Disclaimer: I'm a PhD student in pretty much the same field, but I'm not experienced enough that anyone should take my opinions as fact.
TFA looks interesting but overhyped to me.
The summary is completely useless, and the article isn't much better. After reading the description 3 times, I figured out the graph, at least. X-axis is time, Y-axis is frequency, and color is amplitude, so it's essentially a time dependent power spectrum density (PSD) with anything above a cutoff amplitude shown in black.
Not exactly. What they are doing is taking a normal time-frequency plot (as they say, like a music score) and transforming it to have new axes - the derivitive of phase and the group delay. They're arguing that this is generally a sparser representation of the signal than other representations. They analyse what white noise looks like in it. They give a hand waving physiological argument that this is how the ear might work, the strongest of which was the sparsity compared with the relative inactivity typical of the ear neurons - from TFA:
The fraction of the time-frequency plane occupied by the support of the distribution decreases as the sequence becomes longer, as in Fig. 3; therefore, reassigned distributions are sparse in the time-frequency plane. Sparse representations are of great interest in neuroscience (41-43), particularly in auditory areas, because most neurons in the primary auditory cortex A1 are silent most of the time (44-46).
The usual advantages of sparsity are in areas like compression, but with no inverse to their transform, I'm not sure that would be useful.
This is just another research paper guys, not a huge breakthrough or something.
If I wanted to be really sadistic, I could instead present site readers with a sentence, in which they have to fill in either "their," "there," or "they're."
Not to be a pedant, but "either" refers to one of two.:p
When the kids went to bed, my wife asked me, "Will we be able to keep the house, David?"
I just shook my head, and tried to hold back the tears. "I don't know, Jenny. I don't know."
Yes. The GP was confusing 0D (a scalar) with 1D (a vector). Also, since the multi-dimensional Fourier Transform kernal is seperable in each dimension, you can calculate higher dimensional transforms with the 1D version. Of course, the GP was kidding anyway, so I wouldn't get hung up on it.;)
No, not really. Let's take the encryption component, for example. For that, you have two choices: you can filter your encrypted content into a universally sharable format that is encrypted using a public key encryption algorithm (such as RSA). You can then exchange keys using one of the standard key exchange algorithms. The recipient can then decrypt the content and re-encrypt it in its native format.
If some company can decrypt the data, and convert it into another format, this system you're proposing only works if you've some mechanism to control what that other company does with the data. Someone has to be able to read the music file somewhere, and unless they're prevented somehow (i.e. in law), they can remove the DRM.
True, it's not anti-DRM per se, but it is open format, and that'll get substantial support here. Quick question time: Can anyone get hold of the format? If yes, can you legally write a programme to rip to another format?
Amazing... as I write there are 17 top-level posts of which 11 are saying something to the effect that "OMFG!!! Waste of bandwidth! All these sites are gonna be really slow!!! I'm editing my hosts file..." etc.
This means that fully 64.7% of Slashdot readers are so eager to rant on (not having read TFA) that they don't even mind making themselves look like utter fools...
More ironically, that makes all of those ill-considered posts a, erm, waste of bandwidth.
Is there perfect compatibility between business users with Word. and OO? Absolutely not. It's totally unacceptable for corporate use with other folks that use MS Word regularly.
Actually, I have had no issues with compatability between the two since upgrading to OOv2. I also send most documents as pdfs, which is not only a better solution in most situations than an OO Writer-written.doc, but it's a better solution in most situations than a Word-written.doc. If I had a dollar for every fuckup I've seen in a file written and read by different versions of Word, I'd be able to personally finance Calc to something approaching Excel.
If you want to bash OO on interoperability, don't pick Writer-Word.
What is it about these generic algorithms that your control theorist friend objects to?
He dislikes them for being designed as lazy ballpark solutions (the Zieger-Nichol tuning rules) to problems that often have an exact analytical solution. He says people use them because they're the only thing they bother learning.
I'm not really qualified to make his argument properly though. The only practical control system I've ever implimented was a PI controller.:) He, on the other hand, is an academic who scares pure mathematicians and engineers alike.
It's not all primitive - this is usually done in analog 3-term PID controllers. Where electonics cannot be used due to environment restrictions, pneumatic bellows (!) are often used to model integral action.
I know a control theorest who would disagree. He hates PID controllers with a passion.:)
He already has locked up people for 3 years without trial or even being questioned - although he has been twice been 'told off' for breaching the Human Rights Act in this way.
On a serious and vaugely related note however, if you decieve a machine into thinking that something is happening when it actually isn't (either through an error in the calculations or through false sensory equipment) would that allow you to make it violate the the three laws of robotics and cause it to break them without it thinking it broke them so to speak? I'm sure I read an Issac Isamov story that did something like this, anyone know about it?
Sounds familiar alright. In The Naked Sun, one character suggests that a robot could be told to put something "harmless" into a drink, then another robot could be ordered to serve it to someone, unaware that it has been poisoned by the first, but I think there was a more complicated plot closer to what you're thinking.
OTOH, communication has sped the transmission of information. Now we hear about news from distant cities as if it were local. Things probably actually aren't any worse than they ever were. Probably. But the also don't appear to be any better.
"The world's always been this crazy. It's just better documented now." I can't remember who said that. I think he was Latvian though.
On the subject of quotes, I was just looking at the tagging on TFA, "stupid, sheep, bullshit, bigbrother, privacy (tagging beta)" and couldn't help but think of the corus of variations on "bullshit" from the TV Neos in the Architect scene of the Matrix Reloaded.:)
Then put back the limits that a corporation can only work in the one field it was originally incorporated for.
I'm not sure that's entirely fair. What if that field dries up? I can't think of a good example offhand (I'm terrible at that sort of thing), but if you were a ship builder thirty years ago, and wanted to expand into a field that wasn't shrinking like that was due to commercial air travel, a rule like that would seem terribly unfair.
This isn't a business where you can just walk in off the street, pick up a hammer, and get to work. You have to study, you have to work, you have to be skilled.
Using a hammer correctly is harder than you think. Speaking as the son of a carpenter who is hard working and incredibly skillful with a hammer, chisel and every other tool of his trade, don't belittle the guys who spent every bit as long learning their trade as you just because you have to use your head a bit more - I hate that sort of attitude every bit as much as the reverse one.
...At three bucks they would sell BILLIONS of freaking disks. 3$ is an impulse item charge, people would be grabbing handfuls of them, not even bothering with most file trading or looking up "CD Leroy" at the flea market.
People are just not that stupid or naieve about costs anymore, not when EVERYONE knows how cheap it is to make dupes...
They wouldn't sell billions. In fact, I doubt they'd increase sales enough to even come close to making what they do now. That would be okay though for most movies, but it's hard to convince people that cutting their profit margin is sensible (even if it'll help revitalise the industry). The blockbusters, the ones they spend more than $100,000,000 on making, they'd find it tougher to pay for those. Still, if it was $3 for a decent small film, and $10 for Tom Cruise's latest heap of shit, they'd probably start recognising that there's value in making a good small-budget movie. I wish I could see it happening.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I'm a PhD student in pretty much the same field, but I'm not experienced enough that anyone should take my opinions as fact.
TFA looks interesting but overhyped to me.
Not exactly. What they are doing is taking a normal time-frequency plot (as they say, like a music score) and transforming it to have new axes - the derivitive of phase and the group delay. They're arguing that this is generally a sparser representation of the signal than other representations. They analyse what white noise looks like in it. They give a hand waving physiological argument that this is how the ear might work, the strongest of which was the sparsity compared with the relative inactivity typical of the ear neurons - from TFA:The usual advantages of sparsity are in areas like compression, but with no inverse to their transform, I'm not sure that would be useful.
This is just another research paper guys, not a huge breakthrough or something.
Read the parent. "We use your PIN to unlock that information."
If some company can decrypt the data, and convert it into another format, this system you're proposing only works if you've some mechanism to control what that other company does with the data. Someone has to be able to read the music file somewhere, and unless they're prevented somehow (i.e. in law), they can remove the DRM.
True, it's not anti-DRM per se, but it is open format, and that'll get substantial support here. Quick question time: Can anyone get hold of the format? If yes, can you legally write a programme to rip to another format?
Actually, I have had no issues with compatability between the two since upgrading to OOv2. I also send most documents as pdfs, which is not only a better solution in most situations than an OO Writer-written .doc, but it's a better solution in most situations than a Word-written .doc. If I had a dollar for every fuckup I've seen in a file written and read by different versions of Word, I'd be able to personally finance Calc to something approaching Excel.
If you want to bash OO on interoperability, don't pick Writer-Word.
He dislikes them for being designed as lazy ballpark solutions (the Zieger-Nichol tuning rules) to problems that often have an exact analytical solution. He says people use them because they're the only thing they bother learning.
I'm not really qualified to make his argument properly though. The only practical control system I've ever implimented was a PI controller. :) He, on the other hand, is an academic who scares pure mathematicians and engineers alike.
I know a control theorest who would disagree. He hates PID controllers with a passion. :)
Sounds familiar alright. In The Naked Sun, one character suggests that a robot could be told to put something "harmless" into a drink, then another robot could be ordered to serve it to someone, unaware that it has been poisoned by the first, but I think there was a more complicated plot closer to what you're thinking.
Clearly, you've never sampled the delights of haggis.
Isn't that famously a myth?
On the subject of quotes, I was just looking at the tagging on TFA, "stupid, sheep, bullshit, bigbrother, privacy (tagging beta)" and couldn't help but think of the corus of variations on "bullshit" from the TV Neos in the Architect scene of the Matrix Reloaded. :)
Very good. We're on the same page so!
Man, I phrased that question badly, didn't I? ;) Yes, blacksmiths, at least as skilled workers as carpenters, use hammers as often.
Name a profession that uses a hammer a tenth as much as carpentry, and I'll concede the point.
Using a hammer correctly is harder than you think. Speaking as the son of a carpenter who is hard working and incredibly skillful with a hammer, chisel and every other tool of his trade, don't belittle the guys who spent every bit as long learning their trade as you just because you have to use your head a bit more - I hate that sort of attitude every bit as much as the reverse one.
:) Very good. I like Lada's design too.