The study identified several regions of the brain that are "male" vs "female" in nature. Hence, there are variations in structures in those regions that do tend to dominate on one gender vs another. However, what the study found is that there is no one "combination" of such regions that statistically dominates to define a definite male or female brain, and that each individual person possesses variation between the two types.
Yes. Majority opinion should be held so high, even if it trumps conceited arrogance assumptions of what is progress.
Let me be clear, I fully support nuclear power, I think it should be expanded greatly, safely using advanced techniques. I think these countries are idiots for closing it down, but it is their democratic right, and don't anyone dare take that away from them.
3G UMTS existed in all of those places (don't know about China) for 3-4 years now. I should know since I had cell phones from Japan and Malaysia I carried all over the region...
You don't have your facts. I have lived and traveled in all of those countries.
Malaysia and Singapore have full country 3G/UMTS networks starting 3 years ago. Thailand is almost there. Even not counting 3G they all have more GSM carriers to choose from than USA does.
Japan has had 3G UMTS for 4 years now. I have used phones bought in each of those countries in each of all the other countries, including in Japan.
Having lived in Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia, you absolutely don't have your facts straight. Those countries all have modern 3G/UMTS networks.
I bought phones in both Japan and Malaysia 3 years ago that did both GSM and 3G everywhere in the region and world (except 3G in US because USA used different frequencies.)
Korea is CDMA only but I never went there...
Folks, once the 3g iphone is released, tons of markets will be opened opened up:
Japan - big time! The Japanese *will* buy this.
China
SE Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand)
All of these places had 3g networks in place well ahead of the US. There is a reason the iphone didn't land in those places yet, it didn't have 3g!
Was about to say the same thing. At least twice a month something about new improvement in solar cells is posted, but they never materialize into something people can use!
If the online tracking database worked. As of now you type in your email address or order number and it can't find you. This leads one to believe that the order was lost even though payment was already extracted.
At least with your Dell shipment, Dell could tell you the order was in the system and will ship in X time.
I ordered on the last day and paypal definitely took my money and gave it to OLPC.
Those folx are doing something good but they are definitely disorganized.
And I can't even track my order in their online tracking database.
First email went unanswered and second one got a response, but was missing any indication of when they would ship, just that they were overwhelmed with the response.
Basically it shows one of the reasons why one would need to work at 12-16 bits / color channel, with full sized sample images I took and processed.
I am working on a second example, one that shows introduction of artifacts when too many filters/transforms are applied to an 8 bit / color channel image (as one might need to do in reality, as opposed to arbitrary manipulations that could make anything look bad).
This thread has mostly died down, but hopefully people who are interested still manage to take a look and if it helps spur GIMP development, so much the better.
Well, I based my statements on the following: 1. GIMP does not support working directly in >8-bits / channel. 2. All of my searches of the internet have found occasional discussion from GIMP developers who stated that there is no need for >8/channel due to 8/channel being more than adequate for the eye. 3. GIMP documentation almost completely ignores the issue of channel bit depth. 4. There is a surge of commercial applications for professional digital image manipulation for handling RAW files. Take a close look at Apple's Aperture. Sure it can work in any format, but its whole concept was built around RAW 16bit/channel. 5. A search of the internet on professional digital photo RAW work flows shows much discussion about why those extra bits should never be thrown away. a. They represent much additional detail (a bit less than 4096 levels of detail, as opposed to the normal 256) that can be "pulled-in" and manipulated to form a final downconverted 8-bit/channel image. b. Artifacts from many applied filters/transforms are greatly reduced before the final 8-bit/channel downconversion. 6. My own experience confirms this.
Final conclusion: GIMP developers have their priorities, I do not begrudge them that. I conclude there are not many such developers who use GIMP themselves purely for RAW digital photo workflows. However, the very recent huge surge of cameras outputing these formats are driving a corresponding increase in the number of people demanding such features. Again, the professional marketplace is abound with such examples.
But in the end, it means a segment of the population that will never want to use GIMP.
And believe me, I very much wanted to use GIMP, I did not want to go to Photoshop, but I ended up paying money (yes I buy rather than warez my non-free/OSS software) for the bottom-end Photoshop Elements 3.0 for my Mac because of those features. There are many other packages out there too I can spend money on, but very few free ones.
The dcraw packages are fantastic, I have occasionally used them for batch conversions. I haven't tried the GIMP plugins because the down-conversion to 8-bit happens too early in the workflow. The free software that came with my camera (from Canon) is not bad and works in a pinch.
I would use GIMP in a heart-beat if but for that one feature. Without it, I can't really use it at all, because the commercial apps offer comparable feature-sets, I may as well avoid time consuming import/exports and stay in them.
I am lucky, I do not do digital photography for a living. Those that do, can't always afford the big expensive packages and softwares. A free OSS solution would help out alot of journalists and photographers who could use more free solutions on their tight budgets.
Doesn't matter that you use a 32-bit float per channel for your filters. If you operate on 8-bit channels, thats alot less *data* for you to operate on than if you had 16-bits of data.
Now granted, current digital cameras really only capture 12-bits at raw. But consider what that extra 4-bits can do, thats a range of about 4096 above the range of 256 that exists in 8-bits. You can do ALOT of things with this extra data like varying exposures that you simply cannot do if the data isn't there to begin with. Your 32-bit float representation for your filter doesn't do a bit good operating on data that was thrown away.
Now, to drive my point home, real photographers do real things with this data every day, and it translates to real visual effects that is extremely useful in the final output image, even when that image ends up being downconverted to 8 bits per channel.
This is why nearly every photo manipulation program out there, except for gimp of course - gimp's missing the boat, allows for operating at this bit depth. These features exist because they translate into real valuable operations.
Well, while you are technically correct, you shoot past the who point by miles.
The idea isn't to try to actually view at that color depth. Its already beyond the capabilities of many video output devices, and even possibly the human eye. But again, thats not the point nor in dispute.
The issue is the accumulated filter effects and tranformations applied to a digital image. Each such effect can create subtle artifacts and degradations. When you start with 8bit/color channel (traditional 24bpp) then these can build up fast to become noticably visible in the final image.
But if you apply those effects to a 16bit/color channel (48bpp) image, the artifacts don't become noticable as quickly, if at all, assuming you are using a good quality image manipulation program. Then when all is done, you can convert your final image to 8bit/channel (24bpp) such as jpeg and have a clean image.
Its more than just a completely different kettle of fish, professional and many non-professional photographers routinely, often exclusively (if they have control over it), operate solely in 16 bits / color channel. They do this for all of the reasons I explained before, performing all filters/transformations in 16bit/channel to avoid the gradual introduction of artifacts before a final conversion to 8bit/channel at the end.
Pretty much any other package that caters to this class of users offers this capability. GIMP, on the other hand, has no interest to offer this as a feature. Thats fine, but then there is a whole segment of people who will end up going over to Photoshop and a mix of other applications.
The issue is now directly working in RAW, I didn't state that very well. I want to import from RAW (which is possible) and keep it in the native 16bpp.
The reason ? Because a workflow for processing digital photos can involve applying quite a few filters and transformations. Doing as much as possible in 16bpp is more likely to prevent visible artifacts from occuring. Then, when one is all finished, the final product can be converted to 8bpp for either printing or web posting.
If one goes straight to 8bpp and then applies all of the filters and transformations, artifacts are more likely to creep into the image along the way, and those can be annoying to deal with.
I want to work in my RAW photos in 16-bit as much as possible before converting to 8bpp at the final step. GIMP doesn't do that, so I am forced to use photoshop.
[Is the issue called trust. Specifically, towards people on the [inside of your organization. [ [It all boils down to "Do you trust your employees"? [ [There are businesses that do, and there are those that don't.
And then there are the smarter ones that recognize reality - that regardless of how much trust one gives, statistically speaking, someone will abuse that trust and walk off with data. The smarter businesses put appropriate mechanisms in place that both recognize and attempt appropriately minimize the occurance and resulting damage of these eventualities.
I think its called "trust without being stupid about it."
Seriously, a patent for a "portable" stereo ? I sure am hell glad there was no patent on portable game consoles. Maybe there is, waiting to sue Sony and Nintendo.
Its too bad this guy one the fight. This patent just as much shows whats wrong with the patent system as the controversies of today.
Cops do carry guns, as others pointed out. Not a thing wrong with that either.
The biggest crime you have to worry about is pickpockets, especially in Tokyo's crowded Shinjuku area. I have been targeted a few times even. One of those times, at 5am I was sitting against a store front resting off the night and saw a guy scanning the area out of the corner of my eye. When he spotted me he immediately moved towards me to stand near me.
He clearly thought I was asleep or nearly so, perhaps drunk. I was neither. I made no reaction other than, out of the corners of eyes, to give him quite the evil "don't mess with me" eye.
Once we made eye contact, he decided better of it and walked off to a plaza where many Japanese drunks were passed out. I watched him shake down one poor guy, taking his wallet, and walked away.
Rule #1 of partying in Tokyo - never pass out on the streets, and in general always watch out for pickpockets...
Yeah, ok, this will probably be an unpopular position.
BestBuy sucks, but I have no problem with what they did. No one had to buy from them, and they can return it under their normal return policy.
Yeah, if people WANTED one, there wasn't much they could do, but blame Microsoft for that, not BestBuy. There are plenty of annoying practices at BestBuy to complain about, I just don't think this is one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
The study identified several regions of the brain that are "male" vs "female" in nature. Hence, there are variations in structures in those regions that do tend to dominate on one gender vs another. However, what the study found is that there is no one "combination" of such regions that statistically dominates to define a definite male or female brain, and that each individual person possesses variation between the two types.
Yes. Majority opinion should be held so high, even if it trumps conceited arrogance assumptions of what is progress. Let me be clear, I fully support nuclear power, I think it should be expanded greatly, safely using advanced techniques. I think these countries are idiots for closing it down, but it is their democratic right, and don't anyone dare take that away from them.
3G UMTS existed in all of those places (don't know about China) for 3-4 years now. I should know since I had cell phones from Japan and Malaysia I carried all over the region...
You don't have your facts. I have lived and traveled in all of those countries. Malaysia and Singapore have full country 3G/UMTS networks starting 3 years ago. Thailand is almost there. Even not counting 3G they all have more GSM carriers to choose from than USA does. Japan has had 3G UMTS for 4 years now. I have used phones bought in each of those countries in each of all the other countries, including in Japan.
Having lived in Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia, you absolutely don't have your facts straight. Those countries all have modern 3G/UMTS networks. I bought phones in both Japan and Malaysia 3 years ago that did both GSM and 3G everywhere in the region and world (except 3G in US because USA used different frequencies.) Korea is CDMA only but I never went there...
Folks, once the 3g iphone is released, tons of markets will be opened opened up: Japan - big time! The Japanese *will* buy this. China SE Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand) All of these places had 3g networks in place well ahead of the US. There is a reason the iphone didn't land in those places yet, it didn't have 3g!
Was about to say the same thing. At least twice a month something about new improvement in solar cells is posted, but they never materialize into something people can use!
If the online tracking database worked. As of now you type in your email address or order number and it can't find you. This leads one to believe that the order was lost even though payment was already extracted. At least with your Dell shipment, Dell could tell you the order was in the system and will ship in X time.
I ordered on the last day and paypal definitely took my money and gave it to OLPC. Those folx are doing something good but they are definitely disorganized.
And I can't even track my order in their online tracking database. First email went unanswered and second one got a response, but was missing any indication of when they would ship, just that they were overwhelmed with the response.
I thought Wikipedia was designed to handle this sort of thing ?
.edu addresses ? Probably way more than from .gov addresses.
Doesn't everyone who creates and edits articles have a vested interest ? Else why would they be spending time to do it ?
Lots of articles get "spinned" by non-politicians too, whether it is about politics or something else.
I wonder how many spins comes from
I uploaded two images to this gallery at http://www.pbase.com/gorim/raw_workflow
Basically it shows one of the reasons why one would need to work at 12-16 bits / color channel, with full sized sample images I took and processed.
I am working on a second example, one that shows introduction of artifacts when too many filters/transforms are applied to an 8 bit / color channel image (as one might need to do in reality, as opposed to arbitrary manipulations that could make anything look bad).
This thread has mostly died down, but hopefully people who are interested still manage to take a look and if it helps spur GIMP development, so much the better.
Well, I based my statements on the following:
1. GIMP does not support working directly in >8-bits / channel.
2. All of my searches of the internet have found occasional discussion from GIMP developers who stated that there is no need for >8/channel due to 8/channel being more than adequate for the eye.
3. GIMP documentation almost completely ignores the issue of channel bit depth.
4. There is a surge of commercial applications for professional digital image manipulation for handling RAW files. Take a close look at Apple's Aperture. Sure it can work in any format, but its whole concept was built around RAW 16bit/channel.
5. A search of the internet on professional digital photo RAW work flows shows much discussion about why those extra bits should never be thrown away.
a. They represent much additional detail (a bit less than 4096 levels of detail, as opposed to the normal 256) that can be "pulled-in" and manipulated to form a final downconverted 8-bit/channel image.
b. Artifacts from many applied filters/transforms are greatly reduced before the final 8-bit/channel downconversion.
6. My own experience confirms this.
Final conclusion: GIMP developers have their priorities, I do not begrudge them that. I conclude there are not many such developers who use GIMP themselves purely for RAW digital photo workflows. However, the very recent huge surge of cameras outputing these formats are driving a corresponding increase in the number of people demanding such features. Again, the professional marketplace is abound with such examples.
But in the end, it means a segment of the population that will never want to use GIMP.
And believe me, I very much wanted to use GIMP, I did not want to go to Photoshop, but I ended up paying money (yes I buy rather than warez my non-free/OSS software) for the bottom-end Photoshop Elements 3.0 for my Mac because of those features. There are many other packages out there too I can spend money on, but very few free ones.
The dcraw packages are fantastic, I have occasionally used them for batch conversions. I haven't tried the GIMP plugins because the down-conversion to 8-bit happens too early in the workflow. The free software that came with my camera (from Canon) is not bad and works in a pinch.
I would use GIMP in a heart-beat if but for that one feature. Without it, I can't really use it at all, because the commercial apps offer comparable feature-sets, I may as well avoid time consuming import/exports and stay in them.
I am lucky, I do not do digital photography for a living. Those that do, can't always afford the big expensive packages and softwares. A free OSS solution would help out alot of journalists and photographers who could use more free solutions on their tight budgets.
Still missing.
Doesn't matter that you use a 32-bit float per channel for your filters. If you operate on 8-bit channels, thats alot less *data* for you to operate on than if you had 16-bits of data.
Now granted, current digital cameras really only capture 12-bits at raw. But consider what that extra 4-bits can do, thats a range of about 4096 above the range of 256 that exists in 8-bits. You can do ALOT of things with this extra data like varying exposures that you simply cannot do if the data isn't there to begin with. Your 32-bit float representation for your filter doesn't do a bit good operating on data that was thrown away.
Now, to drive my point home, real photographers do real things with this data every day, and it translates to real visual effects that is extremely useful in the final output image, even when that image ends up being downconverted to 8 bits per channel.
This is why nearly every photo manipulation program out there, except for gimp of course - gimp's missing the boat, allows for operating at this bit depth. These features exist because they translate into real valuable operations.
Well, while you are technically correct, you shoot past the who point by miles.
The idea isn't to try to actually view at that color depth. Its already beyond the capabilities of many video output devices, and even possibly the human eye. But again, thats not the point nor in dispute.
The issue is the accumulated filter effects and tranformations applied to a digital image. Each such effect can create subtle artifacts and degradations. When you start with 8bit/color channel (traditional 24bpp) then these can build up fast to become noticably visible in the final image.
But if you apply those effects to a 16bit/color channel (48bpp) image, the artifacts don't become noticable as quickly, if at all, assuming you are using a good quality image manipulation program. Then when all is done, you can convert your final image to 8bit/channel (24bpp) such as jpeg and have a clean image.
Its more than just a completely different kettle of fish, professional and many non-professional photographers routinely, often exclusively (if they have control over it), operate solely in 16 bits / color channel. They do this for all of the reasons I explained before, performing all filters/transformations in 16bit/channel to avoid the gradual introduction of artifacts before a final conversion to 8bit/channel at the end.
Pretty much any other package that caters to this class of users offers this capability. GIMP, on the other hand, has no interest to offer this as a feature. Thats fine, but then there is a whole segment of people who will end up going over to Photoshop and a mix of other applications.
16 bits each for R, G, and B.
The issue is now directly working in RAW, I didn't state that very well. I want to import from RAW (which is possible) and keep it in the native 16bpp.
The reason ? Because a workflow for processing digital photos can involve applying quite a few filters and transformations. Doing as much as possible in 16bpp is more likely to prevent visible artifacts from occuring. Then, when one is all finished, the final product can be converted to 8bpp for either printing or web posting.
If one goes straight to 8bpp and then applies all of the filters and transformations, artifacts are more likely to creep into the image along the way, and those can be annoying to deal with.
I want to work in my RAW photos in 16-bit as much as possible before converting to 8bpp at the final step. GIMP doesn't do that, so I am forced to use photoshop.
[Is the issue called trust. Specifically, towards people on the [inside of your organization.
[
[It all boils down to "Do you trust your employees"?
[
[There are businesses that do, and there are those that don't.
And then there are the smarter ones that recognize reality - that regardless of how much trust one gives, statistically speaking, someone will abuse that trust and walk off with data. The smarter businesses put appropriate mechanisms in place that both recognize and attempt appropriately minimize the occurance and resulting damage of these eventualities.
I think its called "trust without being stupid about it."
Seriously, a patent for a "portable" stereo ?
I sure am hell glad there was no patent on portable game consoles. Maybe there is, waiting to sue Sony and Nintendo.
Its too bad this guy one the fight. This patent just as much shows whats wrong with the patent system as the controversies of today.
Cops do carry guns, as others pointed out. Not a thing wrong with that either. The biggest crime you have to worry about is pickpockets, especially in Tokyo's crowded Shinjuku area. I have been targeted a few times even. One of those times, at 5am I was sitting against a store front resting off the night and saw a guy scanning the area out of the corner of my eye. When he spotted me he immediately moved towards me to stand near me. He clearly thought I was asleep or nearly so, perhaps drunk. I was neither. I made no reaction other than, out of the corners of eyes, to give him quite the evil "don't mess with me" eye. Once we made eye contact, he decided better of it and walked off to a plaza where many Japanese drunks were passed out. I watched him shake down one poor guy, taking his wallet, and walked away. Rule #1 of partying in Tokyo - never pass out on the streets, and in general always watch out for pickpockets...
Sounds like the Jehovah's Witnesses faction, who stops by my door every 2 months like clockwork...
Yeah, ok, this will probably be an unpopular position.
BestBuy sucks, but I have no problem with what they did. No one had to buy from them, and they can return it under their normal return policy.
Yeah, if people WANTED one, there wasn't much they could do, but blame Microsoft for that, not BestBuy. There are plenty of annoying practices at BestBuy to complain about, I just don't think this is one of them.
Color me DUH!
Forget games, its hard enough for men to know what women like and want for anything in real life.
So men game designers can't design games that women like ? No kidding.
And guess what ? I read Slashdot too, so clearly I am even more unlikely to know...