Our story sounds the same. My wife and I share a PC at home. She is an advanced computer user, with no technical backround, though.
First, she was impressed with the "Linux" "design" - she found the desktop and the distro (I'm not saying which not to start yet another rivalry) much more appealing than the Windows one. Next, she moved on to the features, quickly discovering greater possibilities (she did FrontPage, Powerpoint and Excel courses and even knows how and dares to use the stuff...) while exploring different tools and menus.
A phase of nagging followed since some things needed either: - explaining: to eject the CD, use the "User mount tool" or something; - or tweaking: hold on a sec, lemme have a look... after a minute or a day...... There ya go!
She always had an option of rebooting back to windows if a file or a site didn't open. But this very step, rebooting, was a limitation in itself so windows was being used less and less often and at the same time, eventual complaints about Linux gradually stopped.
Once, I had her do a preview of a large collection of digital photos in both Win and Linux to compare the speed. Another point proved.
It turned out that in her Economy post-grad class, where they exchanged a lot of.doc,.ppt, and.crap, she was far from being the only one importing the files, editing and saving them back into Win formats with OpenOffice; took'em quite a while to figure out that not all of them are Windows slaves.
At her new job, the in-house geek, amazingly, offered to install whatever OS she wanted on her PC, but openly admitted, that she would be a "linux-first". To make sure she is in sync with the team, she opted for XP. Funly enough, they both had the same idea what browser to install - and again, I leave to your imagination what replaced the IE.
Her computer woes were mostly due to the fact that she had the false expectation that everything on the box has to understand what she is thinking - a common preconception of the computer illiterates mislead by Gates and company. The fact is, that while clinging to that concept, Windows software gave her as much pain as the next, because she improvised at everything instead of RTFM and understanding how things work. So her migration to Linux was plagued with similar aches and pains as her windows work, i.e. -why is this page number constantly shifted?-
Linux now works for her just as well as Windows, if not better.
Looking at both the article and comments, I can only think somebody launched a speculation, maybe just for the heck of it, maybe to try to feel the climate.
The trick why this move could (not) work, is whether MS and Red Hat would be looking for the same (or different) arguments, nicely stacked into the slashdot thread(s), to back an eventual decision on.
In a ludicrous world these days anything goes. Desperate companies make desperate moves, U turns, side-shifting and the like are happening at a rate when, if only cranked up one little bit, would stop making sense.
The fact is that the only really desperate player these days is SCO, with MS getting close to step in the line. Others seem to be doing their businesses-as-usual and will only profit and then carry on if any odd moves take place.
Red Hat seems to be doing fine, but with the launch of Fedora and with new development in the F/O community every day, i.e. bypassing the java-trap I do not consider Red Hat being the main focus of anything.
If MS wanted to do a silver-bullet move (it goes without saying it will have to be against some of their past statements and strategies) it would have to to better than that and I'm definitely not the one to help them (at least not for free) out anyhow. Naturally, a moral aspect of victory is much more important in the FOSS world while the business pragmatism is much more of a virtue in the M$ empire, and that makes such speculation possible.
In my experience, such marriages of convenience take a lot more in order to happen.
Not to mention the biggest, obviously ignored obstacle in the plot: egos of the key players. What's next, in other news, Stallman leading a consultancy group in IBM?
how things turn out. It sure takes them Redmond gang a while to come up with anything, when looking at the purchase-company / product-to-market cycle...
People have launched a number of variations on the "1. massively spread lame s/w w/ vulnerabilites 2. start seling antivirus s/w 3. profit?" hypothesis. However, this would only turn out to be a correct theory only if the AV s/w worked remarkably well, shifting the virii vulnerability stories focus elsewhere. I wouldn't want to bet a dime on a conspiracy theory or on any type of a silver-bullet solution.
My bet is different - many Redmond products had flaws and some attempts at new niche markets were downright failures. Hence, I'd bet on an AV product that will fit 'normally' into the S win suite, reducing only part of the problems and introducing some (as typical of any s/w) new issues of its own.
A less safe bet, but not to be dismissed, is the ultimate toll-for-disaster scenario, also mentioned times and again in this discussion.
quite right. Color-based retrievals are much easier and cheaper to implement, you know.
I did my BS thesis in CS/CE on CBIR back in '99 and decided to use interest points instead of color statistics in order to explore the options.
While color-based CBIR gives very "good" results as far as color match is concerned and human context is therefore many times hit on the spot and sometimes missed altogether, a simple interest points calculation (filtering the image with a double Gaussian etc.) yields "interesting" results, sometimes returning nice hits and sometimes grouping images with shapes that no human soul could count for similar.
Note that I used and tweaked a method that successfully used when checking for identical images (against forgeries, for example) as a foundation, deliberately, to explore its usefulness in searching for similar images.
Searching for similar images or checking if identical are actually two quite different things.
I imagine you would be just as disappointed using my thesis C program, as the field of computer vision, as we called it, was relatively fresh on the subject at the time. I admit I haven't done any further research since, having to make a living, so I'm not sure what's up and cookin' these days...
Naturally, there are entirely different methods that could serve CBIR purposes (machine learning, neural networks, metadata, text-tags-assisted stuff), but that be a different focus, not the computer vision approach.
not to mention the entire potential of locations in South America - Tiwanacu (or something), Bolivia being the most obvious (or most fashionable these days).
as every time with M$'n'bugz story, I want to repeat my thesis:
M$ continually misleads and milks the dumb users that it created.
the worst side effect M$ has spawned over the years, is the propagation of computer semi- or illiterate users, that are lead into the illusion of a bulletproof environment that will do-for-them-what-they-want.
It starts with ignoring any available textbooks, throwing away manuals, thrashing installation guides along with the packaging even before even trying the 'plug-and-pray' ritual, moving on to the belief that anything can be resolved by clicking 'yes' or 'no' to any set of questions asked by the system. Naturally, this is nerdy behaivour, too.
When something goes wrong, its "fix my computer, you incompetent..." phrase for the post-sales, support, sysadmin or any nearest computer-literate person all over again. Here is the difference: a nerd fixes things hands-on, our joe-illiterate-user, on the other hand, blames the nearest nerd!
It's the spoiled brats who defend the main part of M$ market share and most its earnings - since M$ has lead them to believe it can deliver them an omnipotent tool without the need to learn, maintain or comprehend anything.
M$ deliver now, fix later-or-never politics that is in clear contrast to the beliefs of its last faithful users, nicely complements the situation above to create the ultimate "business" model that is beyond any parasitic capabilities. The only solution offered is buying newer products and paying for support into infinity...
the entire next generation of products: - revolutionary OS - corresponding office suite - browser, media player apps. etc.
should be developed: 1. from scratch 2. open source 3. free as free-as-in-whatever
this revolutionary move should be particulary targeted for non-desktop (mobile gadgets etc) wireless broadband platforms.
anything less is next to nothing.
The development and progress in computing and technology in general has been slowed down by lack of vision and need to squeeze out profits from lame products made for retards. High time to make it up to us.
Now which S.O.B. modded this down in matter of minutes? And why? So is this how it works: working time in Redmond, people paid to mod down anybody sharing the truth about M$?
well, since somebod's asking for it, let's burn some more karma by sheding some more light on the state of things.
Open source community in Slovenia is a strong movement, but compared to what they're up against, they hardly have a fair chance:
Earlier Slashdot story "MS Rails On Open Source, Appeals To Gov't Greed"
my comment: Open source has no bribe money to give (Score:1)
by kd4evr (712384) on Wednesday May 26, @09:44AM (#9256757)
attention moderators: Karma2burn
Reading between the lines, M$ is telling governements (and intereseted governement officials in particular) that it is very unlikely that a big open-source deal in a public service would be accompanied by any sort of bonuses, benefits and commi$$ions for the decision-makers.
1. ignore open source
2. ??????
3. Profit?!
The shortened example below is purely coincidental and totally misses the point:
Slovenia recently decided on a huge license deal with M$, not even considering open source solutions as well as ignoring the news that M$ is willing to give licenses for free to countries just not to switch to non-M$. Another job well done and taxpayers money well spent, would be in tune with the above article.
The interesting detail below is purely coincidental and has no point whatsoever:
Former CEO of M$ Slovenia, now doing intl. business is now married to a former governement-head-of-PR, now vice-chairing the Slovenian chamber of commerce. The happy couple made the tabloid news couple of years ago - he giving her an Audi TT as a gift - or some sort of an engagement present...
- officially joined EU May this year - may adopt currency (Euro) in next couple of years - inflation some 4% and dropping - cost of living close to EU, paychecks lower, though
- parrent is correct, no globaly-strong economic players there - only suitable for investors and VC with thich skin and stamina - too expensive and inflexible public administration (could be true in a lot of places, though) - taxes the life and blood out of decent citizens and straight businesses - little to no perspective for young people & families
Developing country is a wrong label for Slovenia. The correct indication is that Slovenia is a country that could be well off and has every chance of being a member of the 'developed' club; however, with a self-centered attidute, minorty complex of a small nation and a prevailing sense of envy and narrow-minded greed in most of the population, the nation is draining its resources the wrong way. As a non-fitting member of this Slovenian society, constantly contemplating a well known sport of the nation: emigration (or e-migration, for that matter) I still have to develop a term like 'Retarding' country for the state of affairs...
Damn retards even renewed the M$ licenses without a wink of an eye - for big bucks; at the same time the news was out that M$ flexes to zero to stay in business against the cheaper and the better.
The headline should not be "Hooraay - more MBs at Yahoo!"... It should be something like "Damn - what have these guys done to their system?"
Only latest-and-greatest browsers are suported, so I mostly get nag-nag-nag that I should upgrade and only if I'm lucky, I see what is supposed to be my account. Meanwhile, I keep crashing into other peoples accounts - not seeing their messages, but again, an invitiation to upgrade to Browser 9.whatever...
Don't tell me - they've outsourced to India and are using the difference in salaries not only to profit but also to buy a TB or two storage?
I can cope with free and global, evolution and progress and stuff.
I can take the fact that I may be too expensive when compared to someone with same skills as well as face the fact that someone may deliver better quality for the same paycheck.
We all have chance to change a job if our supervisors want too much while give too little.
There's one situation though I can't cope with:
1. Management offshores and outsources a good product away from a godd crew to a bunch of Hrundi V. Bakshi types never before proven in battle
2. The new N times cheaper crew transforms the good product into crapware, customers lose their temper, sales start going down
3. ???
4. Profit! Managing board gets their bonuses for good yearly figures and moves on to ruin another product while we give each other the infamous "My job went to India, and all I got was this lousy T-" shirts.
We are paying for the advanced management lessons - might as well have them watch Hrundi V. Bakshi on video - even that's probably slightly above their intellectual level...
after some AI reasoning, your question probably translates to:
"How many greedy corporate thieves are going to stuff their pockets by moving entire infrastructure to cheaper-work-force environments?"
Nobody in their right mind - provided that he has technical knowledge and appreciates sysadm experience - will hire cheap or not keep competent personel close at hand.
Dear CEO, thinking of outsourcing: remember Hrundi V. Bakshi?
Thanks for your tips. I really appreciatte every bit of battle-proven experience because this is the only acceptable way to improve my tactics with Windows: someone has to try it out and guarantee that it's worth. So far, Norton has proved itself in my books, I've already heard good things about Spybot and AdAware, just have been lucky enough not to need them that much.
The thing is, the battles fought these days are different from what I tried to point out in a comment. Today, auto-updates, antiviral software and stuff like that are a must - and if used properly, are not the main source of problems.
Aunties and grandads will still run into problems no matter what. I'll pass my final judgement on how badly windows really suck once I get around to install an is-linux-ready-for-the-desktop-? distro onto an unsuspecting family member. My hopes are the only difference they'll notice is that "funny, it works well all the time" but a more realistic approach tells me that they'll still run into problems, only that since they will be given a limited set of instructions, I'll be able to solve the limited mess in a reasonable amount of time using the good'ol unix sysadmin knowledge instead of going BOFH...
My point was the general windows "experience" through the decade - not even counting the malware, spyware, adware and virii - using, re-using, customizing and taming the windows "features" was enough of a rollercoaster.
I guess some day it'll have to be payback time for every time when grandma, grandad, mom, dad, uncle{1,2,3} and auntie{1-9} called any respectably computer-educated relative with a question like: "something is wrong with my computer. Can you come and fix it?"
Microsoft tried to spread the delusion that no computer knowledge and background is neccessary to maintain a computer system while making it more and more complex.
Things have reached saturation point these days: every at-least-half computer-literate spends a significant amount of his business and spare time rescuing some system gone bananas.
The fact is that no open source, free as in beer or even proprietary software is much better than any M$ products. The only difference is that these (non-M$) product do not assume self-sufficiency, or praise themselves as the best thing delivered to mankind. Instead of planting the evil seeds of false expectations, it comes natural to people using these product that they need to master a certain level of skill or consult an expert. One knows what one pays for and one knows what one gets!
Microsoft, on the other hand, is simply not transparent. It takes hours of investigation by a computer professional to discover what combination of -khm-features- caused grandma's computer to "start acting funny".
I stopped doing unpaid PC-M$-Win support for my friends and relatives a few years ago, because it was driving me nuts. So, I prepared a one liner fend-off checklist instead:
1. Don't tell me - you are using Windows, right? 2. Who made you think upgrading your system is a good idea? 3. Everything worked fine until recently and gone bizzare for no apparent reason? 4. I have no idea how to fix or even use M$ Outlook. Simply make a choice between using email or running outlook! 5. Other browsers are just fine. When you run onto a site that only opens up in M$ explorer, guess again, who's to blame! 6. Face it - there is no help or anything either you or even a PHD in computer engineering/science can do. 7. Well, that's why Bill Gates is rich and we are poor.
I mean, how deep the world dropped - people started perceiving computers as problems that can only be miracleously solved by throwing money away every few months!
Hopefully, the demise of m$ happens before any kind of world disaster; otherwise, future archeologists from this or another planet will think the dominant planetary religion was playing some solitary card game...
These days, we have more access to more production - but most people are too lazy to increase the effort needed to sift the 99.9% percent of the dirt to find that 1% of the pure gold.
The industry did all it could to hide & bury the good stuff. I'm fortunate to have friends that are collectors and conossieurs in different styles, so I can pick a few hints and save a lot of time - and at least sometimes listen to good music.
It is very sad that everything is targeted toward some imposed and supposed teenage fashion, all with the single purpose of stealing the small few bucks out of unsuspected teenagers' back pockets. The next logical step would be that instead of giving kids monthly allowance parents simply mail the check to RIAA in some sort of subscription scheme (like: tax on having a naive teenage kid in the house that will fall for every silly fad and trick in the book each season in a row until they get kids of their own)...
Oh, what... No,.. can't be that... there is a point to all this!
P.S.:
There was always junk, but mass marketing of today has mad junk the law. I can't figure out what happened to MTV. If I accidentaly switch to it for a second, it seems like that it's the same show all day long all year round: a guy with naked chest, golden chain around his neck and a fur coat over the shoulders, surrounded by GLLYBs in bikinis on a luxurious set. It almost seems that every video made uses the same yacht and the very same three fancy european top brand cars in an exclusive paint-job!
Your question is innacurately put, but to the point. Anything is possible, and we do know little.
Even weather forecasts for next tuesday are a mix of thumb-rules, heuristics, ad-hoc models empirically improved over the years, some fortune-telling and phsycic vision; and they still miss it!
However, we do have some (innacurate and incomplete, though) data throughout written history of mankind, as well as geological evidence that enables us to make reasonable educated guesses about what was the climate like. Mile-thick layers of ice on the polar caps are probably the best record there can be.
So climatology these days uses the data for centuries and millenia to develop models of future behaviour. The 100 year cronology on day-to-day weather data has little to do with the topic.
The point is, that things we are encoutering today, differ somewhat in their intensity and specifics from anything in written human history. Where I come from, people have farmed for at least 1500 years. Nowdays, their ever more important line of bussiness in the last decase is filing natural disaster damage claims to governement and insurance companies.
Just don't get me started on what skiing seasons were like and what happens now. Note that here in Slovenia (alpine) skiing has at least a 300 year tradition...
I used to contribute all the environmentalist panic to statisticaly acceptable ripple 15 years ago. Ten years ago, I started worrying since I saw every reason to do so.
Reading between the lines, M$ is telling governements (and intereseted governement officials in particular) that it is very unlikely that a big open-source deal in a public service would be accompanied by any sort of bonuses, benefits and commi$$ions for the decision-makers.
1. ignore open source 2. ?????? 3. Profit?!
The shortened example below is purely coincidental and totally misses the point:
Slovenia recently decided on a huge license deal with M$, not even considering open source solutions as well as ignoring the news that M$ is willing to give licenses for free to countries just not to switch to non-M$.
Another job well done and taxpayers money well spent, would be in tune with the above article.
The interesting detail below is purely coincidental and has no point whatsoever:
Former CEO of M$ Slovenia is now married to a former governement-head-of-PR. The happy couple made the tabloid news couple of years ago - he giving her an Audi TT as a gift - or some sort of an engagement present...
Thank you for moderating this comment. This is not a signature. Handle with care. No lifeguard on duty. Anything below this point is no longer related to the post above. He who dies with the most taglines wins. Why don't somebody, following the fine example of RIAA, sue Microsoft for designing, providing and distributing virus-spreading tools?
Only partly a surprise. China and the Chinese have a tradition of being somewhat exclusive and prefer to keep to themselves, which goes severeal thousands years back in their culture.
Leaving communism, human (and intelectual) rights aside, not to mention the Tibet, this may be a move that should be welcomed by international techonlogical, academic and economic community.
China has the resources to implement and test a set of its own standards. What we should all hope for is that they come up with something better than what we have to endure with today.
Hopefully, the ol'days of cold war are over where any result was accepted as long as it was a product of the 'right' 'working class'.
So this may, with a positive approach, stir up the competition.
If communist China, however, will practice the ol'style and come up with a kludgy design (remember-Wartburg-Trabant-Lada-Moskvich-Tatra-Vol ga), tough luck for them and little good news for us.
Every corporate user (or group of users) faces a dilemma:
- stick with the good ol' NT 4 stuff which they finally mastered and managed to put in some kind of stable and working order, not only to avoid pitfalls with new bugs (oops, features) but also to avoid W2k and XP specific viral and security exploits to limit their security update efforts;
- or migrate at some point, hoping to avoid both old aches and pains as well as lack of features and interoperability compared to those entitites who migrated already.
Considering all side factors (sysadmin skills and preferences, ability to spend & invest in infrastructure), parent (darnok) has a point: those who hadn't yet migrated, are not likely to do so unless they are lured into a honeytrap of some sort: either new value, package deals or discounts, etc.
Finnaly, if those (probably smart) people would want to migrate, wouldn't they consider all options and likely consider the competition - give linux driven solutions a go?
I used to ignore eco-nuts and still avoid'em wherever I can.
Sapienti sat - my point was not panicking about planetary disaster; what pisses me of are the facts that:
- we've had too many 'excellent vintages' in our vineyards, followed by a few disastrous seasons; - I've experienced a variety of odd skiing conditions during the season, mostly interrupted by lacks of snow and too high temperatures, leaving man-made snow as the last chance to get any skiing at all; - fruit doesn't grow the way is should, the grassess bloom like crazy causing (me) extensive hayfever, insects spreading...
Ten years ago I could say, too, heck, it's all within the statistical curve; nowdays, I know some serious s**t must be going down - and nobody's to know exactly what!
Earth may have a self-regulating system we do not yet (fully) understand. When you say its a robust system, you are right. Our climate models may well be worth squat, right again.
Dinosaurs did quite well for quite a long time, until they could...
However, the issue is not whether human interventions can fully derail earth's climate or only tackle the parameters a bit. The point is, that the changes in the weather we as a civilisation started will most certainly affect our way of life as we know it. Human is considered the most adaptable species, present in all kinds of environments. I cannot argue whether we are going to drive ourselves into extinction or not by what we did to the climate, but surely life (and survival) in either dry deserts, frozen glaciers or stormy swamps has little to do with the current trends in economy. There is a vast difference between a habitable and comfortable climate, you see...
Dont start the IPO on that dino-breeding company just yet;-)
simulating 100% compatibility with a faulty, buggy, unpredictable and unmanageable s/w is either a prank or a contradiction in terms.
My congrats to the 4 students for yet-another-distro but they surely won't able to simulate all the blue screens, dr. watson's and virii prone (with-welcome-sign) openings in less than 2.5*10^4 years. It took a lot of engineering hours in Redmond to make Windows the masterpile of crap that it is today.
I don't think further bridges are neccessary - the trend is Linux and doing well...
Slashdot Mirror
Hear, hear!
... after a minute or a day ... ... There ya go!
.doc, .ppt, and .crap, she was far from being the only one importing the files, editing and saving them back into Win formats with OpenOffice; took'em quite a while to figure out that not all of them are Windows slaves.
Our story sounds the same. My wife and I share a PC at home. She is an advanced computer user, with no technical backround, though.
First, she was impressed with the "Linux" "design" - she found the desktop and the distro (I'm not saying which not to start yet another rivalry) much more appealing than the Windows one. Next, she moved on to the features, quickly discovering greater possibilities (she did FrontPage, Powerpoint and Excel courses and even knows how and dares to use the stuff...) while exploring different tools and menus.
A phase of nagging followed since some things needed either:
- explaining: to eject the CD, use the "User mount tool" or something;
- or tweaking: hold on a sec, lemme have a look
She always had an option of rebooting back to windows if a file or a site didn't open. But this very step, rebooting, was a limitation in itself so windows was being used less and less often and at the same time, eventual complaints about Linux gradually stopped.
Once, I had her do a preview of a large collection of digital photos in both Win and Linux to compare the speed. Another point proved.
It turned out that in her Economy post-grad class, where they exchanged a lot of
At her new job, the in-house geek, amazingly, offered to install whatever OS she wanted on her PC, but openly admitted, that she would be a "linux-first". To make sure she is in sync with the team, she opted for XP. Funly enough, they both had the same idea what browser to install - and again, I leave to your imagination what replaced the IE.
Her computer woes were mostly due to the fact that she had the false expectation that everything on the box has to understand what she is thinking - a common preconception of the computer illiterates mislead by Gates and company. The fact is, that while clinging to that concept, Windows software gave her as much pain as the next, because she improvised at everything instead of RTFM and understanding how things work. So her migration to Linux was plagued with similar aches and pains as her windows work, i.e. -why is this page number constantly shifted?-
Linux now works for her just as well as Windows, if not better.
Looking at both the article and comments,
I can only think somebody launched a speculation, maybe just for the heck of it, maybe to try to feel the climate.
The trick why this move could (not) work, is whether MS and Red Hat would be looking for the same (or different) arguments, nicely stacked into the slashdot thread(s), to back an eventual decision on.
In a ludicrous world these days anything goes. Desperate companies make desperate moves, U turns, side-shifting and the like are happening at a rate when, if only cranked up one little bit, would stop making sense.
The fact is that the only really desperate player these days is SCO, with MS getting close to step in the line.
Others seem to be doing their businesses-as-usual and will only profit and then carry on if any odd moves take place.
Red Hat seems to be doing fine, but with the launch of Fedora and with new development in the F/O community every day, i.e. bypassing the java-trap I do not consider Red Hat being the main focus of anything.
If MS wanted to do a silver-bullet move (it goes without saying it will have to be against some of their past statements and strategies) it would have to to better than that and I'm definitely not the one to help them (at least not for free) out anyhow. Naturally, a moral aspect of victory is much more important in the FOSS world while the business pragmatism is much more of a virtue in the M$ empire, and that makes such speculation possible.
In my experience, such marriages of convenience take a lot more in order to happen.
Not to mention the biggest, obviously ignored obstacle in the plot: egos of the key players. What's next, in other news, Stallman leading a consultancy group in IBM?
how things turn out. It sure takes them Redmond gang a while to come up with anything, when looking at the purchase-company / product-to-market cycle...
People have launched a number of variations on the
"1. massively spread lame s/w w/ vulnerabilites
2. start seling antivirus s/w
3. profit?"
hypothesis. However, this would only turn out to be a correct theory only if the AV s/w worked remarkably well, shifting the virii vulnerability stories focus elsewhere. I wouldn't want to bet a dime on a conspiracy theory or on any type of a silver-bullet solution.
My bet is different - many Redmond products had flaws and some attempts at new niche markets were downright failures. Hence, I'd bet on an AV product that will fit 'normally' into the S win suite, reducing only part of the problems and introducing some (as typical of any s/w) new issues of its own.
A less safe bet, but not to be dismissed, is the ultimate toll-for-disaster scenario, also mentioned times and again in this discussion.
quite right. Color-based retrievals are much easier and cheaper to implement, you know.
I did my BS thesis in CS/CE on CBIR back in '99 and decided to use interest points instead of color statistics in order to explore the options.
While color-based CBIR gives very "good" results as far as color match is concerned and human context is therefore many times hit on the spot and sometimes missed altogether, a simple interest points calculation (filtering the image with a double Gaussian etc.) yields "interesting" results, sometimes returning nice hits and sometimes grouping images with shapes that no human soul could count for similar.
Note that I used and tweaked a method that successfully used when checking for identical images (against forgeries, for example) as a foundation, deliberately, to explore its usefulness in searching for similar images.
Searching for similar images or checking if identical are actually two quite different things.
I imagine you would be just as disappointed using my thesis C program, as the field of computer vision, as we called it, was relatively fresh on the subject at the time. I admit I haven't done any further research since, having to make a living, so I'm not sure what's up and cookin' these days...
Naturally, there are entirely different methods that could serve CBIR purposes (machine learning, neural networks, metadata, text-tags-assisted stuff), but that be a different focus, not the computer vision approach.
not to mention the entire potential
of locations in South America -
Tiwanacu (or something), Bolivia
being the most obvious
(or most fashionable these days).
as every time with M$'n'bugz story, I want to repeat my thesis:
..."
;-)
M$ continually misleads and milks the dumb users that it created.
the worst side effect M$ has spawned over the years, is the
propagation of computer semi- or illiterate users, that are
lead into the illusion of a bulletproof environment that will
do-for-them-what-they-want.
It starts with ignoring any available textbooks, throwing away manuals, thrashing installation guides along with the packaging even before even trying the 'plug-and-pray' ritual, moving on to the belief that anything can be resolved by clicking 'yes' or 'no' to
any set of questions asked by the system. Naturally, this is nerdy behaivour, too.
When something goes wrong, its "fix my computer, you incompetent
phrase for the post-sales, support, sysadmin or any nearest computer-literate person all over again. Here is the difference: a nerd fixes things hands-on, our joe-illiterate-user, on the other hand, blames the nearest nerd!
It's the spoiled brats who defend the main part of M$ market share and most its earnings - since M$ has lead them to believe it can
deliver them an omnipotent tool without the need to learn, maintain or comprehend anything.
M$ deliver now, fix later-or-never politics
that is in clear contrast to the beliefs of its last faithful users,
nicely complements the situation above to create the ultimate "business" model that is beyond any parasitic capabilities.
The only solution offered is buying newer products and paying for support into infinity...
sorry for tipos - blame the M$ IE I just used
the entire next generation of products:
- revolutionary OS
- corresponding office suite
- browser, media player apps. etc.
should be developed:
1. from scratch
2. open source
3. free as free-as-in-whatever
this revolutionary move should be particulary
targeted for non-desktop (mobile gadgets etc)
wireless broadband platforms.
anything less is next to nothing.
The development and progress in computing and technology in general has been slowed down by
lack of vision and need to squeeze out profits from lame products made for retards. High time to make it up to us.
F.I.A.T. = Failure of Italian Automobile Technology
FIAT & M$ - a match made in heaven. Should get along
like a house on fire.
Now which S.O.B. modded this down in matter of minutes? And why?
So is this how it works: working time in Redmond, people paid to mod down anybody sharing the truth about M$?
well, since somebod's asking for it, let's burn some more karma by sheding some more light on the state of things.
Open source community in Slovenia is a strong movement, but compared to what they're up against, they hardly have a fair chance:
Earlier Slashdot story
"MS Rails On Open Source, Appeals To Gov't Greed"
my comment:
Open source has no bribe money to give (Score:1)
by kd4evr (712384) on Wednesday May 26, @09:44AM (#9256757)
attention moderators: Karma2burn
Reading between the lines, M$ is telling governements (and intereseted governement officials in particular) that it is very unlikely that a big open-source deal in a public service would be accompanied by any sort of bonuses, benefits and commi$$ions for the
decision-makers.
1. ignore open source
2. ??????
3. Profit?!
The shortened example below is purely coincidental and totally misses the point:
Slovenia recently decided on a huge license deal with M$, not even considering open source solutions as well as ignoring the news that M$ is willing to give licenses for free to countries just not to switch to non-M$. Another job well done and taxpayers money well spent, would be in tune with the above article.
The interesting detail below is purely coincidental and has no point whatsoever:
Former CEO of M$ Slovenia, now doing intl. business is now married to a former governement-head-of-PR, now vice-chairing the Slovenian chamber of commerce. The happy couple made the tabloid news couple of years ago - he giving her an Audi TT as a gift - or some sort of an engagement present...
Now mod this!
Current state of affairs in Slovenia:
- officially joined EU May this year
- may adopt currency (Euro) in next couple of years
- inflation some 4% and dropping
- cost of living close to EU, paychecks lower, though
- parrent is correct, no globaly-strong economic players there
- only suitable for investors and VC with thich skin and stamina
- too expensive and inflexible public administration (could be true in a lot of places, though)
- taxes the life and blood out of decent citizens and straight businesses
- little to no perspective for young people & families
Developing country is a wrong label for Slovenia. The correct indication is that Slovenia is a country that could be well off and has every chance of being a member of the 'developed' club; however, with a self-centered attidute, minorty complex of a small nation and a prevailing sense of envy and narrow-minded greed in most of the population, the nation is draining its resources the wrong way.
As a non-fitting member of this Slovenian society, constantly contemplating a well known sport of the nation: emigration (or e-migration, for that matter) I still have to develop a term like 'Retarding' country for the state of affairs...
Damn retards even renewed the M$ licenses without a wink of an eye - for big bucks; at the same time the news was out that M$ flexes to zero to stay in business against the cheaper and the better.
The headline should not be "Hooraay - more MBs at Yahoo!"...
It should be something like "Damn - what have these guys done to their system?"
Only latest-and-greatest browsers are suported, so I mostly get nag-nag-nag that I should upgrade and only if I'm lucky, I see what is supposed to be my account. Meanwhile, I keep crashing into other peoples accounts - not seeing their messages, but again, an invitiation to upgrade to Browser 9.whatever...
Don't tell me - they've outsourced to India and are using the difference in salaries not only to profit but also to buy a TB or two storage?
I can cope with free and global, evolution and progress and stuff.
I can take the fact that I may be too expensive when compared to someone with same skills as well as face the fact that someone may deliver better quality for the same paycheck.
We all have chance to change a job if our supervisors want too much while give too little.
There's one situation though I can't cope with:
1. Management offshores and outsources a good product away from a godd crew to a bunch of Hrundi V. Bakshi types never before proven in battle
2. The new N times cheaper crew transforms the good product into crapware, customers lose their temper, sales start going down
3. ???
4. Profit! Managing board gets their bonuses for good yearly figures and moves on to ruin another product while we give each other the infamous "My job went to India, and all I got was this lousy T-" shirts.
We are paying for the advanced management lessons - might as well have them watch Hrundi V. Bakshi on video - even that's probably slightly above their intellectual level...
after some AI reasoning, your question probably translates to:
"How many greedy corporate thieves are going to stuff their pockets by moving entire infrastructure to cheaper-work-force environments?"
Nobody in their right mind - provided that he has technical knowledge and appreciates sysadm experience - will hire cheap or not keep competent personel close at hand.
Dear CEO, thinking of outsourcing: remember Hrundi V. Bakshi?
just ran out of mod points and something like this shows up.
Mud people?
you probably ment adrift, not afloat?
There! I responded to flamebait.
Thanks for your tips. I really appreciatte every bit of battle-proven experience because this is the only acceptable way to improve my tactics with Windows: someone has to try it out and guarantee that it's worth. So far, Norton has proved itself in my books, I've already heard good things about Spybot and AdAware, just have been lucky enough not to need them that much.
The thing is, the battles fought these days are different from what I tried to point out in a comment. Today, auto-updates, antiviral software and stuff like that are a must - and if used properly, are not the main source of problems.
Aunties and grandads will still run into problems no matter what. I'll pass my final judgement on how badly windows really suck once I get around to install an is-linux-ready-for-the-desktop-? distro onto an unsuspecting family member. My hopes are the only difference they'll notice is that "funny, it works well all the time" but a more realistic approach tells me that they'll still run into problems, only that since they will be given a limited set of instructions, I'll be able to solve the limited mess in a reasonable amount of time using the good'ol unix sysadmin knowledge instead of going BOFH...
My point was the general windows "experience" through the decade - not even counting the malware, spyware, adware and virii - using, re-using, customizing and taming the windows "features" was enough of a rollercoaster.
I guess some day it'll have to be payback time for every time when grandma, grandad, mom, dad, uncle{1,2,3} and auntie{1-9} called any respectably computer-educated relative with a question like: "something is wrong with my computer. Can you come and fix it?"
Microsoft tried to spread the delusion that no computer knowledge and background is neccessary to maintain a computer system while making it more and more complex.
Things have reached saturation point these days: every at-least-half computer-literate spends a significant amount of his business and spare time rescuing some system gone bananas.
The fact is that no open source, free as in beer or even proprietary software is much better than any M$ products. The only difference is that these (non-M$) product do not assume self-sufficiency, or praise themselves as the best thing delivered to mankind. Instead of planting the evil seeds of false expectations, it comes natural to people using these product that they need to master a certain level of skill or consult an expert. One knows what one pays for and one knows what one gets!
Microsoft, on the other hand, is simply not transparent. It takes hours of investigation by a computer professional to discover what combination of -khm-features- caused grandma's computer to "start acting funny".
I stopped doing unpaid PC-M$-Win support for my friends and relatives a few years ago, because it was driving me nuts. So, I prepared a one liner fend-off checklist instead:
1. Don't tell me - you are using Windows, right?
2. Who made you think upgrading your system is a good idea?
3. Everything worked fine until recently and gone bizzare for no apparent reason?
4. I have no idea how to fix or even use M$ Outlook. Simply make a choice between using email or running outlook!
5. Other browsers are just fine. When you run onto a site that only opens up in M$ explorer, guess again, who's to blame!
6. Face it - there is no help or anything either you or even a PHD in computer engineering/science can do.
7. Well, that's why Bill Gates is rich and we are poor.
I mean, how deep the world dropped - people started perceiving computers as problems that can only be miracleously solved by throwing money away every few months!
Hopefully, the demise of m$ happens before any kind of world disaster; otherwise, future archeologists from this or another planet will think the dominant planetary religion was playing some solitary card game...
These days, we have more access to more production - but most people are too lazy to increase the effort needed to sift the 99.9% percent of the dirt to find that 1% of the pure gold.
.. can't be that...
The industry did all it could to hide & bury the good stuff. I'm fortunate to have friends that are collectors and conossieurs in different styles, so I can pick a few hints and save a lot of time - and at least sometimes listen to good music.
It is very sad that everything is targeted toward some imposed and supposed teenage fashion, all with the single purpose of stealing the small few bucks out of unsuspected teenagers' back pockets. The next logical step would be that instead of giving kids monthly allowance parents simply mail the check to RIAA in some sort of subscription scheme (like: tax on having a naive teenage kid in the house that will fall for every silly fad and trick in the book each season in a row until they get kids of their own)...
Oh, what... No,
there is a point to all this!
P.S.:
There was always junk, but mass marketing of today has mad junk the law. I can't figure out what happened to MTV. If I accidentaly switch to it for a second, it seems like that it's the same show all day long all year round: a guy with naked chest, golden chain around his neck and a fur coat over the shoulders, surrounded by GLLYBs in bikinis on a luxurious set. It almost seems that every video made uses the same yacht and the very same three fancy european top brand cars in an exclusive paint-job!
Your question is innacurately put, but to the point. Anything is possible, and we do know little.
Even weather forecasts for next tuesday are a mix of thumb-rules, heuristics, ad-hoc models empirically improved over the years, some fortune-telling and phsycic vision; and they still miss it!
However, we do have some (innacurate and incomplete, though) data throughout written history of mankind, as well as geological evidence that enables us to make reasonable educated guesses about what was the climate like. Mile-thick layers of ice on the polar caps are probably the best record there can be.
So climatology these days uses the data for centuries and millenia to develop models of future behaviour. The 100 year cronology on day-to-day weather data has little to do with the topic.
The point is, that things we are encoutering today, differ somewhat in their intensity and specifics from anything in written human history. Where I come from, people have farmed for at least 1500 years. Nowdays, their ever more important line of bussiness in the last decase is filing natural disaster damage claims to governement and insurance companies.
Just don't get me started on what skiing seasons were like and what happens now. Note that here in Slovenia (alpine) skiing has at least a 300 year tradition...
I used to contribute all the environmentalist panic to statisticaly acceptable ripple 15 years ago. Ten years ago, I started worrying since I saw every reason to do so.
attention moderators: Karma2burn
Reading between the lines, M$ is telling governements (and intereseted governement officials in particular) that it is very unlikely that a big open-source deal in a public service would be accompanied by any sort of bonuses, benefits and commi$$ions for the decision-makers.
1. ignore open source
2. ??????
3. Profit?!
The shortened example below is purely coincidental and totally misses the point:
Slovenia recently decided on a huge license deal with M$, not even considering open source solutions as well as ignoring the news that M$ is willing to give licenses for free to countries just not to switch to non-M$.
Another job well done and taxpayers money well spent, would be in tune with the above article.
The interesting detail below is purely coincidental and has no point whatsoever:
Former CEO of M$ Slovenia is now married to a former governement-head-of-PR. The happy couple made the tabloid news couple of years ago - he giving her an Audi TT as a gift - or some sort of an engagement present...
Thank you for moderating this comment. This is not a signature. Handle with care. No lifeguard on duty. Anything below this point is no longer related to the post above. He who dies with the most taglines wins. Why don't somebody, following the fine example of RIAA, sue Microsoft for designing, providing and distributing virus-spreading tools?
Only partly a surprise. China and the Chinese have a tradition of being somewhat exclusive and prefer to keep to themselves, which goes severeal thousands years back in their culture.
l ga), tough luck for them and little good news for us.
Leaving communism, human (and intelectual) rights aside, not to mention the Tibet, this may be a move that should be welcomed by international techonlogical, academic and economic community.
China has the resources to implement and test a set of its own standards. What we should all hope for is that they come up with something better than what we have to endure with today.
Hopefully, the ol'days of cold war are over where any result was accepted as long as it was a product of the 'right' 'working class'.
So this may, with a positive approach, stir up the competition.
If communist China, however, will practice the ol'style and come up with a kludgy design (remember-Wartburg-Trabant-Lada-Moskvich-Tatra-Vo
Good question!
Every corporate user (or group of users) faces a dilemma:
- stick with the good ol' NT 4 stuff which they finally mastered and managed to put in some kind of stable and working order, not only to avoid pitfalls with new bugs (oops, features) but also to avoid W2k and XP specific viral and security exploits to limit their security update efforts;
- or migrate at some point, hoping to avoid both old aches and pains as well as lack of features and interoperability compared to those entitites who migrated already.
Considering all side factors (sysadmin skills and preferences, ability to spend & invest in infrastructure), parent (darnok) has a point: those who hadn't yet migrated, are not likely to do so unless they are lured into a honeytrap of some sort: either new value, package deals or discounts, etc.
Finnaly, if those (probably smart) people would want to migrate, wouldn't they consider all options and likely consider the competition - give linux driven solutions a go?
I used to ignore eco-nuts and still avoid'em wherever I can.
Sapienti sat - my point was not panicking about planetary disaster; what pisses me of are the facts that:
- we've had too many 'excellent vintages' in our vineyards, followed by a few disastrous seasons;
- I've experienced a variety of odd skiing conditions during the season, mostly interrupted by lacks of snow and too high temperatures, leaving man-made snow as the last chance to get any skiing at all;
- fruit doesn't grow the way is should, the grassess bloom like crazy causing (me) extensive hayfever, insects spreading...
Ten years ago I could say, too, heck, it's all within the statistical curve; nowdays, I know some serious s**t must be going down - and nobody's to know exactly what!
Hmm...
;-)
Earth may have a self-regulating system we do not yet (fully) understand. When you say its a robust system, you are right. Our climate models may well be worth squat, right again.
Dinosaurs did quite well for quite a long time, until they could...
However, the issue is not whether human interventions can fully derail earth's climate or only tackle the parameters a bit.
The point is, that the changes in the weather we as a civilisation started will most certainly affect our way of life as we know it. Human is considered the most adaptable species, present in all kinds of environments. I cannot argue whether we are going to drive ourselves into extinction or not by what we did to the climate, but surely life (and survival) in either dry deserts, frozen glaciers or stormy swamps has little to do with the current trends in economy. There is a vast difference between a habitable and comfortable climate, you see...
Dont start the IPO on that dino-breeding company just yet
Then again, their website is simulating the common M$ features very well right now...
so I stand corrected...
simulating 100% compatibility with a faulty, buggy, unpredictable and unmanageable s/w is either a prank or a contradiction in terms.
My congrats to the 4 students for yet-another-distro but they surely won't able to simulate all the blue screens, dr. watson's and virii prone (with-welcome-sign) openings in less than 2.5*10^4 years. It took a lot of engineering hours in Redmond to make Windows the masterpile of crap that it is today.
I don't think further bridges are neccessary - the trend is Linux and doing well...