> I, for one, am pretty much 99.99% correct when it comes to making positive recognition of those people around me that I see often.... I personally think that these cameras need to look at people the way we do, with two eyes.... Ever seen a perfect frontal view photograph of a person's face? Can you tell how long their nose is when you're looking at it?
I certainly am not an expert in these matters, but based on half a lifetime's self-observation, I'm pretty sure that your recognition of your fellow humans is based on subtleties of appearance and mannerisms rather than on some hyper-analytical form-matching mechanism.
I know that on several occasions I have been in a grocery store or somewhere and caught a former schoolmate out of the corner of my eye, recognizing him or her instantly. But as I approach to say 'hi' I get a better look and suddenly think that I have mis-recognized a stranger instead of correctly recognizing a former associate. It's only on the third or fourth look that I decide for sure that I should go ahead and say 'hi'.
Also notice the frequent situation where half your friends think Little Joey looks like Mom and the other half think he looks like Dad. I hypothesize that that's because some are looking at (say) the shape of his nose and others are looking at (say) the shape of his eyes. I.e., humans apparently recognize people on a fairly arbitrary subset of subtle cues rather than matching a remembered 3-D 'mask' to their faces.
As in so many other fields of AI, the technology that's on the market today falls far, far short of the basic abilities that humans -- and animals -- take so much for granted.
I wonder what the best today's technolgy could actually deliver is. If you set a threshold of (say) a maximum of 0.1% false positives, what are the chances of actually recognizing someone in your criminal/terrorist database if they are actively trying not to be recognized? I suspect the performance is going to be pretty dismal.
> I have not personally measured the number of base pairs; very few have I'm sure.
If you're equating "the number of base pairs" with "information" then your argument is lost before you start, because we know that the number of base pairs can increase or decrease between parent and child.
> However evolutionists are the ones claiming that you can get something from nothing; it's up to you/them to come up with examples, it's not up to me to dance for you.
Actually, the theory of evolution is just the invocation of known facts to explain known facts. It is beyond argument that species have changed over time, and modern genetics gives us an explanation for how this happens. Creationists don't like this and so they incorrectly invoke the second law of thermodynamics or make up their own "fourth law of thermodynamics" to 'prove' that the biological explanation is wrong.
It is quite clear that children differ from their parents. Is this a change in 'information'? Who knows; creationists generally avoid defining their terms, because they always find themselves shown wrong when they do.
Do we "gest something from nothing" when a snowflake forms? Until you can answer that quantitatively then you should recognize that you're talking out your ass. (Or rather, echoing what came out of some creationist leader's ass.)
> What I see is that AC agrees that there is natural selection and genetic mutations, but that these mutations never lead to an increase in genetic information.
And are we to suppose that AC has ever actually measured the information in a parent and offspring to see what the difference is?
Or even has a rigorous definition for 'information' in the context of inheritance?
> I mean, it's great that a large company is taking on Linux on a large scale, however, the fact that it will be running on these machines shouldn't be viewed as a huge victory. Do the clerks at these stores even realize what sort of OS they're using? Will Linux run these terminals any differently than anything else?
It's called "making inroads".
Frankly, I don't have much stake in what kind of POS anybody runs for their POS systems, but it is kind of nice to see managers go with quality over marketing hype now and then.
> So...I wonder what a Signal 11 looks like on a cash register?
Most of the checkers I deal with would be confused as to whether they should push the "11" key on the register, give the customer $11.00 in change, or call security with a Code 11 Alert.
And they'd probably ask the customer which they thought it meant...
At least with Windows everyone knows that any unexpected pop-up means "reboot, hope it works next time, and if the customer expresses annoyance at the wait, try to make friendly small talk about how crappy computers are".
> This is the statistical anomaly that will never happen again. M$ used their one "get to be right for free" card on knocking down realnames, so it's safe to assume they'll *never* *ever* be right again.
Actually, Micorsoft goes through the deck pretty fast, so the card should come up again in 2006 or so.
> The core Truths of "Religion" never change. However, Man's understanding of them will always be limited, and the application of the core Truths will change according to environment.
IOW, "The core 'truths' of religion are in constant flux."
The key difference between science and religion is that science is guided by evidence and religion is guided by tradition + a dash of this week's social views.
> God didn't change his mind about creating the earth. The Man that God created went off and became wicked, and God cried over them as a parent cries over the bad choices of a child. (Of course, most parents don't go kill their kids and start a new family when the first one doesn't go so well, but that is another problem to explain... I would be here all night!)
Give it your best shot. Be sure to tell us how many infants drowned in the flood.
There's no excusing the inexcusable.
Also explain why an omni*ent god applied a fix that didn't work: the ground was hardly dry before his champion of righteousness got drunk and showed his peepee, and of course the world is brim-full of wicked people right now. What did the flood accomplish?
> I believe the "Creation Scientists" are generally using anything but science to butress their case, I do think that they provide an important service. They harp on problems within the current set of theories that are taught, theories which are presented in schools with little or no rebuttal.
Alas, the creationist is yet to be born who understands any theory of science well enough to point out problems in it. (For that matter, it's doubtful that one in 10,000 creationists even know what a "theory" is.)
FYI, many scientists make careers of debating the problems with their own theories. Creationists have never added anything to the debate. (They're fond of pointing out errors like Piltdown man, but they always forget to mention that the frauds and mistakes they like to point out were invariably discovered by scientists rather than by creationists.)
> For example, the systematic lack of transitional forms in the fossil record is one which calls into question the gradualistic evolution that was taught when I was in school...
Browse talk.origins sometime and you'll notice that the one thing creationists never let themselves be pinned down on is the definition of "transitional". They incessantly assert that no such things exist, but won't even define the term. Whenever someone cites an example the creationists just handwave it away with "that's not transitional".
> Can teenagers be hurt by being presented both the pros and cons of the various theories in a balanced way?
No, I don't suppose it would hurt. But creationists have never pointed out any pros or cons of biological theories -- neither in a balanced way nor otherwise. Also, I'm curious why you seem to think that gradeschoolers should get the full dosage of "outstanding problems in evolution". In physics, mathematics, computer science, and in areas of biology other than the theory of evolution, that is generally reserved for grad school. Why the special treatment for the theory of evolution? Other than the fact that it offends a lot of people's religious beliefs?
Yes. Better yet, visit their Web sites first and find out what their curriculum is in advance. Also find out things like what their lab facilities are, what their graduation rates are, what campus crime rates are, etc. (Some states require their schools to publish those last two items, though the schools don't always make it easy to find.)
You may also be able to find the results of course surveys, and surveys of graduating students that will tell what kind of jobs they're getting and even how much their starting pay is.
But the main point is, use the Web to research the programs thoroughly before you go, and then you can as a customized question set based on what you have found out (or been unable to find out) about each specific university.
> Computer science, is a SCIENCE, while software system development is something else entirely. Schools that don't recognize the difference are so out of touch that the knowledge they teach you will not be applicable in the real world.
You do well to raise the distinction between SE and CS, but IMO the point above is overstated.
At my alma there is no SE program and many of the CS professors are interested in CS qua science, but IMO almost every required course in the curriculum contributes to making a better general-purpose ITer out of you. And that includes the rather lightweight "theory" classes usually required of undergraduates, such as discrete math, data structures, and algorithms.
Granted, there were still people who whinged "I just want to be a programmer" when faced with a class on hardware organization or OS design. Frankly I have no sympathy for them unless what they really meant was "I just want to be a third-rate programmer".
Also notice that the classes that provoke the most whinges are not generally the science classes.
> Software is no longer just a tool for mathmaticians to solve complex equations. Unfortunatly, I think many CS professors are still locked into the scientific mindset when it comes to computers.
That is not, by and large, what CS professors have in mind when they talk about the "science" in CS. For the most part they mean "theory", though in some sub-fields there is a very strong empiricism as well.
> When in doubt, raise concerns about terrorism, or inappropriately use 9/11 as a crutch. The new coin of Washington (both east and west it seems).
It's not just the USA. Want to wage war on a neighbor or on members of your own population? Just go ahead, and call it "War on Terrorism (tm)" if anyone expresses outrage over it.
> If, in skipping work to see Star Wars you harm thousands of people, and you still choose to skip work, then you probably aren't the type of person that should have been hired for that position in the first place.
Yeah, Yoda tried to explain that to young Anakin, but some people are just too strong willed for the light side.
> If we don't watch out, networks will go to the CNN format where the show is only a portion of the screen with crap in windows elsewhere.
Then someone will come out with a box with a handy "zoom" feature and a convenient preset that "zooms" the drek off the edges and shows only the content.
More likely the networks will go for rendered-in ads.
> I think with strong patent protections science can't develop well. Same in software development. If patent holders do not develop the product, no one can.
And therein lies the problem. The rich and powerful in the developed nations aren't interested in the advancement of science and software; they're interested in the next quarterly report.
> Years ago, the PTB reformed the process that music sales were recorded & how albums would thereby be certified as ``Gold" or ``Platinum."
> One week, the best-selling record was some forgettable group created by the music industry & heavily hyped on MTV....
I don't know how it's done now, but back in the '60s and '70s LPs went gold or platinum on the basis of the sticker price x the number the record company shipped to the distributers. So record companies got in the habit of doing the calculation and shipping enough to ensure the record went gold the first week it was out (whether anyone actually bought it or not), hoping that the announcement that it was a gold record would drive enough sales to cover the expense of operating that way.
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> I, for one, am pretty much 99.99% correct when it comes to making positive recognition of those people around me that I see often.
I certainly am not an expert in these matters, but based on half a lifetime's self-observation, I'm pretty sure that your recognition of your fellow humans is based on subtleties of appearance and mannerisms rather than on some hyper-analytical form-matching mechanism.
I know that on several occasions I have been in a grocery store or somewhere and caught a former schoolmate out of the corner of my eye, recognizing him or her instantly. But as I approach to say 'hi' I get a better look and suddenly think that I have mis-recognized a stranger instead of correctly recognizing a former associate. It's only on the third or fourth look that I decide for sure that I should go ahead and say 'hi'.
Also notice the frequent situation where half your friends think Little Joey looks like Mom and the other half think he looks like Dad. I hypothesize that that's because some are looking at (say) the shape of his nose and others are looking at (say) the shape of his eyes. I.e., humans apparently recognize people on a fairly arbitrary subset of subtle cues rather than matching a remembered 3-D 'mask' to their faces.
As in so many other fields of AI, the technology that's on the market today falls far, far short of the basic abilities that humans -- and animals -- take so much for granted.
I wonder what the best today's technolgy could actually deliver is. If you set a threshold of (say) a maximum of 0.1% false positives, what are the chances of actually recognizing someone in your criminal/terrorist database if they are actively trying not to be recognized? I suspect the performance is going to be pretty dismal.
> I have not personally measured the number of base pairs; very few have I'm sure.
If you're equating "the number of base pairs" with "information" then your argument is lost before you start, because we know that the number of base pairs can increase or decrease between parent and child.
> However evolutionists are the ones claiming that you can get something from nothing; it's up to you/them to come up with examples, it's not up to me to dance for you.
Actually, the theory of evolution is just the invocation of known facts to explain known facts. It is beyond argument that species have changed over time, and modern genetics gives us an explanation for how this happens. Creationists don't like this and so they incorrectly invoke the second law of thermodynamics or make up their own "fourth law of thermodynamics" to 'prove' that the biological explanation is wrong.
It is quite clear that children differ from their parents. Is this a change in 'information'? Who knows; creationists generally avoid defining their terms, because they always find themselves shown wrong when they do.
Do we "gest something from nothing" when a snowflake forms? Until you can answer that quantitatively then you should recognize that you're talking out your ass. (Or rather, echoing what came out of some creationist leader's ass.)
> Gentry's halos have been attacked time and time again
I presume it's a waste of time arguing with you, but any lurkers who don't want to be led astry might want to read this explanation.
> What I see is that AC agrees that there is natural selection and genetic mutations, but that these mutations never lead to an increase in genetic information.
And are we to suppose that AC has ever actually measured the information in a parent and offspring to see what the difference is?
Or even has a rigorous definition for 'information' in the context of inheritance?
> I mean, it's great that a large company is taking on Linux on a large scale, however, the fact that it will be running on these machines shouldn't be viewed as a huge victory. Do the clerks at these stores even realize what sort of OS they're using? Will Linux run these terminals any differently than anything else?
It's called "making inroads".
Frankly, I don't have much stake in what kind of POS anybody runs for their POS systems, but it is kind of nice to see managers go with quality over marketing hype now and then.
> Until this week, I had no idea that "Paint Your Wagon" was actually a real movie. Then I saw it in the TV section of the paper...
Oh, by all means rent it and watch it. It's a real hoot.
> So...I wonder what a Signal 11 looks like on a cash register?
Most of the checkers I deal with would be confused as to whether they should push the "11" key on the register, give the customer $11.00 in change, or call security with a Code 11 Alert.
And they'd probably ask the customer which they thought it meant...
At least with Windows everyone knows that any unexpected pop-up means "reboot, hope it works next time, and if the customer expresses annoyance at the wait, try to make friendly small talk about how crappy computers are".
> "Upstart" is what your TechDesk news editor calls it when 1) he doesn't use it, and 2) he doesn't like it.
Or, 3) doesn't have andy idea what it is but saw other journalists describe it that way.
> This is the statistical anomaly that will never happen again. M$ used their one "get to be right for free" card on knocking down realnames, so it's safe to assume they'll *never* *ever* be right again.
Actually, Micorsoft goes through the deck pretty fast, so the card should come up again in 2006 or so.
> I could have done it in 2 Lines with Perl!
Yes, but scientists prefer comprehensible models of the universe!
> The core Truths of "Religion" never change. However, Man's understanding of them will always be limited, and the application of the core Truths will change according to environment.
IOW, "The core 'truths' of religion are in constant flux."
The key difference between science and religion is that science is guided by evidence and religion is guided by tradition + a dash of this week's social views.
> God didn't change his mind about creating the earth. The Man that God created went off and became wicked, and God cried over them as a parent cries over the bad choices of a child. (Of course, most parents don't go kill their kids and start a new family when the first one doesn't go so well, but that is another problem to explain... I would be here all night!)
Give it your best shot. Be sure to tell us how many infants drowned in the flood.
There's no excusing the inexcusable.
Also explain why an omni*ent god applied a fix that didn't work: the ground was hardly dry before his champion of righteousness got drunk and showed his peepee, and of course the world is brim-full of wicked people right now. What did the flood accomplish?
> I believe the "Creation Scientists" are generally using anything but science to butress their case, I do think that they provide an important service. They harp on problems within the current set of theories that are taught, theories which are presented in schools with little or no rebuttal.
Alas, the creationist is yet to be born who understands any theory of science well enough to point out problems in it. (For that matter, it's doubtful that one in 10,000 creationists even know what a "theory" is.)
FYI, many scientists make careers of debating the problems with their own theories. Creationists have never added anything to the debate. (They're fond of pointing out errors like Piltdown man, but they always forget to mention that the frauds and mistakes they like to point out were invariably discovered by scientists rather than by creationists.)
> For example, the systematic lack of transitional forms in the fossil record is one which calls into question the gradualistic evolution that was taught when I was in school...
Browse talk.origins sometime and you'll notice that the one thing creationists never let themselves be pinned down on is the definition of "transitional". They incessantly assert that no such things exist, but won't even define the term. Whenever someone cites an example the creationists just handwave it away with "that's not transitional".
> Can teenagers be hurt by being presented both the pros and cons of the various theories in a balanced way?
No, I don't suppose it would hurt. But creationists have never pointed out any pros or cons of biological theories -- neither in a balanced way nor otherwise. Also, I'm curious why you seem to think that gradeschoolers should get the full dosage of "outstanding problems in evolution". In physics, mathematics, computer science, and in areas of biology other than the theory of evolution, that is generally reserved for grad school. Why the special treatment for the theory of evolution? Other than the fact that it offends a lot of people's religious beliefs?
Since it rivals the performance of both n and p, does that make it faster on NP-complete problems?
> Can I see a copy of your curriculum please?
Yes. Better yet, visit their Web sites first and find out what their curriculum is in advance. Also find out things like what their lab facilities are, what their graduation rates are, what campus crime rates are, etc. (Some states require their schools to publish those last two items, though the schools don't always make it easy to find.)
You may also be able to find the results of course surveys, and surveys of graduating students that will tell what kind of jobs they're getting and even how much their starting pay is.
But the main point is, use the Web to research the programs thoroughly before you go, and then you can as a customized question set based on what you have found out (or been unable to find out) about each specific university.
> Computer science, is a SCIENCE, while software system development is something else entirely. Schools that don't recognize the difference are so out of touch that the knowledge they teach you will not be applicable in the real world.
You do well to raise the distinction between SE and CS, but IMO the point above is overstated.
At my alma there is no SE program and many of the CS professors are interested in CS qua science, but IMO almost every required course in the curriculum contributes to making a better general-purpose ITer out of you. And that includes the rather lightweight "theory" classes usually required of undergraduates, such as discrete math, data structures, and algorithms.
Granted, there were still people who whinged "I just want to be a programmer" when faced with a class on hardware organization or OS design. Frankly I have no sympathy for them unless what they really meant was "I just want to be a third-rate programmer".
Also notice that the classes that provoke the most whinges are not generally the science classes.
> Software is no longer just a tool for mathmaticians to solve complex equations. Unfortunatly, I think many CS professors are still locked into the scientific mindset when it comes to computers.
That is not, by and large, what CS professors have in mind when they talk about the "science" in CS. For the most part they mean "theory", though in some sub-fields there is a very strong empiricism as well.
> When in doubt, raise concerns about terrorism, or inappropriately use 9/11 as a crutch. The new coin of Washington (both east and west it seems).
It's not just the USA. Want to wage war on a neighbor or on members of your own population? Just go ahead, and call it "War on Terrorism (tm)" if anyone expresses outrage over it.
> If, in skipping work to see Star Wars you harm thousands of people, and you still choose to skip work, then you probably aren't the type of person that should have been hired for that position in the first place.
Yeah, Yoda tried to explain that to young Anakin, but some people are just too strong willed for the light side.
> If you want to be specific, both Opera and Mozilla copied those ideas from others.
From whom? (I've been intending to ask, so this looks like a good spot.)
> If we don't watch out, networks will go to the CNN format where the show is only a portion of the screen with crap in windows elsewhere.
Then someone will come out with a box with a handy "zoom" feature and a convenient preset that "zooms" the drek off the edges and shows only the content.
More likely the networks will go for rendered-in ads.
> Oh, man. I bet they are going to be baffled, too, when their box fails to sell any units.
...and blame it on rampant bootlegging, too.
> I think with strong patent protections science can't develop well. Same in software development. If patent holders do not develop the product, no one can.
And therein lies the problem. The rich and powerful in the developed nations aren't interested in the advancement of science and software; they're interested in the next quarterly report.
It's the Tragedy of the Commons, writ large.
> For those to lazy to register:
LMAO. If the movie's half so entertaining as that review, it should do OK.
I'm not holding my breath, though.
Didn't anyone tell Micorsoft what this trial is about?
> Years ago, the PTB reformed the process that music sales were recorded & how albums would thereby be certified as ``Gold" or ``Platinum."
> One week, the best-selling record was some forgettable group created by the music industry & heavily hyped on MTV.
I don't know how it's done now, but back in the '60s and '70s LPs went gold or platinum on the basis of the sticker price x the number the record company shipped to the distributers. So record companies got in the habit of doing the calculation and shipping enough to ensure the record went gold the first week it was out (whether anyone actually bought it or not), hoping that the announcement that it was a gold record would drive enough sales to cover the expense of operating that way.