Probably because the magnets have to be placed inside the microwave, close to the tube....and one doesn't want the average consumer messing around in there...
...this is probably the first time I've thought to myself: why don't people just leave this alone? It's really a public safety issue, and there is no real reason anyone outside of police, fire, etc have to have this device.
What exactly does a CD made of corn smell like after 3 hours in my drive playing MP3s? Fried mush...? Microwave popcorn?
Maybe sticking a little butter in the floppy drive....
I had a discussion with a gentleman recently who also made the same comment as the submitter of this topic.
Even intelligent people seem to be under the somewhat misguided notion that if we have a computer with as many transistors (or registers, or nodes, etc etc) as neurons, we'll have the equivalent of a brain.
It's just not true. The connectivity and organization of the human brain are something we only barely understand. We try to understand, through anatomical studies, functional imaging, etc. but we are just barely scraping the surface.
Arguing that we'll have real AI once we have the equivalent raw computational units is even less realistic than saying that I'll be able to do my homework with computer hardware (and no software). In that case at least you have the computational units and organization and "simply" need to add the software and algorithms to make it work. With a brain, you don't have the organization or the software!
When I was a kid, I used to attend Michigan Atari Computer Enthusiast (MACE) meetings. These meetings were held in the early 80s in Southfield, Michigan -- and the organization was about 2000 strong! The meetings were huge, lots of great demos, a tape library, etc. Those were great times.
About four years ago I realized MACE still existed, and was having a meeting, again, in Southfield. I drove out to it -- figured somehow I should for old times sake. Boy, was it a sorry thing. About six people in a little room. These folks were using computers from 1984 for their everyday work. They seriously couldn't see why you would ever switch to another platform or OS. The discussion centered around "keeping relevant" in the modern computing environ with your Atari.
I remember leaving the meeting, very sad. Remember the machine for what it was, folks. It was a happy thing that did you well. Don't spoil it with some sort of anachronistic BS...
Any real image processing person can write a filter to take this stuff out of just about anything. If it doesn't substantially obscure the interesting parts of the frame (e.g. they put it on a single color surface) then you could use just about any stupid methododology to repair it. 2D median filter in that area, for example...
This method isn't viable because making it hard to remove also involves obscuring/significantly degrading what's going on in the picture. I don't see anyone doing this to any real extent - few would stand for it.
A much more interesting method is that being developed by a company called Cinea....
I like the idea of calling the association, but I am more enthusiastic about contacting the heads of the association at home, during dinner.
It would be a real shame if someone were to dig up those folks numbers....
While this sounds good, I have a very, very hard time believing any small company can do this.
It is a monumental task to track down and establish the proper chain of IP for these games, as the remnants of the companies themselves are unlikely to know who owns what. Certain properties are actively protected (Pac Man, Galaga) - but most others are not.
The ownership info of, say, Atari Baseball is likely buried in a very long, very boring set of legal documents that are not necessarily accessible to the public (or to any small wanna-ba company that wants to sell roms). If you asked the attorneys for Midway what the IP ownership is on Atari Baseball they would probably not know. It's too much history, and not important enough from a $$$ perspective to bother with.
There are a multitude of other things here that also say something is amiss. Nobody would go through the legal hassle and expense of setting up this outfit. Or rather, nobody on the IP owner end would bother with this at $2/romset. It's just not worth the effort to anyone serious.
Now, these guys may THINK that they have the right to do this - either they got a legal opinion that the stuff is undefended and therefore public domain anyway, or that the original programmers somehow can be contacted and have the authority to grant permission to distrbute....both may or may not be correct.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how long this lasts....I smell C&D order all over the place...
I was once an ISEF finalist/winner. "Second place" is a designation given to a substantial number of projects at the International fair. There are like 5-10 blue (first), 10-30 red (second), etc.
The biggest winners are in a seperate catagory -- things like the, "BLAH T. BLAH SCIENCE AWARD" that includes a trip to Japan, or a trip to see the Nobel ceremonies, etc etc.
Interestingly, building a project like this is really only a certain level of merit at a real science fair (like ISEF). I used to build devices like that -- and get awards like second place. The real thing the judges are looking for is scientific/research content. For instance, the kid may have built this and got it to work, but did he improve on the design? did he measure the efficiency of the system? did he use the device to study some effect X, Y, or Z? This may sound crazy, but at that level the high school students are expected to perform at the level of grad student researchers.
The winning doesn't really matter, though -- the kid got a postiive experience that will stay with him for the rest of his life...!
Anyone who takes an intermediate signal processing class learns about Princ. Component Analysis (PCA). Loosely, it attempts to represent a set of signals as weighted, linear combinations of sub-signals.....
The technique allows you to find the pieces of signal that are common to the overall set. In this case I'm sure they are lining up some radio feeds, performing PCA, doing a little trivial stuff to it, and synthesizing their own "music" based on some transformation of the PCA weights and computed vectors.
Not a big deal -- more like a one afternoon project for a grad student, or maybe a class project for a few undergrads...
Sorry, Mr Resistor, your posting illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of patents and how they work.
You are right that patent suits can be filed anytime, but you will LOSE if you have not actively and vigorously defended your IP prior to the suit. This is to say that you cannot ignore little company X infringement for 5 years, and then sue Microsoft for infringing. Microsoft just has to show that you knew there were others infringing, and you didn't do anything about it.
There are a lot of companies and individuals that come out of the woodwork a little too late -- coming out against a giant company....it fails.
It'd be much better if the students pursued smaller, more discrete projects that they could truly get involved with. It's sad that many engineering students end up doing things like PR, fundraisers, etc etc instead of engineering -- and trust me, that is what happens at places like UM.
They don't have to be ruined by paperwork 2 years into a bachelors degree. They'll have plenty of time in the real world to trade useful engineering skills for that...
The concept of audio "fingerprinting" is an interesting one, but likely outside of Fanning (and his local folks) experience or abilities.
Fingerprinting has to rely on one of two things. The first is the artificialities of files -- things like file length, name, checksums, etc etc. All of these are easily overcome, and likely not robust to differing compression/bit rates/etc. The second thing it could reply on is data content -- that is, things like how many beats per minute, the time/frequency pattern in segment(s) X, Y, etc etc. I'll call this analysis of content. Unfortunately, simple analysis of content and watermarking schemes are very easily detected and overcome (remember the Felten/audio protection challenge?). TRUE analysis of content (when certain instruments play, their timing, the singing, etc) is a very difficult signal processing problem that won't be overcome without serious mathematics. And as much as I like Fanning, I don't think he's got the juice for it.
Just my $0.02
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Probably because the magnets have to be placed inside the microwave, close to the tube....and one doesn't want the average consumer messing around in there...
Ransom Love? That sounds like some sort of soft-core star, or the title of an 80s movie that repeatedly shows on the TNT network...
As someone working in biometrics and algorithm development, I would personally like to BEG the press to stop with the awful articles.
Almost every article says the same thing, makes awful assumptions, comments on the privacy issue, and generally screws the pooch.
Misconceptions and overhype can kill technologies for years....
It's not amusing. It's just wrong.
From the wired article:
"After his presentation, a group of nerds followed him to the hotel's bar for drinks, hanging on his every word."
How dorky did these guys have to be to have a reporter for "Wired" catagorize them as nerds...damn....
What exactly does a CD made of corn smell like after 3 hours in my drive playing MP3s? Fried mush...? Microwave popcorn? Maybe sticking a little butter in the floppy drive....
I had a discussion with a gentleman recently who also made the same comment as the submitter of this topic. Even intelligent people seem to be under the somewhat misguided notion that if we have a computer with as many transistors (or registers, or nodes, etc etc) as neurons, we'll have the equivalent of a brain. It's just not true. The connectivity and organization of the human brain are something we only barely understand. We try to understand, through anatomical studies, functional imaging, etc. but we are just barely scraping the surface. Arguing that we'll have real AI once we have the equivalent raw computational units is even less realistic than saying that I'll be able to do my homework with computer hardware (and no software). In that case at least you have the computational units and organization and "simply" need to add the software and algorithms to make it work. With a brain, you don't have the organization or the software!
Actually, I think they might have been. Hard to tell. When you're 11 years old originally, then go back when you're late 20s... It was so, so sad.
When I was a kid, I used to attend Michigan Atari Computer Enthusiast (MACE) meetings. These meetings were held in the early 80s in Southfield, Michigan -- and the organization was about 2000 strong! The meetings were huge, lots of great demos, a tape library, etc. Those were great times.
About four years ago I realized MACE still existed, and was having a meeting, again, in Southfield. I drove out to it -- figured somehow I should for old times sake. Boy, was it a sorry thing. About six people in a little room. These folks were using computers from 1984 for their everyday work. They seriously couldn't see why you would ever switch to another platform or OS. The discussion centered around "keeping relevant" in the modern computing environ with your Atari.
I remember leaving the meeting, very sad. Remember the machine for what it was, folks. It was a happy thing that did you well. Don't spoil it with some sort of anachronistic BS...
for these Clone Wars cartoons to be cut up and overdubbed on "Adult Swim"....
Any real image processing person can write a filter to take this stuff out of just about anything. If it doesn't substantially obscure the interesting parts of the frame (e.g. they put it on a single color surface) then you could use just about any stupid methododology to repair it. 2D median filter in that area, for example... This method isn't viable because making it hard to remove also involves obscuring/significantly degrading what's going on in the picture. I don't see anyone doing this to any real extent - few would stand for it. A much more interesting method is that being developed by a company called Cinea....
I like the idea of calling the association, but I am more enthusiastic about contacting the heads of the association at home, during dinner. It would be a real shame if someone were to dig up those folks numbers....
While this sounds good, I have a very, very hard time believing any small company can do this. It is a monumental task to track down and establish the proper chain of IP for these games, as the remnants of the companies themselves are unlikely to know who owns what. Certain properties are actively protected (Pac Man, Galaga) - but most others are not. The ownership info of, say, Atari Baseball is likely buried in a very long, very boring set of legal documents that are not necessarily accessible to the public (or to any small wanna-ba company that wants to sell roms). If you asked the attorneys for Midway what the IP ownership is on Atari Baseball they would probably not know. It's too much history, and not important enough from a $$$ perspective to bother with. There are a multitude of other things here that also say something is amiss. Nobody would go through the legal hassle and expense of setting up this outfit. Or rather, nobody on the IP owner end would bother with this at $2/romset. It's just not worth the effort to anyone serious. Now, these guys may THINK that they have the right to do this - either they got a legal opinion that the stuff is undefended and therefore public domain anyway, or that the original programmers somehow can be contacted and have the authority to grant permission to distrbute....both may or may not be correct. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how long this lasts....I smell C&D order all over the place...
I was once an ISEF finalist/winner. "Second place" is a designation given to a substantial number of projects at the International fair. There are like 5-10 blue (first), 10-30 red (second), etc. The biggest winners are in a seperate catagory -- things like the, "BLAH T. BLAH SCIENCE AWARD" that includes a trip to Japan, or a trip to see the Nobel ceremonies, etc etc. Interestingly, building a project like this is really only a certain level of merit at a real science fair (like ISEF). I used to build devices like that -- and get awards like second place. The real thing the judges are looking for is scientific/research content. For instance, the kid may have built this and got it to work, but did he improve on the design? did he measure the efficiency of the system? did he use the device to study some effect X, Y, or Z? This may sound crazy, but at that level the high school students are expected to perform at the level of grad student researchers. The winning doesn't really matter, though -- the kid got a postiive experience that will stay with him for the rest of his life...!
Anyone who takes an intermediate signal processing class learns about Princ. Component Analysis (PCA). Loosely, it attempts to represent a set of signals as weighted, linear combinations of sub-signals..... The technique allows you to find the pieces of signal that are common to the overall set. In this case I'm sure they are lining up some radio feeds, performing PCA, doing a little trivial stuff to it, and synthesizing their own "music" based on some transformation of the PCA weights and computed vectors. Not a big deal -- more like a one afternoon project for a grad student, or maybe a class project for a few undergrads...
I was really excited seeing the Reloaded trailer. Too bad the movie, as a whole, sucked. One can only pray this will be better....
Sorry, Mr Resistor, your posting illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of patents and how they work.
You are right that patent suits can be filed anytime, but you will LOSE if you have not actively and vigorously defended your IP prior to the suit. This is to say that you cannot ignore little company X infringement for 5 years, and then sue Microsoft for infringing. Microsoft just has to show that you knew there were others infringing, and you didn't do anything about it.
There are a lot of companies and individuals that come out of the woodwork a little too late -- coming out against a giant company....it fails.
Sad but true. Look up the idea of "latches".....
It'd be much better if the students pursued smaller, more discrete projects that they could truly get involved with. It's sad that many engineering students end up doing things like PR, fundraisers, etc etc instead of engineering -- and trust me, that is what happens at places like UM. They don't have to be ruined by paperwork 2 years into a bachelors degree. They'll have plenty of time in the real world to trade useful engineering skills for that...
The concept of audio "fingerprinting" is an interesting one, but likely outside of Fanning (and his local folks) experience or abilities. Fingerprinting has to rely on one of two things. The first is the artificialities of files -- things like file length, name, checksums, etc etc. All of these are easily overcome, and likely not robust to differing compression/bit rates/etc. The second thing it could reply on is data content -- that is, things like how many beats per minute, the time/frequency pattern in segment(s) X, Y, etc etc. I'll call this analysis of content. Unfortunately, simple analysis of content and watermarking schemes are very easily detected and overcome (remember the Felten/audio protection challenge?). TRUE analysis of content (when certain instruments play, their timing, the singing, etc) is a very difficult signal processing problem that won't be overcome without serious mathematics. And as much as I like Fanning, I don't think he's got the juice for it. Just my $0.02