I think the problem there would be that the text of the question itself would become the point of attack for the automated solver.
But I like the 3-D idea. My thought was that answering the question correctly doesn't require a "perfect" answer, but rather something that is score as being "good enough".
Differences in language or terminology would be included in the answer, so essentially each image in the test library would have a series of words and scores for those words.
Like any approach there will certainly be new-found complexities, but overall I just think that making the test based on imagery essentially makes for a far superior test than one based on letters. The evolution of the text-based tests just arrives at our current situation where obfuscation of the letters makes it hard for people too.
In the case of images, training a computer to "understand" an image would, as far as I can see, be vastly more complicated than training it to see 26 letters and 10 numbers under some messy lines and distortions.
What if instead of using a word/letter-test an image test was used? The user would be presented with an image, like a ball floating in a pool or a three apples next to a brick. The user would have to describe the image using the basic words, ala "ball in pool", "three apples and brick."
The image could be cropped differently, slight color changes, rotations, and other slight changes to prevent programatic recognition.
Perhaps it wouldn't work, but it seems to me that a computer would have a harder time deciphering and image than a series of letters of a known set of 26 + 10 (A-z, 0-9)...
Have you ever considered the reality that most of the bad legislation that government passes was single-handedly created by the corporations in the first place? I think what the poster was trying to say is that all institutions of power corrupt equally, be they governments or corporations.
Put another way, if the LP wants to get government off the back of the citizens and corporations, who is going to get the corporations off of backs of the citizens?
Have you or any other in the Libertarian party with significant influence ever seriously considered the possibility that the failure to obtain significant positions of influence in the government after 33 years stems from the possibility that your party's platform consists of a utopian theory instead of solid implementation?
We are all familiar with the adage, "The devil is in the details." Put in simplest terms, have you ever really and *honestly* evaluated just how many "devils" you have lurking in your desired platform?
I wish I could vote Libertarian but I am always left with the (negative) impression that your party is more about finding intellectual fellowship instead of supporting workable solutions; about having a blind love affair with the "what should be" while ignoring the implementation realities of the "what is."
1) People didn't have televisions in their homes at all in 1939. It was radio or going out to a show.
2) The number of movies released back then was lower, making competition for the movie-goer dollars a lot less.
3) Not everyone lives in the US (you insensitive clods:P ). LOTR has brought in more outside of the US than within. It's currently #2 in unadjusted dollars:
You're spot on here. As a whole, The Silmarillion would be hard to do. The hardest part would be to come up with a lot more dialog, as the Silm. tends to read a lot like the bible as opposed to standard prose. I would actually propose that covering the whole story in a movie format would require movie(s) even longer than LOTR.
However, OBAL has the does that makings for an outstanding film. For those not familiar, the Silmarillion is a sort of historical collection of events starting with the creation of the earth and roughly up to where the One Ring comes into existence.
OBAL, specifically, as about a man, Beren, who, while wandering in the forest finds Luthien (who no man has ever seen), the most beautiful elf. They fall in love, but the elve's father is outraged. He won't grant his daughter's hand unless Beren can obtain one of the elvish Silmarils from Morgoth's crown (Morgoth was Sauron's master and mentor and stole the Silmarils [jewels essentially] from a line of elves, who grew arrogant after their creation) This task is essentially suicidal, but Beren sets out on it anyway. Luthien escapes from her own people to aid Beren. I won't spoil the ending, however; it's too good a read:)
Thanks for your help (and the parent poster's as well.) My question was posed because I wanted to have some ballpark idea of re-distribution from a download size standpoint. Specifically, would the user have to download a program, but also 100MB library to get the program to run?
From what I gather, the WxWindows download scenario would most likely be a smaller one, since it seems to be more wrapper-based. I think I read somewhere that AOL's Communicator program was written with WxWindows (but the core of Wx was modified for AOL's needs.) Not sure if that was true or not but it seems to stick in my head as being so.
I want to ask a very cloud-level question here between the WxWindows and QT toolsets. My thanks in advance for anyone that can attempt to answer this.
I my understanding is correct, a robust application developed with WxWindows would essentially just consist of the actual executable, because the controls used by the application (such as a tree view, list view, etc.) are native to each operating system. That is, in Windows, for example, the binary libraries that supply these controls are simply being wrapped in the WxWindows layer, meaning that WxWindows isn't supplying it's own library components that would have to be distributed with each application.
Qt, based on my very slim understanding, supplies its own binary libraries that would have to be redistributed with the application? Is that correct? Would a QT application compiled for Windows require the redistribution of the entire/partial QT libraries with the application?
Identifying differences between what men and women prefer is not sexist. Men are not from Mars, Women are not from Venus, but there are preferential differences, and they are especially obvious in what movies each gender prefers. We're not a homogenous creature, and there's nothing wrong with recognizing the fact that there are some differences between men and women and what types of movies they prefer.
Oscar balloting is secret, so how does this poster know that all the women vote for the romances?
The voters aren't tossed into a pit at the end of the voting, never to be heard from again. They are people who talk to other people. That being the case, the movie "industry" is certainly interested conducting demographic studies to allow them to predict what the voters will like. Do you really think there is that much secrecy surrounding oscar voting? Consider the politics of the Oscars, and how movies are pressed towards the academy as proof positive that the industry knows the voters' demographics quite well: at an individual level, an age level, a political preference level, and a gender level.
Does this mean that the male voters always pick the most violent movie nominated?
No, but on average males tend towards movies like SPR (and LOTR for that matter) more than movies like SiL.
As another poster noted, even the romance parts of LOTR were "enhanced" beyond their presentation in the book. The "romance factor" is part of the politics of the Oscars. It's not an absolute requirement for winning the big award, but it's part of the equation. I was never trying to lay down an edict with my post. I was simply introducing an interesting reality about Oscar voting and the ravenous politics that have grown around the academy.
50% of the Oscar voting body is women, who have historically voted for whatever the most romance-based movie is of the bunch (Cold Mountain in this case.) Put another way, 50% of the voting body is interested in movies about relationships as opposed to epic cinema - unless of course it's about romance; think "Titanic."
Remember when "Shakespeare in Love" beat "Saving Private Ryan"; "Forrest Gump" beat "Pulp Fiction", etc.?
While there certainly can be exceptions to this rule, and hopefully this year will be one, past history suggests that the Oscar will go to something like Cold Mountain or Big Fish.
Wal-mart does sell at a loss by passing the loss to the manufacturers and suppliers.
They do so by waving a "golden opportunity" to the naive. They negotiate unfavorable terms, that the mfgs/suppliers would not accept from others with the promise that "you're with Wal-mart now" - e.g. - things will get brighter after you re-tool your operation and take a loss in supplying us at first. They do this for all the no-name goods (which is most of the store). Then when the mfg/supplier gets smart, they get dropped...and there will always be another naive one in line to take their place.
So you're technically right when you say Wal-mart doesn't sell at a loss, but they do use their power to make sure that others do. It's a bit like stealing things and selling them on E-Bay, just a more sophisticated way of doing it.
One could also blame the mfg/supp for being so easily tempted by the apple being waved in front of their face...
In the first two movies, Aragorn clearly does not have Narcil. As an earlier poster pointed out, it was reforged and given to him in Rivendell. That did happen in the books.
Also, in the FOTR extended DVD edition Elrond mentions reforging Narcil in the scene where Aragorn is at his mother's grave.
Now, the cinematic ROTK poster clearly shows Narcil's hilt in Aragorn's hands. So how does he get it? My guess is that Arwen makes a flight from the rest of the elves and takes it to him. This pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that PJ wants to make Arwen's character a bit more significant than just a strong woman waiting in the wings for the war to end...
The Scourging of the shire is not in the movie. Instead Saruman is killed at Orthanc (roughly in the same way).
Before people flame PJ for such a "betrayal" of the story, consider this departure from a cinematic perspective: 9 hours of movie lead up to the spectacular ending of the ring only to lead off into another hour to cover The Scourging?
This unfortunately just wouldn't fly from the cinematic perspective, even though the book lovers like most of us want to get every little last bit out of the story of Middle Earth. It is a film adaptation after all.
Ah yes, the Danny De Vito episode when he makes the baby translator. For the life of me I couldn't quite seem to remember where I heard that one. Thanks!
Get an unlisted and unpublished phone number. This costs $6 a month in MN. Couple this with not giving out your phone number to people trying to give you something "for free", and you should be in the clear. I haven't had one telemarketing call since I got the number two years ago.
One more thing: never ever fill out the "win this 2002 $vehicle" sweepstakes cards at the mall/wherever. They don't actually give away the vehicle anyway; they just to harvest phone numbers for a variety of telemarketing firms.
You made a valid point in that the war is won on the client-side; the nifty features. But you seem to be preaching that the world should embrace not-so-nifty features from the likes of Mozilla, et. al. just for the sake of not patronizing the current leader in such technologies. A battle like this just ended not long ago. It was called the Cold War.
I can by no means expound that capitalism is the perfect system, but it is better than socialism. To parallel, the best product should win, not the one that is "right." The non-MS cirlce needs to produce a product that is not simply on par with MS, but EXCEPTIONAL to it. That's how the "war" is won. Furthermore, the "war" itself, as defined by/. collectively seems to require the many (read: the 99% of non-technical computer users/owners who made MS into M$) to adopt new products that are the same products that the/. crowd touts as being so cool because they suit the "end users suck" dogma so well.
The "war" and the "many" don't exactly include "us" - they include people whos interest in computers (and desire to understand them) is approximately the equal to the average/.er's interest and dedication to something along the lines of tackle football. In short, make the non-MS killer app, don't complain about MS making killer apps...
I have the exact same thing down from you in the Twin Cities. We're pretty lucky here. With the Qwest/USWest merger I got the impression that the combined company intends to become the leading DSL provider in this and other areas.
I suspect the prices will come down as the "fear of installation" does too. Most people not in the tech circles hear about the cable modem more, so it's going to take some time. But like anything that follows the economies of scale theory the price will drop as more people get into it. I just think that most people who have never used a high speed connection are too content with dial-up. I know I could never go back to it!
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I think the problem there would be that the text of the question itself would become the point of attack for the automated solver.
But I like the 3-D idea. My thought was that answering the question correctly doesn't require a "perfect" answer, but rather something that is score as being "good enough".
Differences in language or terminology would be included in the answer, so essentially each image in the test library would have a series of words and scores for those words.
Like any approach there will certainly be new-found complexities, but overall I just think that making the test based on imagery essentially makes for a far superior test than one based on letters. The evolution of the text-based tests just arrives at our current situation where obfuscation of the letters makes it hard for people too.
In the case of images, training a computer to "understand" an image would, as far as I can see, be vastly more complicated than training it to see 26 letters and 10 numbers under some messy lines and distortions.
What if instead of using a word/letter-test an image test was used? The user would be presented with an image, like a ball floating in a pool or a three apples next to a brick. The user would have to describe the image using the basic words, ala "ball in pool", "three apples and brick."
The image could be cropped differently, slight color changes, rotations, and other slight changes to prevent programatic recognition.
Perhaps it wouldn't work, but it seems to me that a computer would have a harder time deciphering and image than a series of letters of a known set of 26 + 10 (A-z, 0-9)...
Have you ever considered the reality that most of the bad legislation that government passes was single-handedly created by the corporations in the first place? I think what the poster was trying to say is that all institutions of power corrupt equally, be they governments or corporations.
Put another way, if the LP wants to get government off the back of the citizens and corporations, who is going to get the corporations off of backs of the citizens?
Have you or any other in the Libertarian party with significant influence ever seriously considered the possibility that the failure to obtain significant positions of influence in the government after 33 years stems from the possibility that your party's platform consists of a utopian theory instead of solid implementation?
We are all familiar with the adage, "The devil is in the details." Put in simplest terms, have you ever really and *honestly* evaluated just how many "devils" you have lurking in your desired platform?
I wish I could vote Libertarian but I am always left with the (negative) impression that your party is more about finding intellectual fellowship instead of supporting workable solutions; about having a blind love affair with the "what should be" while ignoring the implementation realities of the "what is."
...when our history book depicted our beloved Upper Peninsula of Michigan as part of Canada.
1) People didn't have televisions in their homes at all in 1939. It was radio or going out to a show.
:P ). LOTR has brought in more outside of the US than within. It's currently #2 in unadjusted dollars:
2) The number of movies released back then was lower, making competition for the movie-goer dollars a lot less.
3) Not everyone lives in the US (you insensitive clods
http://www.imdb.com/Charts/worldtopmovies
You're spot on here. As a whole, The Silmarillion would be hard to do. The hardest part would be to come up with a lot more dialog, as the Silm. tends to read a lot like the bible as opposed to standard prose. I would actually propose that covering the whole story in a movie format would require movie(s) even longer than LOTR.
:)
However, OBAL has the does that makings for an outstanding film. For those not familiar, the Silmarillion is a sort of historical collection of events starting with the creation of the earth and roughly up to where the One Ring comes into existence.
OBAL, specifically, as about a man, Beren, who, while wandering in the forest finds Luthien (who no man has ever seen), the most beautiful elf. They fall in love, but the elve's father is outraged. He won't grant his daughter's hand unless Beren can obtain one of the elvish Silmarils from Morgoth's crown (Morgoth was Sauron's master and mentor and stole the Silmarils [jewels essentially] from a line of elves, who grew arrogant after their creation) This task is essentially suicidal, but Beren sets out on it anyway. Luthien escapes from her own people to aid Beren. I won't spoil the ending, however; it's too good a read
This is from Google's tallying, so it's probably a pretty good ballpark. Look at the second section, right side:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Thanks for your help (and the parent poster's as well.) My question was posed because I wanted to have some ballpark idea of re-distribution from a download size standpoint. Specifically, would the user have to download a program, but also 100MB library to get the program to run?
From what I gather, the WxWindows download scenario would most likely be a smaller one, since it seems to be more wrapper-based. I think I read somewhere that AOL's Communicator program was written with WxWindows (but the core of Wx was modified for AOL's needs.) Not sure if that was true or not but it seems to stick in my head as being so.
Anyway, thanks for your help. I appreciate it.
I want to ask a very cloud-level question here between the WxWindows and QT toolsets. My thanks in advance for anyone that can attempt to answer this.
I my understanding is correct, a robust application developed with WxWindows would essentially just consist of the actual executable, because the controls used by the application (such as a tree view, list view, etc.) are native to each operating system. That is, in Windows, for example, the binary libraries that supply these controls are simply being wrapped in the WxWindows layer, meaning that WxWindows isn't supplying it's own library components that would have to be distributed with each application.
Qt, based on my very slim understanding, supplies its own binary libraries that would have to be redistributed with the application? Is that correct? Would a QT application compiled for Windows require the redistribution of the entire/partial QT libraries with the application?
Thanks to anyone who can answer this...
First of all, it's blatantly sexist.
Identifying differences between what men and women prefer is not sexist. Men are not from Mars, Women are not from Venus, but there are preferential differences, and they are especially obvious in what movies each gender prefers. We're not a homogenous creature, and there's nothing wrong with recognizing the fact that there are some differences between men and women and what types of movies they prefer.
Oscar balloting is secret, so how does this poster know that all the women vote for the romances?
The voters aren't tossed into a pit at the end of the voting, never to be heard from again. They are people who talk to other people. That being the case, the movie "industry" is certainly interested conducting demographic studies to allow them to predict what the voters will like. Do you really think there is that much secrecy surrounding oscar voting? Consider the politics of the Oscars, and how movies are pressed towards the academy as proof positive that the industry knows the voters' demographics quite well: at an individual level, an age level, a political preference level, and a gender level.
Does this mean that the male voters always pick the most violent movie nominated?
No, but on average males tend towards movies like SPR (and LOTR for that matter) more than movies like SiL.
As another poster noted, even the romance parts of LOTR were "enhanced" beyond their presentation in the book. The "romance factor" is part of the politics of the Oscars. It's not an absolute requirement for winning the big award, but it's part of the equation. I was never trying to lay down an edict with my post. I was simply introducing an interesting reality about Oscar voting and the ravenous politics that have grown around the academy.
50% of the Oscar voting body is women, who have historically voted for whatever the most romance-based movie is of the bunch (Cold Mountain in this case.) Put another way, 50% of the voting body is interested in movies about relationships as opposed to epic cinema - unless of course it's about romance; think "Titanic."
Remember when "Shakespeare in Love" beat "Saving Private Ryan"; "Forrest Gump" beat "Pulp Fiction", etc.?
While there certainly can be exceptions to this rule, and hopefully this year will be one, past history suggests that the Oscar will go to something like Cold Mountain or Big Fish.
Wal-mart does sell at a loss by passing the loss to the manufacturers and suppliers.
They do so by waving a "golden opportunity" to the naive. They negotiate unfavorable terms, that the mfgs/suppliers would not accept from others with the promise that "you're with Wal-mart now" - e.g. - things will get brighter after you re-tool your operation and take a loss in supplying us at first. They do this for all the no-name goods (which is most of the store). Then when the mfg/supplier gets smart, they get dropped...and there will always be another naive one in line to take their place.
So you're technically right when you say Wal-mart doesn't sell at a loss, but they do use their power to make sure that others do. It's a bit like stealing things and selling them on E-Bay, just a more sophisticated way of doing it.
One could also blame the mfg/supp for being so easily tempted by the apple being waved in front of their face...
In the first two movies, Aragorn clearly does not have Narcil. As an earlier poster pointed out, it was reforged and given to him in Rivendell. That did happen in the books.
Also, in the FOTR extended DVD edition Elrond mentions reforging Narcil in the scene where Aragorn is at his mother's grave.
Now, the cinematic ROTK poster clearly shows Narcil's hilt in Aragorn's hands. So how does he get it? My guess is that Arwen makes a flight from the rest of the elves and takes it to him. This pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that PJ wants to make Arwen's character a bit more significant than just a strong woman waiting in the wings for the war to end...
Anyone else have any ideas?
ANSWER/SPOILERS below!
The Scourging of the shire is not in the movie. Instead Saruman is killed at Orthanc (roughly in the same way).
Before people flame PJ for such a "betrayal" of the story, consider this departure from a cinematic perspective: 9 hours of movie lead up to the spectacular ending of the ring only to lead off into another hour to cover The Scourging?
This unfortunately just wouldn't fly from the cinematic perspective, even though the book lovers like most of us want to get every little last bit out of the story of Middle Earth. It is a film adaptation after all.
Ah yes, the Danny De Vito episode when he makes the baby translator. For the life of me I couldn't quite seem to remember where I heard that one. Thanks!
I have heard it before! Is it from the Simpsons? Office Space? I just can't seem to remember.
It's the 80/20 rule and is more aimed at economics, but it applies rather well to most significant endeavors.
Get an unlisted and unpublished phone number. This costs $6 a month in MN. Couple this with not giving out your phone number to people trying to give you something "for free", and you should be in the clear. I haven't had one telemarketing call since I got the number two years ago.
One more thing: never ever fill out the "win this 2002 $vehicle" sweepstakes cards at the mall/wherever. They don't actually give away the vehicle anyway; they just to harvest phone numbers for a variety of telemarketing firms.
...and who do you run to *when* the State embarks upon the same abuses?
You made a valid point in that the war is won on the client-side; the nifty features. But you seem to be preaching that the world should embrace not-so-nifty features from the likes of Mozilla, et. al. just for the sake of not patronizing the current leader in such technologies. A battle like this just ended not long ago. It was called the Cold War.
/. collectively seems to require the many (read: the 99% of non-technical computer users/owners who made MS into M$) to adopt new products that are the same products that the /. crowd touts as being so cool because they suit the "end users suck" dogma so well.
/.er's interest and dedication to something along the lines of tackle football. In short, make the non-MS killer app, don't complain about MS making killer apps...
I can by no means expound that capitalism is the perfect system, but it is better than socialism. To parallel, the best product should win, not the one that is "right." The non-MS cirlce needs to produce a product that is not simply on par with MS, but EXCEPTIONAL to it. That's how the "war" is won. Furthermore, the "war" itself, as defined by
The "war" and the "many" don't exactly include "us" - they include people whos interest in computers (and desire to understand them) is approximately the equal to the average
I have the exact same thing down from you in the Twin Cities. We're pretty lucky here. With the Qwest/USWest merger I got the impression that the combined company intends to become the leading DSL provider in this and other areas.
I suspect the prices will come down as the "fear of installation" does too. Most people not in the tech circles hear about the cable modem more, so it's going to take some time. But like anything that follows the economies of scale theory the price will drop as more people get into it. I just think that most people who have never used a high speed connection are too content with dial-up. I know I could never go back to it!