Thank you:) It was just something I knocked out before I left work and I never thought anyone would ever get to see it, but yet again/. proves me wrong. It's trolls like that that make me glad to be a part of the open-minded, open-source community that/. promotes:)
The Schindler's List is a one sided manipulation of the espectator's feelings regarding a very sensitive subject. The performance and realization are magnificent, that can't be denied, but it's manipulation nevertheless. That's a pretty low thing to do as a director.
I'd totally disagree with you there on that last point. It's part of a director or writer's job to manipulate their audience, whether it be through the cinematography, the characterisations or through the plot. A successful film manipulates its audience in many ways, subtle and not-so subtle, and without that a film is sterile, leaving wondering what you were doing far the last hour and a half.
Sure, Schindler's List may be a pretty extreme example of audience manipulation - I don't know, I haven't seen it myself. But the subject matter is an extremely sensitive one and is bound to provoke strong feelings, even if the film was poorly executed. And anyway, I'm sure the director's views would be shared by the majority of the audience before they saw the film, if anything making the film less manipulative rather than more.
I think that people who believe in learning social interaction as a priority at college (opposed to the actual studies) are, by and large, Liberal Arts majors if you ask me. (Not intended as a troll, just an opinion).
Okay, as someone you finished their degree in Theoretical Physics a couple of years ago I'll reply:) I don't think anyone here really thinks the most important thing about college is learning social interaction, of course the primary object is to learn your subject.
But the point is that there are a lot of other aspects of college which are important to the rest of your life. Learning to meet and get on with new people, how to talk to people confidently and act in groups, how to work as part of a team in projects, how to live life on your own and a million other little things which prepare people for the rest of their life. The entire college experiance contributes to these things, yes even "snorting beers and shots of whiskey" as you say. Granted you can learn all these things by staying at home and doing a remote course, but the impetus from being in a totally new place and situation is lost, and people won't gain all these new skills, making it harder for them when they finally leave home and get a job.
I find that most people are sincere about their own motives but always question other people's motives. Why is that?
Because there are very few people out there who truly like everything about themselves, and that kind of introspection generally makes people rather depressed about past decisions and their consequences:) Anyway, the article wasn't about me planning to produce Kubrick's film, so discussing my motives would be somewhat offtopic thankfully.
Anyway I'm not saying Spielberg's doing this for the money - I'd think it was blatently obvious he doesn't really need any more. It's more about recognition - as you said Spielberg had to wait a long time for an Oscar and wasn't taken seriously by a lot of people until Schindler's List. And whether Kubrick's films were popular or not they were always respected and I think that's what Spielberg gets out of this.
And anyway I don't agree with people finishing films, books, songs or whatever after the author dies and then releasing them. I think it's both an affront to the author in that it can never really be their work, just someone else's take on it, and somewhat grisly. I mean, I've seen about a dozen new videos by 2 Pac on MTV since he was shot, with him in the videos and all! He seems to have become more prolific since he died than he was whilst alive.
Spielberg said Kubrick had been developing "A.I.'' -- which stands for "artificial intelligence'' -- for nearly two decades before his death in March.
This suggests to me that either Kubrick had an idea that he liked but couldn't ever get it work or it was something he sort of liked but not enough to actually ever do. In either case this film probably won't do Kubrick's reputation any good, especially if it's mauled by writers, editors and so on.
What is this trend with taking someone's half-finished work after they die, attempting to finish it and then publishing it as a "tribute", saying it's what they would have wanted. I'm sure that in many cases it would definitely not have been what they wanted.
Harlan said Kubrick and Spielberg discussed "A.I.'' at length and said that before his death Kubrick "came to realize that Steven would actually be the ideal director for the project.''
Oh please. This is very convenient for Spielberg and Harlan isn't it? I mean it's not like they would stand to benefit from producing this film is it? Call me a cynic but I doubt Kubrick ever came anywhere close to saying something definite about making the film.
A question then. What sort of music do you listen to then? Where do you live (i.e. Europe or the US)? Have you ever been to a decent club where they play decent dance music, or are you just basing your knowledge on the charts? Because techno, hip-hop and bubblegum music are three very different styles of music, and was just curious as to what you liked an what you were basing your opinions on. Thank you.
Oops. It's been a while and now I fell rather stupid:(
Re:Corrected link to 10,000,000 digits
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Happy Pi Day!
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I don't think it's a pissing competition amongst mathematicians so much - there are already a large number of methods worked out to calculate pi - the simplest I can remember is pi/4 = 1 - 1/2 + 1/3 - 1/4 + 1/5 -... but more amongst the people with large computers with spare time on their hands:)
Re:/. reinforces the stereotype of humorless geeks
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That's why I browse at -1, sure I get the "MOO FUCKAZ" posts, but I also get the funny ones at the bottom. And let's face it, a lot of +5 posts are full of waffle - I know I've had +5 posts that were just something I'd thought of off the top of my head.
The sheer amount of humourless zealots on/. is why I've trolled as well. It's so easy and you can guarantee a response to almost any topic - Linux, open source, patents - the list goes on:)
... something which both countries can be proud of, as seems to be very rare in today's world. The Human Genome Project has been a massive undertaking by scientists and has been supported by both governments, even though its benefits will not be fully apparent for some years to come. Hopefully this model of international collaberation in such huge undertakings will continue as I'm sure there are many projects which could benefit.
It's also nice to see research which will be fully public and used for the benefit of the human race rather than a single company, group or nation. In the years to come we will all feel the results of this and be better for it.
Okay, so I'm being very idealistic for once, but it's nice to see something good happen in the international community.
A sense of humour needed
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I'm sorry, but you seem to have lost yours. Yes this particular thread doesn't typify Slashdot's "mission" but over the years hot grits have become part of what/. is about. Like any good thing there are long-running jokes and themes which provide continuity and a sense of community.
And obviously it was a joke. We are allowed to make jokes, and we even get moderated up for them - that's why one of the moderation options is the Funny tag. Without humour this site would be sterile and boring, and a much worse place to visit.
I get the impression you've been reading/. too much lately:) Patents aren't evil, they're just a legal idea for protecting innovation. Well, at least they're supposed to be and probably were at one time. It's just they are being forced to apply in new domains which were never conceived of back when they were invented. There were, and are, good reasons for a patent system, it's just the current implementation that's flawed and being abused by companies who care solely about huge profits.
These are only some of the reasons why we have to fight this evil. It has an impact on our lives.So even if you are a non-US-resident like me, join the fight!
You make it sound like a civil war. That sort of reaction just makes/. look bad, we need reasoned responses not knee-jerk flag-waving. Patents shouldn't be abolished, but they definitely need to be reformed from their current state. And this forum is a chance to have your ideas given a wider audience. So if you don't have anything constructive to say, then keep your thoughts to/.
The trouble here is that there are two separate domains at issue here - ideas and artistry. Are the two covered by the same rules or are the concepts different enough to warrant different rules? I mean an idea is just a concept thought up by someone but an artist's work, although similarly ephermal, is perhaps an idea given form through work and skill. It's a tricky question, and I personally think the two are different, but others may be it differently.
If they are different, then we must be sure again to make sure that when we are discussing this issue our language must define what we really mean, rather than what the reader thinks it means, otherwise debate is pointless. What this whole issue needs is some clarification.
I don't really disagree with you, but I think that to concede to terms like "theft" and "piracy" is to messy up the discourse to the detriment of those who want reform or even honest debate.
Damn. I just typed out a reply to this and then lost it by accidentally refreshing the page. Here goes again.
Yes the words "theft" and "piracy" do have concrete meanings in the real world, but on the net their meanings are a lot fuzzier. When you have the situation of someone downloading an artist's work without their permission or payment, but never distributing it or changing it you have a situation is probably somewhere between "theft" and "copyright infringement". We don't have a word to describe this grey area and perhaps we need one. The other problem is that both sides in this argument are using the same words to mean different things, and as such the argument is being drowned in a sea of confusion rather than being a meaningful dialogue.
P.S. Piracy is one of only two crimes which you can still be hung for here in the UK, so don't get caught:)
Slightly offtopic here, but don't you ever wonder about the people who complain about your articles time after time, but adamantly refuse to stop them being shown? I wouldn't want to accuse/.ers of martyrdom, but...
Anyway, obviously your opinion doesn't have to be "correct" or "accurate" (I use those loaded terms advisedly), it just has to provoke discussion and bring out ideas. Which judging from the numbers of posts your articles get, they succeed in doing. Although thinking about it, that's pretty much the definition of a troll as well:)
My response to that congressional aide: It's disingenuous to use terms like "theft" and "piracy," ancient notions of law and property, in the 21st Century. They have little contemporary meaning in cyberspace.
I've got to disagree with that. Theft on the net is still theft. Yes, the original work is still present, you're not depriving anyone of someone they own, but if someone chooses to use the net to sell something then taking it without paying is still theft. It maybe more benign than breaking and entering, but given enough people doing it it can be more damaging.
Artists, musicians, writers and other creators of intellectual property can still be paid fairly for their work. There are all sorts of options beyond conventional royalties. They can sign contracts with music distributors that draw revenue from Web site advertising or subscription fees, or that sell music and other cultural offerings in smaller, less costly units. They can offer contracts to cadres of music lovers who agree to pay for access if they're offered more choices at cheaper prices.
Yes, but it's still incredibly difficult for an unknown artist to gain serious exposure or make more than a pittence on the net. It may be easier to set up a distribution system, and there are certainly a lot of ways to generate revenue, but the last thing they need is hordes of people downloading there stuff for free, claiming the net is "uncopyrightable" and that "information should be free". Yes it's a noble sentiment but people often put a lot of work into these things and deserve a reward - which will often be used to buy more equipment or allow the time to do more work.
Given the opportunity artists can market and sell their work far for far better gain than they could do in the corporate marketplace where immeadiate profit is the only concern. But if people aren't prepared to support these people then they will eventually have no choice but to return to the corporate market, whether they want to or not.
It's also great for people like me in the UK - it's nice to see a new article here for when I get into work at 9am. Otherwise I can just wade through all the stories posted while I'm tucked up in bed, and it's not worth posting at that point even if I've got something to say.
Unfortunately, if you really want to get into it, this ain't a very cheap hobby:(
God, tell me about it. I've got a crappy P133 at the moment, Cubase VST 3.5 (not that my PC is anywhere near fast enough to use many audio channels, ugh), Rebirth v1.5 and a SB Live running W95. I did have access to my mate's stuff - a Roland TB303, Roland JP8000 and a Korg digital mixer, and now that I don't I've practically given up - there's no way I can afford the complete PC upgrade, a nice Event Gina, a Novation Supernova or any of the other nice toys I really need to get back into music:( My only choice at the moment would be a tracker - not really professional quality.
I'm sure they've done some great work but my personal belief is that it's been subject to a marketing department's hype machine. The vision system in a primate is one of the most complex parts of the brain and is still not entirely understood by neuropsychologists.
There are three main pathways from the eye - the magnocellular (connected to the rods mainly and used for brightness and motion detection), the parvocellular (connected to the cones mainly and used for colour determination) and the koniocellular (whose function is less well known). These three pathways feed into the V1 area which acts as a feature detector, then into the V2 area, which detects colour features and movement and then into a variety of different areas including the V3 (shapes), V4 (colour) and V5 (motion and positioning) areas, the parietal lobe, the thalamus and the various inferotemporal and interparietal areas among others still being found.
All of these different areas seem to have some bearing on vision in its entirety, and show just how complex vision is. As such I think that any claim that a company has suddenly perfected a chip which allows complex visual capabilities is suspect until hard facts and experimentation can prove or disprove the claims.
Apparently they have concentrated on a subset of vision problems.
Yes, but the list given at the end lists things like face recognition which is even more tricky than general object recognition. AFAIK even the best systems today have a lot of trouble with faces that are at an angle of even 30 degrees from the viewpoint.
I'm not saying that they don't have a working chip, I'm saying that the article is filled with marketing hype and very little in the way of facts. The reality of the chip's potential is probably nowhere near what the article hints at, even though I'm sure it has a lot of genuine applications.
The GVPP's major performance strength over current $10,000 vision systems is its automatic adaptation to varying lighting conditions. Today's vision systems dictate uniform, shadowless illumination, and even next-generation prototype systems, designed to work under "normal" lighting conditions, can be used only from dawn to dusk. The GVPP, on the other hand, adapts to real-time changes in lighting without recalibration, day or night.
Okay, so what they're claiming is that their brand-new, $6 ($50 in total) device can do things which long-standing scientific projects costing $10,000 cannot? Am I the only one who thinks that this sounds somewhat fishy?
The GVPP was invented in 1992, when BEV founder Patric Pirim saw it would be relatively simple for a CMOS chip to implement in hardware the separate contributions of temporal and spatial processing in the brain.
Again don't you think that all of the many computer scientists and neuropsychologists working on machine vision wouldn't have thought of this themselves? I've read a fair bit on the theory of vision processing and pattern recognition and it's a hugely complex subject. And now a small research company has cracked it? I don't think so. If you read the list of things which they say it can be used for it comes across as being a huge gimmick - they seem to have listed everything they could think of that might be worth money.
Okay the base classes aren't exactly OS-specific but it's more the classes from TComponent downwards that'll take the time. They are generally just wrappers around direct Win32 API calls and so they'll have to have all of their private methods altered to work under Linux. If there are any functional differences between the Win32 and Linux APIs here then this will also add to the coding time.
Music, the spark for a surprising percentage of the Net's legal battles, has become a metaphor for the emerging political struggle over who defines and propagates culture on the Web and the rest of the Net.
Music hasn't really become a metaphor, more like the first battle of the war.
It advances a principle of blind copyright protection that in no way takes into account the Net's unique nature, nor the rights and sensibilities of a generation that defines culture differently.
Okay, I'm as big a fan of the net as the next geek, but the Internet doesn't deserve special treatment because of any "unique nature". This counts both ways - while we might lose some of the benefits we currently enjoy, we would also be free of laws that impose stricter controls in the net than for the offline world, such as the DMCA. Of course in an ideal world the freedoms we can theoretically enjoy on the net should also be available in the real world, but that's just being idealistic unfortunately.
This kind of pre-Net copyright protection will advance the same sort of tepid and homogeneous culture that the music and movie industries have forced on the offline world by promoting products that can generate enormous revenues, and by gobbling up independent companies and acquiring media and entertainment companies and mass-marketing (and in effect, censoring and moderating) popular culture.
That's not entirely true. There has always been, and always will be, an underground scene for music especially. I listen to a lot of acid techno, a form of music not available on any major label but which I can find supported by any number of independant record labels, some of which have been going for years. There have been many genres of music which go unnoticed and untouched by major record labels.
Everywhere it reigns, from Wal-Mart to AOL/Time Warner to Microsoft, corporatism discourages creativity, pushes individuals to the margins and promotes conformity and control of software, hardware, intellectual content and culture.
Again this is a sweeping statement about a subject which has a vast scope. Yes, maybe most corporations are like this, but certainly not all of them. There are companies out there which encourage their staff to be creative and push their ideas - the first example I can think of is Dyson who make vacuum cleaners over here in the UK.
Geeks may be the only barrier standing between us and the rampaging corporatists drooling over profits from cyberspace.
Okay, now this sounds like part of the trailer for a Hollywood film - you know with that bloke going "It was a time for political activism":)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but isn't that because he's doing a version which he'll be charging for?
Thank you :) It was just something I knocked out before I left work and I never thought anyone would ever get to see it, but yet again /. proves me wrong. It's trolls like that that make me glad to be a part of the open-minded, open-source community that /. promotes :)
The Schindler's List is a one sided manipulation of the espectator's feelings regarding a very sensitive subject. The performance and realization are magnificent, that can't be denied, but it's manipulation nevertheless. That's a pretty low thing to do as a director.
I'd totally disagree with you there on that last point. It's part of a director or writer's job to manipulate their audience, whether it be through the cinematography, the characterisations or through the plot. A successful film manipulates its audience in many ways, subtle and not-so subtle, and without that a film is sterile, leaving wondering what you were doing far the last hour and a half.
Sure, Schindler's List may be a pretty extreme example of audience manipulation - I don't know, I haven't seen it myself. But the subject matter is an extremely sensitive one and is bound to provoke strong feelings, even if the film was poorly executed. And anyway, I'm sure the director's views would be shared by the majority of the audience before they saw the film, if anything making the film less manipulative rather than more.
I think that people who believe in learning social interaction as a priority at college (opposed to the actual studies) are, by and large, Liberal Arts majors if you ask me. (Not intended as a troll, just an opinion).
Okay, as someone you finished their degree in Theoretical Physics a couple of years ago I'll reply :) I don't think anyone here really thinks the most important thing about college is learning social interaction, of course the primary object is to learn your subject.
But the point is that there are a lot of other aspects of college which are important to the rest of your life. Learning to meet and get on with new people, how to talk to people confidently and act in groups, how to work as part of a team in projects, how to live life on your own and a million other little things which prepare people for the rest of their life. The entire college experiance contributes to these things, yes even "snorting beers and shots of whiskey" as you say. Granted you can learn all these things by staying at home and doing a remote course, but the impetus from being in a totally new place and situation is lost, and people won't gain all these new skills, making it harder for them when they finally leave home and get a job.
I find that most people are sincere about their own motives but always question other people's motives. Why is that?
Because there are very few people out there who truly like everything about themselves, and that kind of introspection generally makes people rather depressed about past decisions and their consequences :) Anyway, the article wasn't about me planning to produce Kubrick's film, so discussing my motives would be somewhat offtopic thankfully.
Anyway I'm not saying Spielberg's doing this for the money - I'd think it was blatently obvious he doesn't really need any more. It's more about recognition - as you said Spielberg had to wait a long time for an Oscar and wasn't taken seriously by a lot of people until Schindler's List. And whether Kubrick's films were popular or not they were always respected and I think that's what Spielberg gets out of this.
And anyway I don't agree with people finishing films, books, songs or whatever after the author dies and then releasing them. I think it's both an affront to the author in that it can never really be their work, just someone else's take on it, and somewhat grisly. I mean, I've seen about a dozen new videos by 2 Pac on MTV since he was shot, with him in the videos and all! He seems to have become more prolific since he died than he was whilst alive.
Spielberg said Kubrick had been developing "A.I.'' -- which stands for "artificial intelligence'' -- for nearly two decades before his death in March.
This suggests to me that either Kubrick had an idea that he liked but couldn't ever get it work or it was something he sort of liked but not enough to actually ever do. In either case this film probably won't do Kubrick's reputation any good, especially if it's mauled by writers, editors and so on.
What is this trend with taking someone's half-finished work after they die, attempting to finish it and then publishing it as a "tribute", saying it's what they would have wanted. I'm sure that in many cases it would definitely not have been what they wanted.
Harlan said Kubrick and Spielberg discussed "A.I.'' at length and said that before his death Kubrick "came to realize that Steven would actually be the ideal director for the project.''
Oh please. This is very convenient for Spielberg and Harlan isn't it? I mean it's not like they would stand to benefit from producing this film is it? Call me a cynic but I doubt Kubrick ever came anywhere close to saying something definite about making the film.
A question then. What sort of music do you listen to then? Where do you live (i.e. Europe or the US)? Have you ever been to a decent club where they play decent dance music, or are you just basing your knowledge on the charts? Because techno, hip-hop and bubblegum music are three very different styles of music, and was just curious as to what you liked an what you were basing your opinions on. Thank you.
Oops. It's been a while and now I fell rather stupid :(
I don't think it's a pissing competition amongst mathematicians so much - there are already a large number of methods worked out to calculate pi - the simplest I can remember is pi/4 = 1 - 1/2 + 1/3 - 1/4 + 1/5 - ... but more amongst the people with large computers with spare time on their hands :)
That's why I browse at -1, sure I get the "MOO FUCKAZ" posts, but I also get the funny ones at the bottom. And let's face it, a lot of +5 posts are full of waffle - I know I've had +5 posts that were just something I'd thought of off the top of my head.
The sheer amount of humourless zealots on /. is why I've trolled as well. It's so easy and you can guarantee a response to almost any topic - Linux, open source, patents - the list goes on :)
... something which both countries can be proud of, as seems to be very rare in today's world. The Human Genome Project has been a massive undertaking by scientists and has been supported by both governments, even though its benefits will not be fully apparent for some years to come. Hopefully this model of international collaberation in such huge undertakings will continue as I'm sure there are many projects which could benefit.
It's also nice to see research which will be fully public and used for the benefit of the human race rather than a single company, group or nation. In the years to come we will all feel the results of this and be better for it.
Okay, so I'm being very idealistic for once, but it's nice to see something good happen in the international community.
I'm sorry, but you seem to have lost yours. Yes this particular thread doesn't typify Slashdot's "mission" but over the years hot grits have become part of what /. is about. Like any good thing there are long-running jokes and themes which provide continuity and a sense of community.
And obviously it was a joke. We are allowed to make jokes, and we even get moderated up for them - that's why one of the moderation options is the Funny tag. Without humour this site would be sterile and boring, and a much worse place to visit.
Patents are evil for lots of reasons.
I get the impression you've been reading /. too much lately :) Patents aren't evil, they're just a legal idea for protecting innovation. Well, at least they're supposed to be and probably were at one time. It's just they are being forced to apply in new domains which were never conceived of back when they were invented. There were, and are, good reasons for a patent system, it's just the current implementation that's flawed and being abused by companies who care solely about huge profits.
These are only some of the reasons why we have to fight this evil. It has an impact on our lives.So even if you are a non-US-resident like me, join the fight!
You make it sound like a civil war. That sort of reaction just makes /. look bad, we need reasoned responses not knee-jerk flag-waving. Patents shouldn't be abolished, but they definitely need to be reformed from their current state. And this forum is a chance to have your ideas given a wider audience. So if you don't have anything constructive to say, then keep your thoughts to /.
The trouble here is that there are two separate domains at issue here - ideas and artistry. Are the two covered by the same rules or are the concepts different enough to warrant different rules? I mean an idea is just a concept thought up by someone but an artist's work, although similarly ephermal, is perhaps an idea given form through work and skill. It's a tricky question, and I personally think the two are different, but others may be it differently.
If they are different, then we must be sure again to make sure that when we are discussing this issue our language must define what we really mean, rather than what the reader thinks it means, otherwise debate is pointless. What this whole issue needs is some clarification.
I don't really disagree with you, but I think that to concede to terms like "theft" and "piracy" is to messy up the discourse to the detriment of those who want reform or even honest debate.
Damn. I just typed out a reply to this and then lost it by accidentally refreshing the page. Here goes again.
Yes the words "theft" and "piracy" do have concrete meanings in the real world, but on the net their meanings are a lot fuzzier. When you have the situation of someone downloading an artist's work without their permission or payment, but never distributing it or changing it you have a situation is probably somewhere between "theft" and "copyright infringement". We don't have a word to describe this grey area and perhaps we need one. The other problem is that both sides in this argument are using the same words to mean different things, and as such the argument is being drowned in a sea of confusion rather than being a meaningful dialogue.
P.S. Piracy is one of only two crimes which you can still be hung for here in the UK, so don't get caught :)
Slightly offtopic here, but don't you ever wonder about the people who complain about your articles time after time, but adamantly refuse to stop them being shown? I wouldn't want to accuse /.ers of martyrdom, but...
Anyway, obviously your opinion doesn't have to be "correct" or "accurate" (I use those loaded terms advisedly), it just has to provoke discussion and bring out ideas. Which judging from the numbers of posts your articles get, they succeed in doing. Although thinking about it, that's pretty much the definition of a troll as well :)
My response to that congressional aide: It's disingenuous to use terms like "theft" and "piracy," ancient notions of law and property, in the 21st Century. They have little contemporary meaning in cyberspace.
I've got to disagree with that. Theft on the net is still theft. Yes, the original work is still present, you're not depriving anyone of someone they own, but if someone chooses to use the net to sell something then taking it without paying is still theft. It maybe more benign than breaking and entering, but given enough people doing it it can be more damaging.
Artists, musicians, writers and other creators of intellectual property can still be paid fairly for their work. There are all sorts of options beyond conventional royalties. They can sign contracts with music distributors that draw revenue from Web site advertising or subscription fees, or that sell music and other cultural offerings in smaller, less costly units. They can offer contracts to cadres of music lovers who agree to pay for access if they're offered more choices at cheaper prices.
Yes, but it's still incredibly difficult for an unknown artist to gain serious exposure or make more than a pittence on the net. It may be easier to set up a distribution system, and there are certainly a lot of ways to generate revenue, but the last thing they need is hordes of people downloading there stuff for free, claiming the net is "uncopyrightable" and that "information should be free". Yes it's a noble sentiment but people often put a lot of work into these things and deserve a reward - which will often be used to buy more equipment or allow the time to do more work.
Given the opportunity artists can market and sell their work far for far better gain than they could do in the corporate marketplace where immeadiate profit is the only concern. But if people aren't prepared to support these people then they will eventually have no choice but to return to the corporate market, whether they want to or not.
It's also great for people like me in the UK - it's nice to see a new article here for when I get into work at 9am. Otherwise I can just wade through all the stories posted while I'm tucked up in bed, and it's not worth posting at that point even if I've got something to say.
Unfortunately, if you really want to get into it, this ain't a very cheap hobby :(
God, tell me about it. I've got a crappy P133 at the moment, Cubase VST 3.5 (not that my PC is anywhere near fast enough to use many audio channels, ugh), Rebirth v1.5 and a SB Live running W95. I did have access to my mate's stuff - a Roland TB303, Roland JP8000 and a Korg digital mixer, and now that I don't I've practically given up - there's no way I can afford the complete PC upgrade, a nice Event Gina, a Novation Supernova or any of the other nice toys I really need to get back into music :( My only choice at the moment would be a tracker - not really professional quality.
I'm sure they've done some great work but my personal belief is that it's been subject to a marketing department's hype machine. The vision system in a primate is one of the most complex parts of the brain and is still not entirely understood by neuropsychologists.
There are three main pathways from the eye - the magnocellular (connected to the rods mainly and used for brightness and motion detection), the parvocellular (connected to the cones mainly and used for colour determination) and the koniocellular (whose function is less well known). These three pathways feed into the V1 area which acts as a feature detector, then into the V2 area, which detects colour features and movement and then into a variety of different areas including the V3 (shapes), V4 (colour) and V5 (motion and positioning) areas, the parietal lobe, the thalamus and the various inferotemporal and interparietal areas among others still being found.
All of these different areas seem to have some bearing on vision in its entirety, and show just how complex vision is. As such I think that any claim that a company has suddenly perfected a chip which allows complex visual capabilities is suspect until hard facts and experimentation can prove or disprove the claims.
Apparently they have concentrated on a subset of vision problems.
Yes, but the list given at the end lists things like face recognition which is even more tricky than general object recognition. AFAIK even the best systems today have a lot of trouble with faces that are at an angle of even 30 degrees from the viewpoint.
I'm not saying that they don't have a working chip, I'm saying that the article is filled with marketing hype and very little in the way of facts. The reality of the chip's potential is probably nowhere near what the article hints at, even though I'm sure it has a lot of genuine applications.
The GVPP's major performance strength over current $10,000 vision systems is its automatic adaptation to varying lighting conditions. Today's vision systems dictate uniform, shadowless illumination, and even next-generation prototype systems, designed to work under "normal" lighting conditions, can be used only from dawn to dusk. The GVPP, on the other hand, adapts to real-time changes in lighting without recalibration, day or night.
Okay, so what they're claiming is that their brand-new, $6 ($50 in total) device can do things which long-standing scientific projects costing $10,000 cannot? Am I the only one who thinks that this sounds somewhat fishy?
The GVPP was invented in 1992, when BEV founder Patric Pirim saw it would be relatively simple for a CMOS chip to implement in hardware the separate contributions of temporal and spatial processing in the brain.
Again don't you think that all of the many computer scientists and neuropsychologists working on machine vision wouldn't have thought of this themselves? I've read a fair bit on the theory of vision processing and pattern recognition and it's a hugely complex subject. And now a small research company has cracked it? I don't think so. If you read the list of things which they say it can be used for it comes across as being a huge gimmick - they seem to have listed everything they could think of that might be worth money.
This is way offtopic, but your sig is excellent :)
Okay the base classes aren't exactly OS-specific but it's more the classes from TComponent downwards that'll take the time. They are generally just wrappers around direct Win32 API calls and so they'll have to have all of their private methods altered to work under Linux. If there are any functional differences between the Win32 and Linux APIs here then this will also add to the coding time.
Music, the spark for a surprising percentage of the Net's legal battles, has become a metaphor for the emerging political struggle over who defines and propagates culture on the Web and the rest of the Net.
Music hasn't really become a metaphor, more like the first battle of the war.
It advances a principle of blind copyright protection that in no way takes into account the Net's unique nature, nor the rights and sensibilities of a generation that defines culture differently.
Okay, I'm as big a fan of the net as the next geek, but the Internet doesn't deserve special treatment because of any "unique nature". This counts both ways - while we might lose some of the benefits we currently enjoy, we would also be free of laws that impose stricter controls in the net than for the offline world, such as the DMCA. Of course in an ideal world the freedoms we can theoretically enjoy on the net should also be available in the real world, but that's just being idealistic unfortunately.
This kind of pre-Net copyright protection will advance the same sort of tepid and homogeneous culture that the music and movie industries have forced on the offline world by promoting products that can generate enormous revenues, and by gobbling up independent companies and acquiring media and entertainment companies and mass-marketing (and in effect, censoring and moderating) popular culture.
That's not entirely true. There has always been, and always will be, an underground scene for music especially. I listen to a lot of acid techno, a form of music not available on any major label but which I can find supported by any number of independant record labels, some of which have been going for years. There have been many genres of music which go unnoticed and untouched by major record labels.
Everywhere it reigns, from Wal-Mart to AOL/Time Warner to Microsoft, corporatism discourages creativity, pushes individuals to the margins and promotes conformity and control of software, hardware, intellectual content and culture.
Again this is a sweeping statement about a subject which has a vast scope. Yes, maybe most corporations are like this, but certainly not all of them. There are companies out there which encourage their staff to be creative and push their ideas - the first example I can think of is Dyson who make vacuum cleaners over here in the UK.
Geeks may be the only barrier standing between us and the rampaging corporatists drooling over profits from cyberspace.
Okay, now this sounds like part of the trailer for a Hollywood film - you know with that bloke going "It was a time for political activism" :)