That's absolutely correct. It's not thermal. If you look at the article or go to the source images on Neptec's site (and caption info), you'll notice it says it's a false-color depth image, meaning the color indicates it's depth below the surface according to the scale on the side. The damage is about 1.2 inches deep and a little bigger than your thumb in diameter.
This isn't really an issue of insulation. It's the disturbance of laminar flow. The laminar boundary layer is actually quite a good insulator itself, especially at Mach 20. The main issue is how much the hole disturbs the boundary layer and what localized heating might result. This small of a hole in diameter, even though it's mostly through the tile, should be mostly negligible. But NASA is treating it VERY seriously and is doing simulations as well as has an arc-jet facility to test on an exact duplicate of the damage. (It's a 3D model of the hole, if you check the video, and is easily reproduced on the ground. It has even been printed out with a 3D printer.)
Remember that Columbia damage was on the Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) panels on the leading edge of the wing, not the tiles on the belly. The leading edge is one of the hottest and most critical points where that damage occurred. This damage is generally low risk, and EVA is always risky to some degree, but this might be a great opportunity to test repair procedures. When people talk about whether NASA is making decisions based on schedule for this damage, it's not about ignoring risks for the sake of schedule. Risk wins, easily. The schedule issue is that if the damage is not a risk at all, is it prudent to fix it anyway to test procedures and have an actual flow repair to analyze upon return. Remember, EVA and extending flights adds risk to the crew too, but can be beneficial and reduce risk both for this flight and future flights.
This sort of thinking reminds me of Carl Sagan's lesson of the Marsh of Camerina in Pale Blue Dot. For those who haven't read this brilliant book, it's a metaphor (technically, and analogy I suppose) for creating worse problems in your attempt to solve a problem. In this case, the inhabitants of Camerina drained a nearby marsh to halt the spread of disease that was killing many of them. And it worked. Except that the marsh was also an effective barrier to keep out their enemies, who subsequently attached through the now empty marsh and slaughtered them all.
Personally, I'd change the wording to "This is exactly how patents are used today." Patents, including those on algorithms (software is not patentable, despite what many people believe) have a very useful and noble purpose: to encourage people to publish their clever ideas and inventions so that others can learn from them, improve upon them, inspire new ideas, and encourage progress. A world without patents at all is a world of secrets where much effort (and expense) goes into keeping the inner workings secret. Otherwise, what's to keep people from creating and selling exact copies of your work without having to put in the investment of time and money into developing the invention like you did?
The limited protection that patents offer is a necessary evil meant only as the incentive for publishing the details of the invention, and should be limited to only as much protection is necessary for that purpose. The protection is NOT the intent of patents, nor is it an inherent right of inventors.
Unfortunately, that noble intention has been distorted and corrupted in a manner exactly as you describe. Now, instead of inventors we have huge multi-national corporations who patent everything including prior art and the obvious and use patent lawyers who are skilled at writing patents that are impossible to understand, such that nobody actually learns how it works AND with the added bonus that anybody who does something similar doesn't realize they've technically violated the patent even if they read it and didn't think it was similar.
Patents are good. This system is bad. Very bad. Bring on the reforms.
"It's not a question of trust, but rather of ownership."
This is the key point of contention, but you miss the point of the other side. I tend to side with you on this, but there is some validity (within limits) to the other side.
All the examples of ownership that people give out, including yours, are tangible property. Very few people would disagree with the assertion you can do what you want with it. (There are circumstances where you can't legally do certain things, but those aren't the point here.)
This issue is about intellectual property. You actually can't do anything you want with the content of most creative works. If you buy a book, you aren't allowed to copy the whole thing and give it or sell it to someone. Same thing with a CD. (There are exceptions of course, such as in Canada where there's a levy on recordable media that compensates for "personal copying".)
The saving grace for the content providers has always been that content has been tied to a tangible medium (books, CDs, records, tapes, DVD, film, etc.). In that case, the violation of copyright is naturally limited by the practicality of copying and distributing the associated tangible media. In order for it to be widespread, one needs to invest money and time in the operation and hence require payment at the other end. These copy-for-profit operations always have been (and should be) hunted and prosecuted.
The issue at hand here is that, when you now buy a song digitally, there is no tangible medium required. There is no cost on copying. There is no cost on distribution thanks to the internet. So there are no limitations of practicality anymore. This isn't (primarily) and issue of losing rights that we used to have. It's an issue of putting back a safety net that used to be there, and aren't anymore. I hate to say it, but it's the content providers that are losing a lot more in terms of effective rights in this. With tangible media gone, the inherent protections of practicality that came with them are gone. They've lost that. The safety net is gone. If we continue to ignore that then we will lose the argument.
In order to for us to make convincing arguments, we need to demonstrate that they are safe even without the safety net. If we can't then perhaps a replacement safety net, such as some form or DRM, is necessary, and justifiably so.
This needs to be an issue about what copyright is about, why it exists, what limited rights the content creators should have, what rights the users should have, and how to protect the balance. We want to keep the rights we always had, but so do they. If we keep making this an issue about "it's mine, I paid for it and I'm going to do what I want with it", we'll lose and we should. Copyright is useful when done properly, but is misunderstood and misused on both sides. You can't ensure a balance by only focusing on one side which both sides are guilty of. (I used "we" and "they", but a lot of us are both creators and users.)
Easy answer. The ones who say it incorrectly are the incompetent ones. The fact that 99% of the people are sloppy doesn't change the fact they are sloppy. That's just rationalizing. Language isn't a free-for-all. It does need structure and meaning, especially in these days of globalization where translation is needed more often.
"In my experience there is rarely such a thing as an artist that can produce one song worth having but not many."
Likewise in my experience there is rarely such a thing as an artist that can produce an alburm with all songs worth having and not just some. Nobody said anything about just one song. But I have many CDs with only 2 or 3 "good" songs out of 12 or 15.
I would tend to agree somewhat. However there is one huge hole in the complaints and arguments. NASA has a lot less control over its priorities that most people think. It gets its priorities largely from Congress. And despite the implications of the article, it is not driven largely by Congress members with shuttle contractors in their districts. Yes, the shuttles are old technology and the ISS has little resemblance to its original intention. But there are international agreements here and huge cancellation fees in many cases. For financial and political purposes, there's very little choice here but to finish the ISS, and this relies heavily on the shuttles. To top it off, they are bound to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board recommendations for shuttle flight safety, hence the large costs in getting the shuttles and flights to meet these standards and extension of schedules to meet ISS commitments.
There is a plan to retire the shuttles and still support ISS, but it's not like they can do that tomorrow. It takes years of development which IS going on right now.
As far as the Moon and Mars, manned missions versus probes and robotics, science, and deflecting asteroids and comets, there are quite polar opposite opinions out there. The article argues one case, but the author doesn't indicate why the priorities he suggests are more important than other priorities. When he "boils down" the net worth of NASA Life Science research to "billions of dollars spent for astronauts to take each other's blood pressure", it's clear this guy is not the least bit objective or knowledgeable about what NASA actually does. This is the opinion of a "couch" space expert, which is about what his interest in manned exploration amounts to -- sitting on the couch. NASA was created essentially for manned space flight. Some people are content to stay here and let robots do all the space work. Would North American society exist today if that was the extend of the exploration will in Europe 500 years ago? (Exploration which was, by the way, largely driven with interests in financial spin-offs.)
Does NASA, or Congress, have its priorities straight? Perhaps, perhaps not. Much of it is a matter of opinion. Much of it is a matter of existing commitments. Much of it is drvien by economic considerations. But in any case, this article is one of the worst analyses of the subject I've seen.
"existing facial rec systems have been known to fail..."
2D versus 3D, my friend. 2D cameras measure reflected intensities from a given perspective, and therefore are prone to problems with (a) reflectivity/lighting, (b) the viewing perspective, and (c) other things in the image (occlusions, clutter). 3D directly measures the shape of the face, which is harder to change than you think. (Really, it's the shape of the skull that primarily dictates the shape. Only certain areas of the face can change much and don't largely affect the verification.)
However, this too isn't all that "revolutionary" as the article suggests. Real-time 3D range images have been around for 5-10 years, especially using structured light (some even faster than 40 ms), and robust 3D face recognition algos have been around for almost as long. There just haven't been any/many commercial products yet, and this example is also in the lab, so it's more or less at the same implementation level as 3-5 years ago with similar systems.
"As someone who works on validation of computer target recognition, I recommend being very skeptical."
As someone who has written, studied, tested, validated, and worked with 3D target recognition and facial recognition algorithms, I agree to a point. I only agree because it's always good to be skeptical of these things until the (unbiased) evidence has been presented.
That being said, the jump from 2D to 3D recognition is nothing but revolutionary in terms of recognition and verification accuracy. Beards, cosmetic surgery, and even swelling are not major impediments. They do reduce the match, but less than you'd think. There are areas of the face that don't change much even in such cases. 3D face recognition is more about measuring the shape of the skull. The skin generally follows the shape of the skull except where there are heavy fat deposits, or of course if you grow a beard. Unless you're changes were to the extent of a normal face to something like the Elephant Man or Eric Stoltz in "Mask" (no, not the Jim Carry movie), it's still going to do quite well.
And even then, the application here is verification. If the changes were enough to make it fail, that would just mean you'd have to go through either a secondary manual security check and/or update the biometrics. It's not like you could, say, pretend to be Tom Cruise and say your face changed. If you don't look like Tom Cruise with a beard or fatter face, and have the same shaped skull, and have the other security info to back you up, you're going to get your biometrics updated.
As a general comment (not specific to the parent post), I know/. likes to pick apart these things, but/. readers are not of so superior intelligence that they can come up with flaws in 2 minutes that experts in the area of research have not addressed, studied, or solved in years of research.
"Uh, yeah, because facial recognition software is so accurate."
Actually, I've worked on 3D facial recognition algorithms and they can be incredibly accurate. You are correct that 2D facial recognition algos have limited accuracy, but that's largely because 2D cameras merely measure the amount of light reflected into each pixel, so any real-world dimensional measurement is an interpretation of feature locations and extrapolated into 3D. Perspective views is big problem as are lighting conditions, clutter, and disguises.
A 3D sensor directly measures the 3D shape and can fit it quite easily to the reference model. We've done 3D face matches with wigs, glasses, and beards at the same time and still correctly identified the person. You really have to cover up a significant amount of the shape of the face to fool it.
And even then, that was for identification. This application is verification, so a disguise would be counterproductive. You'd have to take someone with a similar face shape and use professional face-shaping make-up (like for movies) to make an identically-shaped face to fool it into believing you were someone you were not. Not just one that looks the same, but is actually the same size and shape. Hard to do, especially without someone clearly seeing you are wearing the fake features, despite what Mission Impossible or other movies make us believe.
That being said, I don't know the statistics on similarities of faces. I would certainly bet identical twins could fool it, though I'm not sure how identical their face shapes are statistically.
"What is just about taking the results of someone's hard labor and giving them nothing in return for it?"
Actually, I'd be more interested in your understanding of the history of copyright, why it exists, why it's important to have a balance between creator's rights and users rights, and your thoughts on how the current laws (such as this one) fit into that balance.
There's a big difference between someone getting nothing in return and perpetual ownership and rights over anything that can be done with that work, and harsh over-the-top punishments for copyright violations. That's the battle going on these days. I don't think anyone's claiming that it should just always be legal to download without any compensation to the creator in any form. It's the "digging their heals in" to criminalize their customers with far excessive punishments that's the problem here, instead of taking a reasoned approach to updating business models to meet the reality of technology today, like has happened in the past from printing press, audio recording, radio, photocopying, cable TV, VCR, etc., etc.
"Yes a laptop makes you more efficient at entering and storing vast amounts of information."
Yes, it makes a very stupid method more efficient. It'd be even more efficient to either send out copies of the notes beforehand, or even -- god forbid -- use a book which is chock full of pre-written notes. What could be more efficient for note taking?
Class time is for learning, not note-taking. Sometimes you get lazy profs who write down the same notes over and over without handing them out or having a book. But it seems more to be students who just want to take notes and learn on their own later. I don't blame this prof at all and I'd do the same thing. But then I'd also organize the classes to facilitate review of pre-written notes or books.
"I pay for University and I'll be damned if a Professor will tell me how I'm going to learn and if I can/can't take my laptop to the class I am paying for."
That's exactly what I've been arguing all along, and yet they still won't let me talk loudly on my cell phone in the middle of the movie. Who do these people think they are telling me what to do? I paid so I should call the shots. Why can't these people understand the simple logic that you and I share on this issue.
"That shotgun I said I'd never live in the same house as....just don't let me see it."
I nearly spit my drink out my nose when I read that. I'm very far from left-wing, but even I realize the most useless piece of equipment in New Orleans would have been a gun. Thanks for the laugh.
What the article didn't state makes it even more emphatic. In Canada it is legal to download music via P2P. So all the stuff about P2P in this study refers to legal downloading, and still it isn't harming the recording industry like they say and still people buy music with a legally free alternative. (I say "free", but really we pay a levy on recordable media to compensate, so it's really a legally "already paid for" alternative.) I think that says even more.
"and no, very few bands make money off of touring and merchandising...very, very few"
In an absolute sense that might be true in that very few bands make a living in general from music. However, relative to sales of recorded music, bands make most of their money from touring and merchandising. Basically, the artist "cut" of the CD sales goes towards paying back the "loan" for the recording work (including salaries, catering, etc., etc., over which the artist has little or no input). Most of what they make on tour is theirs to keep, minus the direct costs of the support staff. Yes, this can be substantial on big tours, but they also make bigger money. The point is that you can take the revenue and subtract the costs directly and see how much per show you are making so you know when you are losing money. CD sales are a cross-your-fingers-and-hope that you make back enough to cover the "loan" you contracted for.
Only the biggest artists make much income from commercial music sales (not home-recorded CDs), and that's because they're big enough to dictate better contract terms and make back the recording costs quicker and easier.
In the end, for the average band CD sales are just useful for promotional purposes to get people to their shows to actually make their money.
"You must judge the accuracy of the statements based on their accuracy alone."
Am I the only one who sees that this whole string of arguments is about 2 different things? Well, it looks like a few people have tried to point it out.
It is absolutely 100% correct that the accuracy of a statement has nothing to do with whether someone was paid to say it or not. Attacking the messenger or their intentions is indeed ad hominem. But that's not what the other side of the argument is here.
If you only have the statement, you don't know it's accuracy. You have absolutely nothing to judge it on with respect to "truth data". The issue here isn't the accuracy of the statement because you can't check it. The issue here is the confidence in the accuracy of the statement with no available "truth data". If it is someone with a background in presenting objective information, there is more confidence that their statements are accurate than someone who clearly has a self-interest in being subjective.
Confidence and likelihood are statistical tools and are useful for a best guess. There is no such thing as an ad hominen attack on confidence. Likelihood and confidence a part of reasoning, but it is not closed form like pure deductive reasoning.
"Which death did you choose; the quick or the slow?"
This one is so easy. Would you rather (a) risk the chance of being struck by lighting, or (b) carry around a 100 lb faraday cage all day, every day for the rest of your life? Funny that the American government is able to sell the faraday cage as the right choice, especially with side benefit that they sell faraday cages. And so many people are just lining up to get one. It doesn't even matter to some if the occasional one is plastic. Why bother checking? As long as people feel safe because the government told them they did the right thing. Good for them.
"... if you have publically denied them of revenue"
While I agree if he's interested in a job he should be careful that they don't mind what he's doing, I don't see where this would deny them revenue. They sell a piece of hardware (HD24), and an extension piece of software on Windows that works through firewire. (It's not clear if they charge extra for the Windows software.) They were very clear they're not building drivers for Linux presumably because the cost to develop, maintain, and support Linux wouldn't cover the small market gains. This guy figured out how to make it work in Linux. He basically just opened up a market for them by effectively developing a Linux driver for free, with no required commitment from them for support or maintenance. Now they can potentially sell more hardware at no extra cost.
"...without a clean room reverse engineering, its blatently illegal"
Could you provide a reference to the particular law and section? It is my understanding that reverse engineering is not only legal in most cases, it is even protected. It's only a few rare exceptions that are illegal such as (potentially) EULA restrictions and creating software that bypasses copyrightprotections, thanks to the DMCA.
Unless this guys is violating his EULA, I'm not sure where the violation is. Still, it is good to check with a lawyer.
"The point is that the burden of proof is to prove that he did."
That's correct. Though keep in mind that the burdon of proof in civil matters is a lot easier than in criminal. In civil matters it is only necessary to prove it is likely he had inside info ("balance of probabilities"), not "beyond a reasonable doubt". So, although he wouldn't have to prove his innocence, it might be necessary to at least demonstrate he has the capability to reverse engineer such a system on his own. For instance, if Alesis engineers claimed it'd be impossible to reverse engineer it without inside information, that might be enough to make it likely unless he could convincingly demonstrate otherwise.
That being said, I'm not exactly sure why "inside information" makes a difference here. Has anybody identified what law he could be sued under if he open-sourced this? Haven't a lot of open source projects been done by reverse engineering hardware without the manufacturer's consent? I don't think trade secret would work here; that's a very specific type of secret. If he didn't bypass some security mechanisms it wouldn't be DMCA. If he didn't copy and re-use their code, no copyright violations. If he didn't implement a technique patented by them, no patent violation.
Sounds like a standard "after market" type modification which is perfectly legal AFAIK.
"You're butchering the quote and as a result perverting it for your own uses:"
Hold on a sec. I am not butchering anything. I obtained and confirmed the quote from severalindependentsources. You only provide one. While yours does look like it has been researched (or copied) by that wiki author in a little more detail, that doesn't guarantee it is more accurate. For the sake of argument that yours is correct since it really isn't important at all to the point.
What is perhaps more important than the actual wording of the quote is the point: that trading rights and freedoms for security is generally not a good idea. I don't think anybody would have interpretted it as mean any right or freedom starting from 100% no restrictions. That's just silly.
But you are completely bypassing the point I was making for the sake of trying too be geekier about the correct quote. Millions died protecting the rights to not have government monitoring them over reading books on Winnie the Pooh, or Islam, or whatever (as an example). That 3000 more have died and everyone turns 180 degrees on these issues, without even requiring the government to demonstrate the necessity or usefulness, is a travesty and says a lot about the self-centeredness of today's society in America and the ability of propaganda to scare the crap out of them and just start handing over their rights.
I'd rather live with a 1/100,000 chance (3000 out of 300 million) of being killed by a terrorist on American soil than have 300 million people lose rights like this. And that terrorist risk also doesn't take into account the bungling of the intelligence under the existing system in 2001 nor in the increase in security that could be done without reducing rights and freedoms. It hasn't been demonstrated that these measures are even necessary. In some cases, the response security measures (and potentially violations of rights) are even counter-productive towards securing against terrorism.
"... as if concealing the fact that you checked "Winnie the Pooh" out of the library is more important than gathering enough information to stop the next WTC bombing before it happens."
It's attitudes like that which terrify me for the future of society. Two world wars and other more local ones were fought with many millions killed from many countries and the one saving grace, that many of us are immensely proud of and justifies that many deaths, is that these people fought and died to protect our rights and way of life.
Now 3000 people are killed on American soil and everyone is running scared saying "Here take my rights away! What do I care if the government monitors me, I'm not doing anything wrong. They can do anything they want and take away any freedoms that I'm not really using regularly; just please don't let any more people die."
I've never seen such a bunch of self-centered scared wimps. It's a disgrace and disrespectful to those who died in the past to protect these rights and freedoms. The American Founding Fathers would have a fit. Ben Franklin too would probably just hang his head in shame:
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Ben Franklin
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This isn't really an issue of insulation. It's the disturbance of laminar flow. The laminar boundary layer is actually quite a good insulator itself, especially at Mach 20. The main issue is how much the hole disturbs the boundary layer and what localized heating might result. This small of a hole in diameter, even though it's mostly through the tile, should be mostly negligible. But NASA is treating it VERY seriously and is doing simulations as well as has an arc-jet facility to test on an exact duplicate of the damage. (It's a 3D model of the hole, if you check the video, and is easily reproduced on the ground. It has even been printed out with a 3D printer.)
Remember that Columbia damage was on the Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) panels on the leading edge of the wing, not the tiles on the belly. The leading edge is one of the hottest and most critical points where that damage occurred. This damage is generally low risk, and EVA is always risky to some degree, but this might be a great opportunity to test repair procedures. When people talk about whether NASA is making decisions based on schedule for this damage, it's not about ignoring risks for the sake of schedule. Risk wins, easily. The schedule issue is that if the damage is not a risk at all, is it prudent to fix it anyway to test procedures and have an actual flow repair to analyze upon return. Remember, EVA and extending flights adds risk to the crew too, but can be beneficial and reduce risk both for this flight and future flights.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Personally, I'd change the wording to "This is exactly how patents are used today." Patents, including those on algorithms (software is not patentable, despite what many people believe) have a very useful and noble purpose: to encourage people to publish their clever ideas and inventions so that others can learn from them, improve upon them, inspire new ideas, and encourage progress. A world without patents at all is a world of secrets where much effort (and expense) goes into keeping the inner workings secret. Otherwise, what's to keep people from creating and selling exact copies of your work without having to put in the investment of time and money into developing the invention like you did?
The limited protection that patents offer is a necessary evil meant only as the incentive for publishing the details of the invention, and should be limited to only as much protection is necessary for that purpose. The protection is NOT the intent of patents, nor is it an inherent right of inventors.
Unfortunately, that noble intention has been distorted and corrupted in a manner exactly as you describe. Now, instead of inventors we have huge multi-national corporations who patent everything including prior art and the obvious and use patent lawyers who are skilled at writing patents that are impossible to understand, such that nobody actually learns how it works AND with the added bonus that anybody who does something similar doesn't realize they've technically violated the patent even if they read it and didn't think it was similar.
Patents are good. This system is bad. Very bad. Bring on the reforms.
This is the key point of contention, but you miss the point of the other side. I tend to side with you on this, but there is some validity (within limits) to the other side.
All the examples of ownership that people give out, including yours, are tangible property. Very few people would disagree with the assertion you can do what you want with it. (There are circumstances where you can't legally do certain things, but those aren't the point here.)
This issue is about intellectual property. You actually can't do anything you want with the content of most creative works. If you buy a book, you aren't allowed to copy the whole thing and give it or sell it to someone. Same thing with a CD. (There are exceptions of course, such as in Canada where there's a levy on recordable media that compensates for "personal copying".)
The saving grace for the content providers has always been that content has been tied to a tangible medium (books, CDs, records, tapes, DVD, film, etc.). In that case, the violation of copyright is naturally limited by the practicality of copying and distributing the associated tangible media. In order for it to be widespread, one needs to invest money and time in the operation and hence require payment at the other end. These copy-for-profit operations always have been (and should be) hunted and prosecuted.
The issue at hand here is that, when you now buy a song digitally, there is no tangible medium required. There is no cost on copying. There is no cost on distribution thanks to the internet. So there are no limitations of practicality anymore. This isn't (primarily) and issue of losing rights that we used to have. It's an issue of putting back a safety net that used to be there, and aren't anymore. I hate to say it, but it's the content providers that are losing a lot more in terms of effective rights in this. With tangible media gone, the inherent protections of practicality that came with them are gone. They've lost that. The safety net is gone. If we continue to ignore that then we will lose the argument.
In order to for us to make convincing arguments, we need to demonstrate that they are safe even without the safety net. If we can't then perhaps a replacement safety net, such as some form or DRM, is necessary, and justifiably so.
This needs to be an issue about what copyright is about, why it exists, what limited rights the content creators should have, what rights the users should have, and how to protect the balance. We want to keep the rights we always had, but so do they. If we keep making this an issue about "it's mine, I paid for it and I'm going to do what I want with it", we'll lose and we should. Copyright is useful when done properly, but is misunderstood and misused on both sides. You can't ensure a balance by only focusing on one side which both sides are guilty of. (I used "we" and "they", but a lot of us are both creators and users.)
Maybe I'll be allowed to go see it after I become a Supreme Court Judge.
Easy answer. The ones who say it incorrectly are the incompetent ones. The fact that 99% of the people are sloppy doesn't change the fact they are sloppy. That's just rationalizing. Language isn't a free-for-all. It does need structure and meaning, especially in these days of globalization where translation is needed more often.
Likewise in my experience there is rarely such a thing as an artist that can produce an alburm with all songs worth having and not just some. Nobody said anything about just one song. But I have many CDs with only 2 or 3 "good" songs out of 12 or 15.
There is a plan to retire the shuttles and still support ISS, but it's not like they can do that tomorrow. It takes years of development which IS going on right now.
As far as the Moon and Mars, manned missions versus probes and robotics, science, and deflecting asteroids and comets, there are quite polar opposite opinions out there. The article argues one case, but the author doesn't indicate why the priorities he suggests are more important than other priorities. When he "boils down" the net worth of NASA Life Science research to "billions of dollars spent for astronauts to take each other's blood pressure", it's clear this guy is not the least bit objective or knowledgeable about what NASA actually does. This is the opinion of a "couch" space expert, which is about what his interest in manned exploration amounts to -- sitting on the couch. NASA was created essentially for manned space flight. Some people are content to stay here and let robots do all the space work. Would North American society exist today if that was the extend of the exploration will in Europe 500 years ago? (Exploration which was, by the way, largely driven with interests in financial spin-offs.)
Does NASA, or Congress, have its priorities straight? Perhaps, perhaps not. Much of it is a matter of opinion. Much of it is a matter of existing commitments. Much of it is drvien by economic considerations. But in any case, this article is one of the worst analyses of the subject I've seen.
2D versus 3D, my friend. 2D cameras measure reflected intensities from a given perspective, and therefore are prone to problems with (a) reflectivity/lighting, (b) the viewing perspective, and (c) other things in the image (occlusions, clutter). 3D directly measures the shape of the face, which is harder to change than you think. (Really, it's the shape of the skull that primarily dictates the shape. Only certain areas of the face can change much and don't largely affect the verification.)
However, this too isn't all that "revolutionary" as the article suggests. Real-time 3D range images have been around for 5-10 years, especially using structured light (some even faster than 40 ms), and robust 3D face recognition algos have been around for almost as long. There just haven't been any/many commercial products yet, and this example is also in the lab, so it's more or less at the same implementation level as 3-5 years ago with similar systems.
As someone who has written, studied, tested, validated, and worked with 3D target recognition and facial recognition algorithms, I agree to a point. I only agree because it's always good to be skeptical of these things until the (unbiased) evidence has been presented.
That being said, the jump from 2D to 3D recognition is nothing but revolutionary in terms of recognition and verification accuracy. Beards, cosmetic surgery, and even swelling are not major impediments. They do reduce the match, but less than you'd think. There are areas of the face that don't change much even in such cases. 3D face recognition is more about measuring the shape of the skull. The skin generally follows the shape of the skull except where there are heavy fat deposits, or of course if you grow a beard. Unless you're changes were to the extent of a normal face to something like the Elephant Man or Eric Stoltz in "Mask" (no, not the Jim Carry movie), it's still going to do quite well.
And even then, the application here is verification. If the changes were enough to make it fail, that would just mean you'd have to go through either a secondary manual security check and/or update the biometrics. It's not like you could, say, pretend to be Tom Cruise and say your face changed. If you don't look like Tom Cruise with a beard or fatter face, and have the same shaped skull, and have the other security info to back you up, you're going to get your biometrics updated.
As a general comment (not specific to the parent post), I know /. likes to pick apart these things, but /. readers are not of so superior intelligence that they can come up with flaws in 2 minutes that experts in the area of research have not addressed, studied, or solved in years of research.
Actually, I've worked on 3D facial recognition algorithms and they can be incredibly accurate. You are correct that 2D facial recognition algos have limited accuracy, but that's largely because 2D cameras merely measure the amount of light reflected into each pixel, so any real-world dimensional measurement is an interpretation of feature locations and extrapolated into 3D. Perspective views is big problem as are lighting conditions, clutter, and disguises.
A 3D sensor directly measures the 3D shape and can fit it quite easily to the reference model. We've done 3D face matches with wigs, glasses, and beards at the same time and still correctly identified the person. You really have to cover up a significant amount of the shape of the face to fool it.
And even then, that was for identification. This application is verification, so a disguise would be counterproductive. You'd have to take someone with a similar face shape and use professional face-shaping make-up (like for movies) to make an identically-shaped face to fool it into believing you were someone you were not. Not just one that looks the same, but is actually the same size and shape. Hard to do, especially without someone clearly seeing you are wearing the fake features, despite what Mission Impossible or other movies make us believe.
That being said, I don't know the statistics on similarities of faces. I would certainly bet identical twins could fool it, though I'm not sure how identical their face shapes are statistically.
Actually, I'd be more interested in your understanding of the history of copyright, why it exists, why it's important to have a balance between creator's rights and users rights, and your thoughts on how the current laws (such as this one) fit into that balance.
There's a big difference between someone getting nothing in return and perpetual ownership and rights over anything that can be done with that work, and harsh over-the-top punishments for copyright violations. That's the battle going on these days. I don't think anyone's claiming that it should just always be legal to download without any compensation to the creator in any form. It's the "digging their heals in" to criminalize their customers with far excessive punishments that's the problem here, instead of taking a reasoned approach to updating business models to meet the reality of technology today, like has happened in the past from printing press, audio recording, radio, photocopying, cable TV, VCR, etc., etc.
Yes, it makes a very stupid method more efficient. It'd be even more efficient to either send out copies of the notes beforehand, or even -- god forbid -- use a book which is chock full of pre-written notes. What could be more efficient for note taking?
Class time is for learning, not note-taking. Sometimes you get lazy profs who write down the same notes over and over without handing them out or having a book. But it seems more to be students who just want to take notes and learn on their own later. I don't blame this prof at all and I'd do the same thing. But then I'd also organize the classes to facilitate review of pre-written notes or books.
That's exactly what I've been arguing all along, and yet they still won't let me talk loudly on my cell phone in the middle of the movie. Who do these people think they are telling me what to do? I paid so I should call the shots. Why can't these people understand the simple logic that you and I share on this issue.
I nearly spit my drink out my nose when I read that. I'm very far from left-wing, but even I realize the most useless piece of equipment in New Orleans would have been a gun. Thanks for the laugh.
What the article didn't state makes it even more emphatic. In Canada it is legal to download music via P2P. So all the stuff about P2P in this study refers to legal downloading, and still it isn't harming the recording industry like they say and still people buy music with a legally free alternative. (I say "free", but really we pay a levy on recordable media to compensate, so it's really a legally "already paid for" alternative.) I think that says even more.
In an absolute sense that might be true in that very few bands make a living in general from music. However, relative to sales of recorded music, bands make most of their money from touring and merchandising. Basically, the artist "cut" of the CD sales goes towards paying back the "loan" for the recording work (including salaries, catering, etc., etc., over which the artist has little or no input). Most of what they make on tour is theirs to keep, minus the direct costs of the support staff. Yes, this can be substantial on big tours, but they also make bigger money. The point is that you can take the revenue and subtract the costs directly and see how much per show you are making so you know when you are losing money. CD sales are a cross-your-fingers-and-hope that you make back enough to cover the "loan" you contracted for.
Only the biggest artists make much income from commercial music sales (not home-recorded CDs), and that's because they're big enough to dictate better contract terms and make back the recording costs quicker and easier.
In the end, for the average band CD sales are just useful for promotional purposes to get people to their shows to actually make their money.
Am I the only one who sees that this whole string of arguments is about 2 different things? Well, it looks like a few people have tried to point it out.
It is absolutely 100% correct that the accuracy of a statement has nothing to do with whether someone was paid to say it or not. Attacking the messenger or their intentions is indeed ad hominem. But that's not what the other side of the argument is here.
If you only have the statement, you don't know it's accuracy. You have absolutely nothing to judge it on with respect to "truth data". The issue here isn't the accuracy of the statement because you can't check it. The issue here is the confidence in the accuracy of the statement with no available "truth data". If it is someone with a background in presenting objective information, there is more confidence that their statements are accurate than someone who clearly has a self-interest in being subjective.
Confidence and likelihood are statistical tools and are useful for a best guess. There is no such thing as an ad hominen attack on confidence. Likelihood and confidence a part of reasoning, but it is not closed form like pure deductive reasoning.
And more Catholic*.
*I am not intentionally implying Catholics are less intelligent or less healthy. They just tend to have more children because of their beliefs.
This one is so easy. Would you rather (a) risk the chance of being struck by lighting, or (b) carry around a 100 lb faraday cage all day, every day for the rest of your life? Funny that the American government is able to sell the faraday cage as the right choice, especially with side benefit that they sell faraday cages. And so many people are just lining up to get one. It doesn't even matter to some if the occasional one is plastic. Why bother checking? As long as people feel safe because the government told them they did the right thing. Good for them.
While I agree if he's interested in a job he should be careful that they don't mind what he's doing, I don't see where this would deny them revenue. They sell a piece of hardware (HD24), and an extension piece of software on Windows that works through firewire. (It's not clear if they charge extra for the Windows software.) They were very clear they're not building drivers for Linux presumably because the cost to develop, maintain, and support Linux wouldn't cover the small market gains. This guy figured out how to make it work in Linux. He basically just opened up a market for them by effectively developing a Linux driver for free, with no required commitment from them for support or maintenance. Now they can potentially sell more hardware at no extra cost.
Where exactly is the denied revenue?
Could you provide a reference to the particular law and section? It is my understanding that reverse engineering is not only legal in most cases, it is even protected. It's only a few rare exceptions that are illegal such as (potentially) EULA restrictions and creating software that bypasses copyrightprotections, thanks to the DMCA.
Unless this guys is violating his EULA, I'm not sure where the violation is. Still, it is good to check with a lawyer.
That's correct. Though keep in mind that the burdon of proof in civil matters is a lot easier than in criminal. In civil matters it is only necessary to prove it is likely he had inside info ("balance of probabilities"), not "beyond a reasonable doubt". So, although he wouldn't have to prove his innocence, it might be necessary to at least demonstrate he has the capability to reverse engineer such a system on his own. For instance, if Alesis engineers claimed it'd be impossible to reverse engineer it without inside information, that might be enough to make it likely unless he could convincingly demonstrate otherwise.
That being said, I'm not exactly sure why "inside information" makes a difference here. Has anybody identified what law he could be sued under if he open-sourced this? Haven't a lot of open source projects been done by reverse engineering hardware without the manufacturer's consent? I don't think trade secret would work here; that's a very specific type of secret. If he didn't bypass some security mechanisms it wouldn't be DMCA. If he didn't copy and re-use their code, no copyright violations. If he didn't implement a technique patented by them, no patent violation.
Sounds like a standard "after market" type modification which is perfectly legal AFAIK.
Hold on a sec. I am not butchering anything. I obtained and confirmed the quote from several independent sources. You only provide one. While yours does look like it has been researched (or copied) by that wiki author in a little more detail, that doesn't guarantee it is more accurate. For the sake of argument that yours is correct since it really isn't important at all to the point.
What is perhaps more important than the actual wording of the quote is the point: that trading rights and freedoms for security is generally not a good idea. I don't think anybody would have interpretted it as mean any right or freedom starting from 100% no restrictions. That's just silly.
But you are completely bypassing the point I was making for the sake of trying too be geekier about the correct quote. Millions died protecting the rights to not have government monitoring them over reading books on Winnie the Pooh, or Islam, or whatever (as an example). That 3000 more have died and everyone turns 180 degrees on these issues, without even requiring the government to demonstrate the necessity or usefulness, is a travesty and says a lot about the self-centeredness of today's society in America and the ability of propaganda to scare the crap out of them and just start handing over their rights.
I'd rather live with a 1/100,000 chance (3000 out of 300 million) of being killed by a terrorist on American soil than have 300 million people lose rights like this. And that terrorist risk also doesn't take into account the bungling of the intelligence under the existing system in 2001 nor in the increase in security that could be done without reducing rights and freedoms. It hasn't been demonstrated that these measures are even necessary. In some cases, the response security measures (and potentially violations of rights) are even counter-productive towards securing against terrorism.
It's attitudes like that which terrify me for the future of society. Two world wars and other more local ones were fought with many millions killed from many countries and the one saving grace, that many of us are immensely proud of and justifies that many deaths, is that these people fought and died to protect our rights and way of life.
Now 3000 people are killed on American soil and everyone is running scared saying "Here take my rights away! What do I care if the government monitors me, I'm not doing anything wrong. They can do anything they want and take away any freedoms that I'm not really using regularly; just please don't let any more people die."
I've never seen such a bunch of self-centered scared wimps. It's a disgrace and disrespectful to those who died in the past to protect these rights and freedoms. The American Founding Fathers would have a fit. Ben Franklin too would probably just hang his head in shame: