Well, yes, but it's like exception handling vs. error codes: using exceptions doesn't get rid of the error handling problem, but at least they ensure that things can't fail silently. Presumably the two parties do not want to use the line at all if it has been tapped. Better a DOS than a leak of confidential information.
In my experience, programmers who prefer less formal and weakly-typed languages for development have never had to work on a project of any considerable size. Say, on the order of of 10^5 lines of code and up.
Sure, less formal languages make it much easier to whip up form-based GUIs when you want to (for example) be able to treat numbers as strings and vice-versa with no questions asked. No argument there. But when your application builds up to significant levels of complexity, you'll be happy to be using a language with "formal" and "scientific" features that save you from hanging yourself on things like bogus implicit type conversions.
The dual conciousness problem is not really a problem, and we can see this by comparing it to something familiar.
Consider this: it is widely believed that a human's periods of dreaming correspond to periods of learning, and thus correspond to the brain rearranging itself to take the day's new information into account. One could argue that the brain that went to sleep without the rearrangement "dies" during the night as it changes, and a new rearranged brain wakes up in the morning thinking that it's the same person who went to sleep.
Except, of course, it isn't. It's different. Not that this bothers us.
Babies, who are learning at an astounding rate, actually seem to experience periodic whole brain "crashes" and "reboots" during sleep. Is the post-reboot baby the same as the pre-reboot baby? In some ways, no; but fundamentally, yes.
We can only assume that the process (which I agree is remarkably improbable) of downloading ones dying brain would be essentally the same as falling asleep, dreaming, and waking up with a changed brain but without identity issues.
...and my dentist uses it: a little heater attached to the drill's water source. Dentist's drills are water-driven, and most of the pain of drilling comes from cold water flowing into the unprotected tooth. Use warm water and hey! you have no pain. I've had 3 or 4 cavities repaired with no pain block, and it's never hurt.
If he ever hit a nerve I'm sure it would hurt, but then again the laser probably would too...
Of course, dentists can charge you extra for using novocaine, whereas the heated water is free. Not a great incentive to use the cheaper, easier, and better solution.
I am honestly (and, I guess, naively) surprised by the suspicion. I thought it was just an interesting little problem that slashdotters would probably like to kick around. The details are at best marginally interesting...except to competitors, which is why I left them out.
I understand that people are legitimately worried about surveillance these days. I am more worried than most given my research on face detection (see some other post here). The academic literature overlaps significantly with recognition, so I have a pretty good idea of just how unreliable it is.
Even so, the contrast between people's assumptions and the boring reality in this case is really quite staggering. It is not a government project. It does not involve public surveillance on some vast scale. We are not misleading our customers. Despite what you assert, there are legitimate private facilities that need this sort of thing.
First of all, I posted to "Ask Slashdot". People post to "Ask Slashdot" when they have a question and they want to know what the Slashdot community thinks. If you don't want to contribute to this process, filter out the "Ask Slashdot" posts.
Secondly, as I mentioned in another post, the details are largely irrelevant (mostly because they are so boring). Anybody who has a large data stream that they need to archive will benefit from the posted responses.
No, what I am doing completely contravenes, the 1st, 4th, 12th, 121st, and any other amendment you can think of. I am working not only with nefarious government agencies but also alien ones! Nasty, nasty alien ones. Boo.
Look, we have a whole lot of video footage to store. I can't say more for competitive reasons. Not security reasons. I really wish I could give all the details. I can't. In many ways, the details are irrelevant. Data storage on this scale is going to become more and more common. We're just on the cutting edge at the moment. I think it is an interesting problem for everyone to ponder.
I understand how slashdot works. I posted to get a wide variety of ideas. Hard to get through standard industry channels, which we are also, obviously, pursuing. I didn't ask for specs. Or solutions. Just ideas. What's your problem?
Oh, for goodness' sake. This has nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing. I wish I could give you more informaion, but apparently there are competition issues.
Actually, I developed (past tense) a hardware-based object detection system. Faces are interesting objects to try and learn to detect, because they have intresting and considerable variation. They also make for a fun demo and get more press. But I could have been detecting anything. Recognition, on the other hand, is different; it is the detection of individual faces rather than faces in general, and it would be nearly impossible to put entirely into a hardware system because of the large face database required.
That system rocked. But it has nothing to do with this post.
Apparently you didn't actually read my post. I said I was assuming 100:1 compression on the video stream. That brings each frame down to 3K, which is much better than 25-50K.
30 fps for 24/7 is what our customer wants. End of discussion.
Gigabit ethernet is becoming common, and you only need the serious bandwidth for the last few links before the destination. Everything before that can run on 100 Mbit.
All of the various requirements were compiled into the post:). No, we can't expect to have largely static images. The most we'd want to store along with the video is timestamps. Any other data that results from processing the video stream will be dealt with separately...this is just for archiving the raw video. I'm not sure what the break-even point is on speeding up retrieval. Assume for the moment that we don't want to spend more than 5% of the total cost on speeding up retrieval.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yes, but it's like exception handling vs. error codes: using exceptions doesn't get rid of the error handling problem, but at least they ensure that things can't fail silently. Presumably the two parties do not want to use the line at all if it has been tapped. Better a DOS than a leak of confidential information.
I can't believe I'm about to do this but...
I, for one, welcome our new Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur interstellar spaceship pilot masters.
Ugh, I feel so dirty.
Sure, less formal languages make it much easier to whip up form-based GUIs when you want to (for example) be able to treat numbers as strings and vice-versa with no questions asked. No argument there. But when your application builds up to significant levels of complexity, you'll be happy to be using a language with "formal" and "scientific" features that save you from hanging yourself on things like bogus implicit type conversions.
Consider this: it is widely believed that a human's periods of dreaming correspond to periods of learning, and thus correspond to the brain rearranging itself to take the day's new information into account. One could argue that the brain that went to sleep without the rearrangement "dies" during the night as it changes, and a new rearranged brain wakes up in the morning thinking that it's the same person who went to sleep.
Except, of course, it isn't. It's different. Not that this bothers us.
Babies, who are learning at an astounding rate, actually seem to experience periodic whole brain "crashes" and "reboots" during sleep. Is the post-reboot baby the same as the pre-reboot baby? In some ways, no; but fundamentally, yes.
We can only assume that the process (which I agree is remarkably improbable) of downloading ones dying brain would be essentally the same as falling asleep, dreaming, and waking up with a changed brain but without identity issues.
Rob
If he ever hit a nerve I'm sure it would hurt, but then again the laser probably would too...
Of course, dentists can charge you extra for using novocaine, whereas the heated water is free. Not a great incentive to use the cheaper, easier, and better solution.
Hmmmmm...very helpful input. Thanks!
Rob
I am honestly (and, I guess, naively) surprised by the suspicion. I thought it was just an interesting little problem that slashdotters would probably like to kick around. The details are at best marginally interesting...except to competitors, which is why I left them out.
I understand that people are legitimately worried about surveillance these days. I am more worried than most given my research on face detection (see some other post here). The academic literature overlaps significantly with recognition, so I have a pretty good idea of just how unreliable it is.
Even so, the contrast between people's assumptions and the boring reality in this case is really quite staggering. It is not a government project. It does not involve public surveillance on some vast scale. We are not misleading our customers. Despite what you assert, there are legitimate private facilities that need this sort of thing.
Rob
I disagree (naturally).
First of all, I posted to "Ask Slashdot". People post to "Ask Slashdot" when they have a question and they want to know what the Slashdot community thinks. If you don't want to contribute to this process, filter out the "Ask Slashdot" posts.
Secondly, as I mentioned in another post, the details are largely irrelevant (mostly because they are so boring). Anybody who has a large data stream that they need to archive will benefit from the posted responses.
Rob
No, what I am doing completely contravenes, the 1st, 4th, 12th, 121st, and any other amendment you can think of. I am working not only with nefarious government agencies but also alien ones! Nasty, nasty alien ones. Boo.
Look, we have a whole lot of video footage to store. I can't say more for competitive reasons. Not security reasons. I really wish I could give all the details. I can't. In many ways, the details are irrelevant. Data storage on this scale is going to become more and more common. We're just on the cutting edge at the moment. I think it is an interesting problem for everyone to ponder.
Rob
I understand how slashdot works. I posted to get a wide variety of ideas. Hard to get through standard industry channels, which we are also, obviously, pursuing. I didn't ask for specs. Or solutions. Just ideas. What's your problem?
Rob
Oh, for goodness' sake. This has nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing. I wish I could give you more informaion, but apparently there are competition issues.
Rob
The parameters were compiled into the post :). We need 30fps.
Rob
Actually, I developed (past tense) a hardware-based object detection system. Faces are interesting objects to try and learn to detect, because they have intresting and considerable variation. They also make for a fun demo and get more press. But I could have been detecting anything. Recognition, on the other hand, is different; it is the detection of individual faces rather than faces in general, and it would be nearly impossible to put entirely into a hardware system because of the large face database required.
That system rocked. But it has nothing to do with this post.
Rob
Apparently you didn't actually read my post. I said I was assuming 100:1 compression on the video stream. That brings each frame down to 3K, which is much better than 25-50K.
30 fps for 24/7 is what our customer wants. End of discussion.
Gigabit ethernet is becoming common, and you only need the serious bandwidth for the last few links before the destination. Everything before that can run on 100 Mbit.
I hope this clears some things up.
All of the various requirements were compiled into the post :). No, we can't expect to have largely static images. The most we'd want to store along with the video is timestamps. Any other data that results from processing the video stream will be dealt with separately...this is just for archiving the raw video. I'm not sure what the break-even point is on speeding up retrieval. Assume for the moment that we don't want to spend more than 5% of the total cost on speeding up retrieval.
Thanks - Rob
Not a problem. Compression is in-camera. So the data stream out of the back of the camera is already compressed. Rob