Statistics on the other hand will show that the number of fatalities varies to the square of the speed of the vehicle involved in a collision.
Highway statistics show no consistent relationship between speed and fatality. That's probably because once you reach a speed that kills you, it doesn't matter how much faster you go. Higher speeds do seem to increase driver alertness, but of course you also have more stopping distance.
What we do know is that Germany has much higher highway speeds, yet much lower highway accident rates (1/3 of US) and lower absolute number of fatalities (1/40 of US at 1/4 the population).
True. And US highways are generally built so that 90mph is safe, because many of them were designed before the oil crisis and strict speed limits. Furthermore, where it isn't safe, the state can still impose additional limits.
Even for roads like the Autobahn, when you do have a wreck, it tends to be pretty spectacular and much worse than the ones we typically get in the US.
Yet, the US has 40 times the number of highway fatalities for only 4 times the population. And the US has 3 times the fatality rate of German highways. And German highways have less than half the fatality rate of other German roads. Whichever way you look at it, the German highway system is safer even though people regularly travel at 100mph, and many cars go as fast as 130mph.
Yes, but not for the reasons you think. US speed limits were enacted after the oil crisis of the 1970's to save fuel, not to save lives. It's known that higher speed limits by themselves doesn't automatically lead to more accidents.
This plan may lead to more accidents because some people will drive fast while others won't. That may cause problems (but it just isn't known).
A better plan would be to have for-pay stretches of high-speed highways.
One of the advantages of TS is that it gives you a wider image circle than a standard lens of the same focal length, so it can be seen as effectively a 16mm lens.
No matter how you shift it, you can't get the same shot as with a 16mm lens.
Rotating the lens can bring up the DOF so I can use a much wider aperture than a conventional lens.
That only works for very limited shooting situations.
Using the conventional techniques you mention to get the same effect as a TS lens are all accompanied with a loss of image quality,
You get a loss of resolution with cropping or perspective correction, at worst half. You get 10 Mpixel, which is good enough for web and most print. There are very few situations in which tilt gives you DOF that you can't achieve with stopping down: extreme perspective on planes or weird focus in low light, neither of which comes up much. Simulating selective focus doesn't result in any loss of quality. That's all without using computational photography. As I was saying, if you're a dedicated architectural photographer, it may still be worth it to get twice the resolution on buildings.
In a couple of years, computational photography will be so fully automated that there will be no point at all anymore.
Well, look at what the story and discussion is about: 8"x8" sensors and view cameras.
A TS lens on a DSLR is OK, but they are still heavy and quite limited. If you're an architectural photographer, they may still be worth it, although I think in a few years, they'll just be considered a useless brick. For most people, an ultrawide lens and some extra resolution in the camera are a better way of spending the money and weight; they can then get good architectural shots either by cropping (shoot level, crop ground, which is essentially what a TS lens does) or perspective correction (shoot up, then correct, a standard function).
The videos seem pretty gimmicky to me. On the rare occasion you actually need something like that, it's easy to simulate. TS for limited focus makes little sense these days. A wide aperture lens is money better spent if you want limited DOF.
Extended DOF with tilting also isn't that useful; most situations like that can be adequately handled by stopping down, due to smaller sensors and higher sensitivity of digital.
I used to have a TS lens for my DSLR; it just didn't make that much sense to keep it.
Let me spell it out: right now, $1.30 = 1EU. Devaluing the dollar means going to, oh, $3 = 1EU. So, that $500 iPhone now costs 160 EU, that $20000 Ford pickup truck now costs 6600 EU. How well do you think European manufacturers could compete with that? On the other hand, that 20000 EU BMW now costs $60000, and that 2000 EU European vacation now costs $6000. How fast do you think US demand for European exports will fall?
Once you have an image there isn't anything you can do about depth of field. Compositing a set of images to manage DOF when you can get the same benefit
You can't get the same effect. All you can do with a view camera is to place the focal plane somewhere; it's a very limited effect. With computational photography, you can get infinite depth of field, or you can choose arbitrary regions to be in and out of focus.
by turning a knob on a lens is an expensive and impractical process for a working photographer.
View cameras are hugely expensive, and transporting them and setting them up is as well.
Since computational photography software outside very basic effects, and hardware to support it is not generally available that is obviously a false statement.
It's generally available, just not in the push-button simple form that you may be comfortable with.
What ever it is they are doing, we need to start copying them.
That's pretty simple: they keep the value of their currency low. Drop the value of the US dollar to half what it's now and US products will sell around the world like hotcakes. And at the same time, we'll import much less from China and the EU.
Last I heard your telco wasn't using the _content_ of your communications to choose which ads to serve you.
No, your telco just keeps that information on file and then gives it to governments, often without a warrant. The consequence? Instead of the wrong ad, you may be suspected and accused of the wrong crime.
I myself find that beyond creepy
You should, not because Google is doing it, but because you can be sure that other, less benign groups are doing it as well, and they don't tell you about it.
How about a "do not track me" for your ISP. But those oh-so-privacy-conscious Europeans want to force your ISP to keep your browsing history on file, for perusal by the oh-so-democratic European police forces.
If you really don't understand the value of privacy then would you, for the sake of verifying your sincerity, posting your own browsing history for the last few days?
Your ISP has your complete browsing history, Google doesn't unless you give it to them. Many governments want your ISP to keep that browsing history on record.
If not the average person would have to assume that you have some financial stake in (other's) browsing history. We know Google owns doubleclick and pays PR firms to astroturf i.e., pose as people who "don't understand" in various public forums. All we don't know is who those 'turfers work for.
Or maybe you are posing as someone concerned about "privacy" but actually are astroturfing for one of those organizations/governments trying to invade our privacy and deflecting blame to Google.
An average person would have to conclude that since your arguments are bogus and are ignoring the real privacy villains.
Well, there is one more piece of evidence: Consumer Watchdog's arguments make no sense; they have a single-minded focus on Google and are largely ignoring the privacy violations from lots of other companies.
Answer me these questions: (1) What technical qualifications do the people at "Consumer Watchdog" have with regard to computer privacy? (2) Where does their funding come from? Who has donated to them? (3) Where is their technical analysis of Google privacy practices and in what specific way are they worse than those of other companies?
My reading is that the "Consumer Watchdog" folks are just looking for another hot-button topic to drum up funding and support, and big-scary-Google seems like a good choice. And Microsoft-friendly folks are all too happy to support this. But "Consumer Watchdog" doesn't make any real contribution to improving privacy or policy; that would require an understanding of the issues and technology, which they seem to lack.
Do you think that it's that different here in the States?
Yes, it really is. In Germany, every resident must register his physical home addresses with the government, and service providers need to verify accurate personal information. They also need to store connection information. In the US, there is no requirement to register your home address with the government, and ISPs don't communicate with the government about your identity or location.
That means that in the US, you can walk into a store, buy a mobile device, prepay with cash, and start using it (provided a company offers you that service). And even for wired connections, the US government doesn't automatically get your information and there isn't even a requirement to get the wire under your name, meaning that it doesn't enter databases that way.
Of course, police in the US can find out a lot about you, but they need to take active steps and often need to get a court order. And since the information isn't collected consistently and automatically, data mining becomes much harder.
So apparently you don't like people thinking for you, but you don't bother to think if they have the right idea.
Jobs's idea is to keep competition away; while I don't like Flash, there are situations where it is better to have Flash than nothing.
It's protected me from poor developers and there are far too many of them out there.
You're dreaming. I have an iPhone; there is tons of crappy, insecure, inconsistent software out for it that's not caught by the review process. And iOS compounds the problem by lacking effective sandboxing and sufficient UI standards (apps are confusingly inconsistent about how you set preferences, how you invoke menus, how you undo, etc.).
If you want to be protected from poor developers, get an Android device: it does have effective sandboxing and it does have at least some reasonable UI standards.
I bother because tilt and shift provides far better image quality.
Really? You can get gigapixel quality?
Photoshop
Photoshop? Did I say anything about Photoshop?
doesn't correct for depth of field nor does it give you control of the focal plane.
Computer composition gives you arbitrary control of depth of field, including non-flat depth of field.
It also makes possible a lot of other techniques that are not possible to create with Photoshop.
There is nothing you can do a tilt/shift camera that can't be done better and cheaper with computational photography. (Photoshop, however, doesn't do many of those things.)
You got it backwards: the enforcement I'm talking about is against companies that make excessive copyright claims: claiming copyrights on content that's in the public domain, claiming rights that interfere with fair use rights, etc. You know, like the "FBI warnings" on movies.
I personally do not believe anything I read on a non-peer reviewed paper,
A peer reviewer is just someone working in a field. If you need to rely on peer reviewers to determine whether a paper in your field is credible, you're simply not competent and should find a different job. For people working in a field, peer review is useful for cutting down the crap, not for establishing credibility.
What you're suggesting is a negative results, caused from "not seeing what we wanted to see", which can be rebutted in a million different ways, most of which you probably do not know yet.
Negative results like that are incredibly useful: either they show that a particular experimental approach fails, saving other people the effort to go down that path, or they are a new phenomenon. Keeping such results from getting published is really quite harmful to science, causing needless duplication of the same dead ends again and again.
I think he is more interested in getting publicity than getting his facts checked.
How does "peer review" result in fact checking? Peer reviewers don't have any more information than anybody else. Peer reviewers can check whether there are any obvious errors in the experimental procedures as described, nothing more. Peer reviewers have a tendency to reject papers that have implausible results or conclusions (such as this one), but that's wrong and it's not their job.
The way to "fact check" such a paper is by attempting to replicate the experiments. In order to replicate the experiment, the experiment needs to be published. Then, if anybody is sufficiently interested, they roll up their sleeves and try to replicate it.
Slashdot Mirror
Statistics on the other hand will show that the number of fatalities varies to the square of the speed of the vehicle involved in a collision.
Highway statistics show no consistent relationship between speed and fatality. That's probably because once you reach a speed that kills you, it doesn't matter how much faster you go. Higher speeds do seem to increase driver alertness, but of course you also have more stopping distance.
What we do know is that Germany has much higher highway speeds, yet much lower highway accident rates (1/3 of US) and lower absolute number of fatalities (1/40 of US at 1/4 the population).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/pl08021/fig7_5.cfm
So, stop pulling statistics out of your ass.
Roads are constructed to engineering specs.
True. And US highways are generally built so that 90mph is safe, because many of them were designed before the oil crisis and strict speed limits. Furthermore, where it isn't safe, the state can still impose additional limits.
Even for roads like the Autobahn, when you do have a wreck, it tends to be pretty spectacular and much worse than the ones we typically get in the US.
Yet, the US has 40 times the number of highway fatalities for only 4 times the population. And the US has 3 times the fatality rate of German highways. And German highways have less than half the fatality rate of other German roads. Whichever way you look at it, the German highway system is safer even though people regularly travel at 100mph, and many cars go as fast as 130mph.
Speed limits were enacted neither to raise funds not for safety, but in order to improve gas mileage.
US highways have always been safe enough to drive at 90mph, and modern passenger cars are built for that speed.
Yes, but not for the reasons you think. US speed limits were enacted after the oil crisis of the 1970's to save fuel, not to save lives. It's known that higher speed limits by themselves doesn't automatically lead to more accidents.
This plan may lead to more accidents because some people will drive fast while others won't. That may cause problems (but it just isn't known).
A better plan would be to have for-pay stretches of high-speed highways.
One of the advantages of TS is that it gives you a wider image circle than a standard lens of the same focal length, so it can be seen as effectively a 16mm lens.
No matter how you shift it, you can't get the same shot as with a 16mm lens.
Rotating the lens can bring up the DOF so I can use a much wider aperture than a conventional lens.
That only works for very limited shooting situations.
Using the conventional techniques you mention to get the same effect as a TS lens are all accompanied with a loss of image quality,
You get a loss of resolution with cropping or perspective correction, at worst half. You get 10 Mpixel, which is good enough for web and most print. There are very few situations in which tilt gives you DOF that you can't achieve with stopping down: extreme perspective on planes or weird focus in low light, neither of which comes up much. Simulating selective focus doesn't result in any loss of quality. That's all without using computational photography. As I was saying, if you're a dedicated architectural photographer, it may still be worth it to get twice the resolution on buildings.
In a couple of years, computational photography will be so fully automated that there will be no point at all anymore.
Well, look at what the story and discussion is about: 8"x8" sensors and view cameras.
A TS lens on a DSLR is OK, but they are still heavy and quite limited. If you're an architectural photographer, they may still be worth it, although I think in a few years, they'll just be considered a useless brick. For most people, an ultrawide lens and some extra resolution in the camera are a better way of spending the money and weight; they can then get good architectural shots either by cropping (shoot level, crop ground, which is essentially what a TS lens does) or perspective correction (shoot up, then correct, a standard function).
The videos seem pretty gimmicky to me. On the rare occasion you actually need something like that, it's easy to simulate. TS for limited focus makes little sense these days. A wide aperture lens is money better spent if you want limited DOF.
Extended DOF with tilting also isn't that useful; most situations like that can be adequately handled by stopping down, due to smaller sensors and higher sensitivity of digital.
I used to have a TS lens for my DSLR; it just didn't make that much sense to keep it.
Are you trying to be funny?
Let me spell it out: right now, $1.30 = 1EU. Devaluing the dollar means going to, oh, $3 = 1EU. So, that $500 iPhone now costs 160 EU, that $20000 Ford pickup truck now costs 6600 EU. How well do you think European manufacturers could compete with that? On the other hand, that 20000 EU BMW now costs $60000, and that 2000 EU European vacation now costs $6000. How fast do you think US demand for European exports will fall?
Once you have an image there isn't anything you can do about depth of field. Compositing a set of images to manage DOF when you can get the same benefit
You can't get the same effect. All you can do with a view camera is to place the focal plane somewhere; it's a very limited effect. With computational photography, you can get infinite depth of field, or you can choose arbitrary regions to be in and out of focus.
by turning a knob on a lens is an expensive and impractical process for a working photographer.
View cameras are hugely expensive, and transporting them and setting them up is as well.
Since computational photography software outside very basic effects, and hardware to support it is not generally available that is obviously a false statement.
It's generally available, just not in the push-button simple form that you may be comfortable with.
What ever it is they are doing, we need to start copying them.
That's pretty simple: they keep the value of their currency low. Drop the value of the US dollar to half what it's now and US products will sell around the world like hotcakes. And at the same time, we'll import much less from China and the EU.
Actually, that makes them quite American; that's the same way the US used to behave towards the UK.
Last I heard your telco wasn't using the _content_ of your communications to choose which ads to serve you.
No, your telco just keeps that information on file and then gives it to governments, often without a warrant. The consequence? Instead of the wrong ad, you may be suspected and accused of the wrong crime.
I myself find that beyond creepy
You should, not because Google is doing it, but because you can be sure that other, less benign groups are doing it as well, and they don't tell you about it.
How about a "do not track me" for your ISP. But those oh-so-privacy-conscious Europeans want to force your ISP to keep your browsing history on file, for perusal by the oh-so-democratic European police forces.
If you really don't understand the value of privacy then would you, for the sake of verifying your sincerity, posting your own browsing history for the last few days?
Your ISP has your complete browsing history, Google doesn't unless you give it to them. Many governments want your ISP to keep that browsing history on record.
If not the average person would have to assume that you have some financial stake in (other's) browsing history. We know Google owns doubleclick and pays PR firms to astroturf i.e., pose as people who "don't understand" in various public forums. All we don't know is who those 'turfers work for.
Or maybe you are posing as someone concerned about "privacy" but actually are astroturfing for one of those organizations/governments trying to invade our privacy and deflecting blame to Google.
An average person would have to conclude that since your arguments are bogus and are ignoring the real privacy villains.
Well, there is one more piece of evidence: Consumer Watchdog's arguments make no sense; they have a single-minded focus on Google and are largely ignoring the privacy violations from lots of other companies.
Answer me these questions: (1) What technical qualifications do the people at "Consumer Watchdog" have with regard to computer privacy? (2) Where does their funding come from? Who has donated to them? (3) Where is their technical analysis of Google privacy practices and in what specific way are they worse than those of other companies?
My reading is that the "Consumer Watchdog" folks are just looking for another hot-button topic to drum up funding and support, and big-scary-Google seems like a good choice. And Microsoft-friendly folks are all too happy to support this. But "Consumer Watchdog" doesn't make any real contribution to improving privacy or policy; that would require an understanding of the issues and technology, which they seem to lack.
Do you think that it's that different here in the States?
Yes, it really is. In Germany, every resident must register his physical home addresses with the government, and service providers need to verify accurate personal information. They also need to store connection information. In the US, there is no requirement to register your home address with the government, and ISPs don't communicate with the government about your identity or location.
That means that in the US, you can walk into a store, buy a mobile device, prepay with cash, and start using it (provided a company offers you that service). And even for wired connections, the US government doesn't automatically get your information and there isn't even a requirement to get the wire under your name, meaning that it doesn't enter databases that way.
Of course, police in the US can find out a lot about you, but they need to take active steps and often need to get a court order. And since the information isn't collected consistently and automatically, data mining becomes much harder.
Cable TV isn't a necessity, online banking and shopping more and more is.
So, you'll have a dozen subscriptions to different networks, and they all will have your personal information.
I don't see how they can "fix" that: invites get added by the account that receives them.
If you want to keep work and private E-mail separate, you shouldn't forward between them.
"Consumer Watchdog" appears to be an astroturfing organization, financed by Microsoft.
http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/
I talked to them, and their arguments don't make much sense; they can't come up with a coherent argument why they are focusing on Google so much.
So apparently you don't like people thinking for you, but you don't bother to think if they have the right idea.
Jobs's idea is to keep competition away; while I don't like Flash, there are situations where it is better to have Flash than nothing.
It's protected me from poor developers and there are far too many of them out there.
You're dreaming. I have an iPhone; there is tons of crappy, insecure, inconsistent software out for it that's not caught by the review process. And iOS compounds the problem by lacking effective sandboxing and sufficient UI standards (apps are confusingly inconsistent about how you set preferences, how you invoke menus, how you undo, etc.).
If you want to be protected from poor developers, get an Android device: it does have effective sandboxing and it does have at least some reasonable UI standards.
I bother because tilt and shift provides far better image quality.
Really? You can get gigapixel quality?
Photoshop
Photoshop? Did I say anything about Photoshop?
doesn't correct for depth of field nor does it give you control of the focal plane.
Computer composition gives you arbitrary control of depth of field, including non-flat depth of field.
It also makes possible a lot of other techniques that are not possible to create with Photoshop.
There is nothing you can do a tilt/shift camera that can't be done better and cheaper with computational photography. (Photoshop, however, doesn't do many of those things.)
I think your posting speaks for itself.
You got it backwards: the enforcement I'm talking about is against companies that make excessive copyright claims: claiming copyrights on content that's in the public domain, claiming rights that interfere with fair use rights, etc. You know, like the "FBI warnings" on movies.
That principle also works for the Pope.
I personally do not believe anything I read on a non-peer reviewed paper,
A peer reviewer is just someone working in a field. If you need to rely on peer reviewers to determine whether a paper in your field is credible, you're simply not competent and should find a different job. For people working in a field, peer review is useful for cutting down the crap, not for establishing credibility.
What you're suggesting is a negative results, caused from "not seeing what we wanted to see", which can be rebutted in a million different ways, most of which you probably do not know yet.
Negative results like that are incredibly useful: either they show that a particular experimental approach fails, saving other people the effort to go down that path, or they are a new phenomenon. Keeping such results from getting published is really quite harmful to science, causing needless duplication of the same dead ends again and again.
I think he is more interested in getting publicity than getting his facts checked.
How does "peer review" result in fact checking? Peer reviewers don't have any more information than anybody else. Peer reviewers can check whether there are any obvious errors in the experimental procedures as described, nothing more. Peer reviewers have a tendency to reject papers that have implausible results or conclusions (such as this one), but that's wrong and it's not their job.
The way to "fact check" such a paper is by attempting to replicate the experiments. In order to replicate the experiment, the experiment needs to be published. Then, if anybody is sufficiently interested, they roll up their sleeves and try to replicate it.