasn't art. Because it is. It's just different.
This was actually a big debate inside Wizards of the Coast a while ago. The Magic art director at the time had a blanket no-digital-art policy. This was because most of the stuff he saw was CRAP. But then a guy turns in a pair of digital paintings that were unreal... they were great. They looked totally traditional. An argument raged. They ended up in the card set because they looked good. (No, I don't remember the card set or the artist's name, this was a while ago.)
Just so where clear, I consider computer generated art to be art, just not fine art.
So if the Mona Lisa was created buy a guy with a Wacom pad and Fractal Design Painter it wouldn't be as good anymore?
so a person who sits in front of the computer for hours with a graphics tablet and a natural media paint program (ie Fractal Design Painter) is somehow inferior to someone who uses actual paints? You're nuts. I have seen images produced on a computer that you couldn't tell weren't painted on a canvas without very careful examination. It sure looked like art to me.
Trying to draw a line between "art" and "fine art" is TOTALLY futile as well. It's, you know, subjective.
no kidding! and those damn impressionists, with all their little dots of paint... good thing art has evolved past that stage and we can chuck it all. No one paints like that anymore, so it can't be fine art.
I think people use "boxen" to be cute and "virii" out of ignorance or desire to anger spelling nuts.
The -en suffix is sort of a hackish tradition. "A room full of VAXen." I don't think anyone ever took it seriously.
Dude, be reasonable. Check internet advertising rates and develop a cost-per-thousand sliding scale. A CPM of $20 is a reasonable starting point.
I think the one-time payment for 5's is a great idea though you might have to come down a bit.
;)
Freelance writers don't make that much in most fields. I should know, I contract work from them. And I am one of them too. It's not like there are millions of freelancers driving around in exotic cars.
If you know some freelance markets where I can be a "pig" and receive ludicrous fees for my work, please post a followup. I'd love to be part of the problem you are describing.