They are false positives to your "does-the-pattern-resemble-a-face" system (which is why they appear to be faces at all), but further processing does reject them.
If you didn't have the lower level system that responds to everything that even vaguely resembles a face, you'd never be able to properly read a comic strip because the lines wouldn't register as being faces. (Of course, you'd never recognize anything as being a face, but at least you wouldn't have to worry about finding Elvis in a potato.)
Heh... I grew up in the South hearing all other ethnic groups look alike. Later I heard that people from other ethnic groups had just as hard a time telling white people apart, but it didn't make sense to me at the time. I mean, white people obviously had more varied facial features, skin tones, and hair colors, right?
It turns out that members of ethnic groups with less variety in those areas have other features used for telling each other apart, like overall face or head shape, height of foreheard, and other things that would likely not even be noticeable to caucasians. When you grow up and learn to distinguish faces by certain characteristics, your brain eventually doesn't bother with anything else. I would think a person raised in a really ethnically diverse area would be the most well-equipped to tell apart a wide variety of different types of faces.
Here is a somewhat relevant article on the subject. It's a little more psychological than neuroscientific, but it shows some of the ideas currently being pursued.
I wouldn't call our system "overkill". Also, there are really multiple systems involved.
First, there is the subsystem that recognizes a face as being a face. There are certain clusters of neurons that fire in response to any face-like pattern, regardless of whether or not it is actually attached to a head. This is how we recognize animal faces as being faces, the man in the moon, smiley faces and emoticons, Jesus in a water stain, etc. This capacity is innate, and infants can discern face-like patterns very soon after being born.
After a face has been perceived, it must be narrowed down to an individual person. This ability is partly learned over time, and is responsible for the difficulty people have in recognizing faces outside of their own cultural group. Certain types of brain damage (from a stroke, for instance) can allow people to recognize the fact that they're looking at a face, but still be unable to determine whose face they're looking at.
Keep in mind that even before a face is perceived, you have systems that find the basic shape outlines, determine their orientations (separately and with respect to each other), and at the same time attach color information, shuttle it off to "face subprocessing", then call up any related emotional context (have you ever seen a stranger you didn't like because they resemble someone you already dislike?) -- all before you can become consciously aware of the face.
Just for the record, the triviality of the encryption scheme is irrelevant. ALL programs are "numbers" in some numeric base system. Since they use a lot more symbols than standard counting, a program would be represented by something like base-50 or so. That number can be easily converted to any other base.
In the case of this DeCSS code, however, all they did was gzip the source file, then take the huge hexadecimal number that represented that file and convert it to base-10. It just so happens the number is prime. So, DeCSS may indeed be trivial, but you could do the same thing with the source for SSH or MD5 hashing, or even the entire linux kernel.
It's "nitpick". It refers to the action of removing clusters of louse eggs (nits) from hair. Since louse eggs are so tiny, this requires meticulous precision. Thus, the word came to be associated with finding (often unnecessarily) the smallest defects in anything.
Heh... thanks!:) I don't know of anything public set up exactly like that. I know there are various servers that give free ssh access for people wanting to work on open source stuff, and you can install your own software on some of them, but I don't know of anything specifically set up for letting people use a text-based jabber client.
Of course, if you were going to go through that kind of trouble, you might as well just setup a whole jabber server so you could run your own transports. I wonder if you could tie the unix-based and jabber server user authentication together so you don't have to keep up with two user bases? Well, if not, there's always $preferredscriptinglanguage.
If you could popularize a system like that (esp. if there were a client using ncurses for a little bit of "windowing"), it might go over pretty well. Of course, it would be kind of difficult for languages using non-Roman alphabets. Maybe we should teach everyone Esperanto while we're at it.;)
If this ever makes it to the US, cafeteria-style restaurants like Luby's and Furr's are going to be hell at 5 o'clock in the afternoon when the newly-mobile octogenarians swarm the place for the senior dinner specials.
I can see it now...
"I don't think that discount rang up right, miss." "But sir..." [points giant crushing gripper hand at her throat] "How about that, sir! Looks like we owe you $5 ---" [opens giant crushing gripper hand] "--- err --- $20 dollars!"
If you're traveling around and have a host system you can set up with a permanent domain name, you could install a text-based
jabber client on it, then ssh/telnet to that machine. Slow, but you'd have jabber. (If you need ssh access, you can go to PuTTY's
website, go to download, right-click on the exe, and pick "Run from this location" since it doesn't use an installer.)
I will not be able to talk to my MSN friend in South Korea.
What about:
AIM
jabber
IRC
ICQ
or, heaven forbid, email
Lots of people run multiple message systems. Setting up an extra account to bypass those petty limitations really isn't THAT hard. I know it would be nice if more people opted for an open standard like Jabber, but unless South Korea has some kind of weird nationwide ban on using anything besides MSN, I don't see what the big deal is.
My post was partly meant as a joke... I used to work at a theater, so I know they only make money at the concession stand.
The motion picture companies really are amazingly annoying. They spend massive amounts of money on making and marketing terrible movies, then make up for it by charging theaters out the wazoo to show them. The theaters have to jack up ticket and concession prices to make up for this so they can stay in business. If movie companies actually spent some time coming up with a decent film, it would probably cost less since they wouldn't have to rely on as many special effects and overpriced (but lousy) actors and directors.
You can't cheat and plead, just one movie! It's the Matrix! I have to see it.
There's always sneaking in. You get to see how the trilogy ends AND screw them out of some money. Also, hide some drinks and snacks in your pockets for maximum effect.
The interesting thing to me is that the code isn't that complicated. It is a pretty straightforward procedure. There is no mystery here. It isn't an innovative idea like some kind of new encryption algorithm. This is simply the way to do this memory manipulation related to mapping.
I have a hard time understanding how anyone could even lay claim to PATENTING this code. The only thing you could really do is change the variable names and add some more parentheses. Copyright law related to source code really needs to be examined so we can better deal with these circumstances.
Specialized systems are almost always going to outperform generalized systems when you're dealing with similar levels of technology (for instance, specialized abacasuses vs. a generalized Cray T3E).
The great thing about generalized systems is you can use them to explore new areas, then design a specialized system to take advantage of specific optimizations the generalized one can't support.
I'm glad for the report suggesting a "balanced approach". I can't imagine forsaking one type of system for the other, as each has its place. (Uhoh... generalized systems have a "place"? Does that mean they're specialized at being generalized? Oh, the irony!;))
True... they probably need a companion book on how to securely back up your fscking data. I realize the FSF isn't a giant data warehouse, but if you're going to act as an authoritative source, especially for executable software or source code, you had BETTER have an offsite (or, at the least off-network) backup and be able to effectively rollback in case of problems like this.;)
Hell, we all needed it for MSBLAST. A lot of people (myself included) didn't take this worm very seriously until everything around started breaking. OLE drag-n-drop screwed up, RPC servers failing, svchost.exe crashing, javascript not functioning correctly... The only thing nastier is probably buried in the video archive on consumptionjunction.
From one of the book titles: Using SNORT, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and ACID
This somehow strikes me as a veiled reference to cocaine, peyote, qualuudes, phencyclidine, and LSD.
No longer will pharmacologically-enhanced computing be restricted to the caffeine you get from a case of Jolt!
Slashdot Mirror
My TV's tipping point is 47 degrees forward from vertical. Anything less and it falls back on its base.
No, it's developmentally disabled... There's a difference.
Ahh... I found a better archive.
If you still need a DFC fix, though...
They are false positives to your "does-the-pattern-resemble-a-face" system (which is why they appear to be faces at all), but further processing does reject them.
If you didn't have the lower level system that responds to everything that even vaguely resembles a face, you'd never be able to properly read a comic strip because the lines wouldn't register as being faces. (Of course, you'd never recognize anything as being a face, but at least you wouldn't have to worry about finding Elvis in a potato.)
Heh... I grew up in the South hearing all other ethnic groups look alike. Later I heard that people from other ethnic groups had just as hard a time telling white people apart, but it didn't make sense to me at the time. I mean, white people obviously had more varied facial features, skin tones, and hair colors, right?
It turns out that members of ethnic groups with less variety in those areas have other features used for telling each other apart, like overall face or head shape, height of foreheard, and other things that would likely not even be noticeable to caucasians. When you grow up and learn to distinguish faces by certain characteristics, your brain eventually doesn't bother with anything else. I would think a person raised in a really ethnically diverse area would be the most well-equipped to tell apart a wide variety of different types of faces.
Here is a somewhat relevant article on the subject. It's a little more psychological than neuroscientific, but it shows some of the ideas currently being pursued.
I can add a little to this...
I wouldn't call our system "overkill". Also, there are really multiple systems involved.
First, there is the subsystem that recognizes a face as being a face. There are certain clusters of neurons that fire in response to any face-like pattern, regardless of whether or not it is actually attached to a head. This is how we recognize animal faces as being faces, the man in the moon, smiley faces and emoticons, Jesus in a water stain, etc. This capacity is innate, and infants can discern face-like patterns very soon after being born.
After a face has been perceived, it must be narrowed down to an individual person. This ability is partly learned over time, and is responsible for the difficulty people have in recognizing faces outside of their own cultural group. Certain types of brain damage (from a stroke, for instance) can allow people to recognize the fact that they're looking at a face, but still be unable to determine whose face they're looking at.
Keep in mind that even before a face is perceived, you have systems that find the basic shape outlines, determine their orientations (separately and with respect to each other), and at the same time attach color information, shuttle it off to "face subprocessing", then call up any related emotional context (have you ever seen a stranger you didn't like because they resemble someone you already dislike?) -- all before you can become consciously aware of the face.
You'd have to hide 2 math errors...
$50 billion / $50 million is only 100. So MS would have to start worrying sooner.
50 billion / 50 million = 1000. ;) Now 5 billion / 50 million, on the other hand, does equal 100.
Sounds like a poster I've seen somewhere. That article title should definitely be made into a Demotivational product.
Just for the record, the triviality of the encryption scheme is irrelevant. ALL programs are "numbers" in some numeric base system. Since they use a lot more symbols than standard counting, a program would be represented by something like base-50 or so. That number can be easily converted to any other base.
In the case of this DeCSS code, however, all they did was gzip the source file, then take the huge hexadecimal number that represented that file and convert it to base-10. It just so happens the number is prime. So, DeCSS may indeed be trivial, but you could do the same thing with the source for SSH or MD5 hashing, or even the entire linux kernel.
Just for another perspective on this:
(I'm going to use the tilde (~) to represent the repeating digits.)
z = 0.999~
10z = 9.999~
10z - z = 9.999~ - z
9z = 9
z = 1
Thus, 0.999~ = 1, QED.
It's "nitpick". It refers to the action of removing clusters of louse eggs (nits) from hair. Since louse eggs are so tiny, this requires meticulous precision. Thus, the word came to be associated with finding (often unnecessarily) the smallest defects in anything.
Of course, if you were going to go through that kind of trouble, you might as well just setup a whole jabber server so you could run your own transports. I wonder if you could tie the unix-based and jabber server user authentication together so you don't have to keep up with two user bases? Well, if not, there's always $preferredscriptinglanguage.
If you could popularize a system like that (esp. if there were a client using ncurses for a little bit of "windowing"), it might go over pretty well. Of course, it would be kind of difficult for languages using non-Roman alphabets. Maybe we should teach everyone Esperanto while we're at it. ;)
If this ever makes it to the US, cafeteria-style restaurants like Luby's and Furr's are going to be hell at 5 o'clock in the afternoon when the newly-mobile octogenarians swarm the place for the senior dinner specials.
I can see it now...
"I don't think that discount rang up right, miss."
"But sir..."
[points giant crushing gripper hand at her throat]
"How about that, sir! Looks like we owe you $5 ---"
[opens giant crushing gripper hand]
"--- err --- $20 dollars!"
Umm... they would have started the project earlier, but they got tired of waiting for Duke Nukem Forever?
No? Damn...
What about:
Lots of people run multiple message systems. Setting up an extra account to bypass those petty limitations really isn't THAT hard. I know it would be nice if more people opted for an open standard like Jabber, but unless South Korea has some kind of weird nationwide ban on using anything besides MSN, I don't see what the big deal is.
My post was partly meant as a joke... I used to work at a theater, so I know they only make money at the concession stand.
The motion picture companies really are amazingly annoying. They spend massive amounts of money on making and marketing terrible movies, then make up for it by charging theaters out the wazoo to show them. The theaters have to jack up ticket and concession prices to make up for this so they can stay in business. If movie companies actually spent some time coming up with a decent film, it would probably cost less since they wouldn't have to rely on as many special effects and overpriced (but lousy) actors and directors.
There's always sneaking in. You get to see how the trilogy ends AND screw them out of some money. Also, hide some drinks and snacks in your pockets for maximum effect.
The interesting thing to me is that the code isn't that complicated. It is a pretty straightforward procedure. There is no mystery here. It isn't an innovative idea like some kind of new encryption algorithm. This is simply the way to do this memory manipulation related to mapping.
I have a hard time understanding how anyone could even lay claim to PATENTING this code. The only thing you could really do is change the variable names and add some more parentheses. Copyright law related to source code really needs to be examined so we can better deal with these circumstances.
What's the difference?
(only a joke!)
Specialized systems are almost always going to outperform generalized systems when you're dealing with similar levels of technology (for instance, specialized abacasuses vs. a generalized Cray T3E).
;))
The great thing about generalized systems is you can use them to explore new areas, then design a specialized system to take advantage of specific optimizations the generalized one can't support.
I'm glad for the report suggesting a "balanced approach". I can't imagine forsaking one type of system for the other, as each has its place. (Uhoh... generalized systems have a "place"? Does that mean they're specialized at being generalized? Oh, the irony!
True... they probably need a companion book on how to securely back up your fscking data. I realize the FSF isn't a giant data warehouse, but if you're going to act as an authoritative source, especially for executable software or source code, you had BETTER have an offsite (or, at the least off-network) backup and be able to effectively rollback in case of problems like this. ;)
Hell, we all needed it for MSBLAST. A lot of people (myself included) didn't take this worm very seriously until everything around started breaking. OLE drag-n-drop screwed up, RPC servers failing, svchost.exe crashing, javascript not functioning correctly... The only thing nastier is probably buried in the video archive on consumptionjunction.
Using SNORT, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and ACID
This somehow strikes me as a veiled reference to cocaine, peyote, qualuudes, phencyclidine, and LSD. No longer will pharmacologically-enhanced computing be restricted to the caffeine you get from a case of Jolt!