People get pissy when I insist they use proper terminology when conveying ideas and information. I think those people ignorant, yet here we are suffering (again) because of bad terminology.
While the theory of evolution is correct, the multiple uses of the word theory give rise to confusion if not downright misinformation. I'm amazed that those involved with genetic research can know of the theory of evolution on the one hand and on the other assume that there is so much junk in our genome? Now we are stuck with their original gaff. If Darwin was right about evolution, then all that DNA stuff has to be there for a reason. Same with the 10% of the brain thing. It's all there for a reason, we simply do not yet know the reason.
Master/slave is one of those terms that is correct, and technically makes sense, but now we are pc and don't like those terms anymore so we have to use something else. I've seen huge threads arguing on that one. There are more examples of terminology problems, but the point is that using the correct terminology, and naming things with their future use in mind is important. The 'here there be dragons' idea is quite valid. Sounds a lot like 'somebody needs to document this code' to me.
I never heard of it before, but then finding it has not been on my todo list for years either.. rather a recent addition. I hope there is something like that.
Hey, that's pretty fscking cool! I would like to see that for C-SPAN. That sort of indexing would take a huge amount of pain out of getting information from C-SPAN and many other video sources. Very cool.
Actually, you might be wrong. As contests go, this would be fairly cool. There is some gear you can buy for telescopes that might do the trick. The ISS won't track across the sky in quite the same manner as a distant galaxy, but I'm sure it can be adapted to work. One cantenna might not be enough given the normal anomalies that plague people trying to communicate wirelessly through the atmosphere but then again, if you had several of them, spaced appropriately, all tracking the ISS you might be able to pull enough sig-2-noise to pull it off. I'm also reasonably certain that such arrays already exist, if configured slightly differently for different uses. It would be a good RF engineering project for colleges. 'more' is better, not bigger is better, in this case. I'd like to see this contest happen.
If someone slapped me and my family with 200 pages of paper, no matter what is printed on them, I'd be filing assault charges.
This is the kind of thing that should be covered by a user's bill of rights. Fair play and fair thinking in business is something we all have a right to expect. We have lemon laws for cars, and consequently have the right to think we'll be treated fairly by telephone companies. That we often are not is evidence of cause for legal action.
We'll get there, and instances of stupidity like this will push the line in the sand. Think about it, my bank calls me to make sure I really want to spend money on my card if it is outside the norms of my usual activity. Why would phone companies not also do this?..... exactly.
You only need look as far as what passes for entertainment on television in the USA to figure out that you should be considered special if you have an 8th grade education! http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp
Disclaimer: I have yet to watch any episode of Seinfeld. I wasn't impressed with him before Gates conned him into this.
They are entertaining. For awhile, I wondered about moderation and how it works here, but figured it out finally. Now, When I get modded troll or flamebait, I like to think of it as a trophy... for having offended someone enough to waste their mod point that way:)
Seeing others get angry out of confusion or just tech illiteracy does my heart good.
Reading their comments, you just know this is the guy at your local watering hole wearing the nascar hat backwards and having a great time with some light beer. (with some luck, I've just offended a few more people:))) {it's humor people}
It's fun to see that/. gets its share of normal people who do not know rm -rf from a hole in their hard drive.
In the tech industry (marketing aside) terminology is very important. In this case (I'm guessing) it is possible that since he wrote the utility, ALL might mean ALL that he can get data for. This is technically correct, if slightly out of context, despite the source data only being available for 13000-ish object.
That said, 13,000 is a lot to track yet ALL objects being tracked would be more reassuring. After all, mini black holes at the LHC, rogue military space junk, Syria offering peace with Israel. Surely we live in the end times? Just kidding there....
Military satellites should be in the data. If amateur astrologists can track them, so can the Russians and Chinese. Might as well give out the data for them, you don't have to say what their purpose is. FFS, one of them might be dedicated to finding waldo^H^H^H^H^H^H Osama?
Thinking about that, why haven't they found him with satellites? Maybe those spy satellites aren't so good?
For every guy out there, (misogynist comment inbound) I have to say I hope this leads to better understanding of how women communicate and remember things as compared to men. Perhaps there will be a translator, or a pill to make them more understandable? doh!
Well, perhaps this will lead to true understanding of memories, and how the brain actually functions. I hope. I'd like to see some real AI in my lifetime and the human brain is the best example we have of how to create that.
I am hoping that some day soon, people that offer free WiFi (and other places) have a couple of tables with a basic pc built into them, kind of like those old table style video games. The trick is that to use it, you have to have a thumb drive (or something like it) that plugs in, providing storage, OS, personal files etc. There are several distros of Linux that could do this, and there would be some performance issues, but it would certainly turn just about everything (with these or similar systems) into Internet cafes... or whatever you like to call them.
When you are mobile, you plug it into your PDA/phone or other mobile device. When you arrive at home, just plug the thumb drive module into your desktop and you're off.
Yes, I realize that anyone could poke technical holes in that description. I'm just trying to give the basic idea. As storage physical size shrinks, this will become more possible. I'd like to see it. It would not work for absolutely everything, especially storage intensive applications, but for a lot of things it would work. Who carries their porn collection around with them anyway?
I'd also be happy with a mobile device/phone that allowed not only this module to plug in, but additional storage USB devices (mp3 etc) so that the modules become common place. usb storage module for your mp3 player can be plugged into your phone also, as well as your mobile computing device.
you should get the option of phone sized pda, or maybe sidekick style option etc.
Again, I know there are a lot of reasons that this is a problematic goal, it's just a wish list top 10... for me anyway.
Anyone that has read my comments for awhile will know that I tried to point this out months ago, and got flamed for it basically.
The problem with letting Comcast or any ISP that also provides content do anything to shape or filter traffic is that there is no oversight on how they will do this to their advantage. In this case, anything that limits your video usage/sharing in favor of using their video delivery systems is an unfair advantage. This is exactly why bundling 3 or more services together is a bad idea for the consumer... very bad idea.
If Comcast is allowed to mess with traffic on their ISP services, they WILL do so in a way that favors their other services and content. I don't believe there are any scientific studies on the probability of this happening, but you won't find many people (or rocks, walls, monkeys etc) that will tell you that it's unlikely that a big corporation will act unethically if given the chance to do so when nobody is watching.
As in the case of P2P forged packets, they will do whatever they can get away with. Comcast is, and has shown themselves to be an unethical company. period. They should not be trusted. Class actions suits should follow shortly.
Most of archaeology and ancient history is supposition in view of the facts that we do have or think we have. That is how science works, continuously reviewed and revised until no further revisions can be found.
The fossil record (such as it is) has holes in it, and it will never be as complete as the living record was. Only where evidence was preserved is there anything to use for guessing what life was like 10, 14, 20 more millenniums ago.
It's actually fair to suggest that mankind was as intelligent as we now find modern man to be, just without the same science and knowledge. I'm sure sun worshipers were as neighborhood friendly as those people that stop by to invite me to go to church with them on Sundays now. The rub is that we simply do not have records of what happened then.
Judging on the shape of the skull and other items found around the skeleton is a good guess, but hardly CSI accurate despite advances in science. Only through an abundance of evidence can we say with any veracity why a skeleton would be wearing a necklace with tiger claws on it. It's a guess. So one skeleton cannot determine how the Americas were populated, but will add fuel to the fire that says it was not simply northern Asians crossing over to Wasilla and moving on.
Then, IMO, just as now, people who move to a region do not all come from only one source region. To assume so is not fair, and shows shallow thinking as to the resourcefulness of humankind.
I know exactly what happened. Follow along. Prior to about 1990, most electronics systems were made of more parts (less system on a chip type stuff) and the technology for putting those parts together was different. When you use a 4-7 layer board, with lead containing solder, and few if any surface mount components, the connections are more reliable. Some might argue, but it's true. The technology for using lead free solder and surface mount components is almost an art. You're not going to get joe at the tv repair shop to fix your mp3 player very often these days. Consequently, design techniques and technology also changed. Reliability is not something they design in for the 'lifetime' of the device because life expectancy is not 15 years any more, it's about 3 years tops. It's not designed for obsolescence, it just happens that way, so 15 year reliability is not a big bonus anymore.
With surface mount components and technology, most consumer devices have become 'throw away' technology. That is to say it's cheaper to build a new one than to repair the broken one. It's been that way for some 15+ years. So it has become a gamble: make something that lasts long enough for the next model to come out, just replace any defects. Most "repairs" in the last 15 years are nothing more than putting a new case on the outside. Note that Apple has had some problems as have other manufacturers. The Razor sucked as an example.
Despite many such failures in consumer products, I have yet to find anyone complaining bitterly about Panasonic or sharp. Does anyone have horror stories from them? Sharp makes the Sidekick, and I have to say I'm rather impressed with that product.
This is why extra warranty time is a rip-off. If the product is going to fail, it will fail in the first year, if not, it will probably last for 7+ years... well past typical usefulness to most markets.
RoHS in manufacturing programs are also causing things to happen that will bit by bit reduce long term reliability. That's just how it is. Perhaps some nanotech will come along to fix the problems induced by current manufacturing technology trends. I hope so.
Sorry no link, but yesterday there was a story I read that about 8% of human DNA is made up of junk left behind by retrovirus infections. That is to say, we survived those. HIV is a retrovirus. It is not far fetched to believe that Dinosaurs also suffered from disease and virus infections, and that insects could carry these from one animal to another. The general panic over H5N1 should tell you just how serious such a thing can be. If the KT boundary event weakened many dinosaurs, leaving them vulnerable, diseases that were not typically a threat could have become one.
It's also possible that the combination of several things, including climate change after the KT boundary event, worked together to cause depopulation.
Grammar Nazis are droll. That said, you missed the part where Chrome is Windows only. Some of us would have to install Windows to try it out. I can't quite believe the spin it's release generated as it seems something akin to the line sitters waiting for an iPhone.
In less than 24 hours there are dozens of reviews, and a growing list of fanbois. From the first 'secretly' released screen shots I could see it lacked features and was not going to work on Linux. Just what in the hell is there to be getting excited about? Yes, I realize there are many people who use Windows still, so it works for them. That's great, really. I'm just saying that some of us are sitting here, between yawns, wondering why there is such a spin-storm over this browser? Call me when the features are available, and it has a Linux port, mmkay?
I don't buy diesel fuel, no matter which gas station is giving it away. I don't have a diesel fuel vehicle.
I wish I could be more like the technology lemmings, truly I do. I have seen just how much owning an iPod has improved the lives of people who bought one. I'm mean, that's like a get out of hell free card, right? If the Fonz had been able to get an iPod, the world would be a radically different place today, Elvis might still be alive too.
It's just ridiculous to get all spun up over Chrome. In point of fact, I was disappointed. I like Google as much as anyone, but Windows only? Seriously? WTF?
Wow, whoa, holy fuck batman... am I the ONLY person in the world to have thought about it before even downloading Chrome? meh, no adblock, fuckit, I'm not even gonna try it. Maybe when they support Linux there will be an adblock? If not, no problem because I have Firefox.
Some folk act like Firefox is competing with Opera, IE, and others... I don't see it that way. Firefox as won, the others just don't yet realize it. The features in FF are so good IMO that I don't even want to 'try' Chrome to see what it is like. I'll wait for windows fanbois to review it.
Yes, I realize that I sound like a FF fanboi, but this is not so. I just know a good tool when I use it. FF is not perfect, but I don't have the time to spend trying browsers looking for something that can compete with it.
That said, I hope Google does well with Chrome. I'll wait for reviws. It doesn't seem like they wre aiming to get my business yet anyway.
Exactly... when I think of such problems I always imagine a bespectacled political activist with messed up hair, staring intently at the screen of his computer. As the camera pans around to see what is on the screen you see him trying to register his name as a domain....
I have a feeling that this will be pivotal for web 2.1 - "computing in the crowd"
That said, I'm sure that Google is not giving up on it's automated rankings, but rather looking for a way to implement a new source of page rank value. Strange or not, I think there there is some possibility that this can be beneficial. Knowing Google, they've been working on this for awhile, and it already does something useful. If all they manage to do is positively identify sites that should NOT be on the front page, it would improve results that I get from Google, especially when using complex searches.
If the voting/comments help them identify sites that have risen too high in rank, such information can be used to improve the automation processes. That is what I think they are doing. Crowd-sourcing the manual task of identifying sites that have incorrectly high page rank.
There is one thing about that collection though, they'll end up with 1403 copies of every picture, all with different names. I want a look at the software that detects duplicates and sorts all those files out.
Slashdot Mirror
junk dna
theory of evolution
master/slave systems
People get pissy when I insist they use proper terminology when conveying ideas and information. I think those people ignorant, yet here we are suffering (again) because of bad terminology.
While the theory of evolution is correct, the multiple uses of the word theory give rise to confusion if not downright misinformation. I'm amazed that those involved with genetic research can know of the theory of evolution on the one hand and on the other assume that there is so much junk in our genome? Now we are stuck with their original gaff. If Darwin was right about evolution, then all that DNA stuff has to be there for a reason. Same with the 10% of the brain thing. It's all there for a reason, we simply do not yet know the reason.
Master/slave is one of those terms that is correct, and technically makes sense, but now we are pc and don't like those terms anymore so we have to use something else. I've seen huge threads arguing on that one. There are more examples of terminology problems, but the point is that using the correct terminology, and naming things with their future use in mind is important. The 'here there be dragons' idea is quite valid. Sounds a lot like 'somebody needs to document this code' to me.
Gah, I've been hitting submit too soon tonight... try this http://metavid.ucsc.edu/wiki/index.php/Main_Page for some government video awesomeness :)
I never heard of it before, but then finding it has not been on my todo list for years either.. rather a recent addition. I hope there is something like that.
Hey, that's pretty fscking cool! I would like to see that for C-SPAN. That sort of indexing would take a huge amount of pain out of getting information from C-SPAN and many other video sources. Very cool.
gah, I hit post too soon. Try this link http://products.wi-fiplanet.com/wifi/antenna/1066050927.html [wi-fiplanet.com]... there are others
Actually, you might be wrong. As contests go, this would be fairly cool. There is some gear you can buy for telescopes that might do the trick. The ISS won't track across the sky in quite the same manner as a distant galaxy, but I'm sure it can be adapted to work. One cantenna might not be enough given the normal anomalies that plague people trying to communicate wirelessly through the atmosphere but then again, if you had several of them, spaced appropriately, all tracking the ISS you might be able to pull enough sig-2-noise to pull it off. I'm also reasonably certain that such arrays already exist, if configured slightly differently for different uses. It would be a good RF engineering project for colleges. 'more' is better, not bigger is better, in this case. I'd like to see this contest happen.
If someone slapped me and my family with 200 pages of paper, no matter what is printed on them, I'd be filing assault charges.
This is the kind of thing that should be covered by a user's bill of rights. Fair play and fair thinking in business is something we all have a right to expect. We have lemon laws for cars, and consequently have the right to think we'll be treated fairly by telephone companies. That we often are not is evidence of cause for legal action.
We'll get there, and instances of stupidity like this will push the line in the sand. Think about it, my bank calls me to make sure I really want to spend money on my card if it is outside the norms of my usual activity. Why would phone companies not also do this? ..... exactly.
It's far worse than you think, or fear even.
'normal' people (are there really such creatures?) will see that it is from MICROSOFT, and think "it must be good, all their stuff is really technical, and they know what they are doing ... if it wasn't for Microsoft, we'd not have any computers or Intarwebtubes or anything"
http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12558-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=44459&messageID=820843&start=0
You only need look as far as what passes for entertainment on television in the USA to figure out that you should be considered special if you have an 8th grade education! http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp
Disclaimer: I have yet to watch any episode of Seinfeld. I wasn't impressed with him before Gates conned him into this.
They are entertaining. For awhile, I wondered about moderation and how it works here, but figured it out finally. Now, When I get modded troll or flamebait, I like to think of it as a trophy... for having offended someone enough to waste their mod point that way :)
Seeing others get angry out of confusion or just tech illiteracy does my heart good.
Reading their comments, you just know this is the guy at your local watering hole wearing the nascar hat backwards and having a great time with some light beer. (with some luck, I've just offended a few more people :))) {it's humor people}
It's fun to see that /. gets its share of normal people who do not know rm -rf from a hole in their hard drive.
No, but I wouldn't plan any trips to the middle east if I were you.
In the tech industry (marketing aside) terminology is very important. In this case (I'm guessing) it is possible that since he wrote the utility, ALL might mean ALL that he can get data for. This is technically correct, if slightly out of context, despite the source data only being available for 13000-ish object.
That said, 13,000 is a lot to track yet ALL objects being tracked would be more reassuring. After all, mini black holes at the LHC, rogue military space junk, Syria offering peace with Israel. Surely we live in the end times? Just kidding there....
Military satellites should be in the data. If amateur astrologists can track them, so can the Russians and Chinese. Might as well give out the data for them, you don't have to say what their purpose is. FFS, one of them might be dedicated to finding waldo^H^H^H^H^H^H Osama?
Thinking about that, why haven't they found him with satellites? Maybe those spy satellites aren't so good?
For every guy out there, (misogynist comment inbound) I have to say I hope this leads to better understanding of how women communicate and remember things as compared to men. Perhaps there will be a translator, or a pill to make them more understandable? doh!
Well, perhaps this will lead to true understanding of memories, and how the brain actually functions. I hope. I'd like to see some real AI in my lifetime and the human brain is the best example we have of how to create that.
huh? A moderator that changed their mind? Sorry I wasted your point....
I am hoping that some day soon, people that offer free WiFi (and other places) have a couple of tables with a basic pc built into them, kind of like those old table style video games. The trick is that to use it, you have to have a thumb drive (or something like it) that plugs in, providing storage, OS, personal files etc. There are several distros of Linux that could do this, and there would be some performance issues, but it would certainly turn just about everything (with these or similar systems) into Internet cafes... or whatever you like to call them.
When you are mobile, you plug it into your PDA/phone or other mobile device. When you arrive at home, just plug the thumb drive module into your desktop and you're off.
Yes, I realize that anyone could poke technical holes in that description. I'm just trying to give the basic idea. As storage physical size shrinks, this will become more possible. I'd like to see it. It would not work for absolutely everything, especially storage intensive applications, but for a lot of things it would work. Who carries their porn collection around with them anyway?
I'd also be happy with a mobile device/phone that allowed not only this module to plug in, but additional storage USB devices (mp3 etc) so that the modules become common place. usb storage module for your mp3 player can be plugged into your phone also, as well as your mobile computing device.
you should get the option of phone sized pda, or maybe sidekick style option etc.
Again, I know there are a lot of reasons that this is a problematic goal, it's just a wish list top 10... for me anyway.
I wondered if anyone was going to catch that :)
Anyone that has read my comments for awhile will know that I tried to point this out months ago, and got flamed for it basically.
The problem with letting Comcast or any ISP that also provides content do anything to shape or filter traffic is that there is no oversight on how they will do this to their advantage. In this case, anything that limits your video usage/sharing in favor of using their video delivery systems is an unfair advantage. This is exactly why bundling 3 or more services together is a bad idea for the consumer... very bad idea.
If Comcast is allowed to mess with traffic on their ISP services, they WILL do so in a way that favors their other services and content. I don't believe there are any scientific studies on the probability of this happening, but you won't find many people (or rocks, walls, monkeys etc) that will tell you that it's unlikely that a big corporation will act unethically if given the chance to do so when nobody is watching.
As in the case of P2P forged packets, they will do whatever they can get away with. Comcast is, and has shown themselves to be an unethical company. period. They should not be trusted. Class actions suits should follow shortly.
Huh? WTF? Is sex ever safe if your partner weighs 4 tons, has teeth the size of toasters, and never brushes their teeth?
Most of archaeology and ancient history is supposition in view of the facts that we do have or think we have. That is how science works, continuously reviewed and revised until no further revisions can be found.
The fossil record (such as it is) has holes in it, and it will never be as complete as the living record was. Only where evidence was preserved is there anything to use for guessing what life was like 10, 14, 20 more millenniums ago.
It's actually fair to suggest that mankind was as intelligent as we now find modern man to be, just without the same science and knowledge. I'm sure sun worshipers were as neighborhood friendly as those people that stop by to invite me to go to church with them on Sundays now. The rub is that we simply do not have records of what happened then.
Judging on the shape of the skull and other items found around the skeleton is a good guess, but hardly CSI accurate despite advances in science. Only through an abundance of evidence can we say with any veracity why a skeleton would be wearing a necklace with tiger claws on it. It's a guess. So one skeleton cannot determine how the Americas were populated, but will add fuel to the fire that says it was not simply northern Asians crossing over to Wasilla and moving on.
Then, IMO, just as now, people who move to a region do not all come from only one source region. To assume so is not fair, and shows shallow thinking as to the resourcefulness of humankind.
I know exactly what happened. Follow along. Prior to about 1990, most electronics systems were made of more parts (less system on a chip type stuff) and the technology for putting those parts together was different. When you use a 4-7 layer board, with lead containing solder, and few if any surface mount components, the connections are more reliable. Some might argue, but it's true. The technology for using lead free solder and surface mount components is almost an art. You're not going to get joe at the tv repair shop to fix your mp3 player very often these days. Consequently, design techniques and technology also changed. Reliability is not something they design in for the 'lifetime' of the device because life expectancy is not 15 years any more, it's about 3 years tops. It's not designed for obsolescence, it just happens that way, so 15 year reliability is not a big bonus anymore.
With surface mount components and technology, most consumer devices have become 'throw away' technology. That is to say it's cheaper to build a new one than to repair the broken one. It's been that way for some 15+ years. So it has become a gamble: make something that lasts long enough for the next model to come out, just replace any defects. Most "repairs" in the last 15 years are nothing more than putting a new case on the outside. Note that Apple has had some problems as have other manufacturers. The Razor sucked as an example.
Despite many such failures in consumer products, I have yet to find anyone complaining bitterly about Panasonic or sharp. Does anyone have horror stories from them? Sharp makes the Sidekick, and I have to say I'm rather impressed with that product.
This is why extra warranty time is a rip-off. If the product is going to fail, it will fail in the first year, if not, it will probably last for 7+ years... well past typical usefulness to most markets.
RoHS in manufacturing programs are also causing things to happen that will bit by bit reduce long term reliability. That's just how it is. Perhaps some nanotech will come along to fix the problems induced by current manufacturing technology trends. I hope so.
Sorry no link, but yesterday there was a story I read that about 8% of human DNA is made up of junk left behind by retrovirus infections. That is to say, we survived those. HIV is a retrovirus. It is not far fetched to believe that Dinosaurs also suffered from disease and virus infections, and that insects could carry these from one animal to another. The general panic over H5N1 should tell you just how serious such a thing can be. If the KT boundary event weakened many dinosaurs, leaving them vulnerable, diseases that were not typically a threat could have become one.
It's also possible that the combination of several things, including climate change after the KT boundary event, worked together to cause depopulation.
Grammar Nazis are droll. That said, you missed the part where Chrome is Windows only. Some of us would have to install Windows to try it out. I can't quite believe the spin it's release generated as it seems something akin to the line sitters waiting for an iPhone.
In less than 24 hours there are dozens of reviews, and a growing list of fanbois. From the first 'secretly' released screen shots I could see it lacked features and was not going to work on Linux. Just what in the hell is there to be getting excited about? Yes, I realize there are many people who use Windows still, so it works for them. That's great, really. I'm just saying that some of us are sitting here, between yawns, wondering why there is such a spin-storm over this browser? Call me when the features are available, and it has a Linux port, mmkay?
I don't buy diesel fuel, no matter which gas station is giving it away. I don't have a diesel fuel vehicle.
I wish I could be more like the technology lemmings, truly I do. I have seen just how much owning an iPod has improved the lives of people who bought one. I'm mean, that's like a get out of hell free card, right? If the Fonz had been able to get an iPod, the world would be a radically different place today, Elvis might still be alive too.
It's just ridiculous to get all spun up over Chrome. In point of fact, I was disappointed. I like Google as much as anyone, but Windows only? Seriously? WTF?
Wow, whoa, holy fuck batman... am I the ONLY person in the world to have thought about it before even downloading Chrome? meh, no adblock, fuckit, I'm not even gonna try it. Maybe when they support Linux there will be an adblock? If not, no problem because I have Firefox.
Some folk act like Firefox is competing with Opera, IE, and others... I don't see it that way. Firefox as won, the others just don't yet realize it. The features in FF are so good IMO that I don't even want to 'try' Chrome to see what it is like. I'll wait for windows fanbois to review it.
Yes, I realize that I sound like a FF fanboi, but this is not so. I just know a good tool when I use it. FF is not perfect, but I don't have the time to spend trying browsers looking for something that can compete with it.
That said, I hope Google does well with Chrome. I'll wait for reviws. It doesn't seem like they wre aiming to get my business yet anyway.
Exactly... when I think of such problems I always imagine a bespectacled political activist with messed up hair, staring intently at the screen of his computer. As the camera pans around to see what is on the screen you see him trying to register his name as a domain ....
www.asshole.com
I have a feeling that this will be pivotal for web 2.1 - "computing in the crowd"
That said, I'm sure that Google is not giving up on it's automated rankings, but rather looking for a way to implement a new source of page rank value. Strange or not, I think there there is some possibility that this can be beneficial. Knowing Google, they've been working on this for awhile, and it already does something useful. If all they manage to do is positively identify sites that should NOT be on the front page, it would improve results that I get from Google, especially when using complex searches.
If the voting/comments help them identify sites that have risen too high in rank, such information can be used to improve the automation processes. That is what I think they are doing. Crowd-sourcing the manual task of identifying sites that have incorrectly high page rank.
There is one thing about that collection though, they'll end up with 1403 copies of every picture, all with different names. I want a look at the software that detects duplicates and sorts all those files out.