If you seriously believe that porn is equally socially acceptable to admit having been seen for both men and women, you need to get in touch with reality.
if it's necessary to provide comparisons with earlier papers go ahead and use Lenna
IMHO, that's an excellent reason to use Lenna, but let's not forget that any new research which uses only a single image or a small handful of images can't be taken seriously given the current state of computer vision as a field.
later you find out this fellow made a name for himself as a rabid white supremacist.
I don't believe this is a good analogy. In the case of the white supremacist, the portrait is offensive because of its content. That is, it depicts a known white supremacist. The source doesn't enter into it at all (let's give the photographer the benefit of the doubt).
But for the standard Lenna image, the content is "just a face," as you said. Lenna's portrait is said to be offensive solely because of the source of the image - and that is the position you need to defend.
You aren't thinking about what a "test image" means in actual computer vision research. The Lenna image has complex backgrounds including a mirror, a partially occluded face, complex textures (like the hat brim and feather), and also behaves nicely with simple grayscaling. There is no one perfect image for computer vision research, and results need to be based on many images to be taken seriously, but the Lenna image does have quite a few useful properties.
It has a complex background which includes a mirror, it has a partially occluded face, it has complex textures (especially the hat feather), it has good behavior with basic grayscaling, it tends to oversegmentation with simplistic algorithms. No single image could ever be the best for testing computer vision algorithms, but the Lenna image does have quite a few useful properties despite having been originally chosen by chance.
No, it's not based on feminism - which to me is the notion that all people can be equal contributors to the human endeavor regardless of gender identity or orientation.
Its not like there is any thing technical about that image that makes it especially useful as a test case.
Actually, there are several - complex background, including a mirror, widely varying colors and textures (e.g. the hat feather), good behavior with standard grayscaling approaches. Thus it provides a useful test for face recognition and segmentation of natural images with or without color. The image was originally chosen by chance, but it's because of these qualities that it has been commonly used for so long.
In any event, you shouldn't take seriously any computer vision papers based on results from a single image.
Short answer: Reproducibility. The image is one of several which have been commonly used in the literature for decades.
Also, it's actually, it's a really good photo for testing various types of computer vision algorithms - complex backgrounds (including a mirror), varying textures and colors (e.g. the hat feather thing), and a simple grayscale conversion works well.
Sorry, I thought the first sentence was enough as is. The art assets used are minimal (if any).
A game might not care much about the Windows UI, but many years of work went into making the Windows kernel and DirectX into what they are today. Those are not simple bits of code.
Sure - but to use them, you enter into license agreements with Microsoft. Those agreements place restrictions on your activities and you also have to pay them to get a full version of Visual Studio, etc. They are already taking some kind of a cut from you - the differences are in the specific business model implicit in those agreements.
I'm not sure how this fits into the larger argument, but.NET stuff can be developed and run on Mono.
Well, I didn't write Mono either...
Regardless of which compiler/runtime you use, you are in some kind of licensing agreement with the vendor. You are already paying them somehow - the only differences after that point are the specific terms.
Anything using the.net runtime is using significant amounts of windows assets.
In the first point, I was referring mainly to art assets - a typical Windows desktop application or game uses very few or zero MS art assets.
While we're at it, you're also using a compiler and an IDE you probably had nothing to do with the creation of.
That was the second point - subject to license agreements and modulo the vendor business model, you have to pay for those things. In other words, the vendors are already taking some of your profits (or placing various restrictions on your potential for profit).
Many commentators here have written that they were upset mainly because of the specific terms - 30% for Valve, 45% for Bethsesda, 25% for developer - and not with the idea that Valve and Bethesda would take some cut.
Valve could have charged it's normal rate, and Bethsesda settled for favorable licensing, the implicit increased game longevity and publicity (both of which they already had), and maybe a modest financial cut. Leaving aside other aspects, such as the surprise introduction, it's likely that using the same model with different terms could have avoided the outcry.
Why shouldn't Microsoft take a 40% cut of Zenimax profits because Skyrim runs on Windows? Why shouldn't Intel take a 40% cut of Microsoft since Windows runs on their processors?
The difference is that most mods use significant art assets. With Windows programming, the Microsoft assets used are typically minimal. You are also not considering that these costs are passed on through the wholesale agreements these firms reach with one another.
what's pushing this is the management class's absolute loathing of skilled individuals. they demand that every worker be a replacable component and they simply don't care that that means loss of productivity through loss of experience, skill, and talent.
Related point: management never tries to maximize profits, only the ratio of profits to management effort.
Relative to what? A '98 Mercedes E-class gets 30 mpg on the highway, but that's still "good" for a small car in 2015? Meanwhile a diesel Fiat Panda had been getting 70+ mpg for like 20 years.
Gas taxes already exist, man. Set the hyperbole aside - no one is stopping you from buying a car based on the price of gas this week, if that's how you're going to live your life.
In Nazi Germany, people accepted totalitarian rule because of economic growth, low unemployment and resurgent nationalism. In China and USSR, there was growth, redistribution and nationalist fervor. Extraordinary police powers were viewed as costs worth accepting in light of the real progress that had occurred.
The idea of protecting everyone all of the time is often the "wedge" that is used to start the totalitarian states.
Can you name one where this was true? In Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and China, political control and ideological purity were the motivation and the wedge.
Slashdot Mirror
How can you tell the glance is sexually suggestive? I'd really like to know!
Great topic for your next computer vision thesis!
Using a different image would not diminish the lesson in the least.
Right - it only diminishes the ability to reproduce past work or compare new results to old.
If you seriously believe that porn is equally socially acceptable to admit having been seen for both men and women, you need to get in touch with reality.
FTFY.
Can't you even look up the image before complaining about it? It's just a face.
if it's necessary to provide comparisons with earlier papers go ahead and use Lenna
IMHO, that's an excellent reason to use Lenna, but let's not forget that any new research which uses only a single image or a small handful of images can't be taken seriously given the current state of computer vision as a field.
later you find out this fellow made a name for himself as a rabid white supremacist.
I don't believe this is a good analogy. In the case of the white supremacist, the portrait is offensive because of its content. That is, it depicts a known white supremacist. The source doesn't enter into it at all (let's give the photographer the benefit of the doubt).
But for the standard Lenna image, the content is "just a face," as you said. Lenna's portrait is said to be offensive solely because of the source of the image - and that is the position you need to defend.
You aren't thinking about what a "test image" means in actual computer vision research. The Lenna image has complex backgrounds including a mirror, a partially occluded face, complex textures (like the hat brim and feather), and also behaves nicely with simple grayscaling. There is no one perfect image for computer vision research, and results need to be based on many images to be taken seriously, but the Lenna image does have quite a few useful properties.
It has a complex background which includes a mirror, it has a partially occluded face, it has complex textures (especially the hat feather), it has good behavior with basic grayscaling, it tends to oversegmentation with simplistic algorithms. No single image could ever be the best for testing computer vision algorithms, but the Lenna image does have quite a few useful properties despite having been originally chosen by chance.
This isn't nude photography, this is pornography
It's not either. It's a picture of Lenna Soderberg's face.
thanks to feminism taken to nth degrees.
No, it's not based on feminism - which to me is the notion that all people can be equal contributors to the human endeavor regardless of gender identity or orientation.
Its not like there is any thing technical about that image that makes it especially useful as a test case.
Actually, there are several - complex background, including a mirror, widely varying colors and textures (e.g. the hat feather), good behavior with standard grayscaling approaches. Thus it provides a useful test for face recognition and segmentation of natural images with or without color. The image was originally chosen by chance, but it's because of these qualities that it has been commonly used for so long.
In any event, you shouldn't take seriously any computer vision papers based on results from a single image.
wait i thought conservatives were the prudes?
This is America, basically everyone is prudish to the point of neurosis.
The problem isn't with the image itself but where it is from. Claim that it is from somewhere else and there isn't a problem.
Which itself is almost the definition of the ad hominem fallacy.
Short answer: Reproducibility. The image is one of several which have been commonly used in the literature for decades.
Also, it's actually, it's a really good photo for testing various types of computer vision algorithms - complex backgrounds (including a mirror), varying textures and colors (e.g. the hat feather thing), and a simple grayscale conversion works well.
$38 mil is nothing for california
And according to TFA, that number is for the entire west coast, not just California.
The Microsoft assets used are minimal?
Sorry, I thought the first sentence was enough as is. The art assets used are minimal (if any).
A game might not care much about the Windows UI, but many years of work went into making the Windows kernel and DirectX into what they are today. Those are not simple bits of code.
Sure - but to use them, you enter into license agreements with Microsoft. Those agreements place restrictions on your activities and you also have to pay them to get a full version of Visual Studio, etc. They are already taking some kind of a cut from you - the differences are in the specific business model implicit in those agreements.
I'm not sure how this fits into the larger argument, but .NET stuff can be developed and run on Mono.
Well, I didn't write Mono either...
Regardless of which compiler/runtime you use, you are in some kind of licensing agreement with the vendor. You are already paying them somehow - the only differences after that point are the specific terms.
Anything using the .net runtime is using significant amounts of windows assets.
In the first point, I was referring mainly to art assets - a typical Windows desktop application or game uses very few or zero MS art assets.
While we're at it, you're also using a compiler and an IDE you probably had nothing to do with the creation of.
That was the second point - subject to license agreements and modulo the vendor business model, you have to pay for those things. In other words, the vendors are already taking some of your profits (or placing various restrictions on your potential for profit).
Many commentators here have written that they were upset mainly because of the specific terms - 30% for Valve, 45% for Bethsesda, 25% for developer - and not with the idea that Valve and Bethesda would take some cut.
Valve could have charged it's normal rate, and Bethsesda settled for favorable licensing, the implicit increased game longevity and publicity (both of which they already had), and maybe a modest financial cut. Leaving aside other aspects, such as the surprise introduction, it's likely that using the same model with different terms could have avoided the outcry.
Why shouldn't Microsoft take a 40% cut of Zenimax profits because Skyrim runs on Windows? Why shouldn't Intel take a 40% cut of Microsoft since Windows runs on their processors?
The difference is that most mods use significant art assets. With Windows programming, the Microsoft assets used are typically minimal. You are also not considering that these costs are passed on through the wholesale agreements these firms reach with one another.
what's pushing this is the management class's absolute loathing of skilled individuals. they demand that every worker be a replacable component and they simply don't care that that means loss of productivity through loss of experience, skill, and talent.
Related point: management never tries to maximize profits, only the ratio of profits to management effort.
you should eventually see the schools that cut corners get run out of business
It will be too late, because of a "Gresham's dynamic" in which the good schools will have been run out of business by the cost-cutting ones.
gas cars are getting really good milage.
Relative to what? A '98 Mercedes E-class gets 30 mpg on the highway, but that's still "good" for a small car in 2015? Meanwhile a diesel Fiat Panda had been getting 70+ mpg for like 20 years.
Gas taxes already exist, man. Set the hyperbole aside - no one is stopping you from buying a car based on the price of gas this week, if that's how you're going to live your life.
In Nazi Germany, people accepted totalitarian rule because of economic growth, low unemployment and resurgent nationalism. In China and USSR, there was growth, redistribution and nationalist fervor. Extraordinary police powers were viewed as costs worth accepting in light of the real progress that had occurred.
The idea of protecting everyone all of the time is often the "wedge" that is used to start the totalitarian states.
Can you name one where this was true? In Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and China, political control and ideological purity were the motivation and the wedge.