Re:This is a huge amount of work
on
Linux 2.6.27 Out
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· Score: 1
i guess if you're only in the observer role for an hour at a time it wouldn't be that boring. but do you sit there quietly and just point out when the driver makes mistakes or is it a more casual system where you will jump in and make suggestions on the current implementation if know how to do it better?
i do solo web development work at the moment, and even when i work on my own personal projects at home i do all my work alone. and while i enjoy programming, which is why i do it my free time, i do sometimes wish i had someone to collaborate/discuss the implementation with.
i'm just now trying to teach myself C++ (i usually code in PHP/MySQL, JavaScript, Perl, and other web-related languages) so it'll probably be a while before i should even think about collaborating with others. but i do think it would be a great way to make coding more enjoyable/fun and probably also learn a great deal about best practices and development techniques.
yes, Japan has negative population growth, and as a result there is not enough people to take care of the elderly, which is partly why the Japanese government is investing heavily in robotics and investigating the possibility of robot caretakers for the old.
however, the health care system is not suffering from a lack of funding. the way the Japanese health care system works is that the government controls the cost of medical treatment down to minute details. at the moment it is fixed at a very very low rate, but it is still providing much higher quality care than the U.S. the Japanese people like this system because it benefits them.
the only people who are complaining are doctors and private hospitals who say they aren't getting paid enough for their work. however, every two years the Japanese government and health industry representatives do get together to negotiate the the pricing system.
the GP was simply pulling statements out of his ass without researching the actual situation. we all know that Japan has a negative growth rate, which does present some problems. but health care funding isn't one of them. there's a huge difference between not having enough workers to take care of the elderly, and not being able to fund the health care system. even if they had a privatized health care system, it would not change their labor shortage. all it might do is cause old people to not be able to afford health care.
what kind of problems are they facing? people getting the health care they need regardless of socioeconomic stratum? no one going bankrupt because of medical bills? health care costing a fraction of what it does in the U.S. while citizens receive better care and health results?
i think you should do a little more research into the Japanese health system before saying banal platitudes like "socialized healthcare is great until someone has to pay for it."--what is that even supposed to mean? the government hasn't been paying doctors or hospital staff, and they're just now getting the bill? they've been using the same system for decades, and it's been paid for all this time. they just choose to pay for health care collectively and manage their health care system in a way that best serves public good. and the Japanese people seem perfectly happy with the system they have as it gets them good results.
Japan has has socialized health care. the majority of their hospitals and medical institutions are privately owned, but all medical bills are covered by the government. so it won't be a problem for lower income individuals to gain access to this technology in Japan.
though in the U.S. you'll probably only see the wealthy wearing the $2200/month model, while the middle class will have to settle for the $1500/month one-legged version. but everyone else will have to stick with wheelchairs or walkers with tennis balls screwed onto the legs.
Re:This is a huge amount of work
on
Linux 2.6.27 Out
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· Score: 2, Interesting
that's a pretty interesting development technique. i'd never heard of it so i had to look it up on wikipedia.
at first i'd assumed this was simply assigning a two person team for each development task, but turns out it's a much more involved methodology involving close cooperation and meticulous division of labor, with all duties being split between two separate roles of the driver and the observer/navigator.
the driver is the person coding, and the observer/navigator is responsible for reviewing the driver's code and acting as a safety net by catching errors. the observer also seems to be responsible for looking ahead and thinking about general strategy and long-term planning. this frees up the driver to focus completely on the immediate task of implementation.
apparently, two programmers using this technique are more than twice as productive as a single programmer. but i wonder if it wouldn't be incredibly boring being the observer and have to sit there watching someone else code. it might be good if the two programmers are about equally skilled and can learn from each other, but otherwise i think the observer might get bored and not pay attention to the code being written. and if he's also thinking about long-term strategy, he could easily be distracted and miss some of the bugs he's supposed to catch. perhaps simply having programmers partner up to get together and review each other's code, discuss problems/concerns, share insights/exchange thoughts, etc. every once in a while would accomplish the same thing without such a rigid structure.
actually the "iWish" shown in the link hg posted would be perfect. =P
i know it's a fake, but it's just about the best Photoshop mockup i ever seen. and at least it was thoughtfully designed, unlike most of the fakes you see floating around. it would probably cost an arm and a leg though.
and to be perfectly honest, hardware-wise, the PSP works pretty well for most of my needs. it could use a little more RAM for web browsing (or just use a swap file stored on the memory stick) and a second analog stick, but that's really about all i'd ask for (i think there are already keyboard attachments available for the PSP).
it's still the best PMP on the market IMO. however, Sony's mismanagement of the portable undermines the technological merits of the hardware. things like a better Media Browser, a Live-type network, and wireless file sharing/profiles, etc. are all software implementation issues. if they'd just work on adding value to the PSP rather than crippling it with DRM and trying to break the compatibility of new games with custom firmware, they could have made all of these improvements ages ago with all of the firmware updates they've released.
ah, i guess criticizing the focus of this research means i'm promoting censorship. what was i thinking? i should be forbidden from making negative remarks about slashdot stories. or maybe we should just outlaw critical opinions altogether.
nice straw man!
there are plenty of much more useful applications for machine learning algorithms. but these researchers chose an area of research with a very limited range of useful applications. by definition this research is useless. what are the other useful applications of Data-Driven Enhancement of Facial Attractiveness?
well, during the 60's and 70's America was much more liberal and the counterculture was more accepted and prevalent throughout society. like the roaring 20's, it was a time of widespread social and political reform. but since the 80's we've become a much more culturally homogeneous conformist society.
but one advantage of the information age & the internet is that it has changed the cultural hegemons of our society. up until very recently all of the media that people were exposed to were controlled by a handful of corporate conglomerates. all print publications were controlled by a few companies, who also controlled all TV networks, magazine publishers, radio stations, etc. so a handful of commercial entities controlled the distribution of information & culture, which is how our consumer culture has come to dominate society. or perception of beauty is also dictated by this consumer culture.
but slowly the internet is giving the power of media distribution back into the hands of independent artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc. so hopefully, if we can preserve the democratic nature of the internet, we can start to repair the damage done by years of socialization by corporate media. i mean, we're already seeing a more diverse and heterogeneous online culture emerging.
something like this should have been established a long time ago. instead of listening to political demagogues engaging in mudslinging and espousing empty rhetoric, it would be much more productive to actually research current issues with direct access to new bills and legislative proposals. and once you have an educated and informed public, you can conduct mass referendums and let the public make policy decisions themselves (at least on the issues that effect our everyday lives, like drug policy, government surveillance, universal health care, tax policy, gay marriage, etc.).
ideally, the media would do its job keeping the public informed and hold politicians accountable for their actions. but sadly the mainstream media seems to have lost every shred of journalistic integrity and would rather cover celebrity gossip than political corruption, and the consolidation of the media by a handful of media conglomerates means that a handful of people control how the masses perceive the world, and news reporting is often skewed to reflect the world view of our cultural hegemons.
luckily, the internet is starting to change this by decentralizing media distribution and giving individuals access to a wide variety of independent news sources. no longer are corporate media conglomerates the gatekeepers of information. before i'd heard about THOMAS, i used to visit OnTheIssues.org, which provides detailed voting records and public statements (as well as summaries of legislation) of current political leaders and presidential candidates. but a democratic government needs to directly provide this info to the public, and the web is the best way to do this.
i'm glad that this is finally achieved with the THOMAS database. however, i think they need to keep permanent online records for all government officials past and present--right now it only displays congressional records, but that gives the public no oversight of the rest of the government. even if many positions are appointed by the president, we can still hold the president accountable for the actions of his appointees. representative democracy only works if the electorate provides negative feedback when politicians fail to act in the interest of the people. that means the public needs to be ever vigilante of government corruption and incompetence. perhaps an online system can even be established so the public can give direct feedback to government officials on their present performance, and not just limit democratic feedback to public elections. for instance, if a particular cabinet member's public approval drops below 50%, then the president would be forced to appoint a new leader. and if the president's public approval drops below 30%, then that would be cause for a congressional hearing, potentially leading to impeachment.
the next step is to move beyond representative democracy and actually allow the public to participate directly in the democratic process. i know many people think that the average person isn't capable of making public policy decisions, but they can speak for themselves, not for others. i don't need some clueless politician making policy decisions for me. right now the government is run by a very particular social group most aptly described as the political aristocracy. how can a government be trusted to act in the best interest of its citizens when it is run entirely by individuals who come from a completely different socioeconomic background than most of the population. the ruling class of America are all rich old men who are completely disconnected from the reality of the average person. at the very minimum, politicians should be paid a salary equivalent to the mean annual salary of the average American. otherwise, if all legislators reside in the uppermost tax bracket, how can we expect them to make progress tax reforms that are in the interest of the average person?
in the past, logistical problems prevented regular broad-based referendums from being conducted to give the public
personally, i find the faceresearch.org demo posted on Slashdot a while back the most interesting. unlike this algorithm, it actually presents some interesting findings about the psychology of aesthetic beauty.
rather than manipulating a single photo to make that person more "pretty." it allows you to average different people's head shots. and the result of this research seems to show that our perception of beauty is based on the mean range of facial geometries we're exposed to. we naturally find faces that are the most "average" attractive. but different populations have different averages, so there are still cultural differences.
another way to look at it is that instead of looking for features that define beauty, we really just have an aversion to faces that deviate too much from the cultural norm as defined by the average range of facial configurations. now, everyone has unique features that distinguish them from others, and everyone deviates from the population average in some respect, but some show a greater deviation than others, which may indicate their genetic fitness. and so our psychological attraction to average faces is an evolutionarily learned trait to help us pick the most genetically healthy individuals to mate with.
but what's interesting is that if you mix several very different faces that don't meet conventional standards of beauty, you will actually get a very attractive face as a result (try this in the demo by picking the ugliest faces out of the gallery to mix). this is probably because even though "ugly" people deviate largely from the cultural average, they all deviate in different ways, so it doesn't take two beautiful individuals to produce an attractive average.
a corollary to this effect is that a couple with drastically different looks will give birth to very attractive children. which actually works out perfectly with another evolutionary trait--that of opposites attracting. human beings (and perhaps other mammals as well) are attracted to individuals with a very different histocompatibility index to themselves. that is to say, we are attracted to individuals which are very genetically different from ourselves. we can detect people's histocompatibility with our own based on their body scent. and double blind studies have found that men and women find the body odors of individuals whose Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) was the most different from their own. this is to ensure that their offspring will receive a diverse set of genes, which leads to a more robust immune system and prevents inbreeding.
now, my personal theory is, men and women don't just find partners with complementary MHCs to them based on scent alone. facial features can also be an indication of genetic differences. so this may also lead to individuals being attracted to people who have very different facial features from themselves. and since the average of two drastically different faces produces a more average face, this also leads to better looking children.
yea, this research is completely useless. the only potential application i can see for this is to sell software to insecure individuals with low self-esteem so that they can hide behind altered photos of themselves online, further reinforcing their negative self image.
honestly, this program embodies what is most wrong with modern western culture--superficiality, vanity, and an abhorrence of eccentricity or individuality.
my friend used it in his interactive media class to simulate the vision of dogs. you run the flash application and it filters the cam feed to only display the visual spectrum dogs are capable of seeing.
i don't think there's anything inherently wrong with giving flash access to webcam/mic. it creates opportunities for a lot of useful web apps. however, i do think that flash browser plugins need to warn users and have them confirm that they actually want to turn on their webcam/mic.
it forces you to leave all your lights on day or night if you want to maintain your WLAN connectivity.
personally, i think infrared networking is a better idea. sure you might save a little energy by merging your networking devices with existing light sources, but that's not exactly an ideal pairing. i often go to bed with my computer on with files downloading or seeding on BitTorrent. but my wireless router is in an adjacent room, so if i were to use an LED wireless network, i'd need to keep my door open and lights on throughout the night.
and what happens during daytime or for outdoor wireless applications? this just doesn't seem all that useful for the average user.
trying to smuggle something across the border? one of my buddies in Chigaco used to be a professional, um, "pharmaceutical courier." just do what he did and hide your laptop in a hollowed out space in the car's door panels.
that seemed to to work for him pretty well--at least until he got busted and had to do time in Mexican federal prison. but police dogs can't smell laptops.
people want convergence, but there is still two different paths of convergence for the mp3 player market.
first is cellphones/smartphones. this is for the casual use who wants to have access to their music at all times whether they're at work, at the gym, or on the road. this perfectly fits in with the modern digital lifestyle which has seen an increased integration of digital technology in everyday life. camera, mp3 player, phone, and organizer are technological accessories that are good to have handy at all times, they're the basic accessories of modern life.
however, the other path of convergence is the portable entertainment/smart devices market. this is usually for the more technologically savvy nerds/geeks/gadget freaks/etc. the portable entertainment market, when coupled with handheld gaming, is especially appealing to the younger generation (though it's not exclusively for young people). these are generalized entertainment devices which would be taken on road trips, flights, overnight business trips, etc. but would not be practical to carry on you at all times.
you can never fully replace portable media players/entertainment devices with smartphones because the two have conflicting requirements. the video iPod is already much larger than the typical smartphone, and even with its bulky dimensions its video playing capabilities are inadequate for watching movies because of the small screen. you can argue that the iPhone's full-face display addresses this problem, but its 3.5" screen still doesn't compare with the PSP/Pandora/ZEN's 4.3" screen.
granted, most people probably have no need for a portable entertainment device and would find a mp3-playback-capable smartphone more convenient. but as time passes, i think the standalone PMP market will grow rather than be cannibalized by the cellphone market. and as prices for PMPs drop, more and more people will likely have both a standalone PMP and an mp3-capable cellphone.
right, i'm sure Tim Berners-Lee, and Vint Cert are just clueless "idealogs" who have no idea how the internet works.
keep living in your telecom/ISP-create fantasy land there, buddy.
anyone who's actually been following the net neutrality debate and looked at who's publicly against or in favor of net neutrality can see that, aside from ISPs/Telecom corporations with clear vested interests in creating a tiered internet, it's only old, completely out of touch conservative politicians who are opposing net neutrality--it's no coincidence that these are generally the same kind of people who think the internet is made of "tubes."
if anything your comment demonstrates your own ignorance about how the internet works if you actually think that a tiered internet is necessary or beneficial. naturally, instead of providing a logical, factually supported argument, you resort to non-sequiturs and immature ad hominem attacks.
that's the problem with how fair use is legally defined. copyright laws are meant to encourage cultural contribution by giving copyright holders the right to control the distribution of their work for a limited time, after which it is released into public domain. but the duration of legal copyrights has more than quadrupled since the 1800's from 28 years to 115 years.
fair use was established because copyright laws had been corrupted from their original purpose and no longer served public interest. copyrights, like patents, have been increasingly used to take away consumer rights. to restore copyrights to their original purpose, fair use was defined to allow some copying & distribution without having to obtain consent from copyright holders.
playing a 15-second clip of a song for the express purpose of criticizing the views it espouses is a clear case of legal fair use. whether or not a partial reproduction is used in a positive or negative light plays no role in whether it is fair use or not.
the earth actually gets hit by meteors much more often than the moon (due to its larger size) though a majority of them disintegrate before reaching the ground.
the moon, however, has only been hit with 100 sizable (big enough to cause a detectable explosion) meteor impacts over the course of 2-and-a-half years. and i'm sure they could dampen vibrations by putting the lens on some kind of suspension system (for instance a large electromagnet).
and i don't see how thermal gradients would affect the operation of a liquid lens telescope. a glass lens may distort due to thermal gradients, but a liquid lens would retain an even physical distribution due to gravity. if you partially put a glass of water in the sun the water surface does not distort due the thermal gradient. all you have to do is make the dish containing the liquid lens deep enough to account for thermal expansion.
maybe you should have read the entire article (including the PDF link at the end). i agree that removing the detailed tech plan from the web page was a questionable decision, and supporters were very right to be concerned. however, upon closer inspection it seems that Obama's web staff simply trimmed down on the text displayed directly on the page, but the original tech plan remains available for viewing. and if you look at the Versionista Page comparison and the PDF still linked to on the web page, all of the text discussing Net Neutrality are indeed still intact.
it's more likely that Obama's campaign staff simply decided to cut down on the amount of text on the website while making updates to the content. perhaps it's meant to make the site more accessible to people too impatient to read the entire text, who knows? but even the new page directs people to a PDF link of the full tech plan at the bottom.
what is dishonest about stating the facts about the wealth of information the internet gives individuals access to? or the fact that greater access to information/knowledge is beneficial?
i've taught myself Perl, PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSLT/XPath, and just about everything else i know about computer programming from the web. that's not a utopian pipe dream; these are practical results.
and MIT doesn't have to want to shift the power dynamics of society. that's not how social and cultural changes happen. if you change the cultural hegemons of a society, then by definition you're changing the power dynamics of that society. and that's precisely what the web has done. i mean, just look at the recent changes in the music industry or the shift in media consumption habits away from traditional media establishments like newspapers, TV, radio, and towards online sources.
it doesn't take a sociology degree to see to effects the internet has had on our society, and the broader implications it holds for the future. you'd really need to have an incredibly myopic perspective to not see that we're heading down a path with great potential for social & cultural change.
and with ever greater populations and intermingling of cultures, i think it's safe to say the human species has plenty of genetic diversity at the moment.
there's also no shortage of genetic illnesses and cancers which are the direct results of genetic mutation. heck, people are probably exposed to more carcinogenic influences today than ever in human history. just look at all the mutant three-legged frogs that are turning up here in America.
biological reproduction is inherently imperfect, thus creates copying errors that introduce genetic mutations. the lack of mutations is not something that we'll ever have to worry about. and i'd argue that it's unethical to try to conceive children after a certain age just as it's unethical for closely related individuals to have children since their children will be at much higher risk of having congenital illnesses or other health problems.
there's still sexual selection, so we're still experiencing biological evolution, just not propelled by by our physical environment but instead our social environment.
besides, cultural evolution is where humanity will make the most progress as a species. evolution happens at a telescopic rate, which is why cultural evolution occurs much faster than biological evolution, and it will continue to occur at a faster and faster rate because of technological advances which speed up the dissemination of information.
first it was the agricultural(neolithic) revolution, which allowed permanent settlements to be established. farming and the domestication of animals, and the subsequent sedentary lifestyle, gave human communities more time for leisure, allowing advanced culture to develop. this also gave rise to towns and large high density population centers, which also contributed to quickened pace of cultural development.
10,000~11,000 years later the printing press was invented, followed by the scientific revolution and Italian renaissance, at which point movable type was independently developed in Europe (with much more success than it had in China a few centuries eearlier). this made printing much cheaper and more practical, which had far reaching social & cultural consequences.
just 300~400 years later, the industrial revolution took place, which also had profound social, cultural, as well as economic consequences. this was also around the time that radio and later television were invented, which along with the existing mass circulation newspaper gave birth to the modern mass media.
and a mere 6 decades later the internet was created, and along with it came the world wide web. in this age of digital communication, anyone can access the collective knowledge of human civilization with a click of the mouse. media conglomerates are no longer the cultural gatekeepers of humanity. the internet has decentralized and democratized the exchange of culture and distribution of media. any musician, artists, or writer can publish their work on the internet at very little cost and reach millions of people from all around the world, bypassing record labels, TV & radio networks, book & magazine publishers, etc.
more importantly, free online repositories such as arXiv.org, MIT OpenCourseWare, Wikipedia, E2, Project Gutenberg, and even file sharing, have removed traditional barriers to education & knowledge. because of this the internet has the potential to radically change the power dynamics of our society. and all this may be a potential catalyst for sweeping social changes within the next few decades--if we take advantage of this incredible technological boon to humanity.
while i think this technology may have some useful purposes in the future, i'm a little disturbed at the type of applications it's already being marketed towards:
NeuroSky's products offer opportunities for its exclusive partners and developers to create next generation applications in markets as diverse as consumer electronics, health & wellness, education & training, transportation, market research and others.
i'm honestly afraid that this technology will be used by marketing/advertising firms to develop even more insidious ways of manipulating consumers. with marketing/advertising permeating all aspects of popular culture, even being used by politicians to frame political issues in ways that will win them public approval, we're increasingly living in a society of mass manipulation. we don't need to give the persuaders an even greater degree of control over us by letting them have unprecedented access to the thoughts and mental processes of consumers.
though i'm sure they'll probably start handing these out at focus groups so that they can tap directly into the subconscious desires of the individual as the ultimate form marketing research. marketing gurus are already helping major corporations appeal to the primitive reptilian minds of consumers to exploit people's subconscious associations. unfortunately, this results in consumers making irrational purchase decisions, which is at least partly responsible for the family SUV phenomena in the U.S.
Slashdot Mirror
i guess if you're only in the observer role for an hour at a time it wouldn't be that boring. but do you sit there quietly and just point out when the driver makes mistakes or is it a more casual system where you will jump in and make suggestions on the current implementation if know how to do it better?
i do solo web development work at the moment, and even when i work on my own personal projects at home i do all my work alone. and while i enjoy programming, which is why i do it my free time, i do sometimes wish i had someone to collaborate/discuss the implementation with.
i'm just now trying to teach myself C++ (i usually code in PHP/MySQL, JavaScript, Perl, and other web-related languages) so it'll probably be a while before i should even think about collaborating with others. but i do think it would be a great way to make coding more enjoyable/fun and probably also learn a great deal about best practices and development techniques.
yes, Japan has negative population growth, and as a result there is not enough people to take care of the elderly, which is partly why the Japanese government is investing heavily in robotics and investigating the possibility of robot caretakers for the old.
however, the health care system is not suffering from a lack of funding. the way the Japanese health care system works is that the government controls the cost of medical treatment down to minute details. at the moment it is fixed at a very very low rate, but it is still providing much higher quality care than the U.S. the Japanese people like this system because it benefits them.
the only people who are complaining are doctors and private hospitals who say they aren't getting paid enough for their work. however, every two years the Japanese government and health industry representatives do get together to negotiate the the pricing system.
the GP was simply pulling statements out of his ass without researching the actual situation. we all know that Japan has a negative growth rate, which does present some problems. but health care funding isn't one of them. there's a huge difference between not having enough workers to take care of the elderly, and not being able to fund the health care system. even if they had a privatized health care system, it would not change their labor shortage. all it might do is cause old people to not be able to afford health care.
what kind of problems are they facing? people getting the health care they need regardless of socioeconomic stratum? no one going bankrupt because of medical bills? health care costing a fraction of what it does in the U.S. while citizens receive better care and health results?
i think you should do a little more research into the Japanese health system before saying banal platitudes like "socialized healthcare is great until someone has to pay for it."--what is that even supposed to mean? the government hasn't been paying doctors or hospital staff, and they're just now getting the bill? they've been using the same system for decades, and it's been paid for all this time. they just choose to pay for health care collectively and manage their health care system in a way that best serves public good. and the Japanese people seem perfectly happy with the system they have as it gets them good results.
Japan has has socialized health care. the majority of their hospitals and medical institutions are privately owned, but all medical bills are covered by the government. so it won't be a problem for lower income individuals to gain access to this technology in Japan.
though in the U.S. you'll probably only see the wealthy wearing the $2200/month model, while the middle class will have to settle for the $1500/month one-legged version. but everyone else will have to stick with wheelchairs or walkers with tennis balls screwed onto the legs.
that's a pretty interesting development technique. i'd never heard of it so i had to look it up on wikipedia.
at first i'd assumed this was simply assigning a two person team for each development task, but turns out it's a much more involved methodology involving close cooperation and meticulous division of labor, with all duties being split between two separate roles of the driver and the observer/navigator.
the driver is the person coding, and the observer/navigator is responsible for reviewing the driver's code and acting as a safety net by catching errors. the observer also seems to be responsible for looking ahead and thinking about general strategy and long-term planning. this frees up the driver to focus completely on the immediate task of implementation.
apparently, two programmers using this technique are more than twice as productive as a single programmer. but i wonder if it wouldn't be incredibly boring being the observer and have to sit there watching someone else code. it might be good if the two programmers are about equally skilled and can learn from each other, but otherwise i think the observer might get bored and not pay attention to the code being written. and if he's also thinking about long-term strategy, he could easily be distracted and miss some of the bugs he's supposed to catch. perhaps simply having programmers partner up to get together and review each other's code, discuss problems/concerns, share insights/exchange thoughts, etc. every once in a while would accomplish the same thing without such a rigid structure.
actually the "iWish" shown in the link hg posted would be perfect. =P
i know it's a fake, but it's just about the best Photoshop mockup i ever seen. and at least it was thoughtfully designed, unlike most of the fakes you see floating around. it would probably cost an arm and a leg though.
and to be perfectly honest, hardware-wise, the PSP works pretty well for most of my needs. it could use a little more RAM for web browsing (or just use a swap file stored on the memory stick) and a second analog stick, but that's really about all i'd ask for (i think there are already keyboard attachments available for the PSP).
it's still the best PMP on the market IMO. however, Sony's mismanagement of the portable undermines the technological merits of the hardware. things like a better Media Browser, a Live-type network, and wireless file sharing/profiles, etc. are all software implementation issues. if they'd just work on adding value to the PSP rather than crippling it with DRM and trying to break the compatibility of new games with custom firmware, they could have made all of these improvements ages ago with all of the firmware updates they've released.
ah, i guess criticizing the focus of this research means i'm promoting censorship. what was i thinking? i should be forbidden from making negative remarks about slashdot stories. or maybe we should just outlaw critical opinions altogether.
nice straw man!
there are plenty of much more useful applications for machine learning algorithms. but these researchers chose an area of research with a very limited range of useful applications. by definition this research is useless. what are the other useful applications of Data-Driven Enhancement of Facial Attractiveness?
well, during the 60's and 70's America was much more liberal and the counterculture was more accepted and prevalent throughout society. like the roaring 20's, it was a time of widespread social and political reform. but since the 80's we've become a much more culturally homogeneous conformist society.
but one advantage of the information age & the internet is that it has changed the cultural hegemons of our society. up until very recently all of the media that people were exposed to were controlled by a handful of corporate conglomerates. all print publications were controlled by a few companies, who also controlled all TV networks, magazine publishers, radio stations, etc. so a handful of commercial entities controlled the distribution of information & culture, which is how our consumer culture has come to dominate society. or perception of beauty is also dictated by this consumer culture.
but slowly the internet is giving the power of media distribution back into the hands of independent artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc. so hopefully, if we can preserve the democratic nature of the internet, we can start to repair the damage done by years of socialization by corporate media. i mean, we're already seeing a more diverse and heterogeneous online culture emerging.
something like this should have been established a long time ago. instead of listening to political demagogues engaging in mudslinging and espousing empty rhetoric, it would be much more productive to actually research current issues with direct access to new bills and legislative proposals. and once you have an educated and informed public, you can conduct mass referendums and let the public make policy decisions themselves (at least on the issues that effect our everyday lives, like drug policy, government surveillance, universal health care, tax policy, gay marriage, etc.).
ideally, the media would do its job keeping the public informed and hold politicians accountable for their actions. but sadly the mainstream media seems to have lost every shred of journalistic integrity and would rather cover celebrity gossip than political corruption, and the consolidation of the media by a handful of media conglomerates means that a handful of people control how the masses perceive the world, and news reporting is often skewed to reflect the world view of our cultural hegemons.
luckily, the internet is starting to change this by decentralizing media distribution and giving individuals access to a wide variety of independent news sources. no longer are corporate media conglomerates the gatekeepers of information. before i'd heard about THOMAS, i used to visit OnTheIssues.org, which provides detailed voting records and public statements (as well as summaries of legislation) of current political leaders and presidential candidates. but a democratic government needs to directly provide this info to the public, and the web is the best way to do this.
i'm glad that this is finally achieved with the THOMAS database. however, i think they need to keep permanent online records for all government officials past and present--right now it only displays congressional records, but that gives the public no oversight of the rest of the government. even if many positions are appointed by the president, we can still hold the president accountable for the actions of his appointees. representative democracy only works if the electorate provides negative feedback when politicians fail to act in the interest of the people. that means the public needs to be ever vigilante of government corruption and incompetence. perhaps an online system can even be established so the public can give direct feedback to government officials on their present performance, and not just limit democratic feedback to public elections. for instance, if a particular cabinet member's public approval drops below 50%, then the president would be forced to appoint a new leader. and if the president's public approval drops below 30%, then that would be cause for a congressional hearing, potentially leading to impeachment.
the next step is to move beyond representative democracy and actually allow the public to participate directly in the democratic process. i know many people think that the average person isn't capable of making public policy decisions, but they can speak for themselves, not for others. i don't need some clueless politician making policy decisions for me. right now the government is run by a very particular social group most aptly described as the political aristocracy. how can a government be trusted to act in the best interest of its citizens when it is run entirely by individuals who come from a completely different socioeconomic background than most of the population. the ruling class of America are all rich old men who are completely disconnected from the reality of the average person. at the very minimum, politicians should be paid a salary equivalent to the mean annual salary of the average American. otherwise, if all legislators reside in the uppermost tax bracket, how can we expect them to make progress tax reforms that are in the interest of the average person?
in the past, logistical problems prevented regular broad-based referendums from being conducted to give the public
personally, i find the faceresearch.org demo posted on Slashdot a while back the most interesting. unlike this algorithm, it actually presents some interesting findings about the psychology of aesthetic beauty.
rather than manipulating a single photo to make that person more "pretty." it allows you to average different people's head shots. and the result of this research seems to show that our perception of beauty is based on the mean range of facial geometries we're exposed to. we naturally find faces that are the most "average" attractive. but different populations have different averages, so there are still cultural differences.
another way to look at it is that instead of looking for features that define beauty, we really just have an aversion to faces that deviate too much from the cultural norm as defined by the average range of facial configurations. now, everyone has unique features that distinguish them from others, and everyone deviates from the population average in some respect, but some show a greater deviation than others, which may indicate their genetic fitness. and so our psychological attraction to average faces is an evolutionarily learned trait to help us pick the most genetically healthy individuals to mate with.
but what's interesting is that if you mix several very different faces that don't meet conventional standards of beauty, you will actually get a very attractive face as a result (try this in the demo by picking the ugliest faces out of the gallery to mix). this is probably because even though "ugly" people deviate largely from the cultural average, they all deviate in different ways, so it doesn't take two beautiful individuals to produce an attractive average.
a corollary to this effect is that a couple with drastically different looks will give birth to very attractive children. which actually works out perfectly with another evolutionary trait--that of opposites attracting. human beings (and perhaps other mammals as well) are attracted to individuals with a very different histocompatibility index to themselves. that is to say, we are attracted to individuals which are very genetically different from ourselves. we can detect people's histocompatibility with our own based on their body scent. and double blind studies have found that men and women find the body odors of individuals whose Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) was the most different from their own. this is to ensure that their offspring will receive a diverse set of genes, which leads to a more robust immune system and prevents inbreeding.
now, my personal theory is, men and women don't just find partners with complementary MHCs to them based on scent alone. facial features can also be an indication of genetic differences. so this may also lead to individuals being attracted to people who have very different facial features from themselves. and since the average of two drastically different faces produces a more average face, this also leads to better looking children.
yea, this research is completely useless. the only potential application i can see for this is to sell software to insecure individuals with low self-esteem so that they can hide behind altered photos of themselves online, further reinforcing their negative self image.
honestly, this program embodies what is most wrong with modern western culture--superficiality, vanity, and an abhorrence of eccentricity or individuality.
my friend used it in his interactive media class to simulate the vision of dogs. you run the flash application and it filters the cam feed to only display the visual spectrum dogs are capable of seeing.
i don't think there's anything inherently wrong with giving flash access to webcam/mic. it creates opportunities for a lot of useful web apps. however, i do think that flash browser plugins need to warn users and have them confirm that they actually want to turn on their webcam/mic.
it forces you to leave all your lights on day or night if you want to maintain your WLAN connectivity.
personally, i think infrared networking is a better idea. sure you might save a little energy by merging your networking devices with existing light sources, but that's not exactly an ideal pairing. i often go to bed with my computer on with files downloading or seeding on BitTorrent. but my wireless router is in an adjacent room, so if i were to use an LED wireless network, i'd need to keep my door open and lights on throughout the night.
and what happens during daytime or for outdoor wireless applications? this just doesn't seem all that useful for the average user.
trying to smuggle something across the border? one of my buddies in Chigaco used to be a professional, um, "pharmaceutical courier." just do what he did and hide your laptop in a hollowed out space in the car's door panels.
that seemed to to work for him pretty well--at least until he got busted and had to do time in Mexican federal prison. but police dogs can't smell laptops.
well, the PSP has a much larger gaming library than the iPod Touch/iPhone, and it also has a bigger video display.
personally, my ideal portable entertainment device would have:
people want convergence, but there is still two different paths of convergence for the mp3 player market.
first is cellphones/smartphones. this is for the casual use who wants to have access to their music at all times whether they're at work, at the gym, or on the road. this perfectly fits in with the modern digital lifestyle which has seen an increased integration of digital technology in everyday life. camera, mp3 player, phone, and organizer are technological accessories that are good to have handy at all times, they're the basic accessories of modern life.
however, the other path of convergence is the portable entertainment/smart devices market. this is usually for the more technologically savvy nerds/geeks/gadget freaks/etc. the portable entertainment market, when coupled with handheld gaming, is especially appealing to the younger generation (though it's not exclusively for young people). these are generalized entertainment devices which would be taken on road trips, flights, overnight business trips, etc. but would not be practical to carry on you at all times.
you can never fully replace portable media players/entertainment devices with smartphones because the two have conflicting requirements. the video iPod is already much larger than the typical smartphone, and even with its bulky dimensions its video playing capabilities are inadequate for watching movies because of the small screen. you can argue that the iPhone's full-face display addresses this problem, but its 3.5" screen still doesn't compare with the PSP/Pandora/ZEN's 4.3" screen.
granted, most people probably have no need for a portable entertainment device and would find a mp3-playback-capable smartphone more convenient. but as time passes, i think the standalone PMP market will grow rather than be cannibalized by the cellphone market. and as prices for PMPs drop, more and more people will likely have both a standalone PMP and an mp3-capable cellphone.
right, i'm sure Tim Berners-Lee, and Vint Cert are just clueless "idealogs" who have no idea how the internet works.
keep living in your telecom/ISP-create fantasy land there, buddy.
anyone who's actually been following the net neutrality debate and looked at who's publicly against or in favor of net neutrality can see that, aside from ISPs/Telecom corporations with clear vested interests in creating a tiered internet, it's only old, completely out of touch conservative politicians who are opposing net neutrality--it's no coincidence that these are generally the same kind of people who think the internet is made of "tubes."
if anything your comment demonstrates your own ignorance about how the internet works if you actually think that a tiered internet is necessary or beneficial. naturally, instead of providing a logical, factually supported argument, you resort to non-sequiturs and immature ad hominem attacks.
that's the problem with how fair use is legally defined. copyright laws are meant to encourage cultural contribution by giving copyright holders the right to control the distribution of their work for a limited time, after which it is released into public domain. but the duration of legal copyrights has more than quadrupled since the 1800's from 28 years to 115 years.
fair use was established because copyright laws had been corrupted from their original purpose and no longer served public interest. copyrights, like patents, have been increasingly used to take away consumer rights. to restore copyrights to their original purpose, fair use was defined to allow some copying & distribution without having to obtain consent from copyright holders.
playing a 15-second clip of a song for the express purpose of criticizing the views it espouses is a clear case of legal fair use. whether or not a partial reproduction is used in a positive or negative light plays no role in whether it is fair use or not.
the earth actually gets hit by meteors much more often than the moon (due to its larger size) though a majority of them disintegrate before reaching the ground.
the moon, however, has only been hit with 100 sizable (big enough to cause a detectable explosion) meteor impacts over the course of 2-and-a-half years. and i'm sure they could dampen vibrations by putting the lens on some kind of suspension system (for instance a large electromagnet).
and i don't see how thermal gradients would affect the operation of a liquid lens telescope. a glass lens may distort due to thermal gradients, but a liquid lens would retain an even physical distribution due to gravity. if you partially put a glass of water in the sun the water surface does not distort due the thermal gradient. all you have to do is make the dish containing the liquid lens deep enough to account for thermal expansion.
maybe you should have read the entire article (including the PDF link at the end). i agree that removing the detailed tech plan from the web page was a questionable decision, and supporters were very right to be concerned. however, upon closer inspection it seems that Obama's web staff simply trimmed down on the text displayed directly on the page, but the original tech plan remains available for viewing. and if you look at the Versionista Page comparison and the PDF still linked to on the web page, all of the text discussing Net Neutrality are indeed still intact.
it's more likely that Obama's campaign staff simply decided to cut down on the amount of text on the website while making updates to the content. perhaps it's meant to make the site more accessible to people too impatient to read the entire text, who knows? but even the new page directs people to a PDF link of the full tech plan at the bottom.
what is dishonest about stating the facts about the wealth of information the internet gives individuals access to? or the fact that greater access to information/knowledge is beneficial?
i've taught myself Perl, PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSLT/XPath, and just about everything else i know about computer programming from the web. that's not a utopian pipe dream; these are practical results.
and MIT doesn't have to want to shift the power dynamics of society. that's not how social and cultural changes happen. if you change the cultural hegemons of a society, then by definition you're changing the power dynamics of that society. and that's precisely what the web has done. i mean, just look at the recent changes in the music industry or the shift in media consumption habits away from traditional media establishments like newspapers, TV, radio, and towards online sources.
it doesn't take a sociology degree to see to effects the internet has had on our society, and the broader implications it holds for the future. you'd really need to have an incredibly myopic perspective to not see that we're heading down a path with great potential for social & cultural change.
and with ever greater populations and intermingling of cultures, i think it's safe to say the human species has plenty of genetic diversity at the moment.
there's also no shortage of genetic illnesses and cancers which are the direct results of genetic mutation. heck, people are probably exposed to more carcinogenic influences today than ever in human history. just look at all the mutant three-legged frogs that are turning up here in America.
biological reproduction is inherently imperfect, thus creates copying errors that introduce genetic mutations. the lack of mutations is not something that we'll ever have to worry about. and i'd argue that it's unethical to try to conceive children after a certain age just as it's unethical for closely related individuals to have children since their children will be at much higher risk of having congenital illnesses or other health problems.
there's still sexual selection, so we're still experiencing biological evolution, just not propelled by by our physical environment but instead our social environment.
besides, cultural evolution is where humanity will make the most progress as a species. evolution happens at a telescopic rate, which is why cultural evolution occurs much faster than biological evolution, and it will continue to occur at a faster and faster rate because of technological advances which speed up the dissemination of information.
first it was the agricultural(neolithic) revolution, which allowed permanent settlements to be established. farming and the domestication of animals, and the subsequent sedentary lifestyle, gave human communities more time for leisure, allowing advanced culture to develop. this also gave rise to towns and large high density population centers, which also contributed to quickened pace of cultural development.
10,000~11,000 years later the printing press was invented, followed by the scientific revolution and Italian renaissance, at which point movable type was independently developed in Europe (with much more success than it had in China a few centuries eearlier). this made printing much cheaper and more practical, which had far reaching social & cultural consequences.
just 300~400 years later, the industrial revolution took place, which also had profound social, cultural, as well as economic consequences. this was also around the time that radio and later television were invented, which along with the existing mass circulation newspaper gave birth to the modern mass media.
and a mere 6 decades later the internet was created, and along with it came the world wide web. in this age of digital communication, anyone can access the collective knowledge of human civilization with a click of the mouse. media conglomerates are no longer the cultural gatekeepers of humanity. the internet has decentralized and democratized the exchange of culture and distribution of media. any musician, artists, or writer can publish their work on the internet at very little cost and reach millions of people from all around the world, bypassing record labels, TV & radio networks, book & magazine publishers, etc.
more importantly, free online repositories such as arXiv.org, MIT OpenCourseWare, Wikipedia, E2, Project Gutenberg, and even file sharing, have removed traditional barriers to education & knowledge. because of this the internet has the potential to radically change the power dynamics of our society. and all this may be a potential catalyst for sweeping social changes within the next few decades--if we take advantage of this incredible technological boon to humanity.
while i think this technology may have some useful purposes in the future, i'm a little disturbed at the type of applications it's already being marketed towards:
i'm honestly afraid that this technology will be used by marketing/advertising firms to develop even more insidious ways of manipulating consumers. with marketing/advertising permeating all aspects of popular culture, even being used by politicians to frame political issues in ways that will win them public approval, we're increasingly living in a society of mass manipulation. we don't need to give the persuaders an even greater degree of control over us by letting them have unprecedented access to the thoughts and mental processes of consumers.
though i'm sure they'll probably start handing these out at focus groups so that they can tap directly into the subconscious desires of the individual as the ultimate form marketing research. marketing gurus are already helping major corporations appeal to the primitive reptilian minds of consumers to exploit people's subconscious associations. unfortunately, this results in consumers making irrational purchase decisions, which is at least partly responsible for the family SUV phenomena in the U.S.
why is a post about a DBMS forked from MySQL, and mentioned right in the summary, being modded Offtopic?
personally, i hadn't heard of Drizzle until today. i'm pretty curious about what others think of it too if anyone has experience with it.