I get the idea that these camera networks really aren't about keeping an eye on the street, or recording evidence of a crime for later use, but developing the infrastructure so that the authorities could track a 'target' as they go throughout their day in the city. It would be like in those crime shows, where they see the target's car moving on a bird's-eye map of the city, they have a visual as it comes around each corner, etc.
At first, they would only track terrorists, then suspected terrorists, then drug dealers and pornographers ( the new terrorists ), and finally political dissidents.
At best, this is just a cash cow for the developer, who won't be able to come up with anything useful, and a total waste of taxpayer money.
At worst, this will be a kind of voodoo evidence, like a polygraph test, that can be used against anybody. And of course, like a polygraph test, the results of the 'suspicion machine' can only be interpreted by an expert. It will give a false 'aura of objectivity' to scapegoating and persecution.
Are we finally seeing the wheels coming off of this tired old monopoly? This sounds like the Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s, where nobody cared about the revolution anymore, nobody pitched their 'fair share' any longer, and the whole economy is collapsing.
MS seems to have been able to push crap out in the past. The only way they got away with it was monopoly position, user lock-in, favors of the press, and the ignorance of the general public about what computers were actually capable of, at the time when MS was releasing its features.
Seven years, how many thousands of programmers, evil genius and chair-throwing asshole at the top, and it's still not ready? Perhaps modern OS development is a task so complex that traditional human organizations -- the hierarchical corporation being the most powerful to date -- can no longer tackle it. Is open-source collaboration the next big thing in societal evolution?
I understand your technical points, but GPL'ed creative artworks work a bit differently than programs, in practical terms.
If I write a program and release it under the GPL, it's because I want a copy of modifications, and the ability to re-use and re-modify them. If a company uses my program, makes changes, and doesn't make the source available, I as a developer will ultimately have to sue them, when push comes to shove -- provided I ever figure out that they're using my program. But, they might just use it internally, and I would have no way of knowing they are breaking the agreement.
If I create, say, a comic called The Adventures of GNU and SuperTux, and release it under an open source license, Disney is free to make a movie of those characters. "GNU and SuperTux in Space", for example. I can then make a comic version of that movie, or even re-edit or 'mash-up' the film.
If Disney is going to violate my GPL contract, there's a good chance I'm going to know about it, because ultimately creative work made by corporations is for public consumption. I stand a greater chance of coming to learn of the work than I do of a GPL-violating program only used internally in a company. Sure, Disney might make a training film with my characters for internal use, but what do I care? Do I want to make the comic book version of that? No. Technically it's a violation, but as a practical matter, the creator of GPL art is not really concerned about internal-use-only art.
Furthermore, once I'm aware of the movie Disney made of my characters, the cat's out of the bag. It's not like where a company is using GPL'ed code internally -- the movie is released for public consumption. I stand a good chance of seeing the modifications, and then I can make my own.
And when Disney comes to sue me for the comic book version of 'their' movie, that is in fact the opposite case of the programmer suing the company violating the GPL. Now it will be up to Disney to say what they were doing with my characters in the first place, and the question of what an aggregate program is never really comes up.
Many Worlds "exist" (but are inaccessible to us) Another naive question: Inaccessible in physics usually means there is no transmission or communication between things. Not matter, energy, or information. So if there can't be any information exchange between parallel universes, how is it that we can become aware of their existence, through mathematics? Doesn't knowledge of multiverse in any universe require some information to leak between universes? In other words, if we have any knowledge of another universe, hasn't some information from that universe ( the basic fact of its existence ) had to have gotten to ours, therefore; they are not completely inaccessible?
Could you say then that perception of logic, mathematics, or law, is a perception of multiverse? ( I hesitate to say "the multiverse" because if multiverse is true, "one" or "many" don't really make sense. ) That somehow, our consciousness has transcended the normal perception of a single universe, through mathematics?
The absurd number of parallel universes that would have to be created is mind boggling, since, at the very least, an entire universe would have to be created every single time any atom decayed (one for the universe where that atom happened to decay at that instant, another for the case where that atom didn't happen to decay). What exactly is the absurdity scale you are using to measure the absurdity of this idea? Four parallel universes are okay, six are goofy, seven are silly, 10 are ridiculous, and 1000 or more are absurd?
Strange that none of the wackos who advocate this, and I use the term very loosely, "theory", bother to expain where all of the mass and energy is coming from for all of these extra universes. That's like asking where the mass and energy in our universe came from. It's the same answer in all parallel universes -- it was there all along. When they talk about a new universe branching, it's not a big bang event, where a new universe is born, it's an altered copy its twin, identical up until the point where the quantum decision was made. It has a completely identical history after a certain point and therefore, the same mass and energy. Parallel universes do not 'share' energy, nor information, nor anything else. They don't 'seed' or 'give birth to' each other. They are totally out of contact with each other. We wouldn't even know about other ones, if not for the math.
Note that we are talking about far more universes than atoms in our own universe. Absolute hogwash. I can't see why anyone modded you insightful here. You seem to be arguing from personal incredulity. Not that I'm claiming that these guys are right or their theory is true, but your skepticism seems more emotional than rational to me.
I have another question, which might sound kind of naive. If we can accept that there are many universes, with new ones sprouting all the time, is there some constraint on how those universes are? That there might be an infinite set within a certain limit? Otherwise, if, in one of these other universes, the laws of physics are different, then those inhabitants or observers might be able to travel between universes -- just like in another universe where the speed of light follows different laws, they might be able to observe the whole universe.
Another poster asked "Why am I experiencing this universe?" To which a poster replied, "Because you are in this one. If you were in a different one you would wonder the same thing. That's the anthropic principle."
So then, if the anthropic principle holds multi-versally, then each observer is trapped in a universe of singular experience. But logically, if anything can change in a forked universe, including the laws of physics, we might imagine a universe where the inhabitants could traverse one or more universes. They might ask, "Why do I experience these universes?" Furthermore, there might be a universe where the laws of physics are such that inhabitants can traverse *any* universe -- a universal universe, so to speak. They wouldn't wonder why they were having a singular experience -- their universe would contain *all* universes. They would be experiencing everything! "Why do I experience everything?"
So what really is different between all the forking universes? They must have some commonality, at least in the laws of physics. If not, then there is the possibility of a universe where you can traverse universes. Am I off base here? Can the laws of physics be different in another universe, even if it is descendant of a universe with laws like ours?
That's true, but once they're created, digital works have a way of being re-useable. Not for 95 years, per current U.S. law, or 120 years, per current European or Australian law and current life expectancies. Technically, they are much easier to re-use than analog media, regardless of the legal aspects of doing so. If the US Congress were to do away with copyright tomorrow, you would have a much easier time working with digital work over analog media. And there are plenty of mash-ups being done ( the most basic re-use of end-consumer digital media ) on youtube; copyright isn't really stopping them.
Once somebody creates a model, then anyone who has access to the model and the proper software can animate it. Then, you need a good lawyer before you can distribute any works based around it. Enter the GPL and other open-source licenses.
Judging by history, how does a couple thousand sound? Sounds reasonable;)
But, they were pumping oil out of Iraq until a few years ago. You don't need to have a violence-free paradise to pump oil, you just need a level of stability.
No matter how long people are killing each other and blowing things up on the surface, the oil will still be there underground, sloshing around, waiting. It might take 10 years, 20 years, fifty, or whatever. It doesn't matter; the oil isn't going anywhere. The oil companies are in this for the long haul.
Well, from Bush/Cheney's perspective, it's a giant payoff to their buddies Halliburton, KBR, and Blackwater, along with other military contractors. The international oil companies are going to get their share of Iraqi oil once the region stabilizes. Bush/Cheney are getting their permanent bases built in Iraq, along with the world's largest embassy, larger than the Vatican City.
OK, the US Congress can protect him from American prosecution for war crimes, but would they alone be able to protect him from international war crimes, say, at the Hague? Now I know the US isn't part of the international criminal court or whatever it's called, but I don't recall Nazi Germany agreeing to any war crimes convention.
Excuse me, but aren't ex post facto laws specifically forbidden by the constitution?
Article 1, Section 9:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. My understanding is that an ex post facto law works both ways: You can't make illegal activities that were legal in the past; nor can you make legal activities that were illegal in the past. In other words, you can't change the legal status of actions in the past.
Three things:
1. That is attributed to Fidell 1975... "In one study, first done in 1968 and then replicated in 1983..." The 1975 article related to CVs. The 1983 study relates to papers, which is the discussion at hand.
That's quite an old study considering that women's rights have been in a state of advancement since the 60s. So you counter a study with... no evidence? Not even an anecdote? Some even say that women's rights have been going *backwards* since the 70s. Why should I believe them over you, especially when they have studies to back them up. If you could come up with, say, evidence, to support your case, that would lead me to lend you some credence.
2. I hate to say it, but in my anecdotal experience, single-sex women's schools have really bad math and science programs. So what? Most women who are college educated have gone to public, co-ed schools.
Re:Really not that bad
on
Lair Review
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Oh, and to the reviewer - the main character is "Rohn", not "Roan." Behold! The Riders of Ron!
Yes, 40% of males who ever lived died without producing an offspring. A small off-topic nit-pick: It's probably not true that 40% of males never produced an offspring; rather, some portions of 40% of men didn't have offspring who are represented in the population today.
So, take a trip into this though experiment -- it's 12,000 years ago. Humanity lives in tribes. Yes, bigmen ( and that is a technical term in anthropology ) can afford 2 or 3 wives, but they have trouble taking care of them and all of their offspring, and also making sure that their 15-year-old brides aren't sleeping with other 15-year-old lovers when they're in their eighties. Let's say that 10%-20% of men never produced a child. Then, cities and civilization spring up. God-Kings have harems of thousands of women, guarded by eunuchs. Terrible despots like Genghis Khan sweep over whole continents, killing male children and raping thousands of women. Tyrant Kings like Herod order the death of all male infants. Whole societies go to war against their enemies, and kill every man, woman, and child. Suddenly, in a few thousand years, the representation of male ancestors in the population goes from 80% to 60%, on account of a few dozen tyrants.
So yes, currently, only 60% of male ancestors are represented in the current population. But that doesn't mean that 40% of men never had an offspring.
Alright, I found it. There's has been several studies that suggest that research papers and CVs are ranked lower when they are attached to a woman's name than to a man's:
Not surprisingly, girls at single-sex schools study physical
science and math more than in comparable coed schools, "even
though girls' schools frequently have less adequate laboratory
provision than mixed schools" [Kelly 1982, page 497]
Even more ominously, [Sandler 1986, page 6] reports:
In one study, first done in 1968 and then replicated in 1983, college students were asked to rate identical articles according to specific criteria. The authors' names attached to the articles were clearly male or female, but were reversed for each group of raters: what one group thought had been written by a male, the second group thought had been written by a female, and vice versa. Articles supposedly written by women were consistently ranked lower than when the very same articles were thought to have been written by a male [Goldberg 1968, Paludi et al 1985, Paludi et al 1983]. In a similar study, department chairs were asked to make hypothetical hiring decisions and to assign faculty rank on the basis of vita. For vitae with male names, chairs recommended the rank of associate professor; however, the identical vita with a female name merited only the rank of assistant professor [Fidell 1975]. Anti-female bias is strongest in traditionally male fields [Top 1991,
pages 96-97]. Link.
So if you are submitting a paper for publication to a journal, your peers are likely to think less highly of it if the name on it is female rather than male. That's the bias against women in scientific papers, provided that the department chairs and college students in the study act like peer-reviewers for scientific journals.
I don't get it. is the task of writing papers inherently biased against women? I think the bias he's referring to is that papers with women's names for the lead author are less likely to be published than papers with men's names as the lead author.
I read an article a few years back, I think it was in a popular science rag, that there was a study that showed that there was a bias towards men's names in the acceptance of papers for publication. They had some quotes from a female biologist who said that her number of publications rose when she started using her initials instead of her first name, which was female-sounding.
I'm looking for links or references, but haven't found it yet. I will post if/when I do.
Or perhaps you mean "Finding Nemo"... Thanks for the correction;)
Actually, i was thinking more like this:Rocketmen vs. Robots, parts I-IV, were animated entirely by David T. Krupicz, using Maya or Lightwave, can't remember which.
Now imagine if animators all over the world could collaborate on an open-source move, from treatment and screenplay to mash-ups and remixes. Media singularity, anyone?
Either way, the current problem with creating CGI films isn't the technology. It's the fact that animation is (and always has been) labor intensive. CGI is even more so in the sense that you have to create all the assets from scratch. That's true, but once they're created, digital works have a way of being re-useable. Once somebody creates a model, then anyone who has access to the model and the proper software can animate it. Then, you don't need to be a good modeller to create quality stuff; you only need be a good animator ( though there is some overlap in those particular talents ).
Beyond that, there's the issue of actually being able to tell a good story. For that, technology isn't going to help you. That's true, and that's always been the case with art. A good storyteller can take you to other worlds, when the both of you are sitting in front of the campfire. But all the technology in the world can't make a lousy story interesting ( Star Wars Episode I *ahem*) . Being involved in the local indie filmmaking scene here in my city, I can tell you that there are plenty of good, and even great stories, that will never reach their potential because of bad weather, wrong locations, flaky actors, impossibly expensive effects. Of course, a good cinemist can make a decent movie with the lousiest of equipment, the most paltry locations, and decent actors, and a genius can make a masterpiece. But better technologies simply means that more decent filmmakers will make good movies. Better, cheaper technology means more art, both good and bad.
I see what you're saying now -- technology ( in this case, neither rendering nor ray-tracing ) does not give us "art for free" -- you still need animators, voice actors, lighting, set-makers, etc. etc. It just gives us another venue to perform art, which still takes the same amount of time.
Slashdot Mirror
I get the idea that these camera networks really aren't about keeping an eye on the street, or recording evidence of a crime for later use, but developing the infrastructure so that the authorities could track a 'target' as they go throughout their day in the city. It would be like in those crime shows, where they see the target's car moving on a bird's-eye map of the city, they have a visual as it comes around each corner, etc.
At first, they would only track terrorists, then suspected terrorists, then drug dealers and pornographers ( the new terrorists ), and finally political dissidents.
At best, this is just a cash cow for the developer, who won't be able to come up with anything useful, and a total waste of taxpayer money.
At worst, this will be a kind of voodoo evidence, like a polygraph test, that can be used against anybody. And of course, like a polygraph test, the results of the 'suspicion machine' can only be interpreted by an expert. It will give a false 'aura of objectivity' to scapegoating and persecution.
It could even be happening right now...
Hey, how about replacing the code with code that poisons the database with bogus data?
Are we finally seeing the wheels coming off of this tired old monopoly? This sounds like the Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s, where nobody cared about the revolution anymore, nobody pitched their 'fair share' any longer, and the whole economy is collapsing.
MS seems to have been able to push crap out in the past. The only way they got away with it was monopoly position, user lock-in, favors of the press, and the ignorance of the general public about what computers were actually capable of, at the time when MS was releasing its features.
Seven years, how many thousands of programmers, evil genius and chair-throwing asshole at the top, and it's still not ready? Perhaps modern OS development is a task so complex that traditional human organizations -- the hierarchical corporation being the most powerful to date -- can no longer tackle it. Is open-source collaboration the next big thing in societal evolution?
I understand your technical points, but GPL'ed creative artworks work a bit differently than programs, in practical terms.
If I write a program and release it under the GPL, it's because I want a copy of modifications, and the ability to re-use and re-modify them. If a company uses my program, makes changes, and doesn't make the source available, I as a developer will ultimately have to sue them, when push comes to shove -- provided I ever figure out that they're using my program. But, they might just use it internally, and I would have no way of knowing they are breaking the agreement.
If I create, say, a comic called The Adventures of GNU and SuperTux, and release it under an open source license, Disney is free to make a movie of those characters. "GNU and SuperTux in Space", for example. I can then make a comic version of that movie, or even re-edit or 'mash-up' the film. If Disney is going to violate my GPL contract, there's a good chance I'm going to know about it, because ultimately creative work made by corporations is for public consumption. I stand a greater chance of coming to learn of the work than I do of a GPL-violating program only used internally in a company. Sure, Disney might make a training film with my characters for internal use, but what do I care? Do I want to make the comic book version of that? No. Technically it's a violation, but as a practical matter, the creator of GPL art is not really concerned about internal-use-only art.
Furthermore, once I'm aware of the movie Disney made of my characters, the cat's out of the bag. It's not like where a company is using GPL'ed code internally -- the movie is released for public consumption. I stand a good chance of seeing the modifications, and then I can make my own.
And when Disney comes to sue me for the comic book version of 'their' movie, that is in fact the opposite case of the programmer suing the company violating the GPL. Now it will be up to Disney to say what they were doing with my characters in the first place, and the question of what an aggregate program is never really comes up.
Can you clarify what exactly laws A and B are?
Could you say then that perception of logic, mathematics, or law, is a perception of multiverse? ( I hesitate to say "the multiverse" because if multiverse is true, "one" or "many" don't really make sense. ) That somehow, our consciousness has transcended the normal perception of a single universe, through mathematics?
I have another question, which might sound kind of naive. If we can accept that there are many universes, with new ones sprouting all the time, is there some constraint on how those universes are? That there might be an infinite set within a certain limit? Otherwise, if, in one of these other universes, the laws of physics are different, then those inhabitants or observers might be able to travel between universes -- just like in another universe where the speed of light follows different laws, they might be able to observe the whole universe.
Another poster asked "Why am I experiencing this universe?" To which a poster replied, "Because you are in this one. If you were in a different one you would wonder the same thing. That's the anthropic principle."
So then, if the anthropic principle holds multi-versally, then each observer is trapped in a universe of singular experience. But logically, if anything can change in a forked universe, including the laws of physics, we might imagine a universe where the inhabitants could traverse one or more universes. They might ask, "Why do I experience these universes?" Furthermore, there might be a universe where the laws of physics are such that inhabitants can traverse *any* universe -- a universal universe, so to speak. They wouldn't wonder why they were having a singular experience -- their universe would contain *all* universes. They would be experiencing everything! "Why do I experience everything?"
So what really is different between all the forking universes? They must have some commonality, at least in the laws of physics. If not, then there is the possibility of a universe where you can traverse universes. Am I off base here? Can the laws of physics be different in another universe, even if it is descendant of a universe with laws like ours?
But, they were pumping oil out of Iraq until a few years ago. You don't need to have a violence-free paradise to pump oil, you just need a level of stability.
No matter how long people are killing each other and blowing things up on the surface, the oil will still be there underground, sloshing around, waiting. It might take 10 years, 20 years, fifty, or whatever. It doesn't matter; the oil isn't going anywhere. The oil companies are in this for the long haul.
Well, from Bush/Cheney's perspective, it's a giant payoff to their buddies Halliburton, KBR, and Blackwater, along with other military contractors. The international oil companies are going to get their share of Iraqi oil once the region stabilizes. Bush/Cheney are getting their permanent bases built in Iraq, along with the world's largest embassy, larger than the Vatican City.
So, yeah, going according to plan.
Good point. This war in Iran had better go according to plan, for Bushes' sake :(
OK, the US Congress can protect him from American prosecution for war crimes, but would they alone be able to protect him from international war crimes, say, at the Hague? Now I know the US isn't part of the international criminal court or whatever it's called, but I don't recall Nazi Germany agreeing to any war crimes convention.
Article 1, Section 9: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. My understanding is that an ex post facto law works both ways: You can't make illegal activities that were legal in the past; nor can you make legal activities that were illegal in the past. In other words, you can't change the legal status of actions in the past.
So, take a trip into this though experiment -- it's 12,000 years ago. Humanity lives in tribes. Yes, bigmen ( and that is a technical term in anthropology ) can afford 2 or 3 wives, but they have trouble taking care of them and all of their offspring, and also making sure that their 15-year-old brides aren't sleeping with other 15-year-old lovers when they're in their eighties. Let's say that 10%-20% of men never produced a child. Then, cities and civilization spring up. God-Kings have harems of thousands of women, guarded by eunuchs. Terrible despots like Genghis Khan sweep over whole continents, killing male children and raping thousands of women. Tyrant Kings like Herod order the death of all male infants. Whole societies go to war against their enemies, and kill every man, woman, and child. Suddenly, in a few thousand years, the representation of male ancestors in the population goes from 80% to 60%, on account of a few dozen tyrants.
So yes, currently, only 60% of male ancestors are represented in the current population. But that doesn't mean that 40% of men never had an offspring.
In their appearance, or their work quality? ;)
Even more ominously, [Sandler 1986, page 6] reports: In one study, first done in 1968 and then replicated in 1983, college students were asked to rate identical articles according to specific criteria. The authors' names attached to the articles were clearly male or female, but were reversed for each group of raters: what one group thought had been written by a male, the second group thought had been written by a female, and vice versa. Articles supposedly written by women were consistently ranked lower than when the very same articles were thought to have been written by a male [Goldberg 1968, Paludi et al 1985, Paludi et al 1983]. In a similar study, department chairs were asked to make hypothetical hiring decisions and to assign faculty rank on the basis of vita. For vitae with male names, chairs recommended the rank of associate professor; however, the identical vita with a female name merited only the rank of assistant professor [Fidell 1975]. Anti-female bias is strongest in traditionally male fields [Top 1991, pages 96-97]. Link.
So if you are submitting a paper for publication to a journal, your peers are likely to think less highly of it if the name on it is female rather than male. That's the bias against women in scientific papers, provided that the department chairs and college students in the study act like peer-reviewers for scientific journals.
I read an article a few years back, I think it was in a popular science rag, that there was a study that showed that there was a bias towards men's names in the acceptance of papers for publication. They had some quotes from a female biologist who said that her number of publications rose when she started using her initials instead of her first name, which was female-sounding.
I'm looking for links or references, but haven't found it yet. I will post if/when I do.
Actually, i was thinking more like this:Rocketmen vs. Robots, parts I-IV, were animated entirely by David T. Krupicz, using Maya or Lightwave, can't remember which.
Now imagine if animators all over the world could collaborate on an open-source move, from treatment and screenplay to mash-ups and remixes. Media singularity, anyone? Either way, the current problem with creating CGI films isn't the technology. It's the fact that animation is (and always has been) labor intensive. CGI is even more so in the sense that you have to create all the assets from scratch. That's true, but once they're created, digital works have a way of being re-useable. Once somebody creates a model, then anyone who has access to the model and the proper software can animate it. Then, you don't need to be a good modeller to create quality stuff; you only need be a good animator ( though there is some overlap in those particular talents )
I see what you're saying now -- technology ( in this case, neither rendering nor ray-tracing ) does not give us "art for free" -- you still need animators, voice actors, lighting, set-makers, etc. etc. It just gives us another venue to perform art, which still takes the same amount of time.