The fact that some people pay millions of dollars for this guy's paintings says as little as the fact that only 4% of people looked at his paintings when they were on the street.

I'm sure that the people paying millions for his paintings have been told that he's a world famous artist, and have had many people explain how important and meaningful his paintings are. I'm just as sure that the passers-by here had no idea that it was a painting by an important and famous artist.

Are his paintings any good? Who knows. Maybe in the right context with the right background, they're moving in a way that few other paintings are. Maybe he has just done a very good job of marketing himself as an important artist and his artistic skills, while good, are more like top 10% of artists, rather than top 0.1%.

The fact that anybody thought that most people would stop to admire the art shows how disconnected from reality some of these art-fans are. Does it mean the art isn't good? No, it just means that without context (including knowing the art is worth a lot of money, knowing the artist is famous, knowing a lot about art in general) that the average passer-by is unlikely to stop to look at the art, and if they happen to stop to look, unlikely to appreciate as fully as someone who has all the right information.

The guy filming is an asshat, but he's right. Police officers break the law all the time because they know they can get away with it. According to those "broken window" theories (i.e. major crimes are more likely when minor crimes go unpunished) I wouldn't be surprised if police speeding while not on a call, parking illegally, etc. made them less likely to respect more serious laws.

And "you can't do that because of the terrorism" is an excuse that needs to be challenged more.

You people who have spoons that fall into your bowls either need bigger spoons or smaller bowls.

So let's see, I get out of my chair with a built-in bookcase, walk up my stairs with a built-in bookcase to take a bath in my bathtub with a built-in bookcase.

It's probably just more practical to put in a bit of shelving.

Sounds like this tech support call Arnold made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-poZ0AOZAc

FWIW, the background music is a loop from the remix Mission Impossible theme from the movie that Cruise starred in.

This is one of those cases where people who have only seen something in a movie / TV show think they understand it.

Just like being shot with a gun doesn't send you flying 6 feet back through the air, being in water near something electrical doesn't mean you'll be electrocuted.

The only way you'll be electrocuted is if the path of least resistance for some electrical current is through your body, and it will probably only be fatal if that path through your body leads through your heart.

An electrical appliance in the tub can be dangerous because the path of least resistance can be from part of the device, through the water, through your body, through your heart, and down to the (grounded) drain in the tub. If you're standing in a puddle next to a downed electrical wire, you're pretty safe. The electricity isn't going to go out the wire, through the water, up one leg, across your heart, down the other leg, and then into the ground. It's just going to go down through the puddle into the ground. On the other hand, if you picked up the wire, the shortest path might be through your hand, through your heart, down your leg, and into the ground.

These guys could be in some danger while plugging things in, but for the most part they'd be pretty safe. Even if there were a short, it would most likely be prong-to-prong, and would probably trip a circuit breaker pretty quickly.

Oh no, they definitely claim they're monitoring what you watch, down to the second. They know when you fast forward a commercial, which bits of a show you replay, etc.

The part they claim not to be doing is attaching personally identifiable information to that data, so they can then say "72% of people watched this commercial". If you look, I think last Superbowl or maybe the one before that, they had all kinds of stats about what ads people watched most, which ones they watched more than once, I think they even said that more people watched the commercials than the game.

Screen scraping used to be the way to get listings data, but it's against the terms of service for the websites, so a product like mythtv that contained a screen scraping component could get in trouble.

Makes sense. I wonder what it would take to make TiVo start their own listings division. Aggregating all the listings data from all the stations around the country is no small task, but it would seem some competition is needed.

I think the challenge of getting all the listings is not just a technical challenge of getting all the information, getting it right, putting it into a database, etc. I also think it's a "schmoozing" challenge, making deals with the networks to let you know about their schedules weeks in advance, making sure they keep supplying you with updates, negotiating over the show summaries, etc. I'm also pretty sure that the deal they have is exclusive, and that even if the networks were willing to provide listings directly to TiVo, TMS would step in and prevent it.

As for offering two kinds of service, TiVo is now making people pay for the service *and* monitoring viewership and pushing TiVo-based ads. Why would they want to change anything?

My understanding is that TiVo doesn't own or control the TV data, but instead licenses it from somebody else (Tribune Media Services?). TMS won't grant anybody (including TiVo) a flat rate, instead they charge per user, and the cost is passed along.

The schedules service available to open-source DVR systems (Schedules Direct) was initially going to have to charge $5/month to cover the costs of providing listings to its users, but has finally managed to lower it to just $20/year, but for a non-profit to charge $20/year to users of open-source systems shows that the price of these listings is very high. Unfortunately TMS's contracts prevent groups from disclosing the rates they're being charged, but it wouldn't be surprising if TMS charged more to provide listings to TiVo users than to users of open-source PVRs.

I'm pretty sure that everybody is charged for listings by TMS, including cable companies. The cable companies just build it into their service fees, so you don't see that line item if you have a cable company set-top box.

Oh, and by the way, the "lifetime" service for TiVo isn't *your* lifetime, it's the lifetime of the TiVo unit.

That site is very low on details, I was hoping they would at least say what frequency of RFID tags they're claiming to work with, but after 10 minutes of searching I couldn't find a single mention of frequency.

My guess is that this is either LF only, HF only or maybe LF / HF, but almost certainly isn't UHF:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rfid#Antenna_types

To do what they claim, their device needs to be a full-fledged tag reader, otherwise it couldn't clone the tags. This isn't too hard with LF/HF tags because they're slow and use very simple anti-collision protocols (if any), but it is very hard with UHF tags. It's especially hard if you're trying to run off a battery.

RFID tags used in animal tracking, key fobs, etc. tend to be LF/HF tags, so this device could work with them. Inventory tags (like the ones used in the Wal*Mart trials) are UHF and so I don't think this device would even recognize them, let alone jam / clone / mimic them.

Is the Italian police overreacting and calling it a "terrorist act" yet?

You would think there's got to be a good market out there for people who want to:

1. Have a high bandwidth
2. Have no usage caps
3. Have a fixed IP
4. Run servers (web, game, etc)

Even if a company charged a lot more for that service, I'm sure there would be demand. The only way I know of to get these things now is to go with a "business" account, which is far more expensive, presumably because they expect to have to provide more tech support.

Ugh. A writers strike means that shows that don't involve "writing" will dominate, i.e. reality TV.

The reality show footage doesn't show her getting through security, only getting checked at the ticket counter. What I noticed here though is that although they said to google her, she showed various forms of ID, etc. she never once removed a pair of oversize dark sunglasses...

Shouldn't that be "suspected child molester who appears to have taken pictures of himself molesting children"?

The distinction is that pedophelia is a condition, child molestation is a crime. Not all pedophiles commit crimes. If pedophelia were a crime it would be a thought-crime, which is scary ground to be treading on.

It's a very good game, but it's short. I finished the game in one evening. On the other hand, once you finish the game, you can replay all the maps with added challenges, for example, try to do it with only 5 portals, or only 30 footsteps, or do it in 30 seconds. Another type of challenge is doing a map with a couple of changes, like the floor being off-limits and fewer boxes to use.

The concept of the game is great, and it's fun that it's a true cross between a puzzle game and a shooter. You shoot portals, and on some occasions you actually have to move fairly fast, but like a puzzle game, you can mostly think about your moves before you do them, so there's mostly no rush.

The AI voice in the game is really clever though, they must have had a pretty good writer involved with the game to turn an otherwise simple puzzle game into something with a bit of a plot to it, and a fun enemy. I just wish the main game had been a bit longer.

I think the physics prof's math is a bit off. Wikipedia says a storey is between 8 and 14 feet, typically 10. That puts the total height at about 80 feet. Add 5 feet for the arm-height of the people dropping the balloons and that's about 85 feet. If the balloon accelerates at 32 feet/s^2 it's in the air for 2.3s, putting it's final speed at 74 feet/s or 50 mph, and that's ignoring air friction, which would slow it down even more. Getting the balloon to 60 mph would require at least another 20 feet probably considerably more to overcome air resistance.

It would still really hurt to be hit by one of these things. And yes, I have too much time on my hands.

... and the guys who think this stuff up call themselves CREATIVES (really, thats their job title)!

Yeah, they used someone else's words, but the content of those words didn't really matter. They were essentially technobabble to get across the (imho creative) idea "smart models". It's too bad they didn't ask for permission or give any credit, but it's not like the commercial hinges on the words they're saying. It's really not much different than taking a small audio clip from a movie and using it in a song, or even reusing the Wilhelm scream over and over again.

Look at the bright side -- this is probably the only time you're ever going to hear a scientifically accurate discussion of quantum mechanics on TV.

Blog link is missing, it should be:
http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=277

I'd say this might qualify as fair use, especially because it's a tiny portion of the copyrighted work, and it has a negligible effect on the market for the copyrighted work. It might be nice if they cited him as the source of the dialogue, but I have yet to see a commercial with credits.

Having said that, there's always the RIAA approach: They pirated his lecture and stole food right out of his mouth, and as a result his entire tuition at MIT is now useless (since obviously even models now know as much as he does about quantum physics) so he should be compensated for 4 years of tuition at $33,600/year.

I wonder if he could get the clip taken down off youtube using the DMCA.

"For Dick of the month, I nominate Trooper Davis, badge number #314159 of the GPD. I was doing a routine traffic patrol while I spotted somebody DWB. It was clear he was a drug dealer because he was driving a Lexus and was too short to be an NBA player. I pulled him over, did the sniff test for probable cause, and searched the trunk. I couldn't figure out where he was hiding the stuff so I tried to motivate him to tell me -- nothing too extreme but he must have had a weak heart or something.

I called in a code 243 but Dickhead Davis wouldn't give me his backup piece. He said some BS about "planting evidence". Look, we both knew the perp was guilty but he was going to let me take the fall?

Traffic tickets are bad and all, but I'd say not tossing your brother a bone like this is much worse."

Wonder if they'd publish my bit of fiction...

#82 posted by bricology , September 21, 2007 11:30 AM:

As we all know, women never wear IEDs on the outside of their clothing:

http://tinyurl.com/27tyda

Was that picture taken as the girl was about to sneak into a crowd of people to blow them up, or was the bomb worn on the outside of the clothing at a rally because if it were worn normally (i.e. hidden on the inside of the clothing) it wouldn't make for an interesting image / statement?

#68 posted by bricology , September 21, 2007 10:57 AM:

Oh -- and anyone who claims "it doesn't even look anything like a bomb!" has their head up their ass. I assure you, it looks EXACTLY like what a bomb could look like.

#61 posted by Antinous , September 21, 2007 10:31 AM:

...But if you were trying to secure the airport and somebody walked up with a homemade electronic device that you couldn't identify, what would you do?

Absolutely nothing. Homemade electronics are no more scary to me than homemade toys, homemade sweaters or homemade apple pie.

I worked in a hospital during the Unibomber period. If we got an unexpected package, we called the bomb squad. We had to. People were actually getting blown up.

Yes, unlike now when there hasn't exactly been a rash of suicide bombers attacking airports.

Wow, too many people here watch too much TV/movies.

Not all unusual things are bombs.

In particular, not all custom electronics made from breadboards and wires are bombs.

If you're wearing it out where everyone can see it, the odds are pretty high it *isn't* a bomb. Bombers try to hide their bombs, not wear them on the front of shirts.

Of all the people here who is saying "it looks like what a suicide bomber wears", how many have you have actually seen a suicide bomber wearing a bomb... and no, I don't mean in a movie or on some show like 24, I mean a real-life suicide bomber? If all you've seen is TV shows are you sure you're qualified to judge. Do you also believe that getting shot makes you sail backwards through the air? Do you believe that tires make a screeching sound when someone skids on a dirt road? Do you believe that high explosives create big orange fireballs?

Get a grip.

Recipe: Airport

Ingredients:
Apathy, 1 metric crapton
Authority, Big chunks distributed unevenly,
Bureaucracy, enough to cover thickly,
Anonymity, pinch
Secrecy, to taste

Directions:
1. Give minimum-wage earners a large amount of authority, a difficult job and ambiguous rules
2. Add thousands of nervous, impatient, exhausted, distracted passengers
3. Sprinkle enough anonymity so that no passenger will ever see an employee more than once, and at best the passenger might catch a nametag
4. Thoroughly mix secrecy and bureaucracy so that nobody really knows the rules, and season with enough random authority so that they're afraid to ask in case they get put on a secret list that will make their lives miserable
5. Add just enough bureaucracy so that an employee who genuinely wants to be helpful is utterly boxed in as to what they can do

Is the bar in the same place at every resolution? Does it happen with a different video source (i.e. a different computer?)

I'm no expert on LCDs but it sure looks like an LCD hardware issue to me. A better question is what is the native resolution of the screen, and how many pixels across is the stripe.

Correction: It's MI5 (as in the article), not M15.

When a story like this is posted, people always come out of the woodwork and say "if you didn't do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear".

What if, as you're leaving the store, you throw your purchases in a knapsack containing the "Dealing with your AIDS diagnosis" pamphlet you just got from your doctor, or your "Coping with your rape trauma" booklet, or the emergency pregnancy test from the pharmacy nearby.

Just because you haven't committed a crime doesn't mean you have nothing to hide.

In particular, if you live in a small town, the random person searching your bag may not be so random. They may know you, or your family, or your friends.

Then, of course, there's the slippery slope argument. Today it's a look at your receipt and a look in your bags. Tomorrow it's a walk through a metal detector. The next day it's a pat down, or a IR body scan, looking through your clothing.

I think you mean he was 75, not 1975.

Wow, I had this book too. It was amazing. They had iPhone like devices in the book too, but they were watches.

When I first heard about cell phones I thought of the predictions from this book, and thought "yeah, a portable phone is good, but when are they going to add movies, video messages, music, etc?"