I realise it's become something of a trope to complain about it, but the Finder is not terrible.
Most complaints about the Finder centre on network performance (hangs on network disconnections, for example), or on a perception of flawed spatiality. The former is a localised, admittedly serious, problem. The latter is mostly a philosophical difference.
For informed arguments about the problems of the Finder, see:
This tool depends on having a collection of 'known good' works in order to make a comparison. But quite often a painter doesn't paint like 'himself'. False positives would be very easy. When van Meegeren forged his Vermeers in the thirties, the paintings didn't have all the signature marks of Vermeers. They were purported to have been from a hitherto little-known period of Vermeer's work.
A good architect is specifically skilled in making good spaces, and will be able to come up with ideas which you hadn't thought of, and will help you to make the most of the space you have to work with.
How do they demonstrably connect a hash to an image?
I see no way the hash could be included IN the image (it would be recursive to hash an image of a hash, wouldn't it?)
Surely if the hash is just printed next to the image, there is nothing to stop you doctoring the image, recomputing the hash, and then doctoring the hash?
Sorry if this is obvious.
It sounds to me like an MD5 hash adds the impression of security, without actually offering anything of the sort.
In actual fact, Apple's PowerMac line were all dual-processor machines until about a year ago, when they released the single-processor machine; which was essentially just a dual-processor machine with one of the processor sockets removed.
I don't believe it sold very well, anyway. I think Apple were testing interest in the low-end tower market, which proved lukewarm, especially in competition with the iMac.
Dick Smith are one of the major computer/ electronics outfits in NZ with stores in most major towns.
All of their DSE branded hardware (generic stuff rebranded for the chain - cdroms, usb drives, nics, cases etc.) come with a driver cd. On the driver cd they include heaps of extras, including a lot of free stuff, including openoffice.org, mozilla, firefox, cdex, even the gimp. All this stuff is current version.
Also, they sell mandrake and openoffice.org for $5.
This seems to work really well, and I really appreciate it.
Sirius are just trying to get some cool by rubbing against Apple (a game everyone seems to be playing these days.) The Satellite Radio-iPod will never happen for the following very simple reasons:
1. Apple have a worldwide market for iPods, but Sirius and XM are only available in the states. Nobody in NZ needs a Sirius iPod.
2. Satellite radio does not meet Apple's fit-and-finish standards: It only works outside unless you have all kinds of clunky antennae apparatus, and even the smallest players are too big for this generation of iPod, let alone the next.
3. Regardless of how good it is, Satellite Radio just doesn't feel like the future, just a regurgitated version of old technology.
OK, so 3 is a bit speculative, but i think the other two stand nicely.
I would think that the students who recieved the computer-generated grades, unless they agreed in advance to be bound by them, would have a pretty good case for a complaint against the profesor in question.
Unless the professor is prepared to put his grading machine to a blind peer-review test (which methinks it would fail dismally), then it shouldn't be accepted as a satisfactory way to grade.
Not to mention the extreme disrespect the professor is showing to his students' time and abilities.
Is it just me, or does 'rich tools' sound like euphemism for 'bloat'?
Should a software tool be 'rich'? Shouldn't it be 'smart'? I'm starting to suspect this might be at the root of my objection to a lot of Microsoft's products.
Verily, there is no game besides Diplomacy. None can compare to its mechanical precision, its emphasis on strategy over nasty dice-juggling (ahem, Risk). Play-by-email with a computer referee is possible, and there is a huge strategic literature out there for both the standard game and its variants.
Thus it is written.
Image recognition is immensely more difficult than people seem to think. And yet every few weeks someone is claiming to be just around the corner from a system that can easily identify the contents of an image.
When your brain 'recognises' what it is looking at, it is doing a lot more than just comparing two images (as in the street-corner example from the article). Your brain simply doesnt operate in terms of bitmaps.
The fact that he is basing his hyper-vaporous product on facial-recognition software should set of alarm bells. Facial-recognition in a real-world context has consistently failed to be of any use at all, although it may work fine under lab conditions.
If all the money invested so far hasn't made a computer able to successfully recognise a subset of the visual field (faces), why should I believe in a machine that is able to recognise practically anything?
parent might be right about snobs, but not mac users in general. I had to scrape together every last cent to get this powerbook; and I was quite aware that i wasn't getting the world's most powerful computer for my money.
Mac advocates always go on about the overall experience, but it's true. I like the way my powerbook feels under my arm, I like the shape of the power adaptor, I like the instant wake-from-sleep, I like the screen overlays for the volume and brightness controls, I like the solid battery life, I like the silence...
My computer is just part of life, and it's a quality-of-life issue.
(Whoops. I promised myself I would never participate in a mac v pc thread.)
What is a little frightening for me is that people seem to think that Moore is particularly cunning or slick with his film-making.
F911 hasn't released here yet, so I'm commenting in general on his technique from Bowling for Columbine.
What could be more obvious and unsubtle than rolling up to KMart with disabled kids; or in his crude (and funny) juxtapositions. It seems to me that his technique itself is deliberately satirical: he is adopting the editing and rhetorical techniques of advertising and marketing with his tongue in his cheek.
People who think that Moore is a *slick* film-maker must be missing an awful lot of the ideological content of other visual media. Moore isn't slick, he's deliberately *clumsy* (which even extends to his deliberate shambling screen persona).
The island in question is Thera (Santorini), which is indeed highly volcanic and still active. From memory, in the late sixties some guy Spiro Marinatos (or something) decided that this had to be Atlantis, because it is comprised of two concentric rings (the rims of the craters). He spent all his money doing sonar profiles of the lagoon, and began excavations on the main island where he uncovered the Cycladic/Minoan town of Akrotiri (a very important site in Aegean archaeology. He argued that Akrotiri was a part of Atlantis, and that Minoan Crete was a province or outlier of this major centre. Not many archaeologists take this seriously.
Undeniably, the Theran eruption was catastrophic (something like Krakatoa), and around about 1600BC. On Crete, the tidal surge shifted huge stone blocks on the coast. However, the decline of Minoan civilisation is difficult to date (and the source of notoriously vigorous debate amongst archaeologists). The Theran eruption is not generally considered to have marked the catastrophic end of the Minoans. Makes a good Discovery channel story though.
Atlantis was a didactic figure composed by Plato in order to contrast the civic values of Athens. It's hard to imagine that Plato didn't have his tongue in his cheek when he claimed to have the story third hand from some guy who knew some guy who had heard the story in exotic Egypt.
as an architecture student, i have spent considerable time working on 3d modelling, and have experimented with vrml. the reason that neither i nor any of my fellow-students used it for anything important is because it is ugly. everything is optimised way too far (i know you can vary the optimisation, but to get it to work realtime, it has to be pretty minimal).
key difference: vrml is for realtime 3d.
interesting note: more students have had success with using the unreal engine to model spaces. it is much prettier, and the navigation is better.
gimmicks have a point
on
SimChurch
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I think the people who are organising this are quite aware that its a gimmick, and I think that's probably the point. The article said that they were interested in attracting people who wouldn't otherwise go to a church.
There are lots of other examples of churches organising surprising or gimmicky events to attract a different audience. The biggest risk is that they will only get people who go to church anyway.
I imagine one of the aims will be to put non-Christians into contact with a local non-virtual church.
(btw i'm not using gimmick as a derogatory term)
this actually works. here in nz, a caving tour company uses pigeons to ferry memory sticks back to base so the digital photos can be waiting when the tourists get back.
http://www.waitomo.co.nz/pigeonpix.html
Slashdot Mirror
Most complaints about the Finder centre on network performance (hangs on network disconnections, for example), or on a perception of flawed spatiality. The former is a localised, admittedly serious, problem. The latter is mostly a philosophical difference.
For informed arguments about the problems of the Finder, see:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars
http://daringfireball.net/2003/04/siracusa_on_the_ finder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi
Kiwi smoothies are generally frowned upon in NZ.
This tool depends on having a collection of 'known good' works in order to make a comparison. But quite often a painter doesn't paint like 'himself'. False positives would be very easy. When van Meegeren forged his Vermeers in the thirties, the paintings didn't have all the signature marks of Vermeers. They were purported to have been from a hitherto little-known period of Vermeer's work.
This is a problem for an architect.
A good architect is specifically skilled in making good spaces, and will be able to come up with ideas which you hadn't thought of, and will help you to make the most of the space you have to work with.
With a sample so small, this is speculation masquerading as data.
How do they demonstrably connect a hash to an image?
I see no way the hash could be included IN the image (it would be recursive to hash an image of a hash, wouldn't it?)
Surely if the hash is just printed next to the image, there is nothing to stop you doctoring the image, recomputing the hash, and then doctoring the hash?
Sorry if this is obvious.
It sounds to me like an MD5 hash adds the impression of security, without actually offering anything of the sort.
In actual fact, Apple's PowerMac line were all dual-processor machines until about a year ago, when they released the single-processor machine; which was essentially just a dual-processor machine with one of the processor sockets removed.
I don't believe it sold very well, anyway. I think Apple were testing interest in the low-end tower market, which proved lukewarm, especially in competition with the iMac.
Dick Smith are one of the major computer/ electronics outfits in NZ with stores in most major towns.
All of their DSE branded hardware (generic stuff rebranded for the chain - cdroms, usb drives, nics, cases etc.) come with a driver cd. On the driver cd they include heaps of extras, including a lot of free stuff, including openoffice.org, mozilla, firefox, cdex, even the gimp. All this stuff is current version.
Also, they sell mandrake and openoffice.org for $5.
This seems to work really well, and I really appreciate it.
After you've read Blatchford's write-up, read this for a reality check:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050124-4551 .html
It uses such terms as 'hogwash' and 'wild-eyed and completely unsubstantiated claims'. Ouch.
Sirius are just trying to get some cool by rubbing against Apple (a game everyone seems to be playing these days.) The Satellite Radio-iPod will never happen for the following very simple reasons: 1. Apple have a worldwide market for iPods, but Sirius and XM are only available in the states. Nobody in NZ needs a Sirius iPod. 2. Satellite radio does not meet Apple's fit-and-finish standards: It only works outside unless you have all kinds of clunky antennae apparatus, and even the smallest players are too big for this generation of iPod, let alone the next. 3. Regardless of how good it is, Satellite Radio just doesn't feel like the future, just a regurgitated version of old technology. OK, so 3 is a bit speculative, but i think the other two stand nicely.
I would think that the students who recieved the computer-generated grades, unless they agreed in advance to be bound by them, would have a pretty good case for a complaint against the profesor in question.
Unless the professor is prepared to put his grading machine to a blind peer-review test (which methinks it would fail dismally), then it shouldn't be accepted as a satisfactory way to grade.
Not to mention the extreme disrespect the professor is showing to his students' time and abilities.
Is it just me, or does 'rich tools' sound like euphemism for 'bloat'? Should a software tool be 'rich'? Shouldn't it be 'smart'? I'm starting to suspect this might be at the root of my objection to a lot of Microsoft's products.
Verily, there is no game besides Diplomacy. None can compare to its mechanical precision, its emphasis on strategy over nasty dice-juggling (ahem, Risk). Play-by-email with a computer referee is possible, and there is a huge strategic literature out there for both the standard game and its variants. Thus it is written.
OS X?
When your brain 'recognises' what it is looking at, it is doing a lot more than just comparing two images (as in the street-corner example from the article). Your brain simply doesnt operate in terms of bitmaps.
The fact that he is basing his hyper-vaporous product on facial-recognition software should set of alarm bells. Facial-recognition in a real-world context has consistently failed to be of any use at all, although it may work fine under lab conditions.
If all the money invested so far hasn't made a computer able to successfully recognise a subset of the visual field (faces), why should I believe in a machine that is able to recognise practically anything?
parent might be right about snobs, but not mac users in general. I had to scrape together every last cent to get this powerbook; and I was quite aware that i wasn't getting the world's most powerful computer for my money. Mac advocates always go on about the overall experience, but it's true. I like the way my powerbook feels under my arm, I like the shape of the power adaptor, I like the instant wake-from-sleep, I like the screen overlays for the volume and brightness controls, I like the solid battery life, I like the silence... My computer is just part of life, and it's a quality-of-life issue. (Whoops. I promised myself I would never participate in a mac v pc thread.)
What could be more obvious and unsubtle than rolling up to KMart with disabled kids; or in his crude (and funny) juxtapositions. It seems to me that his technique itself is deliberately satirical: he is adopting the editing and rhetorical techniques of advertising and marketing with his tongue in his cheek.
People who think that Moore is a *slick* film-maker must be missing an awful lot of the ideological content of other visual media. Moore isn't slick, he's deliberately *clumsy* (which even extends to his deliberate shambling screen persona).
Undeniably, the Theran eruption was catastrophic (something like Krakatoa), and around about 1600BC. On Crete, the tidal surge shifted huge stone blocks on the coast. However, the decline of Minoan civilisation is difficult to date (and the source of notoriously vigorous debate amongst archaeologists). The Theran eruption is not generally considered to have marked the catastrophic end of the Minoans. Makes a good Discovery channel story though.
Atlantis was a didactic figure composed by Plato in order to contrast the civic values of Athens. It's hard to imagine that Plato didn't have his tongue in his cheek when he claimed to have the story third hand from some guy who knew some guy who had heard the story in exotic Egypt.
Hope Mr Sarmast enjoys his boat ride.
key difference: vrml is for realtime 3d.
interesting note: more students have had success with using the unreal engine to model spaces. it is much prettier, and the navigation is better.
I think the people who are organising this are quite aware that its a gimmick, and I think that's probably the point. The article said that they were interested in attracting people who wouldn't otherwise go to a church. There are lots of other examples of churches organising surprising or gimmicky events to attract a different audience. The biggest risk is that they will only get people who go to church anyway. I imagine one of the aims will be to put non-Christians into contact with a local non-virtual church. (btw i'm not using gimmick as a derogatory term)
this actually works. here in nz, a caving tour company uses pigeons to ferry memory sticks back to base so the digital photos can be waiting when the tourists get back. http://www.waitomo.co.nz/pigeonpix.html