( off-topic, but w(hy)tf does one need to log in to see that url ( http://www.facebook.com/privacy.php ) ? Is facebook that much of an elitist "you're with us or you're against us / a loser"-clique that even such documents are behind a 'members only' login? geezus )
Anyway... what you describe is third party websites sending stories to your profile. As I understand it, the whole hubbub is about advertisers using data -from- your profile and all of the data relating to it (such as purchases). For example: "blowdart [your picture here] rated Miss Congeniality 4.5/5 - buy now and save $2.50!"
Sites using that fancy WEB 2.0 stuff don't seem to have any problems with locations for images resizing.. many only image galleries work that way, after all.
I can understand that with that, in the middle of other content, you will have jumping content which would have to be dealt with.. somehow... however, most sites would be done with this within seconds; the only problem comes with exactly the case I mentioned - content loading slowly (or, eventually, not even loading at all).
Not an easy problem, I admit - but just about anything is better than waiting for the page to show up just because a minor element of it is taking its sweet time:)
To be fair, I'd say this is a Firefox rendering issue. It already has the HTML page.. short of any javascripted source-code injection stuff, it should be all set to render the page.. minus the missing 'loading' element. But yes, all the same, it bugs me when the status bar shows that, of all things, it's an -ad- that's the instigating cause.
I'm pretty sure it does because I had to wait 30 seconds for any page of Slashdot's to render fully yesterday because Firefox was busy waiting for ad2.doubleclick.com or somesuch subdomain of theirs. The current page source certainly has doubleclicky ads.
Now, granted, the malware distributors typically tag ads for subjects not often seen on Slashdot (but I get them on, e.g., the Sinfest comic - huh, imagine that).
I'd say it's about time Doubleclick (that's you, Google, if you finally get to say you did indeed acquire it and everybody OK'd the deal.) gets held a little more responsible for this sort of thing being done through their network for which they collect money.
First and foremost... you want to be first with your list of what was best of the year. If a rival publishes theirs first, everybody will be talking about it already. By the time you publish yours, less people are going to be interested in it - and those who are, will be comparing your list to their list; which has a subtle but very important difference from people comparing their list to your list. Granted - if your list is, in content, much better than the others' then next year people may wait for your list rather than going to the other's list. But given the extremely broad scope and subjectiveness of the list involved here (Best of What's New in 2007 - in anything? woo.), you're not likely to be able to get that.. so being first is very important. Expect next year's to be released around the same date, with a likelihood of being released -sooner-.
Then there's psychology - yes, of course, "The Best of 2007" can, quite technically, only be decided On January 1st, 2008. But if you release a list of "The Best of 2007" in 2008, psychology says that people will go "why would I want what was best last year? I want to know what's best -now-, and now is 2008".. despite the ludicrousness of such thoughts, there you go. So instead, you release your list early.. say at the beginning of December. The only thing to keep in mind is that your list should, then, be the list of "The Best of December 2006-November 2007" - but "The Best of 2007" is a much more attractive title. Typically, lists -do- include the time that was skipped from the last, though.
Now, of course, there are ways you can just take that all way too far. The automotive industry is infamous for this. For example, it's not uncommon to see a "Car of the Year 2007" ad in March of 2007. In Europe it's so insane that the Car of the Year 2008 is, and has been, decided for quite some time now. This year's Car of the Year (2007) was decided back in December of 2006. This, again, harks back to psychology.. people don't want to drive the "Car of Yesteryear".. they want to drive the "Car of the Year" where "the Year" is the one they're currently in. That said, as I mentioned, they're infamous for it and it wouldn't be the first time I've heard it be the butt-end of some impromptu jokes as such a commercial drops by inbetween a movie. If publications don't stop themselves soon, they'll end up the same fate.
I do congratulate GP poster for even looking at the symbols though - most people don't. They see a switch, they see the machine in its current state. Assume that state is off, then flicking the switch should turn it on - regardless of what the labels say; unless the thing isn't plugged in / broken / etc. This is increasingly the case as switches are no longer of the toggle type, but rather a pushbutton sort of thing, where the symbol becomes a mix between the two which is a good bit more confusing, even given P poster's mnemonic, but universally accepted as a "power on/off" symbol all the same.
Our electrotechnics/electronics class actually got an assignment from one of our teachers to determine the effects of different voltage/ampèrage combinations, frequencies, etc. for 'the average 25-year old human male'. This 15 minutes after reading the numbers from a book and 10 minutes after a tirade from the teacher explaining that those figures were the result of actual experiments peformed by 'the nazis' and how we, by using those figures, were on some manner of slippery slope because if we use the results of such atrocities now, somebody in the future might think it wasn't such a bad idea, given that we've learned from these things. Another might even say so much as "well, let's not let their suffering/deaths be in vain".
Suffice to say that there's been no other method(s) established and that.. yes, it was awful... but we have the data now, and we'd be stupid not to use it - while at the same time knowing that we should do everything we can to prevent this ever happening again in the future. As far as humans go, that seems to have mostly succeeded (people going on wacky new drugs do so 'voluntarily' for money)... things still have a ways to go for lab animals to be used less and less, unfortunately.
the specific note saying that you do not -buy- CDs from major record companies and you don't -purchase- music online that is DRM-encumbered/a major record company product may be perceived as implying that you'll still download these via 'alternative sources' ('piracy' blabla). Now this may not be the case for you, but it is the case for many, many people; and I can't help but think that it is such a hollow protest when one says "I hate X, therefore I won't buy their product Y - I'll just pirate it!"
simple... people keep modding it interesting/informative/etc. instead of Troll. And if they're not trolling, there needs to be a new mod: -1 Clueless/Oblivious.
You mean the software they purchased that was clearly labeled as being region-restricted?
News flash: It's perfectly legal for you to buy DVDs from Europe or Japan. Just don't go crying "Class Action Lawsuit!" when you find it won't play back in your Region 1 DVD player, as region locking is also perfectly legal.
And to carry on the 'perfectly legal' stuff - it's perfectly legal for you to kill the region locking on your DVD player, and it's perfectly legal for you to spoof your location info to bypass Valve's region check. Doesn't mean they have to make it easy or should be forced into not region locking in the first place.
because as far as I can tell, he's only saying that the Wii is a completely different type of gameplay platform. Well isn't that just insightful?
If the criterium is as you say things "you can't do on a PC" - then it's an argument already lost. There are already 'wiimote'-style controllers for the PC and silly games that make use of them. But say that this peripheral didn't exist, then one could argue that the gun in duck hunt or the mat in DDR was 'next gen'. Puh-lease.
If the criterium is "smaller, more fun, games not necessarily with flash graphics" then you need not look any further than all of the online Flash / Java games that were raised to popularity long before the Wii was a glimmer in Nintendo's eyes. Oh, and.. pssst.. that's all on the PC.
Personally I don't think one can say that 'next gen' is supposed to mean 'different gameplay', and one certainly can't say that it is exclusive to a specific platform; especially if you include a PC as a platform.
But if one -must-... I'd say the Nintendo DS is 'next gen', at least on the hand-held platforms end. Using a stylus to draw your own characters, create walk paths, etc. etc. is something that, if executed well, is way out of the league of any other handheld platform and still not offered for any other platform; and not for lack of a stylus (a wacom penpal is $40 or so), a mouse would do just fine as well - there's simply no games that are played that way because nobody has had to become creative within the 'limitation' of a largely stylus-driven interface.
seriously, you should be able to see those images just fine. It's either your browser software (different display settings for images?) your monitor (bad gamma setting?) or you (bad vision?). For your sake, I hope it's one of the first two.
...and if there aren't, then why are reputable DNS servers allowing these super-fast changes to DNS records anyway? Certainly such trends can be easily detected and stopped dead in its tracks?
Just to make clear - nobody (well, nobody sane) has ever suggested that Google check every new video upload to make sure the uploader has the rights to publish it; that would be impossible anyway. The major problem was with repeat offenses.
However, Google doesn't even have to automatically check for repeat offenses. I.e. if you upload X, it gets taken down because of a DMCA complaint, you can upload X again just fine. The copyright holder will have to file another DMCA complaint. It gets taken down, you upload it again, it gets taken down, you upload it again, it gets taken down, you upload it again, etc.
Some might think "HAHAHA! Suck the loophole, copyright holders!", but this ends up costing Google money and popularity as well (videos that pop up and get removed with some frequency hurt the whole experience more than a video not being available there at all).
So Google finally gets around to checking their existing library for any other video that appears to match X and flag that for removal (probably a quick manual check), and on new uploads tells the user that they may be uploading a video that appears to match X; with any luck they'll have an option for the user to say "no it isn't!" (for parody cases, or complete false positives - however rare), with penalty of having account (temporarily) canceled if they're basically just lying there in order to get the video uploaded anyway.
What I find more interesting is the option for the copyright holder to say "Hang on... we hold the copyright to that, but we know there's an interest in the videos, and users will try to upload it anyway... so why don't we allow that, and actually make a smidgen of money off it by allowing those uploads, but only with advertising?". Excellent, really.
a1) ignore chroma data (gets compressed more anyway), or compare relative (rather than absolute) values - done a2) to fall in line with 'use custom player to ungarble garbled content'; users don't want to have to jump through hoops to play back videos. Btw, are you going to rotate the audio, too? - done a3) base your fingerprint on the realtime performance, not on exact frames. Use a margin of, say, +-5%. Anything over that will result in a 'garbled' up video again anyway.
In essence it comes down to this... if you take any decent fingerprinting software, then the only reasonable way to get around them is by garbling the video; at which point people don't want to watch it anymore, or would have to jump through hoops to get a special player to ungarble. 'Mission accomplished' for the content copyright holders.
It's funny that anytime this sort of thing pops up, most people are heavily debating how to defeat the system, rather than worrying about their own original content (or parody content/etc.) getting falsely flagged.
...he has a trucking company (long haul, 18-wheeler, whatever you want to call them) and he wrote "I want that on our trucks right now - do you know how many ripped skirts, tyre wear, bicycle accidents, problems with poles etc. that would save us?" And he has some of the best drivers in the nation - accidents like that just happen -because- it's damn near impossible to see anything.. A top-down view of the truck outline and everything around it would be a very worthy investment indeed.
true, blurring isn't the same as obscuring. That said, a twirl/swirl filter isn't a blur filter either. A twirl/swirl filter relocates pixels from position A to position B. The original pixels are still largely there, you just have to move them back from B to A. That's what Interpol did here - kudos to them for figuring that out. But a blur filter doesn't just relocate pixels - it blends a bunch together. Now don't get me wrong - there's certainly deconvolution methods to reduce blur - especially motion blur - ( one example software: http://www.focusmagic.com/ ) but you're not going to be able to just take any heavily non-motion blurred image and get a supersharp result back. Other techniques, such as pixelization, are even worse to restore - you may as well not try.
-That- having been said.. yes, obscuring does tend to be better.. as long as it's a proper obscuring and not some half-hearted attempt by a news station where an interviewer / whatever has said to want to be inrecognizable, and then you just get a dark silhouette of the person where you can 1. still make out the silhouette, 2. their voice goes unaltered, 3. bump up the brightness enough and you can even make out a face or, in the case of yea olde license plate, a black bar that is supposed to 'track' the license plate properly, but the person applying the bar is a lazy-ass tracker and it 'swims' over the plate, revealing tiny bits of the bottom/top on certain frames - not too much guesswork involved to figure out the proper license plate, as even with multiple possibilities, only one is likely to match the type/color of the car when looked up on the interwebs.
Now then... Let the "what if somebody photoshopped somebody else's head on there first, then applied the filter, now some poor innocent sap is framed!" replies begin.
That's okay... no other player* allows sharing .
on
ZOMG New Zunes
·
· Score: 1
Take your bitching to Apple and have them add sharing files to the iPod:)
have you considered motion sensors? or IR sensors.. or radiowave sensors.. You'll have the best of all worlds... - light when you need it (i.e. somebody is in the vicinity. Heck, the light suddenly popping on has more effect than the light being on continuously) - no light when you don't need it (makes the light-pollution people happy) - lower electricity bill
down sides.. - initial cost (couple bucks) - initial installation (screwdriver and some healty common sense when it comes to dealing with electrical wiring)
That's a lovely stance there. Apparently, everybody who would like to play the songs on their portable music player that isn't an an iPod doesn't matter; they should just get with the program and buy one.
Or, if they absolutely have to not buy one (what are you people, Apple hat0rz!? BUY ONE!), they can just burn it to a CD and then re-encode! Give that CD-R to your aunt who makes pretty little wind chimes out of them and enjoy your doubly-compressed tune.. or just BUY an iPod!
---
I'm sure your store complaints are perfectly valid, however. That said, it's just a friggin' web store - they can change that whatever way they like (except for violating any 1-click pat.. ah, right. nm). I'm sure Amazon has geeks browsing the web for news about their ventures 24/7 and are bound to read your complaints here, but why not contact them and tell them directly what you think they could do better? They just might be listening.
Not that I think you would be swayed even if it worked as good as, or even better than, the iTunes Music Store. Just a gut feeling there.
Slashdot Mirror
That explains that :)
*waits a minute before hitting submit - stupid slashdot filters*
( off-topic, but w(hy)tf does one need to log in to see that url ( http://www.facebook.com/privacy.php ) ? Is facebook that much of an elitist "you're with us or you're against us / a loser"-clique that even such documents are behind a 'members only' login? geezus )
Anyway... what you describe is third party websites sending stories to your profile. As I understand it, the whole hubbub is about advertisers using data -from- your profile and all of the data relating to it (such as purchases). For example: "blowdart [your picture here] rated Miss Congeniality 4.5/5 - buy now and save $2.50!"
They're intended to protect novel (or improved, see patent law) implementations of ideas. Not ideas themselves - no matter how novel they may be.
Sites using that fancy WEB 2.0 stuff don't seem to have any problems with locations for images resizing.. many only image galleries work that way, after all.
:)
I can understand that with that, in the middle of other content, you will have jumping content which would have to be dealt with.. somehow... however, most sites would be done with this within seconds; the only problem comes with exactly the case I mentioned - content loading slowly (or, eventually, not even loading at all).
Not an easy problem, I admit - but just about anything is better than waiting for the page to show up just because a minor element of it is taking its sweet time
To be fair, I'd say this is a Firefox rendering issue. It already has the HTML page.. short of any javascripted source-code injection stuff, it should be all set to render the page .. minus the missing 'loading' element. But yes, all the same, it bugs me when the status bar shows that, of all things, it's an -ad- that's the instigating cause.
I'm pretty sure it does because I had to wait 30 seconds for any page of Slashdot's to render fully yesterday because Firefox was busy waiting for ad2.doubleclick.com or somesuch subdomain of theirs. The current page source certainly has doubleclicky ads.
Now, granted, the malware distributors typically tag ads for subjects not often seen on Slashdot (but I get them on, e.g., the Sinfest comic - huh, imagine that).
I'd say it's about time Doubleclick (that's you, Google, if you finally get to say you did indeed acquire it and everybody OK'd the deal.) gets held a little more responsible for this sort of thing being done through their network for which they collect money.
There's several reasons for this...
First and foremost... you want to be first with your list of what was best of the year. If a rival publishes theirs first, everybody will be talking about it already. By the time you publish yours, less people are going to be interested in it - and those who are, will be comparing your list to their list; which has a subtle but very important difference from people comparing their list to your list. Granted - if your list is, in content, much better than the others' then next year people may wait for your list rather than going to the other's list. But given the extremely broad scope and subjectiveness of the list involved here (Best of What's New in 2007 - in anything? woo.), you're not likely to be able to get that.. so being first is very important. Expect next year's to be released around the same date, with a likelihood of being released -sooner-.
Then there's psychology - yes, of course, "The Best of 2007" can, quite technically, only be decided On January 1st, 2008. But if you release a list of "The Best of 2007" in 2008, psychology says that people will go "why would I want what was best last year? I want to know what's best -now-, and now is 2008".. despite the ludicrousness of such thoughts, there you go. So instead, you release your list early.. say at the beginning of December. The only thing to keep in mind is that your list should, then, be the list of "The Best of December 2006-November 2007" - but "The Best of 2007" is a much more attractive title. Typically, lists -do- include the time that was skipped from the last, though.
Now, of course, there are ways you can just take that all way too far. The automotive industry is infamous for this. For example, it's not uncommon to see a "Car of the Year 2007" ad in March of 2007. In Europe it's so insane that the Car of the Year 2008 is, and has been, decided for quite some time now. This year's Car of the Year (2007) was decided back in December of 2006. This, again, harks back to psychology.. people don't want to drive the "Car of Yesteryear".. they want to drive the "Car of the Year" where "the Year" is the one they're currently in. That said, as I mentioned, they're infamous for it and it wouldn't be the first time I've heard it be the butt-end of some impromptu jokes as such a commercial drops by inbetween a movie.
If publications don't stop themselves soon, they'll end up the same fate.
O = 0 = false
| = 1 = true
I do congratulate GP poster for even looking at the symbols though - most people don't. They see a switch, they see the machine in its current state. Assume that state is off, then flicking the switch should turn it on - regardless of what the labels say; unless the thing isn't plugged in / broken / etc. This is increasingly the case as switches are no longer of the toggle type, but rather a pushbutton sort of thing, where the symbol becomes a mix between the two which is a good bit more confusing, even given P poster's mnemonic, but universally accepted as a "power on/off" symbol all the same.
Certainly doesn't seem that way on a map - but most map projections are incredibly deceiving. CIA factbook figures:
RUSSIA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rs.html
total: 17,075,200 sq km
land: 16,995,800 sq km
water: 79,400 sq km
CHINA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html
total: 9,596,960 sq km
land: 9,326,410 sq km
water: 270,550 sq km
USA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
total: 9,826,630 sq km
land: 9,161,923 sq km
water: 664,707 sq km
note: includes only the 50 states and District of Columbia ( add some for the all the islands, if counting )
CANADA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ca.html
total: 9,984,670 sq km
land: 9,093,507 sq km
water: 891,163 sq km
Our electrotechnics/electronics class actually got an assignment from one of our teachers to determine the effects of different voltage/ampèrage combinations, frequencies, etc. for 'the average 25-year old human male'. This 15 minutes after reading the numbers from a book and 10 minutes after a tirade from the teacher explaining that those figures were the result of actual experiments peformed by 'the nazis' and how we, by using those figures, were on some manner of slippery slope because if we use the results of such atrocities now, somebody in the future might think it wasn't such a bad idea, given that we've learned from these things. Another might even say so much as "well, let's not let their suffering/deaths be in vain".
Suffice to say that there's been no other method(s) established and that.. yes, it was awful... but we have the data now, and we'd be stupid not to use it - while at the same time knowing that we should do everything we can to prevent this ever happening again in the future. As far as humans go, that seems to have mostly succeeded (people going on wacky new drugs do so 'voluntarily' for money)... things still have a ways to go for lab animals to be used less and less, unfortunately.
the specific note saying that you do not -buy- CDs from major record companies and you don't -purchase- music online that is DRM-encumbered/a major record company product may be perceived as implying that you'll still download these via 'alternative sources' ('piracy' blabla). Now this may not be the case for you, but it is the case for many, many people; and I can't help but think that it is such a hollow protest when one says "I hate X, therefore I won't buy their product Y - I'll just pirate it!"
simple... people keep modding it interesting/informative/etc. instead of Troll. And if they're not trolling, there needs to be a new mod: -1 Clueless/Oblivious.
You mean the software they purchased that was clearly labeled as being region-restricted?
News flash: It's perfectly legal for you to buy DVDs from Europe or Japan. Just don't go crying "Class Action Lawsuit!" when you find it won't play back in your Region 1 DVD player, as region locking is also perfectly legal.
And to carry on the 'perfectly legal' stuff - it's perfectly legal for you to kill the region locking on your DVD player, and it's perfectly legal for you to spoof your location info to bypass Valve's region check. Doesn't mean they have to make it easy or should be forced into not region locking in the first place.
...because it states the limitation right there on the friggin' box. If it didn't, you'd have a point.
because as far as I can tell, he's only saying that the Wii is a completely different type of gameplay platform. Well isn't that just insightful?
If the criterium is as you say things "you can't do on a PC" - then it's an argument already lost. There are already 'wiimote'-style controllers for the PC and silly games that make use of them. But say that this peripheral didn't exist, then one could argue that the gun in duck hunt or the mat in DDR was 'next gen'. Puh-lease.
If the criterium is "smaller, more fun, games not necessarily with flash graphics" then you need not look any further than all of the online Flash / Java games that were raised to popularity long before the Wii was a glimmer in Nintendo's eyes. Oh, and.. pssst.. that's all on the PC.
Personally I don't think one can say that 'next gen' is supposed to mean 'different gameplay', and one certainly can't say that it is exclusive to a specific platform; especially if you include a PC as a platform.
But if one -must-... I'd say the Nintendo DS is 'next gen', at least on the hand-held platforms end. Using a stylus to draw your own characters, create walk paths, etc. etc. is something that, if executed well, is way out of the league of any other handheld platform and still not offered for any other platform; and not for lack of a stylus (a wacom penpal is $40 or so), a mouse would do just fine as well - there's simply no games that are played that way because nobody has had to become creative within the 'limitation' of a largely stylus-driven interface.
seriously, you should be able to see those images just fine. It's either your browser software (different display settings for images?) your monitor (bad gamma setting?) or you (bad vision?). For your sake, I hope it's one of the first two.
This is a fair place to start with regards to option 2 (gamma setting)
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html
( now there's an informative post )
...and if there aren't, then why are reputable DNS servers allowing these super-fast changes to DNS records anyway? Certainly such trends can be easily detected and stopped dead in its tracks?
Just to make clear - nobody (well, nobody sane) has ever suggested that Google check every new video upload to make sure the uploader has the rights to publish it; that would be impossible anyway. The major problem was with repeat offenses.
However, Google doesn't even have to automatically check for repeat offenses. I.e. if you upload X, it gets taken down because of a DMCA complaint, you can upload X again just fine. The copyright holder will have to file another DMCA complaint. It gets taken down, you upload it again, it gets taken down, you upload it again, it gets taken down, you upload it again, etc.
Some might think "HAHAHA! Suck the loophole, copyright holders!", but this ends up costing Google money and popularity as well (videos that pop up and get removed with some frequency hurt the whole experience more than a video not being available there at all).
So Google finally gets around to checking their existing library for any other video that appears to match X and flag that for removal (probably a quick manual check), and on new uploads tells the user that they may be uploading a video that appears to match X; with any luck they'll have an option for the user to say "no it isn't!" (for parody cases, or complete false positives - however rare), with penalty of having account (temporarily) canceled if they're basically just lying there in order to get the video uploaded anyway.
What I find more interesting is the option for the copyright holder to say "Hang on... we hold the copyright to that, but we know there's an interest in the videos, and users will try to upload it anyway... so why don't we allow that, and actually make a smidgen of money off it by allowing those uploads, but only with advertising?". Excellent, really.
a1) ignore chroma data (gets compressed more anyway), or compare relative (rather than absolute) values - done
a2) to fall in line with 'use custom player to ungarble garbled content'; users don't want to have to jump through hoops to play back videos. Btw, are you going to rotate the audio, too? - done
a3) base your fingerprint on the realtime performance, not on exact frames. Use a margin of, say, +-5%. Anything over that will result in a 'garbled' up video again anyway.
In essence it comes down to this... if you take any decent fingerprinting software, then the only reasonable way to get around them is by garbling the video; at which point people don't want to watch it anymore, or would have to jump through hoops to get a special player to ungarble. 'Mission accomplished' for the content copyright holders.
It's funny that anytime this sort of thing pops up, most people are heavily debating how to defeat the system, rather than worrying about their own original content (or parody content/etc.) getting falsely flagged.
just for the record - he laughed at that :D
...he has a trucking company (long haul, 18-wheeler, whatever you want to call them) and he wrote "I want that on our trucks right now - do you know how many ripped skirts, tyre wear, bicycle accidents, problems with poles etc. that would save us?" And he has some of the best drivers in the nation - accidents like that just happen -because- it's damn near impossible to see anything.. A top-down view of the truck outline and everything around it would be a very worthy investment indeed.
true, blurring isn't the same as obscuring. That said, a twirl/swirl filter isn't a blur filter either. A twirl/swirl filter relocates pixels from position A to position B. The original pixels are still largely there, you just have to move them back from B to A. That's what Interpol did here - kudos to them for figuring that out. But a blur filter doesn't just relocate pixels - it blends a bunch together. Now don't get me wrong - there's certainly deconvolution methods to reduce blur - especially motion blur - ( one example software: http://www.focusmagic.com/ ) but you're not going to be able to just take any heavily non-motion blurred image and get a supersharp result back. Other techniques, such as pixelization, are even worse to restore - you may as well not try.
-That- having been said.. yes, obscuring does tend to be better.. as long as it's a proper obscuring and not some half-hearted attempt by a news station where an interviewer / whatever has said to want to be inrecognizable, and then you just get a dark silhouette of the person where you can 1. still make out the silhouette, 2. their voice goes unaltered, 3. bump up the brightness enough and you can even make out a face or, in the case of yea olde license plate, a black bar that is supposed to 'track' the license plate properly, but the person applying the bar is a lazy-ass tracker and it 'swims' over the plate, revealing tiny bits of the bottom/top on certain frames - not too much guesswork involved to figure out the proper license plate, as even with multiple possibilities, only one is likely to match the type/color of the car when looked up on the interwebs.
Now then... Let the "what if somebody photoshopped somebody else's head on there first, then applied the filter, now some poor innocent sap is framed!" replies begin.
Take your bitching to Apple and have them add sharing files to the iPod :)
* I'm sure there's some, somewhere.
have you considered motion sensors? or IR sensors.. or radiowave sensors.. You'll have the best of all worlds...
- light when you need it (i.e. somebody is in the vicinity. Heck, the light suddenly popping on has more effect than the light being on continuously)
- no light when you don't need it (makes the light-pollution people happy)
- lower electricity bill
down sides..
- initial cost (couple bucks)
- initial installation (screwdriver and some healty common sense when it comes to dealing with electrical wiring)
That's a lovely stance there. Apparently, everybody who would like to play the songs on their portable music player that isn't an an iPod doesn't matter; they should just get with the program and buy one.
Or, if they absolutely have to not buy one (what are you people, Apple hat0rz!? BUY ONE!), they can just burn it to a CD and then re-encode! Give that CD-R to your aunt who makes pretty little wind chimes out of them and enjoy your doubly-compressed tune.. or just BUY an iPod!
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I'm sure your store complaints are perfectly valid, however. That said, it's just a friggin' web store - they can change that whatever way they like (except for violating any 1-click pat.. ah, right. nm). I'm sure Amazon has geeks browsing the web for news about their ventures 24/7 and are bound to read your complaints here, but why not contact them and tell them directly what you think they could do better? They just might be listening.
Not that I think you would be swayed even if it worked as good as, or even better than, the iTunes Music Store. Just a gut feeling there.