A person is guilty of an offence if--
(a)
he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer; and
(b)
at the time when he does the act he has the requisite intent and the requisite knowledge.
So, if a script kiddy just tries everything without knowing what he does, he goes free?
You make it sound like opendoc encapsulates every possible piece of data and information you'd ever want to store in a document in order to re-create it.
Exactly.
I hate Open Document. Sure, it's a nice idea to have a standard format, but their style-handling just... sucks. Most used example : Outlining. OOo cannot even do as simple things as note chapters 1 to 12 and then Appendixes A, B, C. There are stupid workarounds (using an outline level 9 for Appendixes and hoping that it doesnt break anything) but it still a PITA.
Ok, I have an itch, I could just write a patch, right? Well, no. As the file format is fixed, I can write a patch that makes the user interface do what I want, but I cannot save it, as the file format doesnt support it. And as the file format is now directed by a commitee, I cannot simply change it.
Thankfully, OpenDocument is XML, so, I end up using a script that unpacks the file and applies some XSLT stylesheets, everytime I want to print it, but still, it's a hassle. (And yes, I know LaTeX would be better, I'm just too lazy to learn it.)
Bottom line : a frozen file format only makes sense if you make it turing complete (i.e. add a programming language, even if it's such a bastard thing as XSLT) as otherwise, you will end up beeing limited by the file format.
There is significantly more impact on aggressive attitudes than on behavior.
And there is significant dispute whether or not an aggressive attitude is bad. After all, an aggressive attitude also means to take a stand for oneself.
And while the article acknoledges that TV has twice the impact that violent games have, he seams a little bit uninformed about TV :
Unlike television, which has only undergone a change from black and white to a color display, videogames are constantly changing in appearance.
Err, hello? Talkshows, reality TV, public humilation on TV? These didn't exist a few decades ago. TV is constantly changing too.
But the article got my approval back at the end :
Perhaps more effort should be spent to improve tried and true methods, such as parental involvement. You'd be hard pressed to find a single argument against parents having more participation in their children's lives and the research backs this up with positive results. Remember the study that looked at trait hostility and violent games? One other finding was that when children reported parental involvement in their videogame playing and game choices, they also reported improved grades and less aggressive behaviors.
Good suggestion. Parents should stop blaming others for their inability to raise their children. And politicians should stop giving parents the illusion that their children can be fixed simply by passing laws.
"Reasonable suspicion" in the US used to mean that the cops did not hassle (or spy on) *anyone* that wasn't doing something suspicious, even when the person was in public.
Does it? Cops have always patrolled some areas. Driving around in a car, listening and looking. When they see something suspicious (like, three young males kicking on something that looks like a human body), they look harder and intervene if it turns out to be a crime. They did not, however, stopped you & searched your pockets. They did neither put a camera into your house or listened (without a warrant) on your phone.
Basicly, I differenciat three types of surveillance actions by cops : - hassling (I have to stop doing what I wanted, i.e. stopping a car, searching a house)
In the US, this isnt allowed without reasonable suspicion - surveillance (observing the "public" areas, where nobody expects privacy, i.e. patrolling, camera surveillance)
Allowed - spying (observing the "private" areas, where people expect privacy, i.e. phone tapping)
Not allowed without a warrant
Now, where does cyberspace belong to? Electonic surveillance is certainly not hassling, but is it spying or just looking? Cypherpunks certainly claim that it is a private area and that nobody should even so much as look what they are doing. Cops claim that it is public, and that using monitoring tools is equivalent to street patrolling : taking a quick look in order to detect crime.
I think we must have a very public debate on the nature of cyberspace. After all, even though it goes over a phone line, it is not like a phone call, but much more diverse. E-mail is more like a post-card. Is IM more like a phone call or like a conversion in the street? Is a webpage like a journal, a mall or a playing ground? Does it depend on the website? If a run a webserver on my home computer, is this like having something in my house, on my lawn, or something else?
Currently the police seams to treat cyberspace like a public area and does pretty much what they want to do in it. I'm against this attitude. However, is the solution really to have a "everything in cyberspace is private" policy? After all, most people accept police patrols and even think that they are a good thing, that they keep the streets safer.
They've got DNA... but they aren't "alive". Isn't it a no-brainer that they came before cells?
No.
Current viruses cannot replicate without an nuturing environnement, i.e. outside a cell. Therefor, the theory was that cells were there before viruses and that viruses evolved from RNA/DNA fragments.
The article mentionned the idea that viruses might have evolved from something a little bit more complex but distinct, that was able to replicate outside a cell and became simpler after cells emerged. Another idea the article presents is that viruses might have high-jacked bacteria (cells without a nucleid) and stayed inside, becomming the nucleid, thereby creating eukaryotes (cells with a nucleid), the base of all complexe life.
When I was still in high-school, I had done some programming and as my mother needed to port an old dBase address database to Windows, I did it for her using Access.
Well, this thing still works and is in use. However, when I look at it...::shudder::... there are some very stupid rookie mistakes in there, that will make maintenance difficult.
Example : Children, ages & name (the database was for an organisation of parents).. As people have different amounts of children, I just put in four columns for ages and for the name. Today, I know the proper way to do such stuff, but back then, I didnt.
And the "average joe" will do such things and worse... Bottom line : NEVER let the average joe help on a big project, the unmaintanable code will hunt you when you try to integrate things. However, the average joe might do some simple programming in isolated projects.
Hmm... thanks for the info (seriously and inseriously) :
So from the letter, Perfect 10 basicly wants Google to enforce their copyright for them and block every page that has a disclaimer that they dont own the copyright on every image it contains... which seems pretty excessiv to me. First, most non-commercial pages on the web have such a disclaimer it. Second, you need some text-understanding to know whether or not a page claims ownership over it's images. Third, a lot of pages that have nothing to do with Perfect 10 fall under it. Fourth, even pages that show images from Perfect 10 might have a right (either through licence or fair use) to do so.
What I find interesting is the proposition of a temporary access (account) to Perfect 10's content. Of course, going by hand through the - most likely - hundred of thousands of images Perfect 10 owns is stupid. They could have given Google a list of md5 sums though and told them to remove any image from their search that matches them... and Google could have shown some good faith and asked for such a list themself.
Inseriously, the letter contains a rather extensive list of free porn sites containing rips of commercial sites...;)
Of course Google infringed on Perfect 10's copyright by showing these images.
So was it that : A) Perfect 10 complained to Google about it and Google just said : "fair use, so get lost" and Perfect 10 had to sue Google to enforce his copyright? or B) Perfect 10 saw these images and decided to sue Google because Google has money but the guys who really infringed his copyright (the sites which published to images) had none?
In case A, Google is at fault for not removing copyrighted images, but in case B, while still infringing on Perfect 10's copyright, Google could claim due diligence, stating that they assumed the pictures to be publicly available because they were, duh, publicly available on the rogue sites.
And on a side note, the book publishers are stupid. This case only shows that, while in general reduced quality previews (thumbnails) are fair use, there are special cases (the mobile market) were they arent because the publisher makes money from them. It doesnt proove that no reduced quality preview falls under fair use. So, as long as they cannot prove that they to, make money from book snippets, they will loose. (Of course, they may make a RIAA, offering text snippets on cell-phones, then claim that nobody buys them because of these Google pirates; completly ignoring that nobody would buy text snippets from books on his cell-phone anyway...)
I don;t think many people want 2 inch porn pictures.
Well, I dont know either who is crazy enough to pay for this, but I sure have seen a lot of ads for them on european late night TV. Probably the same people who paid 3$ for a 8kbps ring tone 6 years ago and who are now old enough to buy porn. (Seriously, why are people ready to pay insane amounts of money for incredible bad quality, just because it's on a cell-phone?)
restraining orders are probably going to start having sections on internet contact
First, every restraining order already has a section against "contacting". After all, tele-harassement is an old issue and if it's done by phone or by IM is no difference.
Second, do not solve with law what can be solved easily otherwise. Seriously. In most IM apps, you can simply block someone, so the law should not intervene. If someone doesnt block me on IM, I take this as an invitation to chat with him, restraining order or not. (I never got one though) However, if he blocked me and I would create new accounts, send anonymous messages, etc to get around the block, well, then the law should intervene to make me stop.
Of course, it wont stop spam. This is marketing bullshit.
But one of the biggest problems with spam isn't the spam itself, that's just an annoyance. The biggest problem is that spam-filters have made email unreliable. Today, when I send a message, I'm not sure if the recipient will get it or if it will end up as a false positiv. And for some buisiness mails, even a.1% chance that it will end up as a false positiv is prohibitiv. This leads to such stupid things as people sending a mail, then calling and asking if the other one got their email.
Now, this scheme can prove interesting as it give buisiness a way to guarantee delivery of crucial email.
And for thoose crying "extortion" : snail mail already does this : for a fee, they will deliver the mail directly to the person and collect their signature, thereby granting guaranteed delivery. And they advertise that they care more about these mails, so that there is less chance of them "getting lost".
So : this does nothing to fighting spam, but guaranteed delivery is still interesting.
On the other hand, if they really remove their spam-filter and only deliver white-listed and paid-for mail to the inbox and everything else to the spam folder (like I read in another article about this plan), now, this would actually make spam worse, as it would increase the number of false positives so much that everybody would have to read their spam-box anyway.
But it still needs huge subsidies, because building a plant is far too expensiv. A nuclear plant needs a decade to bring in the construction costs. That's why nobody in today's competitiv economy is building nuclear plants. Nobody makes an investement that will pay off only after 10 years. After these are amortized however, it is one of the cheapest energy sources around.
While I'm against the concrete form choosen in version 3, DRM is a real problem for the GPL, as the DMCA goes against the very spirit of the GPL.
I could use GPLed software and create a DRM program with it. Normally, everybody can modify it, right?
Well, perhaps not : as it is a protection measure, I can try to sue everybody that does modify it under the DMCA, claiming that any modification to my software lessens the protection, and therefor infringes the DMCA (IANAL, so I'm not sure if this could succeed). So, by declaring my software to be a DRM, I could basicly prevent anybody from modifying it.
Worse, not only I, but if it is a general purpose DRM system, any author of content protected by this DRM could sue you if you modify the software.
The DMCA creates a huge mess : normally illegal actions done with software (even if it is modified GPL-software) are, of course, illegal. But with the DMCA, modifying software itself can be illegal, even if no other illegal act is commited (exemple : excercising fair use rights).
So, the GPL would like to say that modifying (and using) GPLed software is never illegal in itself, only if another illegal act is commited.
Why I'm against the form choosen in the GPLv3 : it only adresses the DMCA in it's current form (and even then, I'm not sure, if it will stand up in court), but with a new law, modifying GPLed software can become illegal again. And the licence will always be behind the law.
I have a friend who did his master thesis on it and..., well eigenfaces dont work. (Eigenfaces : try to reconstruct a picture with a linear combination of other pictures)
First, it is still to much information to get a good result out of it. Eigenfeatures (only create eigenvectors of special features (eyes, nose, mouth) not the whole face) are a better way to go, BUT
They are simply way too sensible to size and orientation : be 1 cm closer to the monitor, tilt your head by 1 degree and oops : eigenfaces no longer work. So to get eigenfaces/features to work properly, you have to reposition the image first to get the exact same size & orientation, and I dont know if anybody has succeeded at it yet.
There are better approches, by actually getting a geometrical representation (lips & brows as a curve, eyes & pupils as ellipses) and then feed this information (position, size & shape) into a classification algorithm, but this is very recent stuff.
And to add to this : psychologists actually question if it is even feasible to know the emotion of a person from their face, as people are quite good at controlling their facial expression:-|
So, facial emotion recognition is in its infancy and may not even be feasible. And just because a computer turns out some numbers doesnt mean theese are better than a complete guess.
Bottom line : probably just real bad pseudo-scientific journalism. Nothing to see here, move along.
After all the crap i've seen published (even in scientific journals) about facial (emotion) recognition, I'll believe in it when I can download an implementation from the net and test it myself.
Yes, exactly, otherwise it wouldn't be running. Actually it is extremly difficult to balance a robot running.
Already walking (having one feet off the ground sometime) is much harder than just using wheels (ground contact all the time). Every time a foot lifts, the other foot must rebalance the entire body. This is very hard. Robots only learned to walk recently and IIRC ASIMO was the first who managed to walk steps. The benefits are, of course, a far greater mobility (humans can walk over almost every terrain, while wheels end at the first higher step).
Real running is even more difficult. Having both feet off the ground (and even just for 0.08 seconds as does ASIMO) is a highly delicated thing. First, you need the force to propulse yourself in the air. Then, you have to put the other feed correctly on the ground, catch the impact without affecting your innertia forward too much and push yourself forward again. Running is controlled falling.
To illustrate how hard 2-legged running is : humans are the only primate capable of real 2-legged running, and IIRC, the only 2-legged runner.
It's a lot easier than saying a Linux/Apache server with MySQL and web applications written in PHP
Well, that is exactly the problem : why to be so specific? After all, nobody sais LWDJ (Linux, Websphere, DB/2 and Java) or SOOJ (Solaris, Oracle AppServer, Oracle Database and Java)
It doesnt matter if the underlying OS is Linux or.{3,4}BSD, it doesnt matter if the Server is Apache or... well, ok there isn't really anything else there in the UNIX world. It doesnt really matter if the Database is MySQL, PostgreSQL, SimpleSQL or even Oracle. And apparently (as nobody knows what exactly the P stands for), it doesn't even matter if the language is PHP, Perl or Python.
Well, it does matter in a real project, as all these applications have different strengths and weaknesses, so select the right one. But here, we are comparing this "platform" to Java. Java is only the language (+ App Server specification), it says NOTHING about the OS, nor the database. So, if we ignore these details when speaking about Java, why are they becomming important for LAMP?
IMNSHO, LAMP based WebApp is just a buzzed way of saying : Open Source based WebApp (hey, new buzz-word : OSWA;p )
Actually, it would be a good opportunity for Google to step forward and announce that they will sign the 2'nd and 3'rd place winners.
Err... ever heard of Google Code Jam?
They are already doing it [a programming contest] (worldwide) and the first price is 10 000$ cash, not a job offer. (Although I'm quite sure that everyone of the top 25 get's a job offer; hey, I only participated and got a "we'll be pleased to read your resume" letter (plus T-Shirt)) Oh, and the top 100 get a paid visite to Googleplex for the last rounds.
Lack of privacy isn't a problem. The problem is inegality of privacy. One could argue (and I believe) that perfect surveillance (everybody knows everything about everyone) will create a better society than we have now. This is why the U.S. constitution calls for complete governement openness.
However, today we have inequal privacy : the governement and coorporations know quite a lot about the citizens, but the citizens know nothing about coorporations and about the governement only what the governement chooses to not declare "national security". (i.e. the governement chooses what the citizens might know about it... and this flies in the face of the constitution)
Knowledge is power, and with secret surveillance, the power goes to however does the secret surveillance.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate Open Document. Sure, it's a nice idea to have a standard format, but their style-handling just
Most used example : Outlining. OOo cannot even do as simple things as note chapters 1 to 12 and then Appendixes A, B, C. There are stupid workarounds (using an outline level 9 for Appendixes and hoping that it doesnt break anything) but it still a PITA.
Ok, I have an itch, I could just write a patch, right? Well, no. As the file format is fixed, I can write a patch that makes the user interface do what I want, but I cannot save it, as the file format doesnt support it. And as the file format is now directed by a commitee, I cannot simply change it.
Thankfully, OpenDocument is XML, so, I end up using a script that unpacks the file and applies some XSLT stylesheets, everytime I want to print it, but still, it's a hassle. (And yes, I know LaTeX would be better, I'm just too lazy to learn it.)
Bottom line : a frozen file format only makes sense if you make it turing complete (i.e. add a programming language, even if it's such a bastard thing as XSLT) as otherwise, you will end up beeing limited by the file format.
From the article : And there is significant dispute whether or not an aggressive attitude is bad. After all, an aggressive attitude also means to take a stand for oneself.
And while the article acknoledges that TV has twice the impact that violent games have, he seams a little bit uninformed about TV : Err, hello? Talkshows, reality TV, public humilation on TV? These didn't exist a few decades ago. TV is constantly changing too.
But the article got my approval back at the end : Good suggestion. Parents should stop blaming others for their inability to raise their children. And politicians should stop giving parents the illusion that their children can be fixed simply by passing laws.
The article is actually pretty interesting, because, although he seams to have an agenda, he cites a lot of scientific evidence.
And about TV (from the article) :
Cops have always patrolled some areas. Driving around in a car, listening and looking. When they see something suspicious (like, three young males kicking on something that looks like a human body), they look harder and intervene if it turns out to be a crime.
They did not, however, stopped you & searched your pockets. They did neither put a camera into your house or listened (without a warrant) on your phone.
Basicly, I differenciat three types of surveillance actions by cops :
- hassling (I have to stop doing what I wanted, i.e. stopping a car, searching a house)
In the US, this isnt allowed without reasonable suspicion
- surveillance (observing the "public" areas, where nobody expects privacy, i.e. patrolling, camera surveillance)
Allowed
- spying (observing the "private" areas, where people expect privacy, i.e. phone tapping)
Not allowed without a warrant
Now, where does cyberspace belong to?
Electonic surveillance is certainly not hassling, but is it spying or just looking?
Cypherpunks certainly claim that it is a private area and that nobody should even so much as look what they are doing.
Cops claim that it is public, and that using monitoring tools is equivalent to street patrolling : taking a quick look in order to detect crime.
I think we must have a very public debate on the nature of cyberspace.
After all, even though it goes over a phone line, it is not like a phone call, but much more diverse.
E-mail is more like a post-card.
Is IM more like a phone call or like a conversion in the street?
Is a webpage like a journal, a mall or a playing ground? Does it depend on the website?
If a run a webserver on my home computer, is this like having something in my house, on my lawn, or something else?
Currently the police seams to treat cyberspace like a public area and does pretty much what they want to do in it. I'm against this attitude. However, is the solution really to have a "everything in cyberspace is private" policy? After all, most people accept police patrols and even think that they are a good thing, that they keep the streets safer.
Current viruses cannot replicate without an nuturing environnement, i.e. outside a cell. Therefor, the theory was that cells were there before viruses and that viruses evolved from RNA/DNA fragments.
The article mentionned the idea that viruses might have evolved from something a little bit more complex but distinct, that was able to replicate outside a cell and became simpler after cells emerged.
Another idea the article presents is that viruses might have high-jacked bacteria (cells without a nucleid) and stayed inside, becomming the nucleid, thereby creating eukaryotes (cells with a nucleid), the base of all complexe life.
Exactly!
... ::shudder:: ... there are some very stupid rookie mistakes in there, that will make maintenance difficult.
.. As people have different amounts of children, I just put in four columns for ages and for the name. Today, I know the proper way to do such stuff, but back then, I didnt.
...
When I was still in high-school, I had done some programming and as my mother needed to port an old dBase address database to Windows, I did it for her using Access.
Well, this thing still works and is in use. However, when I look at it
Example : Children, ages & name (the database was for an organisation of parents)
And the "average joe" will do such things and worse
Bottom line : NEVER let the average joe help on a big project, the unmaintanable code will hunt you when you try to integrate things. However, the average joe might do some simple programming in isolated projects.
Hmm ... thanks for the info (seriously and inseriously) :
... which seems pretty excessiv to me.
... and Google could have shown some good faith and asked for such a list themself.
... ;)
So from the letter, Perfect 10 basicly wants Google to enforce their copyright for them and block every page that has a disclaimer that they dont own the copyright on every image it contains
First, most non-commercial pages on the web have such a disclaimer it.
Second, you need some text-understanding to know whether or not a page claims ownership over it's images.
Third, a lot of pages that have nothing to do with Perfect 10 fall under it.
Fourth, even pages that show images from Perfect 10 might have a right (either through licence or fair use) to do so.
What I find interesting is the proposition of a temporary access (account) to Perfect 10's content. Of course, going by hand through the - most likely - hundred of thousands of images Perfect 10 owns is stupid. They could have given Google a list of md5 sums though and told them to remove any image from their search that matches them
Inseriously, the letter contains a rather extensive list of free porn sites containing rips of commercial sites
Has anybody more information on this case?
...)
Of course Google infringed on Perfect 10's copyright by showing these images.
So was it that :
A) Perfect 10 complained to Google about it and Google just said : "fair use, so get lost" and Perfect 10 had to sue Google to enforce his copyright?
or
B) Perfect 10 saw these images and decided to sue Google because Google has money but the guys who really infringed his copyright (the sites which published to images) had none?
In case A, Google is at fault for not removing copyrighted images, but in case B, while still infringing on Perfect 10's copyright, Google could claim due diligence, stating that they assumed the pictures to be publicly available because they were, duh, publicly available on the rogue sites.
And on a side note, the book publishers are stupid. This case only shows that, while in general reduced quality previews (thumbnails) are fair use, there are special cases (the mobile market) were they arent because the publisher makes money from them. It doesnt proove that no reduced quality preview falls under fair use. So, as long as they cannot prove that they to, make money from book snippets, they will loose.
(Of course, they may make a RIAA, offering text snippets on cell-phones, then claim that nobody buys them because of these Google pirates; completly ignoring that nobody would buy text snippets from books on his cell-phone anyway
I don;t think many people want 2 inch porn pictures.
Well, I dont know either who is crazy enough to pay for this, but I sure have seen a lot of ads for them on european late night TV.
Probably the same people who paid 3$ for a 8kbps ring tone 6 years ago and who are now old enough to buy porn. (Seriously, why are people ready to pay insane amounts of money for incredible bad quality, just because it's on a cell-phone?)
Second, do not solve with law what can be solved easily otherwise. Seriously. In most IM apps, you can simply block someone, so the law should not intervene. If someone doesnt block me on IM, I take this as an invitation to chat with him, restraining order or not. (I never got one though)
However, if he blocked me and I would create new accounts, send anonymous messages, etc to get around the block, well, then the law should intervene to make me stop.
They want to go up to 62000 miles
;-)
...
They had 1000 feets at the end of september 2005
They have 1500 feets now, a 1.5 times improvement in 4.5 month
According to Google Calculator :
(log((62 000 miles) / (1 500 feet)) / log(1.5)) * (4.5 month) = 11.369675 years
Or the other way round :
1 500 feet * 1.5^((11.37 years) / (4.5 month)) = 62 021.7921 miles
Their countdown : 12 years, 58 days
So, as long as they keep this exponentiel growth, they'll get there
If they have linear growth however, it'll be a while
(((62 000 miles) - (1 500 feet)) / (500 feet)) * (4.5 month) = 245 518.875 years
Of course, it wont stop spam. This is marketing bullshit.
.1% chance that it will end up as a false positiv is prohibitiv. This leads to such stupid things as people sending a mail, then calling and asking if the other one got their email.
But one of the biggest problems with spam isn't the spam itself, that's just an annoyance. The biggest problem is that spam-filters have made email unreliable.
Today, when I send a message, I'm not sure if the recipient will get it or if it will end up as a false positiv. And for some buisiness mails, even a
Now, this scheme can prove interesting as it give buisiness a way to guarantee delivery of crucial email.
And for thoose crying "extortion" : snail mail already does this : for a fee, they will deliver the mail directly to the person and collect their signature, thereby granting guaranteed delivery. And they advertise that they care more about these mails, so that there is less chance of them "getting lost".
So : this does nothing to fighting spam, but guaranteed delivery is still interesting.
On the other hand, if they really remove their spam-filter and only deliver white-listed and paid-for mail to the inbox and everything else to the spam folder (like I read in another article about this plan), now, this would actually make spam worse, as it would increase the number of false positives so much that everybody would have to read their spam-box anyway.
Extending range? Simple : remove the oxygen from the air.
e fits-60ghz.php
Actually, there are folks using it over 2.5 km (with expensiv antennas, and NOT through walls) :
http://www.terabeam.com/solutions/whitepapers/ben
(I suspect that the 10m might actually be a feature to allow frequencies to be re-used)
Nuclear energy is cheap, really cheap.
But it still needs huge subsidies, because building a plant is far too expensiv. A nuclear plant needs a decade to bring in the construction costs. That's why nobody in today's competitiv economy is building nuclear plants. Nobody makes an investement that will pay off only after 10 years. After these are amortized however, it is one of the cheapest energy sources around.
and as a sister post pointed out, GE too.
BTW, there is no technical difference between an electric motor and an electrical generator
Blessed be her holy hooves.
The summary got it wrong,
the study states that there are more pages using title, than pages using br. NOT that more title tags are used than br tags.
Approximatly 98% of all pages have a title tag and approximatly 7 out of 8 pages have (at least one, probably more) br tags.
While I'm against the concrete form choosen in version 3, DRM is a real problem for the GPL, as the DMCA goes against the very spirit of the GPL.
I could use GPLed software and create a DRM program with it. Normally, everybody can modify it, right?
Well, perhaps not : as it is a protection measure, I can try to sue everybody that does modify it under the DMCA, claiming that any modification to my software lessens the protection, and therefor infringes the DMCA (IANAL, so I'm not sure if this could succeed). So, by declaring my software to be a DRM, I could basicly prevent anybody from modifying it.
Worse, not only I, but if it is a general purpose DRM system, any author of content protected by this DRM could sue you if you modify the software.
The DMCA creates a huge mess : normally illegal actions done with software (even if it is modified GPL-software) are, of course, illegal. But with the DMCA, modifying software itself can be illegal, even if no other illegal act is commited (exemple : excercising fair use rights).
So, the GPL would like to say that modifying (and using) GPLed software is never illegal in itself, only if another illegal act is commited.
Why I'm against the form choosen in the GPLv3 : it only adresses the DMCA in it's current form (and even then, I'm not sure, if it will stand up in court), but with a new law, modifying GPLed software can become illegal again. And the licence will always be behind the law.
I have a friend who did his master thesis on it and ..., well eigenfaces dont work.
:-|
(Eigenfaces : try to reconstruct a picture with a linear combination of other pictures)
First, it is still to much information to get a good result out of it.
Eigenfeatures (only create eigenvectors of special features (eyes, nose, mouth) not the whole face) are a better way to go, BUT
They are simply way too sensible to size and orientation : be 1 cm closer to the monitor, tilt your head by 1 degree and oops : eigenfaces no longer work. So to get eigenfaces/features to work properly, you have to reposition the image first to get the exact same size & orientation, and I dont know if anybody has succeeded at it yet.
There are better approches, by actually getting a geometrical representation (lips & brows as a curve, eyes & pupils as ellipses) and then feed this information (position, size & shape) into a classification algorithm, but this is very recent stuff.
And to add to this : psychologists actually question if it is even feasible to know the emotion of a person from their face, as people are quite good at controlling their facial expression
So, facial emotion recognition is in its infancy and may not even be feasible.
And just because a computer turns out some numbers doesnt mean theese are better than a complete guess.
Bottom line : probably just real bad pseudo-scientific journalism.
Nothing to see here, move along.
After all the crap i've seen published (even in scientific journals) about facial (emotion) recognition, I'll believe in it when I can download an implementation from the net and test it myself.
RUN with both feet OFF THE GROUND?
Yes, exactly, otherwise it wouldn't be running.
Actually it is extremly difficult to balance a robot running.
Already walking (having one feet off the ground sometime) is much harder than just using wheels (ground contact all the time). Every time a foot lifts, the other foot must rebalance the entire body. This is very hard. Robots only learned to walk recently and IIRC ASIMO was the first who managed to walk steps. The benefits are, of course, a far greater mobility (humans can walk over almost every terrain, while wheels end at the first higher step).
Real running is even more difficult. Having both feet off the ground (and even just for 0.08 seconds as does ASIMO) is a highly delicated thing. First, you need the force to propulse yourself in the air. Then, you have to put the other feed correctly on the ground, catch the impact without affecting your innertia forward too much and push yourself forward again. Running is controlled falling.
To illustrate how hard 2-legged running is : humans are the only primate capable of real 2-legged running, and IIRC, the only 2-legged runner.
It's a lot easier than saying a Linux/Apache server with MySQL and web applications written in PHP
.{3,4}BSD, it doesnt matter if the Server is Apache or ... well, ok there isn't really anything else there in the UNIX world. It doesnt really matter if the Database is MySQL, PostgreSQL, SimpleSQL or even Oracle. And apparently (as nobody knows what exactly the P stands for), it doesn't even matter if the language is PHP, Perl or Python.
;p )
Well, that is exactly the problem : why to be so specific?
After all, nobody sais LWDJ (Linux, Websphere, DB/2 and Java) or SOOJ (Solaris, Oracle AppServer, Oracle Database and Java)
It doesnt matter if the underlying OS is Linux or
Well, it does matter in a real project, as all these applications have different strengths and weaknesses, so select the right one.
But here, we are comparing this "platform" to Java. Java is only the language (+ App Server specification), it says NOTHING about the OS, nor the database. So, if we ignore these details when speaking about Java, why are they becomming important for LAMP?
IMNSHO, LAMP based WebApp is just a buzzed way of saying : Open Source based WebApp (hey, new buzz-word : OSWA
Actually, it would be a good opportunity for Google to step forward and announce that they will sign the 2'nd and 3'rd place winners.
... ever heard of Google Code Jam?
Err
They are already doing it [a programming contest] (worldwide) and the first price is 10 000$ cash, not a job offer.
(Although I'm quite sure that everyone of the top 25 get's a job offer; hey, I only participated and got a "we'll be pleased to read your resume" letter (plus T-Shirt))
Oh, and the top 100 get a paid visite to Googleplex for the last rounds.
He correctly points out that webmail does put the originating IP in the email-header, and therefor can be traced.
This is completly true.
... and this flies in the face of the constitution)
Lack of privacy isn't a problem.
The problem is inegality of privacy.
One could argue (and I believe) that perfect surveillance (everybody knows everything about everyone) will create a better society than we have now. This is why the U.S. constitution calls for complete governement openness.
However, today we have inequal privacy : the governement and coorporations know quite a lot about the citizens, but the citizens know nothing about coorporations and about the governement only what the governement chooses to not declare "national security". (i.e. the governement chooses what the citizens might know about it
Knowledge is power, and with secret surveillance, the power goes to however does the secret surveillance.