Transiently implies that the image data would fade/dissapear passively over time. No, the images are written into a (circular) buffer for processing. The images he takes would not dissapear unless they were over-written by subsequent images.
No, you're being too narrow. Transient only means that in the context of physics or math. In English it simply means temporary, and a circular buffer is exactly what I meant when I used the term. No semantic games please.
Also, you have no insight on how his device actually works. Your statement also shows a complete lack of understanding of how digital image/signal processing work.
Wrong again. I'm a senior software developer for a company that builds medical image processing software. I am intimately familiar with both digital imaging and signal processing. You need to be careful about your assumptions.
How can you assert that the device was clearly running fine after the initial impact. It could have loosened some pins or wires to the power supply, causing juice to drain out slowly, but still allowing the data acquisition part of the device to collect more data.
Perhaps "fine" was a too ambiguous, but this is exactly my point, the device was still running and did not come to a "hard stop". In his post he makes it sound like the latter situation occurred, which it clearly did not. I could understand how recording could be called accidental if the device suffered a complete failure, and later he went in and retrieved the photos from the circular buffer. However, this is obviously NOT the case because many of the photos are from *after* when the impact to the device occurred, if the above "circular buffer" scenario were the correct one, it would only have images from *before* the impact.
The scenario you suggest is, I believe, precisely what actually happened. If so, then the recording cannot be construed as "accidental". If the damage was minor (e.g. loose cable disconnecting data acquisition from data processing as you suggest), and the system records images in this condition for later retrieval - THEN IT HAD TO HAVE BEEN DESIGNED THAT WAY. Since he designed the system, he would have known that it would be recording after the impact. As such, he cannot claim that the images were captured accidentally. It was entirely deliberate and intentional on his part because he DESIGNED THE SYSTEM TO DO SO. In this circumstance, most systems I have ever seen with a similar feature will record the images to a more permanent backup location until connection to the data processor is restored. They certainly *don't* record them to the transient circular buffer used for processing during normal functioning.
This is a prosthetic sight and memory augmentation device he wears due to a medical condition ! Throwing that out is no better than throwing out a paraplegic because you worry his prosthetic leg may scratch the floor tiles.
No, this is a false analogy. The only "medical condition" Mann has is NOT wearing the device - the alleged disorientation he experiences when the device is removed. This is allegedly caused by his using the device nearly constantly for 13 years. However, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, and in other articles about Mann, many of his students have routinely seen him get along just fine without wearing it during this period.
A better analogy would be tossing out someone who wears powerbock shoes constantly, and claims that because he has worn them for many years, not wearing them is a medical condition which reduces his mobility and speed.
While I respect Steve's research, there are a number of things about this alleged "assault" that don't seem right.
1) First off, it's debatable whether someone trying to snatch your glasses is really a physical attack. Attempted theft sure, but they weren't trying to physically injure him or knock his teeth out. Crying wolf, exaggerating, and misconstruing attempted petty theft as physical assault are not good ways to promote your cause. When the headline reads something like "Researcher physically assaulted at McDonald's" what comes to mind for most people is him being punched in the face, or knocked down and kicked etc... When you then read the article and find that the only "physical assault" was just someone trying to take his glasses off without permission - it's pretty clear where the sensationalism lies.
2) I'd like to hear the story from the other side. I don't doubt Steve's sincerity, but I do doubt his objectivity. He has a known public history of deliberately provoking this kind of confrontation. I find it highly unlikely that anyone - especially a restaurant employee - would just walk over and grab his glasses without first at least asking him to remove them. This gap in the narrative is ruining my suspension of disbelief.
3) Who makes wearable computers that are not easily removable?!? The moniker "wearable" implies the devices can be easily "unworn". The guy is a brilliant engineer - making this sort of system modular and removable would be trivial. If his system is not easily removable, it's not because of any technical barrier, it's because he *deliberately chose* to make it so. The problem is, there's no real reason to have such a device permanently attached unless you are trying to make a political statement. By permanently attaching recording devices to your body, you are deliberately provoking conflict in areas of society where such recording is disallowed. I've read a lot of Steve's writing on "Sousveillance", and it's quite clear that he *is* deliberately trying to make a political statement and provoke a wider conversation on privacy issues, human rights etc... While I agree with a lot of his positions on the matter (everyone should be allowed to record all aspects of their personal experiences, and pervasive recording equipment should be equally available and accessible to individuals as well as groups), I just can't sympathize with someone who intentionally and deliberately puts himself into conflict with "the powers that be" and then complains about the results publicly.
4) I don't buy the story of the images being accidentally captured because of the jolt to the system when the restaurant employee tried to remove it. Sure - if the system was constantly buffering as it was running and was hit so hard it shutdown - then I might believe the "these are just images I luckily managed to retrieve from the buffer" story. But the shoe doesn't fit. The system was clearly running fine *after* whatever impact it took - many of the images he displays on his blog correspond to the parts of the narrative *after* the alleged blow - so the images he displays would not have been in the buffer when that occurred. If the system only stores images transiently during normal operation, why were images retained after the system obviously regained full functionality?
We should all reserve judgement until we can hear the other side of the story - innocent until proven guilty applies to everyone. I addition, Steve needs to:
- can the exaggeration, hyperbole and sensationalism: it makes him sound like a dick
- make the damn thing wearable already: I'm certainly not going to buy one if I have to shave my head and glue it to my skull - and I doubt anyone else is either
- own his own behaviour: if he's provoking conflict to start a public conversation, he should just admit. I'd have more respect for him
- quit playing the victim: there are far too many *actual* victims out there in this world, and he's trivializing their experiences by equating attempted petty theft to physical assault
I did make a good faith effort to get the custom configs I was used to, but when I couldn't figure out how to do so, the responses I got were much as you say:
"That's stupid."
"No one does that"
"Why would you even want to do that?"
etc...
I used to be a huge fan of KDE, and used it religiously on every computer.
It used to be that if you wanted configurability and customizability, you went with KDE. If you wanted a slick looking, unified, intuitive UI, you went with Gnome.
When they rolled out KDE 4, I found that a lot of the custom config changes that I always applied to KDE to get it just the way I wanted were suddenly no longer available or just didn't work. Additionally, KDE 4 made my system basically slow to a crawl and none of the hardware accelerated eye candy worked properly anymore (I simply could not get both stable video playback and desktop effects to work together).
So I switched to Gnome. I have since learned how to use gconf-editor to implement most of the custom UI config I like. It's a bit harder to do than it was in KDE 3.X, but what choice do I have?
Are the current versions of KDE any good? I haven't even test driven it since KDE 4 because that experience was so bad...
You mean like in the Babylon 5 season 3 finale, where Sheridan jumps to his death on Z'ha'dum and is brought back to life to lead the alliance against the Shadows and Vorlons?
Oh wait, that's the opposite of what you were trying to say.
There are basically 5 types of cells in the retina: photoreceptors (rods & cones), bipolar cells, amacrine cells, horizontal cells, and ganglion cells.
Photoreceptors transmute light into electro-chemical signals with photopigments, bipolar cells link multiple photoreceptors in a lateral inhibition configuration and perform basic luminosity gradient/edge detection preprocessing. The amacrine and horizontal cells are involved in motion detection and image smoothing, but I don't know much about them. The bipolar cells doing edge detection feed into ganglion cells which connect to the optic nerve to send that signal to the visual cortex, which does more complex feature discrimination (bars, lines etc...).
There are separate ganglion cells which perform rate coded colour detection through what's called the opponent process. There are only two types: blue/yellow and red/green.
The red/green ganglia are easy to describe, they are excited by the red cone photoreceptors and inhibited by the green cone photoreceptors. These signals combine to determine the rate of firing of the ganglion cell. So lots of red light means the red/green ganglia fire rapidly, signalling we are seeing red. Lots of green light makes the red/green ganglia fire slowly or not at all, signalling we are seeing green.
The blue/yellow ganglia are a little more complex, they are excited by the red *and* green cone photoreceptors, and inhibited by the blue cone photoreceptors (synaptic weights from the cones to the ganglia are not equal). So lots of reg+green light = blue/yellow ganglia increase rate of firing signalling yellow, while lots of blue light = blue/yellow ganglia decrease rate of firing signalling blue.
Incidentally, this is why red & green and blue & yellow are "complementary" colours, and accounts for many afterimage effects (e.g. stare are something, then stare at a blank wall) - the retina can't physically signal red and green or blue and yellow at the same time.
The signal being sent along the optic nerve from the ganglia then consists of basically three channels: a luminosity gradient, red/green and blue/yellow. The specific ganglion sending the signal indicates where it was detected in retinotopic space. I am specifically leaving out the amacrine/horizontal cells here, I know they are involved somehow in signal modulation and motion detection, but again, I don't really know how that system works.
The preprocessing done by the retina on visual input can be broken down into three broad categories: edge detection, colour detection and motion detection. The retinal signal is then processed using what I like to call "magic" in the visual cortex to create our perceptions.
1) Moving water takes more muscle power than moving air
2) Mammals (such as us) are warm blooded so our oxygen requirements are high. Fish and other gilled creatures are cold blooded and thus can actually survive on the amount of oxygen dissolved in water. We cannot.
Physically, teenagers are adults (biologically able to procreate)... ...except the very modern idea that children are not adults until some arbitrary law says so.
Sure, physically teenagers are adults, but there's abundant evidence that the frontal cortex is not fully wired until your mid-twenties.
This means that teenagers have empirically measurable cognitive deficits in things like: organizational thinking, executive functioning, empathy, attentional control, judgment of consequences... and a whole host of other mental capacities associated with adult frontal lobe functioning and decision making.
So, no, the laws aren't arbitrary. Sure, maybe the people making them didn't have this research at the time - but they were definitely intuitively aware that teenagers as a group did not display the same kind of mature and responsible thinking as actual adults.
Lol, that's pretty funny! I guess I touched a nerve there eh, because now you're insulting my Googling "skill"!
Look, you're talking about two different things. Points a) and b) above are basically just good research analysis and critical thinking skills - this is not the same thing as:
really damn good with google
Sure, if you have good research analysis and critical thinking skills it can very well make you more effective at using *any* kind of search engine, data index etc...
But that's not what you said. You made a claim about being skilled at using a specific tool, namely Google's search engine. This doesn't necessarily imply being good at research and critical thinking. The only concrete implication a reader can make from a statement of that type is that you consider yourself familiar with how to use tool X.
For example, if I said "I am really damn good at MarioKart", I am making a specific statement about my abilities in a certain video game - it cannot be said that I am making a statement about my general video game, hand-eye coordination or reaction time abilities.
Sure, those things may very well make me more effective at any video game, but you can't draw that conclusion from that statement because it's not a necessary implication. I could be crappy at every other video game and have poor hand-eye coordination and reaction time, but yet have played 10,000 hours of MarioKart and memorized every level, thus still making me "really damn good at MarioKart".
If you simply mistyped and wrote that you were "really damn good with google" when what you actually meant was that you were "really damn good at research and critical thinking" that's fine, everyone makes mistakes. It was simply a mis-communication on your part. But don't pretend that the two are one and the same and then jump down my throat because I said that "Googling" doesn't qualify as a skill!
The difference between how you use google and how I use google is the difference between a teenager on facebook and a research librarian
This last bit is the funniest!!! You have absolutely *zero* evidence on which to make this statement. You know precisely nothing about me - for all you know I am a research librarian!
I certainly hope you did not make it a habit of making such unqualified and baseless assertions while you were on the job - it shows poor critical thinking skills...
But I am really damn good with google. I am always ready to train client employees to do what I do with google...
Seriously? You think knowing how to type in searches in Google is a skill? (let alone one that is difficult to learn?)
What? You know how to use "site:" "filetype:" and "+" and other people just can't grok it? lol
Google, like Apple, has spent a lot of money to make sure that their product is easy to use and intuitive. "Knowing" how to use Google is not a skill. Neither is having read their "advanced operators" FAQ.
The other posters were right, you were not paid big bucks because of your "awesome" (Lol!) Googling "skills" - you were paid big bucks to be the clueless intermediary they could blame everything on if someone else screwed up.
Slashdot Mirror
Transiently implies that the image data would fade/dissapear passively over time. No, the images are written into a (circular) buffer for processing. The images he takes would not dissapear unless they were over-written by subsequent images.
No, you're being too narrow. Transient only means that in the context of physics or math. In English it simply means temporary, and a circular buffer is exactly what I meant when I used the term. No semantic games please.
Also, you have no insight on how his device actually works. Your statement also shows a complete lack of understanding of how digital image/signal processing work.
Wrong again. I'm a senior software developer for a company that builds medical image processing software. I am intimately familiar with both digital imaging and signal processing. You need to be careful about your assumptions.
How can you assert that the device was clearly running fine after the initial impact. It could have loosened some pins or wires to the power supply, causing juice to drain out slowly, but still allowing the data acquisition part of the device to collect more data.
Perhaps "fine" was a too ambiguous, but this is exactly my point, the device was still running and did not come to a "hard stop". In his post he makes it sound like the latter situation occurred, which it clearly did not. I could understand how recording could be called accidental if the device suffered a complete failure, and later he went in and retrieved the photos from the circular buffer. However, this is obviously NOT the case because many of the photos are from *after* when the impact to the device occurred, if the above "circular buffer" scenario were the correct one, it would only have images from *before* the impact.
The scenario you suggest is, I believe, precisely what actually happened. If so, then the recording cannot be construed as "accidental". If the damage was minor (e.g. loose cable disconnecting data acquisition from data processing as you suggest), and the system records images in this condition for later retrieval - THEN IT HAD TO HAVE BEEN DESIGNED THAT WAY. Since he designed the system, he would have known that it would be recording after the impact. As such, he cannot claim that the images were captured accidentally. It was entirely deliberate and intentional on his part because he DESIGNED THE SYSTEM TO DO SO. In this circumstance, most systems I have ever seen with a similar feature will record the images to a more permanent backup location until connection to the data processor is restored. They certainly *don't* record them to the transient circular buffer used for processing during normal functioning.
This is a prosthetic sight and memory augmentation device he wears due to a medical condition ! Throwing that out is no better than throwing out a paraplegic because you worry his prosthetic leg may scratch the floor tiles.
No, this is a false analogy. The only "medical condition" Mann has is NOT wearing the device - the alleged disorientation he experiences when the device is removed. This is allegedly caused by his using the device nearly constantly for 13 years. However, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, and in other articles about Mann, many of his students have routinely seen him get along just fine without wearing it during this period.
A better analogy would be tossing out someone who wears powerbock shoes constantly, and claims that because he has worn them for many years, not wearing them is a medical condition which reduces his mobility and speed.
While I respect Steve's research, there are a number of things about this alleged "assault" that don't seem right.
1) First off, it's debatable whether someone trying to snatch your glasses is really a physical attack. Attempted theft sure, but they weren't trying to physically injure him or knock his teeth out. Crying wolf, exaggerating, and misconstruing attempted petty theft as physical assault are not good ways to promote your cause. When the headline reads something like "Researcher physically assaulted at McDonald's" what comes to mind for most people is him being punched in the face, or knocked down and kicked etc... When you then read the article and find that the only "physical assault" was just someone trying to take his glasses off without permission - it's pretty clear where the sensationalism lies.
2) I'd like to hear the story from the other side. I don't doubt Steve's sincerity, but I do doubt his objectivity. He has a known public history of deliberately provoking this kind of confrontation. I find it highly unlikely that anyone - especially a restaurant employee - would just walk over and grab his glasses without first at least asking him to remove them. This gap in the narrative is ruining my suspension of disbelief.
3) Who makes wearable computers that are not easily removable?!? The moniker "wearable" implies the devices can be easily "unworn". The guy is a brilliant engineer - making this sort of system modular and removable would be trivial. If his system is not easily removable, it's not because of any technical barrier, it's because he *deliberately chose* to make it so. The problem is, there's no real reason to have such a device permanently attached unless you are trying to make a political statement. By permanently attaching recording devices to your body, you are deliberately provoking conflict in areas of society where such recording is disallowed. I've read a lot of Steve's writing on "Sousveillance", and it's quite clear that he *is* deliberately trying to make a political statement and provoke a wider conversation on privacy issues, human rights etc... While I agree with a lot of his positions on the matter (everyone should be allowed to record all aspects of their personal experiences, and pervasive recording equipment should be equally available and accessible to individuals as well as groups), I just can't sympathize with someone who intentionally and deliberately puts himself into conflict with "the powers that be" and then complains about the results publicly.
4) I don't buy the story of the images being accidentally captured because of the jolt to the system when the restaurant employee tried to remove it. Sure - if the system was constantly buffering as it was running and was hit so hard it shutdown - then I might believe the "these are just images I luckily managed to retrieve from the buffer" story. But the shoe doesn't fit. The system was clearly running fine *after* whatever impact it took - many of the images he displays on his blog correspond to the parts of the narrative *after* the alleged blow - so the images he displays would not have been in the buffer when that occurred. If the system only stores images transiently during normal operation, why were images retained after the system obviously regained full functionality?
We should all reserve judgement until we can hear the other side of the story - innocent until proven guilty applies to everyone. I addition, Steve needs to:
... I guess now they have to sleep in it?
I did make a good faith effort to get the custom configs I was used to, but when I couldn't figure out how to do so, the responses I got were much as you say:
"That's stupid."
"No one does that"
"Why would you even want to do that?"
etc...
So now I use Gnome.
It used to be that if you wanted configurability and customizability, you went with KDE. If you wanted a slick looking, unified, intuitive UI, you went with Gnome.
When they rolled out KDE 4, I found that a lot of the custom config changes that I always applied to KDE to get it just the way I wanted were suddenly no longer available or just didn't work. Additionally, KDE 4 made my system basically slow to a crawl and none of the hardware accelerated eye candy worked properly anymore (I simply could not get both stable video playback and desktop effects to work together).
So I switched to Gnome. I have since learned how to use gconf-editor to implement most of the custom UI config I like. It's a bit harder to do than it was in KDE 3.X, but what choice do I have?
Are the current versions of KDE any good? I haven't even test driven it since KDE 4 because that experience was so bad...
No. You need transparent aluminum for that.
...there's not enough customers, and I have to cash out to my GF.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/09/16/why-are-cell-phone-conversations-so-distracting/
You mean like in the Babylon 5 season 3 finale, where Sheridan jumps to his death on Z'ha'dum and is brought back to life to lead the alliance against the Shadows and Vorlons?
Oh wait, that's the opposite of what you were trying to say.
And Babylon 5 was the best SF to ever hit TV...
There are basically 5 types of cells in the retina: photoreceptors (rods & cones), bipolar cells, amacrine cells, horizontal cells, and ganglion cells.
Photoreceptors transmute light into electro-chemical signals with photopigments, bipolar cells link multiple photoreceptors in a lateral inhibition configuration and perform basic luminosity gradient/edge detection preprocessing. The amacrine and horizontal cells are involved in motion detection and image smoothing, but I don't know much about them. The bipolar cells doing edge detection feed into ganglion cells which connect to the optic nerve to send that signal to the visual cortex, which does more complex feature discrimination (bars, lines etc...).
There are separate ganglion cells which perform rate coded colour detection through what's called the opponent process. There are only two types: blue/yellow and red/green.
The red/green ganglia are easy to describe, they are excited by the red cone photoreceptors and inhibited by the green cone photoreceptors. These signals combine to determine the rate of firing of the ganglion cell. So lots of red light means the red/green ganglia fire rapidly, signalling we are seeing red. Lots of green light makes the red/green ganglia fire slowly or not at all, signalling we are seeing green.
The blue/yellow ganglia are a little more complex, they are excited by the red *and* green cone photoreceptors, and inhibited by the blue cone photoreceptors (synaptic weights from the cones to the ganglia are not equal). So lots of reg+green light = blue/yellow ganglia increase rate of firing signalling yellow, while lots of blue light = blue/yellow ganglia decrease rate of firing signalling blue.
Incidentally, this is why red & green and blue & yellow are "complementary" colours, and accounts for many afterimage effects (e.g. stare are something, then stare at a blank wall) - the retina can't physically signal red and green or blue and yellow at the same time.
The signal being sent along the optic nerve from the ganglia then consists of basically three channels: a luminosity gradient, red/green and blue/yellow. The specific ganglion sending the signal indicates where it was detected in retinotopic space. I am specifically leaving out the amacrine/horizontal cells here, I know they are involved somehow in signal modulation and motion detection, but again, I don't really know how that system works.
The preprocessing done by the retina on visual input can be broken down into three broad categories: edge detection, colour detection and motion detection. The retinal signal is then processed using what I like to call "magic" in the visual cortex to create our perceptions.
Hope this helps!
Don't get on a plane!
it's *arbitrarily* more convenient for most people
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Bah! Telnet!
You kids and your new fangled tech!
Gopher is where it's at!!! If I can't find you on WAIS you might as well not exist!
Obviously the answer is that Jedi are cold blooded...
The emperor's new laptop? I'll sell you one right now!
1) Moving water takes more muscle power than moving air
2) Mammals (such as us) are warm blooded so our oxygen requirements are high. Fish and other gilled creatures are cold blooded and thus can actually survive on the amount of oxygen dissolved in water. We cannot.
Sorry, if you were born within the last 20 years, that definitely counts as recent.
Apparently you didn't get the joke.
Of course if running DOS games at their appropriate speed is your goal, then DOSBox is obviously the solution...
lol! Obviously DosBox is perfect for that! I was making a facetious comment with regards to running Windows XP in a JVM.
It'll come in handy to run those old DOS games that aren't properly clocked and run *way* too fast on modern machines....
Physically, teenagers are adults (biologically able to procreate)...
...except the very modern idea that children are not adults until some arbitrary law says so.
Sure, physically teenagers are adults, but there's abundant evidence that the frontal cortex is not fully wired until your mid-twenties.
This means that teenagers have empirically measurable cognitive deficits in things like: organizational thinking, executive functioning, empathy, attentional control, judgment of consequences... and a whole host of other mental capacities associated with adult frontal lobe functioning and decision making.
So, no, the laws aren't arbitrary. Sure, maybe the people making them didn't have this research at the time - but they were definitely intuitively aware that teenagers as a group did not display the same kind of mature and responsible thinking as actual adults.
Ha! Perhaps I did get carried away! Maybe bullet points will help:
What I handed out:
- mockery of "Googling" as a skill
What I got back:
- definition changes after the fact
- personal attacks
Nope. Not the same.
Lol, that's pretty funny! I guess I touched a nerve there eh, because now you're insulting my Googling "skill"!
Look, you're talking about two different things. Points a) and b) above are basically just good research analysis and critical thinking skills - this is not the same thing as:
really damn good with google
Sure, if you have good research analysis and critical thinking skills it can very well make you more effective at using *any* kind of search engine, data index etc...
But that's not what you said. You made a claim about being skilled at using a specific tool, namely Google's search engine. This doesn't necessarily imply being good at research and critical thinking. The only concrete implication a reader can make from a statement of that type is that you consider yourself familiar with how to use tool X.
For example, if I said "I am really damn good at MarioKart", I am making a specific statement about my abilities in a certain video game - it cannot be said that I am making a statement about my general video game, hand-eye coordination or reaction time abilities.
Sure, those things may very well make me more effective at any video game, but you can't draw that conclusion from that statement because it's not a necessary implication. I could be crappy at every other video game and have poor hand-eye coordination and reaction time, but yet have played 10,000 hours of MarioKart and memorized every level, thus still making me "really damn good at MarioKart".
If you simply mistyped and wrote that you were "really damn good with google" when what you actually meant was that you were "really damn good at research and critical thinking" that's fine, everyone makes mistakes. It was simply a mis-communication on your part. But don't pretend that the two are one and the same and then jump down my throat because I said that "Googling" doesn't qualify as a skill!
The difference between how you use google and how I use google is the difference between a teenager on facebook and a research librarian
This last bit is the funniest!!! You have absolutely *zero* evidence on which to make this statement. You know precisely nothing about me - for all you know I am a research librarian!
I certainly hope you did not make it a habit of making such unqualified and baseless assertions while you were on the job - it shows poor critical thinking skills...
But I am really damn good with google. I am always ready to train client employees to do what I do with google...
Seriously? You think knowing how to type in searches in Google is a skill? (let alone one that is difficult to learn?)
What? You know how to use "site:" "filetype:" and "+" and other people just can't grok it? lol
Google, like Apple, has spent a lot of money to make sure that their product is easy to use and intuitive. "Knowing" how to use Google is not a skill. Neither is having read their "advanced operators" FAQ.
The other posters were right, you were not paid big bucks because of your "awesome" (Lol!) Googling "skills" - you were paid big bucks to be the clueless intermediary they could blame everything on if someone else screwed up.