I have to agree - whilst I'm very partial to a smooth blended espresso, I've recently taken to Turkish/Greek coffee after a friend fired up a Turkish coffee pot on the stove and dumped in a pile of grounds. For one minute, I was left thinking 'what the hell is this guy doing' but the taste was nothing less than amazing!
You gotta try it, at least once, and you'll understand that no food or drink should set you back $1500 before you even have a mouthful.
actually, the first poster is entirely correct - although I cannot recall the equation of the uncertaintly principle it still holds true in the macroscopic world, it's just that the wave functions of macroscopic objects (ala schroedinger equation) are far greater than their associated uncertainty. The process of the police observing your speed does change your direction (solid objects also have wave functions, they are just far less significant than in elementary particles), but to such a small extent that it not appreciable:
The radar pulse interacts with the molecules of your car, imparting a small degree of energy coming in from a certain vector (like a gentle breeze) which does change the direction of the car but to such a small degree that it is totally undetectable, and only of mathematical curiosity.
good point - and it seems to be coming to light faster than I imagined. Only problem is, we've now got David Blunkett as Home Secretary (secretary of state for you US-ers out there), Jack 'Fascist Bastard' Straw is now foreign sec (having replaced goggle-eyed ugly bastard Robin Cook).
You think that being blind would have made Blunkett a more caring, pleasant person but apparently he's described as being 'more right wing than Jack Straw'....which is very worrying indeed!
-Nano.
'Is they called Class A because they is da best?' - Ali G.
I think I feel less worried about the MIT application of the data because it is no more than an extension of a personal address book - the information is held by individuals, not by a large, faceless corporation. It's when these individuals get to compiling and aggregating thir pooled data that will worry me. Which won't be long after it first appears.
>>After all, you are nothing but a scummy drug dealer that deserves everything he gets?
Aaaah, good.
drugs = bad.
you must have thought long and hard to come to that conclusion. Let me just ask you a few things to justify your viewpoint:
1) why does a certain substance get placed into the 'illegal' category? because of actual harmfulness or just addictive potential? or is it something else altogether?
2) why doesn't an adult have the right to control their own body? what if I *want* to be addicted to something? what if the 'drug' I want to take isn't addictive?
3) when did many 'drugs' become illegal, and why exactly did they become illegal? did national governments suddenly open their eyes to substances that had existed for VERY long times and go 'hey, shit - these should be illegal' or were there other reasons for their reclassification.
4) when the government reclassifies a 'drug', do you suddenly have a moral dilemma that your previous stance to a substance was either to harsh or to lax compared to what the government wanted you to think. (e.g. a sedative used to cure many epileptics (and therefore 'good') is suddenly found to have addictive potential and therefore jumps into class II (and is therefore 'bad') - do all the people dependant on that drug to lead normal lives suddenly become scummy drug users or unfortunate victims?)
uhhh.....vote for who, exactly? oh, that's right - I must live in the only democracy where my views are unrepresented. Oh no, that's right - *I* must be wrong, not the system in which I live.
And anarchy is not the alternative to a system of imperfect laws passed by the geeky kid in the class who joined 'debate club' rather than 'remote controlled planes'....only in the eyes of someone with a lack of imagination.
And I don't just want certain drugs legalised - I want the government to treat every educated, mentally competent adult as such and to allow them to control their own bodies and lives, not just follow an outdated 'moral code' set down on religious grounds.
Sheep-like is right. It never fails to sicken me how ready people are to take a stiff one up the ass from the government because they believe that cradle-to-grave serveillance is somehow acceptable. As shows like 'big brother' have shown (though somewhat unscientifically) is that constant surveillance increases stress, aggression and impedes normal daily life.
Doesn't ANYONE over here remember Orwell's 1984?
I mean, Jesus Christ, we've got the home secretary (equivalent of the uhh....secretary of state?) talking about maintaining permanent computerised DNA fingerprints of the entire population.
The one tired argument I hear over and over again from advocates of these systems is that 'If you're innocent then you've got nothing to worry about' and 'It'll only catch criminals'. But haven't these same people asked themselves if what constitutes a crime in the eyes of the government is truly set in stone and unquestionably correct? Any of you same people smoke cannabis? huh? you do - well, thats £500 and 2 years probation for you then....what, 1/3 of the UK adult population are now criminals? how about pissing in the street or littering - what, you mean that that homeless guy over there or that high-powered businessman who can't find a public toilet/dustbin because there aren't any is now a criminal? Do you like this picture? What if this same government then decides that sex before marriage is illegal - well, that 24-hour surveillance bracelet on your ankle might just cramp your style.
Maybe, just maybe, politicians and police are as fallible as you and I and this means that they get things wrong - including LAWMAKING. Just because the kid that sat next to you in class grew up to like making public speeches whilst you buckled down to mathematics doesn't give him any more right to run people's lives than you....regardless of the fact he was elected to office on the back of a 'vogue' or just plain old political propaganda and posturing.
(Why is it illegal for Colgate to claim their toothpaste cures impotence, but 'just politics' when Labour spends hundreds of thousands of OUR MONEY to send out text messages to first time voters, promising 24-hour licensing laws and then doing a sharp 180 when they get in?)
Politicians are fallible, laws aren't absolute nor entirely correct, privacy and personal freedom are things you never appreciate until they're gone, widespread surveillance is bad. Get over it.
It's my belief that national pride is OK - why shouldn't you be proud of your nations' meritable achievements? But this has to be tempered with what many people lack - a sense of (I guess you could call it) national humility - accepting that, no, your nation isn't the most advanced/free/developed/rich/unbiased in the world and that in some aspects, others do it better. For example, I'm proud to be British....but I also know that in some aspects adults are conferred greater individual rights just over the sea in the Netherlands, that trains run better in Germany, that Denmark has cleaner streets and that the USA has a greater industrial base. But I like the idea of being a 'loss leader' in many aspects - our history, for example, the idea of a free health service (hmm...leave that one for later) and our dedication to sciences (whilst American universities recieve far more investment than ours, I seem to remember the TV and telephone being invented over here, that we discovered DNA and lead the field in large parts of medical research - especially human embryonic research, all due to our more relaxed laws in that area).
I believe that the largest problems arise when politicians try to legislate morality, or somehow believe that their own moral perogative is somehow more valid than anyone else's.
So, all in all, I feel national pride is nothing to be lambasted, just so long as it's done in moderation.
Louisiana, if I am not mistaken, was French owned and developed for a large part of its pre-USA history and so probably inherited a French system of copyright laws. More than that, I really don't know.
So let me get this straight....If I make a GUI OS and call it Kicrosoft Kindows KP then I can get sued because it's too similar to another well known OS? How about Microshaft Finblows? Moddycroft Dildos?
The point I'm trying to make is this:
1) What percentage of a name must be unique to confer protective rights to the owner? (and this point is moot - look at all the generic drug names on the market: amiloride vs. amiodarone, omeprazole vs. lansoprazole, lidocaine vs. procaine, celecoxib vs. refecoxib, ranitidine vs. cimetidine, captopril vs. enalapril - either drugs with identical functions with very similar names OR different functions with very similar names, each manufactured by different companies)
or
2) How much must two products differ in their functionality/audience to confer those rights? (many products already on the market have similar names but different functions e.g. sharp (electronics) vs. harp (a beer))
So, by creating a product called the XYZ, am I automatically assigned protection over names with the form *XYZ*
This is what the argument boils down to, and there are plenty of examples out there to show that this is just plain stupid, in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the public.
Hmm.....maybe you guys should come and visit the UK sometime - this system already exists (to some extent) over here - cameras on every street corner in big cities, or hidden away on rooftops. Cameras along the motorways (freeways) which take your average speed between camera points in order to catch you speeding....pretty much anything the police want to do with cameras really.
And its all because 'if you're innocent, you've got nothing to worry about - and besides, who wants to let crime occur undetected'. To me, this logic is a lot like 'won't somebody please think of the chlidren'-style arguments to defend massive censorship and internet traffic monitoring.
Oh, btw - over here in the UK the government has the power to monitor all internet traffic and personal comunications AND demand encryption keys - all this legislation was passed due to kneejerk reactions to 'ooh...internet - that sounds like a big place full of terrorists and child pornographers, so lets invade everyone's privacy to catch the miniscule minority of people perpetrating these crimes'.
This logic fails me - how can and 'democracy' limit the rights of a huge swathe of its citizens in order to catch a tiny proportion of lawbreakers? Its like sinking a yacht just because one of the sails had a tear.
So I defy anyone to come up with a solid cost/benefit analysis in favour of catching an absolute minority at the expense of defiling the majority.
From what I have read here on Australian internet-related laws, it sounds like you guys are busy playing 'pick up the soap' with your government in the role as 'Inmate Bubba'.
I know you're all most likely doing this already but you guys need to protest more, write your MPs - beat it into their heads with a 'learning stick', whatever....just don't end up more backwards than your next-door-neighbors in terms of net access.
>>What, precisely, can you do with Windows that you cannot with Linux? Also, what, precisely does Microsoft offer above trivial services like HTTP that Linux does not? I can't think of a single one.
Umm....try:
1) Installing it easily without reformatting your hard drive 10 different ways
2) Setting up a network card, modem, soundcard etc. without reverting to the command line and text-editing a whole load of config files
3) Support for internet fonts (without reverting to the command line and linking your fonts directory...if you can find it...to wherever)
4) Playing popular games
5) Playing video formats (realmedia, asf, wmx, etc...etc...)
6) Installing a new program without having to figure out where the hell it went and how to set it up on your desktop and then make sure everyone with access to your system can use it too.
And if your answer to all this is "L4|\/|3R - this guy gouldn't even grep sector 0 into stack overhead if his RAMBUS DDR 266 started to decompile" then yes, you fall into the LARGE category of people on/. known as ARROGANT SHITHEADS.
If, however, you answered "Oh, those are some serious usability problems your everyday user may come across....we should strive to improve the accesibility of this powerful and dynamic operating system for the average person" then I, for one, congratulate you.
The only way we (yes, I use linux too - mandrake 7.0 and yes all those problems above are from personal experience) can displace M$ from the marketplace is to aim at the same demographics that they do. Otherwise, we're just 2 different tools for different applications/arenas (arenae?) - like phillips vs. posidrive.
I hope the sample images aren't the be-all-and-end-all extent of their program w. respect to Van Gogh-like rendering. Painting is to represent what you see in a permanent form - I believe Van Gogh would have turned a sky full of clouds into something other than a smudge of off-white patches - that he would have tried to create an accurate 'representation' of what he could see onto the page.
But nonetheless, it is an impressive learning algorithm and perhaps has a future in processing for image cleanup....you know, that crap they show in movies where a 'computer guy' presses a few buttons and a blurry satellite photo suddenly shows license plate numbers...
Let's just say I was impressed by the overall approach, but not by the examples given (brush strokes to uniform and lacking attention to the defining details of the images).
I think a better comment to make would be on the point of connection redundancy over the internet - wasn't the original military plan for the net to make sure information could still get around even following a nuclear strike......one fried router and suddenly a whole shedload of sites go down...don't sound much like nuke-proofing to me.
Domain names couldn't be done like that - it would be far too sensible. *pshaw*.tm domain names to ensure you know it's a valid corporate name....what next?.xxx domains so that you can clean up all the assorted filth from the internet and put it all in one easily-blockable location for everyone who feels 'children need the protection'?
I think you are missing a MAJOR reason for standard worldwide online currency - NO RIPOFFS from vendors in different countries selling the same items at different prices. E.g. Buying a DVD in the USA - what, about $20?....well, welcome to 'grab your ankles and take it in the ass' UK where the same thing will cost you £20....so what you say, well - it means we pay an extra $5 over here because of the exchange rates. And the same goes for cars, phones, TVs etc...etc... Nice new porsche? $60000 (with exchange rate, about £40000...comparable taxes in both countries) - so is it £40000? Nope, we pay £60000 (we'll just use a pound sign instead of dollars....no-one'll notice). It's a goddamned assraping everytime we go to the stores over here. We NEED a universal standard where something worth 3 goldgrams (or whatever the fashionable currency is at the time - hell, I even have a beenz account) in the USA is EXACTLY THE SAME 3 goldgrams in the UK, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Kenya, wherever!
-Nano.
Just plain pissed off. Please forgive the occasional fucking expletives.
Hmmm...can we say troll? I guess this one is too though...
I just love the idea of a loving and caring god who gives us all just 60-or-so years to determine whether we spend ETERNITY in hellfire or sitting in a permanent orgasm (I've heard that heroin brings you pretty close to the second already, and we all know how bad heroin is....)
>>For me, $20 for a movie I really like is a worthwhile investment.
And therein lies the rub.
Why the hell do we all put up with the SHIT hollywood is producing at the moment? can we all say umm...pearl harbour, godzilla, independence day etc.etc. - big 'blockbusters' that need more hype than a new version of windows.
People, if we stop going to watch this shit, they should stop making it and so they won't need to 'recoup costs' for what they knew was going to be a turkey in the first place.
Invest in GOOD movies - fine, spend your $20 - I do on occasion, but for the most part a DivX rip downloaded off IRC and then deleted before I vomit halfway through is all I care to give most films nowadays.
Piracy is GOOD - it stops you paying for bad quality films, if you like it then you'll do the right thing and go pay for a legal copy. And to those of you that don't - well, you deserve all the RIAA/DMCA has to throw at you.
I watched Iron Chef when I was in NY last year and absolutely loved it! Why the hell can't we get it over here in the UK? Beats the ass (sorry, arse) off Ainsley Hariott any day - I'd just like to see Jamie Oliver or Good ol' pisshead Floyd (that would be one funny show) take on some of those guys!
Slashdot Mirror
I have to agree - whilst I'm very partial to a smooth blended espresso, I've recently taken to Turkish/Greek coffee after a friend fired up a Turkish coffee pot on the stove and dumped in a pile of grounds. For one minute, I was left thinking 'what the hell is this guy doing' but the taste was nothing less than amazing!
You gotta try it, at least once, and you'll understand that no food or drink should set you back $1500 before you even have a mouthful.
-Nano.
actually, the first poster is entirely correct - although I cannot recall the equation of the uncertaintly principle it still holds true in the macroscopic world, it's just that the wave functions of macroscopic objects (ala schroedinger equation) are far greater than their associated uncertainty. The process of the police observing your speed does change your direction (solid objects also have wave functions, they are just far less significant than in elementary particles), but to such a small extent that it not appreciable:
The radar pulse interacts with the molecules of your car, imparting a small degree of energy coming in from a certain vector (like a gentle breeze) which does change the direction of the car but to such a small degree that it is totally undetectable, and only of mathematical curiosity.
-Nano.
good point - and it seems to be coming to light faster than I imagined. Only problem is, we've now got David Blunkett as Home Secretary (secretary of state for you US-ers out there), Jack 'Fascist Bastard' Straw is now foreign sec (having replaced goggle-eyed ugly bastard Robin Cook).
You think that being blind would have made Blunkett a more caring, pleasant person but apparently he's described as being 'more right wing than Jack Straw'....which is very worrying indeed!
-Nano.
'Is they called Class A because they is da best?' - Ali G.
I think I feel less worried about the MIT application of the data because it is no more than an extension of a personal address book - the information is held by individuals, not by a large, faceless corporation. It's when these individuals get to compiling and aggregating thir pooled data that will worry me. Which won't be long after it first appears.
-Nano.
'silly enough to buy groceries or booze with a credit card'
umm.....excuse me? been popping those paranoid pills again? or just too long a toke on that last reefer?
since when has posessing a lettuce been intent to supply?
-Nano.
someone please mod this up....damned funniest thing I've seen in a week. -Nano.
I think the single most important satire 'rights' battle, IIRC, was fought vs. MAD magazine - why not get ahold of their legal team?
-Nano.
>>After all, you are nothing but a scummy drug dealer that deserves everything he gets?
Aaaah, good.
drugs = bad.
you must have thought long and hard to come to that conclusion. Let me just ask you a few things to justify your viewpoint:
1) why does a certain substance get placed into the 'illegal' category? because of actual harmfulness or just addictive potential? or is it something else altogether?
2) why doesn't an adult have the right to control their own body? what if I *want* to be addicted to something? what if the 'drug' I want to take isn't addictive?
3) when did many 'drugs' become illegal, and why exactly did they become illegal? did national governments suddenly open their eyes to substances that had existed for VERY long times and go 'hey, shit - these should be illegal' or were there other reasons for their reclassification.
4) when the government reclassifies a 'drug', do you suddenly have a moral dilemma that your previous stance to a substance was either to harsh or to lax compared to what the government wanted you to think. (e.g. a sedative used to cure many epileptics (and therefore 'good') is suddenly found to have addictive potential and therefore jumps into class II (and is therefore 'bad') - do all the people dependant on that drug to lead normal lives suddenly become scummy drug users or unfortunate victims?)
-Nano.
uhhh.....vote for who, exactly? oh, that's right - I must live in the only democracy where my views are unrepresented. Oh no, that's right - *I* must be wrong, not the system in which I live.
And anarchy is not the alternative to a system of imperfect laws passed by the geeky kid in the class who joined 'debate club' rather than 'remote controlled planes'....only in the eyes of someone with a lack of imagination.
And I don't just want certain drugs legalised - I want the government to treat every educated, mentally competent adult as such and to allow them to control their own bodies and lives, not just follow an outdated 'moral code' set down on religious grounds.
-Nano.
Sheep-like is right. It never fails to sicken me how ready people are to take a stiff one up the ass from the government because they believe that cradle-to-grave serveillance is somehow acceptable. As shows like 'big brother' have shown (though somewhat unscientifically) is that constant surveillance increases stress, aggression and impedes normal daily life.
Doesn't ANYONE over here remember Orwell's 1984?
I mean, Jesus Christ, we've got the home secretary (equivalent of the uhh....secretary of state?) talking about maintaining permanent computerised DNA fingerprints of the entire population.
The one tired argument I hear over and over again from advocates of these systems is that 'If you're innocent then you've got nothing to worry about' and 'It'll only catch criminals'. But haven't these same people asked themselves if what constitutes a crime in the eyes of the government is truly set in stone and unquestionably correct? Any of you same people smoke cannabis? huh? you do - well, thats £500 and 2 years probation for you then....what, 1/3 of the UK adult population are now criminals? how about pissing in the street or littering - what, you mean that that homeless guy over there or that high-powered businessman who can't find a public toilet/dustbin because there aren't any is now a criminal? Do you like this picture? What if this same government then decides that sex before marriage is illegal - well, that 24-hour surveillance bracelet on your ankle might just cramp your style.
Maybe, just maybe, politicians and police are as fallible as you and I and this means that they get things wrong - including LAWMAKING. Just because the kid that sat next to you in class grew up to like making public speeches whilst you buckled down to mathematics doesn't give him any more right to run people's lives than you....regardless of the fact he was elected to office on the back of a 'vogue' or just plain old political propaganda and posturing.
(Why is it illegal for Colgate to claim their toothpaste cures impotence, but 'just politics' when Labour spends hundreds of thousands of OUR MONEY to send out text messages to first time voters, promising 24-hour licensing laws and then doing a sharp 180 when they get in?)
Politicians are fallible, laws aren't absolute nor entirely correct, privacy and personal freedom are things you never appreciate until they're gone, widespread surveillance is bad. Get over it.
Yeah, one thing you need to keep in mind is a cost/benefit analysis of this situation:
Is it really worth our freedom and privacy to spend our own money in order to catch the minority of people who are laundering money?
If you feel that this payoff is justified, then I'm glad that your opinion doesn't actually count in the larger scheme of things.
-Nano.
It's my belief that national pride is OK - why shouldn't you be proud of your nations' meritable achievements? But this has to be tempered with what many people lack - a sense of (I guess you could call it) national humility - accepting that, no, your nation isn't the most advanced/free/developed/rich/unbiased in the world and that in some aspects, others do it better. For example, I'm proud to be British....but I also know that in some aspects adults are conferred greater individual rights just over the sea in the Netherlands, that trains run better in Germany, that Denmark has cleaner streets and that the USA has a greater industrial base. But I like the idea of being a 'loss leader' in many aspects - our history, for example, the idea of a free health service (hmm...leave that one for later) and our dedication to sciences (whilst American universities recieve far more investment than ours, I seem to remember the TV and telephone being invented over here, that we discovered DNA and lead the field in large parts of medical research - especially human embryonic research, all due to our more relaxed laws in that area).
I believe that the largest problems arise when politicians try to legislate morality, or somehow believe that their own moral perogative is somehow more valid than anyone else's.
So, all in all, I feel national pride is nothing to be lambasted, just so long as it's done in moderation.
-Nano.
Louisiana, if I am not mistaken, was French owned and developed for a large part of its pre-USA history and so probably inherited a French system of copyright laws. More than that, I really don't know.
Well, the US somehow has the right to invade nearby countries and burn fields of cash-crops from under the feet of poor subsistence farmers.
All in the name of the 'War on (some) Drugs'
-Nano.
So let me get this straight....If I make a GUI OS and call it Kicrosoft Kindows KP then I can get sued because it's too similar to another well known OS? How about Microshaft Finblows? Moddycroft Dildos?
The point I'm trying to make is this:
1) What percentage of a name must be unique to confer protective rights to the owner? (and this point is moot - look at all the generic drug names on the market: amiloride vs. amiodarone, omeprazole vs. lansoprazole, lidocaine vs. procaine, celecoxib vs. refecoxib, ranitidine vs. cimetidine, captopril vs. enalapril - either drugs with identical functions with very similar names OR different functions with very similar names, each manufactured by different companies)
or
2) How much must two products differ in their functionality/audience to confer those rights? (many products already on the market have similar names but different functions e.g. sharp (electronics) vs. harp (a beer))
So, by creating a product called the XYZ, am I automatically assigned protection over names with the form *XYZ*
This is what the argument boils down to, and there are plenty of examples out there to show that this is just plain stupid, in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the public.
-Nano.
Hmm.....maybe you guys should come and visit the UK sometime - this system already exists (to some extent) over here - cameras on every street corner in big cities, or hidden away on rooftops. Cameras along the motorways (freeways) which take your average speed between camera points in order to catch you speeding....pretty much anything the police want to do with cameras really.
And its all because 'if you're innocent, you've got nothing to worry about - and besides, who wants to let crime occur undetected'. To me, this logic is a lot like 'won't somebody please think of the chlidren'-style arguments to defend massive censorship and internet traffic monitoring.
Oh, btw - over here in the UK the government has the power to monitor all internet traffic and personal comunications AND demand encryption keys - all this legislation was passed due to kneejerk reactions to 'ooh...internet - that sounds like a big place full of terrorists and child pornographers, so lets invade everyone's privacy to catch the miniscule minority of people perpetrating these crimes'.
This logic fails me - how can and 'democracy' limit the rights of a huge swathe of its citizens in order to catch a tiny proportion of lawbreakers? Its like sinking a yacht just because one of the sails had a tear.
So I defy anyone to come up with a solid cost/benefit analysis in favour of catching an absolute minority at the expense of defiling the majority.
-Nano.
From what I have read here on Australian internet-related laws, it sounds like you guys are busy playing 'pick up the soap' with your government in the role as 'Inmate Bubba'.
I know you're all most likely doing this already but you guys need to protest more, write your MPs - beat it into their heads with a 'learning stick', whatever....just don't end up more backwards than your next-door-neighbors in terms of net access.
>>What, precisely, can you do with Windows that you cannot with Linux? Also, what, precisely does Microsoft offer above trivial services like HTTP that Linux does not? I can't think of a single one.
/. known as ARROGANT SHITHEADS.
Umm....try:
1) Installing it easily without reformatting your hard drive 10 different ways
2) Setting up a network card, modem, soundcard etc. without reverting to the command line and text-editing a whole load of config files
3) Support for internet fonts (without reverting to the command line and linking your fonts directory...if you can find it...to wherever)
4) Playing popular games
5) Playing video formats (realmedia, asf, wmx, etc...etc...)
6) Installing a new program without having to figure out where the hell it went and how to set it up on your desktop and then make sure everyone with access to your system can use it too.
And if your answer to all this is "L4|\/|3R - this guy gouldn't even grep sector 0 into stack overhead if his RAMBUS DDR 266 started to decompile" then yes, you fall into the LARGE category of people on
If, however, you answered "Oh, those are some serious usability problems your everyday user may come across....we should strive to improve the accesibility of this powerful and dynamic operating system for the average person" then I, for one, congratulate you.
The only way we (yes, I use linux too - mandrake 7.0 and yes all those problems above are from personal experience) can displace M$ from the marketplace is to aim at the same demographics that they do. Otherwise, we're just 2 different tools for different applications/arenas (arenae?) - like phillips vs. posidrive.
-Nano.
p.s. linux bigots really, really piss me off.
True, I have to agree with apnu.
I hope the sample images aren't the be-all-and-end-all extent of their program w. respect to Van Gogh-like rendering. Painting is to represent what you see in a permanent form - I believe Van Gogh would have turned a sky full of clouds into something other than a smudge of off-white patches - that he would have tried to create an accurate 'representation' of what he could see onto the page.
But nonetheless, it is an impressive learning algorithm and perhaps has a future in processing for image cleanup....you know, that crap they show in movies where a 'computer guy' presses a few buttons and a blurry satellite photo suddenly shows license plate numbers...
Let's just say I was impressed by the overall approach, but not by the examples given (brush strokes to uniform and lacking attention to the defining details of the images).
-Nano.
I think a better comment to make would be on the point of connection redundancy over the internet - wasn't the original military plan for the net to make sure information could still get around even following a nuclear strike......one fried router and suddenly a whole shedload of sites go down...don't sound much like nuke-proofing to me.
-Nano.
Domain names couldn't be done like that - it would be far too sensible. *pshaw* .tm domain names to ensure you know it's a valid corporate name....what next? .xxx domains so that you can clean up all the assorted filth from the internet and put it all in one easily-blockable location for everyone who feels 'children need the protection'?
Gawd....sensible TLDs...that'll be the day.
-Nano.
I think you are missing a MAJOR reason for standard worldwide online currency - NO RIPOFFS from vendors in different countries selling the same items at different prices. E.g. Buying a DVD in the USA - what, about $20?....well, welcome to 'grab your ankles and take it in the ass' UK where the same thing will cost you £20....so what you say, well - it means we pay an extra $5 over here because of the exchange rates. And the same goes for cars, phones, TVs etc...etc... Nice new porsche? $60000 (with exchange rate, about £40000...comparable taxes in both countries) - so is it £40000? Nope, we pay £60000 (we'll just use a pound sign instead of dollars....no-one'll notice). It's a goddamned assraping everytime we go to the stores over here. We NEED a universal standard where something worth 3 goldgrams (or whatever the fashionable currency is at the time - hell, I even have a beenz account) in the USA is EXACTLY THE SAME 3 goldgrams in the UK, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Kenya, wherever!
-Nano.
Just plain pissed off. Please forgive the occasional fucking expletives.
Hmmm...can we say troll? I guess this one is too though...
I just love the idea of a loving and caring god who gives us all just 60-or-so years to determine whether we spend ETERNITY in hellfire or sitting in a permanent orgasm (I've heard that heroin brings you pretty close to the second already, and we all know how bad heroin is....)
*cough* bullshit *cough*
-Nano.
>>For me, $20 for a movie I really like is a worthwhile investment.
And therein lies the rub.
Why the hell do we all put up with the SHIT hollywood is producing at the moment? can we all say umm...pearl harbour, godzilla, independence day etc.etc. - big 'blockbusters' that need more hype than a new version of windows.
People, if we stop going to watch this shit, they should stop making it and so they won't need to 'recoup costs' for what they knew was going to be a turkey in the first place.
Invest in GOOD movies - fine, spend your $20 - I do on occasion, but for the most part a DivX rip downloaded off IRC and then deleted before I vomit halfway through is all I care to give most films nowadays.
Piracy is GOOD - it stops you paying for bad quality films, if you like it then you'll do the right thing and go pay for a legal copy. And to those of you that don't - well, you deserve all the RIAA/DMCA has to throw at you.
phew....longest rant I've had in ages.
-Nano.
I watched Iron Chef when I was in NY last year and absolutely loved it! Why the hell can't we get it over here in the UK? Beats the ass (sorry, arse) off Ainsley Hariott any day - I'd just like to see Jamie Oliver or Good ol' pisshead Floyd (that would be one funny show) take on some of those guys!
-Nano.