Honestly the attached article was an Ad. The interview didn't really tell much except for advertise his other work and future project. Either the interviewer was terrible OR it was a canned session....and no... there is no way he got all of that imagery from Street View. As you say: (in my words) too much gap in GSV to provide smooth animation (and no controls visible on the screen for the downtrodden black robot to click on)
OR... the little fact that most/.ers had already see the movie when this article hit the main page. "Been there done that now for some feverish ranting"
FYI: I know that system and it relies on extremely low thresholds because of the fact the Afghan data is so terrible. SO, first of all, I can be 99.9% sure his iris scan had nothing to do with the "hit" (Iris is scary accurate) and also that if you look at the match score for fingerprint it was probably very low. Unlike what they show in the movies/TV biometric "identification" systems rarely return a single "hit"... they return a candidate list with attached scores. It is your responsibility to determine a minimum score that you rely on being a "hit" (based on analysis of the gallery data) and also a grey band where you decide the software is not sure and further investigation is required by a human.
The news rarely reports accurately on biometrics. The summaries on/. are usually terrible when it comes to anything biometric....and I always find the commentary here thoroughly entertaining given how much most people don't understand the tech.
The only scientist to say what the summary indicates has said that Frakking wasn't the cause of the *Big earthquake they had. He even admits it was possibly at fault for the many small earthquakes that have plagued the area in the past couple years. Also: most of the scientists who are investigating the big earthquake (as well as the small ones) are pointing more to the high pressure injection well process that is used to dispose of the waste fluids from frakking than the frakking itself. They have seen this process be responsible for large tremors in the past and so are investigating the possibility here. Note: They have not claimed fault yet. They are in the middle of what could be a very long (years) investigation as to the true cause of the tremors. They have only mentioned that the severe increase in small tremors and this extremely rare large tremor may be the result of the recent increase/presence of frakking and injection well activity near the faults.
There is also scientific evidence that the fracking itself causes earthquakes, but nothing of the size of what happened in Oklahoma last weekend. A recent study by seismologist Austin Holland, a seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, said that it’s possible that hydraulic fracking caused a series of small earthquakes, peaking at 2.8, in an area south of Oklahoma City earlier this year. When lots of liquid is injected into the ground it changes the stress and pressure in a place that probably already was a fault, Holland said. It’s similar to injecting water between two adjacent bricks, it allows them to slide more easily and "the water under pressure is helping push the bricks apart ever so slightly," Holland said. But Holland doesn’t believe fracking caused the big Nov. 5, 6 and 8 earthquakes. He compared a man-made earthquake to a mosquito bite.
Bad Summary on both the/. side and the original article. The real information is so much more interesting.
Somewhat off topic but... At pure transfer speeds (if you are actually getting that 5Mbit) you can send 600GB in roughly 11 days. Given this is the real world but seriously. If it takes you 3 months to transfer 600GB you really need to have a conversation with your ISP or whomever you're sending that data to about some SLA details, use a different method of transfer, OR stop streaming pr0n and hosting a game server while you're doing your backup;-)
There are all sorts of challenges a population living longer will cause. We're already living in many of them as the boomer generation (and their parents) are living longer by double or triple than the population was living when our country was founded. This is just an extension of that.
What I refuse to give credence to is the upward mobility problem. I've never been in a organization that involved "serving my time" until I could advance my position. If you're just waiting for that next guy to retire (die?) before you just naturally slide into his/her position then IMHO you don't deserve to get that position. Whether your advancement happens within your existing company, you hire up into a different company or you go out and build something for yourself "waiting" is never a good part of the solution and the fact the guy above you is working more years should have no bearing on your successful career path.
I'm slightly younger than a "typical" boomer's child and I have many boomers and even boomer's parents who call me peer or even senior. That would never happen if I spent my time waiting for them to get out of the way.
Yeah.. parents parent clearly has no idea what Cygwin is all about.
Cygwin IS the first thing we install on ANY Windows host we manage. SSH being essential but the power you have once that infrastructure is in place is fantastic.
Our biggest difficulty being the remote deployment of Cygwin to our hosts that are otherwise dropped from image. Being that each has to be seeded host-specific post-deploy we must use Windows RPC tools to get in the door and all of them have certain issues and are not readily maintained. (Eg. I developed a nice lil JavaSE app to process all of the remote executions via exec and all of the commands that ran just fine when on the command line had different symptoms when run via Java-Exec. My end solution actually had to use 3 different remote execute programs to get Cygwin installed and SSHD up and running... after that we're golden)
Add to that the fact they still seem to think they know better than anyone else, even though they are clearly losing.
Prime example: My BB Torch. Honestly, from a hardware standpoint, I love it. It's well built. It gives me the option of the hardware keyboard well concealed and it built like a tank (I've chucked it across a room more than a few times, sometimes just to show my friends how well built it is) BUT when it comes to the OS it's like they completely ignored all of the lessons learned by the likes of iOS and Android. Yes, you've been in the smartphone business longer than anyone BUT you're new to touchscreens and have a lot to learn. The lack of an OS supported swipe lock is the best example and is *still not remedied as of the last update I've done. I've had to resort to an App that only partially integrates with the OS so has constant problems with the transition especially when a call comes in while locked. It's a good thing they have the hard-keyboard because the on-screen one is crap. Plus, the auto-complete/replace features while typing mean you are constantly having to re-type words that you typed correctly and wanted them that way. The word you actually typed isn't even first in the list of options most of the time if you're paying attention...
anyway... I don't really want to rant about all of the specifics. The point is they came out with a new phone to compete with Apple and Google and didn't even bother to do their homework first. I don't have a PlayBook but I'd bet good money they did the same thing there. They need to get humble and quick then let what they do well (corporate integration, great hardware, etc) shine through.
The study is comparing the latest released versions of the major browsers to show who can handle current threats. IMHO if you are still using an outdated browser then you have no right to feel all warm and fuzzy with your security.
Step 1: Upgrade to latest version of browser of your choice. Step 2: THEN decide if this study gives you reason to want to switch to IE (of said latest version)
I predict you didn't RTFA and are doing exactly what Parent said only trying to sound smarter about it.
RTFA: This is just the eBay QA division. (Ergo the need to rapidly deploy VMs all the time as they try different approaches and solutions). A point made in the FA is that due to the success they have seen in QA due to this switch to SSD eBay will most likely (positively) be pushing those changes out to larger parts of their business (such as the few hundred peta you refer to).
It is then that we will see how much eBay saves by changing over the big iron but one would think that the kind of successes they've seen in this relatively 'small' environment will scale quite well.
A company I worked for a while back was purchased shortly after I started working there. The original company had required no NDA/Non-Compete/etc but when the new management came in they distributed new paperwork for all of us to sign (whole company from HR to IT).
I read over this paperwork and it did exactly as you describe. It gave the company complete ownership over anything we did at work or at home, during work hours or during free time. I told our management that I would be unable to sign such a document and my fellow developers and IT agreed.
As it is, IANAL, but the company allowed me to enter into negotiations with the chief legal of the purchasing company. We hammered out a new version of the document that preserved our rights outside of the workplace and off hours. It was this revised version that roughly 30% of our company signed (Basically everyone tech related) and is a somewhat proud moment for yours truly. It is worthy of note: Neither company was inherently a technology company. The business cases actively pursued in no way coincided with any interests we had outside of work. When the negotiation process began I noticed the fairly internet form letter nature of the document and allowed that maybe they didn't intend to be so overly broad in their charge of ownership. I was told quite directly by their legal that the intent was clear and intentional.
Long story short: It is possible to negotiate with a company to preserve your ownership of your own personal pursuits but you must be proactive and generally have leverage (In my case I was holding up a merger with an entire IT/dev department. Your average shmo only has the desire of the company to have them work there). Also expect that the/any company will do whatever they can to own everything you are and do so presume you are screwed and read any documentation you are asked to sign with that intent in mind.
The title could be... "Scientists prove themselves right... again!"
I'm firmly entrenched in the rigors of experimental science but I also firmly believe that we will one day find a way to break this "speed limit" just to rub it in the face of those who held on to the 'belief' that this observation was infallible.
Similar to how Einstein showed us a world that behaved simply like Newton's but was really more complex, another intellect will show us one that is even more complex (or more simple). Until the next one...
There are false accepts in any FR system. The question is where did they set their thresholds and are they updating them as their gallery changes. Coming from the largest forensic FR company in the business I'm glad this guy is suing as they are improperly using the technology.
The probe data has to be absolutely terrible. Capturing random faces in a crowd of walking people (say in an airport terminal) presents enough challenges. Capturing faces from drivers in moving cars at bad angles with bad shadows pushes that so much harder. Your scores for a correct match are going to be dangerously low compared to potential scores for a non-match. The threshold you would need to set to have 0% FAR would eliminate a majority of your TAR and leave only the random accidental "Oh hey... they guy had his dome light on, it was forward illuminating and he was facing the camera at the time" shots.
While we are exploring the world of Forensic quality FR (with arguably the most accurate algo out there) organizations abusing the tech make our jobs harder. The results from such an environment would maybe be enough to give someone probable cause to *investigate (if the crime were serious enough) "We're fairly positive that the suspect was driving in the area at the time of the hit and run... check his car for damage." NOT to outright convict as in the above story.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly the attached article was an Ad. The interview didn't really tell much except for advertise his other work and future project. Either the interviewer was terrible OR it was a canned session. ...and no... there is no way he got all of that imagery from Street View. As you say: (in my words) too much gap in GSV to provide smooth animation (and no controls visible on the screen for the downtrodden black robot to click on)
OR... the little fact that most /.ers had already see the movie when this article hit the main page. "Been there done that now for some feverish ranting"
I miss Z-Modem... it was a damn fine protocol.
FYI: I know that system and it relies on extremely low thresholds because of the fact the Afghan data is so terrible. SO, first of all, I can be 99.9% sure his iris scan had nothing to do with the "hit" (Iris is scary accurate) and also that if you look at the match score for fingerprint it was probably very low. Unlike what they show in the movies/TV biometric "identification" systems rarely return a single "hit"... they return a candidate list with attached scores. It is your responsibility to determine a minimum score that you rely on being a "hit" (based on analysis of the gallery data) and also a grey band where you decide the software is not sure and further investigation is required by a human.
The news rarely reports accurately on biometrics. The summaries on /. are usually terrible when it comes to anything biometric. ...and I always find the commentary here thoroughly entertaining given how much most people don't understand the tech.
1985: Scan ahead to 3:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt4vXaoPzF8
Where did you go to school?
It seems a lot of people aren't RTF(ull)A...
The only scientist to say what the summary indicates has said that Frakking wasn't the cause of the *Big earthquake they had. He even admits it was possibly at fault for the many small earthquakes that have plagued the area in the past couple years. Also: most of the scientists who are investigating the big earthquake (as well as the small ones) are pointing more to the high pressure injection well process that is used to dispose of the waste fluids from frakking than the frakking itself. They have seen this process be responsible for large tremors in the past and so are investigating the possibility here. Note: They have not claimed fault yet. They are in the middle of what could be a very long (years) investigation as to the true cause of the tremors. They have only mentioned that the severe increase in small tremors and this extremely rare large tremor may be the result of the recent increase/presence of frakking and injection well activity near the faults.
There is also scientific evidence that the fracking itself causes earthquakes, but nothing of the size of what happened in Oklahoma last weekend. A recent study by seismologist Austin Holland, a seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, said that it’s possible that hydraulic fracking caused a series of small earthquakes, peaking at 2.8, in an area south of Oklahoma City earlier this year. When lots of liquid is injected into the ground it changes the stress and pressure in a place that probably already was a fault, Holland said. It’s similar to injecting water between two adjacent bricks, it allows them to slide more easily and "the water under pressure is helping push the bricks apart ever so slightly," Holland said.
But Holland doesn’t believe fracking caused the big Nov. 5, 6 and 8 earthquakes. He compared a man-made earthquake to a mosquito bite.
Bad Summary on both the /. side and the original article. The real information is so much more interesting.
A wrap drive would be pretty cool... you wrap the universe around yourself and then everywhere is only a step away.
Brilliant!
Oh stop whining and do your job hippie! ;-)
Somewhat off topic but... At pure transfer speeds (if you are actually getting that 5Mbit) you can send 600GB in roughly 11 days. Given this is the real world but seriously. If it takes you 3 months to transfer 600GB you really need to have a conversation with your ISP or whomever you're sending that data to about some SLA details, use a different method of transfer, OR stop streaming pr0n and hosting a game server while you're doing your backup ;-)
There are all sorts of challenges a population living longer will cause. We're already living in many of them as the boomer generation (and their parents) are living longer by double or triple than the population was living when our country was founded. This is just an extension of that.
What I refuse to give credence to is the upward mobility problem. I've never been in a organization that involved "serving my time" until I could advance my position. If you're just waiting for that next guy to retire (die?) before you just naturally slide into his/her position then IMHO you don't deserve to get that position. Whether your advancement happens within your existing company, you hire up into a different company or you go out and build something for yourself "waiting" is never a good part of the solution and the fact the guy above you is working more years should have no bearing on your successful career path.
I'm slightly younger than a "typical" boomer's child and I have many boomers and even boomer's parents who call me peer or even senior. That would never happen if I spent my time waiting for them to get out of the way.
Yeah.. parents parent clearly has no idea what Cygwin is all about.
Cygwin IS the first thing we install on ANY Windows host we manage. SSH being essential but the power you have once that infrastructure is in place is fantastic.
Our biggest difficulty being the remote deployment of Cygwin to our hosts that are otherwise dropped from image. Being that each has to be seeded host-specific post-deploy we must use Windows RPC tools to get in the door and all of them have certain issues and are not readily maintained. (Eg. I developed a nice lil JavaSE app to process all of the remote executions via exec and all of the commands that ran just fine when on the command line had different symptoms when run via Java-Exec. My end solution actually had to use 3 different remote execute programs to get Cygwin installed and SSHD up and running... after that we're golden)
You can find a lot of good ruggedized setups here http://www.facebook.com/groups/133909986649315/
Lots of great how-tos for doing it "right"!
Add to that the fact they still seem to think they know better than anyone else, even though they are clearly losing.
Prime example: My BB Torch. Honestly, from a hardware standpoint, I love it. It's well built. It gives me the option of the hardware keyboard well concealed and it built like a tank (I've chucked it across a room more than a few times, sometimes just to show my friends how well built it is) BUT when it comes to the OS it's like they completely ignored all of the lessons learned by the likes of iOS and Android. Yes, you've been in the smartphone business longer than anyone BUT you're new to touchscreens and have a lot to learn. The lack of an OS supported swipe lock is the best example and is *still not remedied as of the last update I've done. I've had to resort to an App that only partially integrates with the OS so has constant problems with the transition especially when a call comes in while locked. It's a good thing they have the hard-keyboard because the on-screen one is crap. Plus, the auto-complete/replace features while typing mean you are constantly having to re-type words that you typed correctly and wanted them that way. The word you actually typed isn't even first in the list of options most of the time if you're paying attention...
anyway... I don't really want to rant about all of the specifics. The point is they came out with a new phone to compete with Apple and Google and didn't even bother to do their homework first. I don't have a PlayBook but I'd bet good money they did the same thing there. They need to get humble and quick then let what they do well (corporate integration, great hardware, etc) shine through.
Oops... I just farted.
Please mod parent down to 0 for the reasons stated by my siblings... an idiot does not deserve a 5.
The slide comparison is a useful tool and I'm happy to have it.
Ya... I certainly don't need my postal mail any more often than my XKCD!
Just don't make me have to go to my post office to GET my XKCD!
Sorry to be the one to tell you but...
We past that point a LONG LONG time ago.
...and I respectfully ask: Who cares?
The study is comparing the latest released versions of the major browsers to show who can handle current threats. IMHO if you are still using an outdated browser then you have no right to feel all warm and fuzzy with your security.
Step 1: Upgrade to latest version of browser of your choice.
Step 2: THEN decide if this study gives you reason to want to switch to IE (of said latest version)
I predict you didn't RTFA and are doing exactly what Parent said only trying to sound smarter about it.
RTFA: This is just the eBay QA division. (Ergo the need to rapidly deploy VMs all the time as they try different approaches and solutions). A point made in the FA is that due to the success they have seen in QA due to this switch to SSD eBay will most likely (positively) be pushing those changes out to larger parts of their business (such as the few hundred peta you refer to).
It is then that we will see how much eBay saves by changing over the big iron but one would think that the kind of successes they've seen in this relatively 'small' environment will scale quite well.
A company I worked for a while back was purchased shortly after I started working there. The original company had required no NDA/Non-Compete/etc but when the new management came in they distributed new paperwork for all of us to sign (whole company from HR to IT).
I read over this paperwork and it did exactly as you describe. It gave the company complete ownership over anything we did at work or at home, during work hours or during free time. I told our management that I would be unable to sign such a document and my fellow developers and IT agreed.
As it is, IANAL, but the company allowed me to enter into negotiations with the chief legal of the purchasing company. We hammered out a new version of the document that preserved our rights outside of the workplace and off hours. It was this revised version that roughly 30% of our company signed (Basically everyone tech related) and is a somewhat proud moment for yours truly. It is worthy of note: Neither company was inherently a technology company. The business cases actively pursued in no way coincided with any interests we had outside of work. When the negotiation process began I noticed the fairly internet form letter nature of the document and allowed that maybe they didn't intend to be so overly broad in their charge of ownership. I was told quite directly by their legal that the intent was clear and intentional.
Long story short: It is possible to negotiate with a company to preserve your ownership of your own personal pursuits but you must be proactive and generally have leverage (In my case I was holding up a merger with an entire IT/dev department. Your average shmo only has the desire of the company to have them work there). Also expect that the/any company will do whatever they can to own everything you are and do so presume you are screwed and read any documentation you are asked to sign with that intent in mind.
Obligatory XKCD reference... http://xkcd.com/865/
The title could be... "Scientists prove themselves right... again!"
I'm firmly entrenched in the rigors of experimental science but I also firmly believe that we will one day find a way to break this "speed limit" just to rub it in the face of those who held on to the 'belief' that this observation was infallible.
Similar to how Einstein showed us a world that behaved simply like Newton's but was really more complex, another intellect will show us one that is even more complex (or more simple). Until the next one...
Mod myself as parent down... My first *DOS*-based Dial-Up client. DOH!
That and my first Windows-based dial-up client was called Telex. Trademark Infringement? ;-)
There are false accepts in any FR system. The question is where did they set their thresholds and are they updating them as their gallery changes. Coming from the largest forensic FR company in the business I'm glad this guy is suing as they are improperly using the technology.
The probe data has to be absolutely terrible. Capturing random faces in a crowd of walking people (say in an airport terminal) presents enough challenges. Capturing faces from drivers in moving cars at bad angles with bad shadows pushes that so much harder. Your scores for a correct match are going to be dangerously low compared to potential scores for a non-match. The threshold you would need to set to have 0% FAR would eliminate a majority of your TAR and leave only the random accidental "Oh hey... they guy had his dome light on, it was forward illuminating and he was facing the camera at the time" shots.
While we are exploring the world of Forensic quality FR (with arguably the most accurate algo out there) organizations abusing the tech make our jobs harder. The results from such an environment would maybe be enough to give someone probable cause to *investigate (if the crime were serious enough) "We're fairly positive that the suspect was driving in the area at the time of the hit and run... check his car for damage." NOT to outright convict as in the above story.
Grr...