Whoa, jumping to conclusions here? Just because you were frustrated doesn't mean everyone was.
I got resynth with one command (apt-get install gimp-resynthesizer, as I recall), and had lots of success with it - and also lots of fun, especially with the texture transfer feature.
It was dead simple and everything seemed intuitive. Then I tried Photoshop. Compared to Paintshop Pro, it was a UI nightmare and I gave up on Photoshop pretty fast.
I know how you feel. My heart was lost to (and lost with) DeluxePaint long ago.
The rest were pictures where you couldn't really expect such a thing to work, although on the sign removal image, I'm sure resynthesizer could have done better with a little tweaking.
The problem is that resynthesizer is so bloody computationally expensive, that for large images I don't have patience for much tweaking.
I don't know how much Photoshop's CAF can be tweaked.
The coolest feature of resynthesize, IMO, is the texture replacement option. It doesn't always work, but when it works, wow. Embedding your face in the moss on a stone or the Virgin Mary in your tortilla is photo hackery out of reach for me without this plugin:-)
Remember, the computer only has the context in the phrase itself (or possibly the document it's in). If you were in a bar, you might have misinterpreted the context and heard "scuzzy babe" yourself.
The arguments for hate crime laws are not hard to understand.
If a white man beats up another white man after he has been to the polling booth, that's bad for a lot of reasons. If a white man beats up a black man after he has been to the polling booth, that's bad for all the aforementioned reasons, but it could also be an attempt to scare other black people from voting. It's not just an attack on that man, it's an attack on his class/category. A person motivated by hate may take the normal punishment for such a crime, and still consider it a success if it worked as intended.
Similar things would be attacks on gays in order to keep them in the closet, and from publicly defending their interests, attacks on muslim women who refuse to wear a veil, etc. Such attacks are already illegal for obvious reasons, but society believes (correctly, in my opinion) that commiting crimes in order to suppress minorities is especially bad, and deserving of extra sanction.
The only issue I have with hate crime laws is if they are directed against particular groups only. It's not what kind of group it is that matters, but the intent of the suppressing act.
it has been interesting to watch the spin doctors morph AGW into what I think is a more likely and accurate way to put it - "climate change". Something Earth has experienced for its entire existence.
It's been interesting to hear the narrative pushed at you from the wingnuts, you mean? Because the first notable paper on global warming, by Plass in 1956, was called “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change”.
But apropos spin...
“'Climate change' is less frightening than 'global warming.'... While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge”
Who wrote that? Republican strategist for the Bush administration, Frank Luntz, in 2002.
As I recall it was Al Gore who first politicized this area of science.
This is just silly. Anthropogenic global warming was politically opposed from the very start by pro-oil think tanks, and they kept the scientific concerns unnoticed for twenty years. There's no way such a major issue could not "become politicized", it was already. And while Al Gore was a politician, and talked about the threat of global warming comparatively early, the same could be said of Margaret Thatcher.
The question is not who made it a political issue. The question is who succeeded in making it a partisan political issue, and that was not Al Gore.
Yes, you know, that was a truly original idea. Things could have so many causes. I wonder why no one ever thought of that before?
Oh wait, they did. Some of it is CO2, some of it is less particulates, solar output does change (but not in the direction that would explain recent warming) and temperature data do have inaccuracies (but there's no reason to think they tend in any particular direction).
There are multiple factors affecting a highly complex system. That's why we use climate models (although the basic facts of global warming were predicted a hundred years ago, and confirmed fifty years ago.)
Presuming you mean the IPCC report (it's not good form to go around writing on committees): No it wasn't. And yes, it was. Maybe, but there's a lot of both in the kind of degrees they have.
Sigh. First paragraph: They don't. No, he didn't. No, it wouldn't. Yes, they have. I'd post links, but you didn't, so why bother.
It could be that when "almost all the climate scientists support the use of known bad tree rings", they actually disagree that they are bad, you know. And unlike Exxon, climate science is not a monolithic for-profit corporation with perverse incentives with regard to pollution.
Even though you're probably right that only whites can be rednecks, it's not therefore "racially charged". You aren't automatically a redneck just because you're from rural Arkansas, you need to fulfill certain stereotypes. Most of those are subject to choice to a larger or smaller degree (smaller: accent, larger: vehicle decoration, etc.). I bet those who fulfill the cliché most aren't exactly ashamed of it, either.
Yes, it is not possible to read a text without selecting an interpretation.
But you are severely ignorant about Bible history. Most Christians use 20-century translations, based on texts in the original language (koine greek) - and they use the oldest fragments they can find. That going through an intermediate language results in inaccuracy was well understood even in the middle ages. No serious translations do that.
Koine greek may be an archaic language, but it is extremely well-studied, and there are lots of samples.
That quote is not in your link. Anyway, I don't care what Microsoft (or Google for that matter) doesn't want to sell in their app stores. I care about having an open platform, so that I can choose to buy from others. Google bans porn from the Android store too, but the big difference is that they let you use other stores if you want to.
Do you really think the recent anti-Adobe efforts were just to "ensure the quality of the iPhone experience", and had nothing to do with making it harder for developers to develop cross-platform apps? How do you explain the ban on interpreters? How exactly would a C64-emulator reduce the quality of the iPhone experience itself? How would the iPhone experience be harmed if I could check a well-concealed box in order to install non-apple-approved apps?
You're delusional. It's about control, all right, but not about control of quality.
My guess is that they'll go after webapps next - hard to get rid of the ones already runnable without causing an uproar, but they will do all they can to block more advanced sites based on upcoming html5 or similar. And they will ban Opera mini again.
Wot? Westboro baptist and co. would be the first to claim that they "just believe what it says" without interpreting it. You see the same in legal interpretation: the most nutty claim that they're not interpreting the law at all, just reading what it says.
Do polls work so well because the people voting in the earlier polls influence the later polls?
If the predictions were shared in real-time with the people they were to predict upon, would they still have the same accuracy?
It seems to me that predicting is only useful when its use is unknown to those it's used on.
I think the answers to that is:
Not only, but it does have an effect.
No, probably not.
You're right that things trying to predict their own results face fundamentally insurmountable obstacles. It has discouraged computer scientists, and I think it will eventually discourage economists and brain researchers. But polls can still be useful (as can computers, economists, and brains)
I can confidently predict that the average temperature for June 2010 in the northern hemisphere will be higher than for April 2010. I am not nearly as confident that 15. June will be warmer than today.
Predicting averages is easier than predicting point values. The wider the area averaged over, the easier it becomes.
"The the global warming people" are in the business of predicting averages.
The intrade contracts on global temperature averages are yours for the taking, if you think you know more than the experts.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoa, jumping to conclusions here? Just because you were frustrated doesn't mean everyone was.
I got resynth with one command (apt-get install gimp-resynthesizer, as I recall), and had lots of success with it - and also lots of fun, especially with the texture transfer feature.
I know how you feel. My heart was lost to (and lost with) DeluxePaint long ago.
The rest were pictures where you couldn't really expect such a thing to work, although on the sign removal image, I'm sure resynthesizer could have done better with a little tweaking.
The problem is that resynthesizer is so bloody computationally expensive, that for large images I don't have patience for much tweaking.
I don't know how much Photoshop's CAF can be tweaked.
The coolest feature of resynthesize, IMO, is the texture replacement option. It doesn't always work, but when it works, wow. Embedding your face in the moss on a stone or the Virgin Mary in your tortilla is photo hackery out of reach for me without this plugin :-)
Remember, the computer only has the context in the phrase itself (or possibly the document it's in). If you were in a bar, you might have misinterpreted the context and heard "scuzzy babe" yourself.
The arguments for hate crime laws are not hard to understand.
If a white man beats up another white man after he has been to the polling booth, that's bad for a lot of reasons. If a white man beats up a black man after he has been to the polling booth, that's bad for all the aforementioned reasons, but it could also be an attempt to scare other black people from voting. It's not just an attack on that man, it's an attack on his class/category. A person motivated by hate may take the normal punishment for such a crime, and still consider it a success if it worked as intended.
Similar things would be attacks on gays in order to keep them in the closet, and from publicly defending their interests, attacks on muslim women who refuse to wear a veil, etc. Such attacks are already illegal for obvious reasons, but society believes (correctly, in my opinion) that commiting crimes in order to suppress minorities is especially bad, and deserving of extra sanction.
The only issue I have with hate crime laws is if they are directed against particular groups only. It's not what kind of group it is that matters, but the intent of the suppressing act.
It's been interesting to hear the narrative pushed at you from the wingnuts, you mean? Because the first notable paper on global warming, by Plass in 1956, was called “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change”.
But apropos spin...
Who wrote that? Republican strategist for the Bush administration, Frank Luntz, in 2002.
This is just silly. Anthropogenic global warming was politically opposed from the very start by pro-oil think tanks, and they kept the scientific concerns unnoticed for twenty years. There's no way such a major issue could not "become politicized", it was already. And while Al Gore was a politician, and talked about the threat of global warming comparatively early, the same could be said of Margaret Thatcher.
The question is not who made it a political issue. The question is who succeeded in making it a partisan political issue, and that was not Al Gore.
If I thought you were genuine, I'd downmod you for being a troll.
You're right it's about the way the brain works, but it's not because these things are found together with so high frequency.
It's that they feel so salient when they are.
There's so much confusion about global warming now I feel like just telling people to shut up for 10 years until they get their stories straight.
I agree! We paid good money for that confusion, too! It's annoying when people don't do as they are supposed to.
signed,
Exxon.
Yes, you know, that was a truly original idea. Things could have so many causes. I wonder why no one ever thought of that before?
Oh wait, they did. Some of it is CO2, some of it is less particulates, solar output does change (but not in the direction that would explain recent warming) and temperature data do have inaccuracies (but there's no reason to think they tend in any particular direction).
There are multiple factors affecting a highly complex system. That's why we use climate models (although the basic facts of global warming were predicted a hundred years ago, and confirmed fifty years ago.)
Presuming you mean the IPCC report (it's not good form to go around writing on committees): No it wasn't. And yes, it was. Maybe, but there's a lot of both in the kind of degrees they have.
I'm just pointing out the obvious, too.
Sigh. First paragraph: They don't. No, he didn't. No, it wouldn't. Yes, they have. I'd post links, but you didn't, so why bother.
It could be that when "almost all the climate scientists support the use of known bad tree rings", they actually disagree that they are bad, you know. And unlike Exxon, climate science is not a monolithic for-profit corporation with perverse incentives with regard to pollution.
Even though you're probably right that only whites can be rednecks, it's not therefore "racially charged". You aren't automatically a redneck just because you're from rural Arkansas, you need to fulfill certain stereotypes. Most of those are subject to choice to a larger or smaller degree (smaller: accent, larger: vehicle decoration, etc.). I bet those who fulfill the cliché most aren't exactly ashamed of it, either.
And they call themselves "Consumer Watchdog". Might as well have called themselves "We are the good guys. No, really!"
Yes, it is not possible to read a text without selecting an interpretation.
But you are severely ignorant about Bible history. Most Christians use 20-century translations, based on texts in the original language (koine greek) - and they use the oldest fragments they can find. That going through an intermediate language results in inaccuracy was well understood even in the middle ages. No serious translations do that.
Koine greek may be an archaic language, but it is extremely well-studied, and there are lots of samples.
That quote is not in your link. Anyway, I don't care what Microsoft (or Google for that matter) doesn't want to sell in their app stores. I care about having an open platform, so that I can choose to buy from others. Google bans porn from the Android store too, but the big difference is that they let you use other stores if you want to.
Do you really think the recent anti-Adobe efforts were just to "ensure the quality of the iPhone experience", and had nothing to do with making it harder for developers to develop cross-platform apps? How do you explain the ban on interpreters? How exactly would a C64-emulator reduce the quality of the iPhone experience itself? How would the iPhone experience be harmed if I could check a well-concealed box in order to install non-apple-approved apps?
You're delusional. It's about control, all right, but not about control of quality.
My guess is that they'll go after webapps next - hard to get rid of the ones already runnable without causing an uproar, but they will do all they can to block more advanced sites based on upcoming html5 or similar. And they will ban Opera mini again.
Wot? Westboro baptist and co. would be the first to claim that they "just believe what it says" without interpreting it. You see the same in legal interpretation: the most nutty claim that they're not interpreting the law at all, just reading what it says.
I for one welcome our new well-trained bovine overlords.
Do polls work so well because the people voting in the earlier polls influence the later polls?
If the predictions were shared in real-time with the people they were to predict upon, would they still have the same accuracy?
It seems to me that predicting is only useful when its use is unknown to those it's used on.
I think the answers to that is:
Not only, but it does have an effect.
No, probably not.
You're right that things trying to predict their own results face fundamentally insurmountable obstacles. It has discouraged computer scientists, and I think it will eventually discourage economists and brain researchers. But polls can still be useful (as can computers, economists, and brains)
Yeah, Bush was elected by a pretty big crowd. But bad as that was, letting a smaller crowd elect someone could easily have led to much worse results.
I can confidently predict that the average temperature for June 2010 in the northern hemisphere will be higher than for April 2010. I am not nearly as confident that 15. June will be warmer than today.
Predicting averages is easier than predicting point values. The wider the area averaged over, the easier it becomes.
"The the global warming people" are in the business of predicting averages.
The intrade contracts on global temperature averages are yours for the taking, if you think you know more than the experts.
Yes. Eurovision Song Contest entries occasionally qualify as diabolically-planned crimes in my opinion, but alas, they tend to get away with it.
And they are dumb, too, although that was optional.