Just when you thought you had become desensitized to the sorry state of our current affairs...

Great find thedeusmachine. I saw the movie after seeing this short. The movie is just as interesting as the short. It's visually stunning and it has the most hauntingly beautiful soundtrack. I highly recommend it.

Often these algorithms can leave a faint footprint in the image/video which could be detected using other algorithms. I bet in the future we will have "video forensic experts" who will primarily try to challenge the video evidence being presented in a trail by detecting these footprints. I bet there is some of that going on already. Don't video experts often comment on why a particular footage of an "alien sighting" is fake?

I guess if we are willing to accept eye-witness testimony under penalty of perjury then video evidence should be no different. Though I do think that current juries are more likely to believe video evidence over eye-witness testimony. Probably because it's easier to lie than to edit videos.

inspired

Thx AnimalsForCrackers. I absolutely love this video. Obviously the video is funny, quirky, viral even but it also captures something fascinating about the new Japanese culture. Not too long ago Japan had an incredibly xenophobic approach to foreign cultures. And here we have the new Japan in its complete and unapologetic embrace of so many alien cultures while somehow preserving its own unique identity. Gotta love their indomitable spirit.

It seems to me that these fake jobs ads and the unethical legal machinery at display is a side effect of the bizzare requirements set by the agency issuing green cards.

Lets say a company like Google using its rigorous selection process decides to hire a group of highly talented programmers. Invariably, a fraction of these programmers are not going to be American citizens and are going to demand basic residency (e.g. a green card) before they decide to setup shop in the U.S.
Now is it fair to the non-American programmer, to Google, or to any of us who consume Google products that an American programmer be hired instead if he/she sports the same bullet list of technical skills on their resume? The "no qualified American" requirement has a monochrome view of job candidates bining them based on qualification without addressing the competitiveness of candidates in the same bin. I don't think employers are looking to screw Americans out of a job in this case because, unlike outsourcing, they will be paying similar wages to the non-American workers (and dealing with the legal hassles).

Also, a large fraction of green card holders eventually become American citizens thus increasing the immigration of highly skilled workers into the country. What is needed is a set of green-card requirements that is more in tune with the market forces.

"No problem. Did you find all the rest of them okay?"
I found the rest interesting but this talk was by far my favorite.

Enzoblue, I think his argument is that the singularity advocates are proposing large modifications to humanity based on the assumption that it will amplify every positive aspect of the human condition and stretch it out over eternity. He challenges this assumption through thought experiments that suggest the singularity might not make us happy; in fact it might make us miserable by robbing us of our most cherished sources of transcendence. At the very least, he argues, we don't know what the new human experience might be like after the singularity because it will be so alien to the current human experience.

I don't think he is saying that all advancement should be targeted towards making us happier. But if a piece of technology's appeal is based on its promise to make us happier we should take the time to think through its ramifications (especially in cases like this which can shake everything to the core) because we certainly have difficulty predicting what will make us happy (e.g.,
http://www.videosift.com/video/Malcolm-Gladwell-on-spaghetti-sauce-happiness-TED-talk http://www.videosift.com/video/The-misguided-Pursuit-of-Happiness--Dan-Gilbert-TEDTalks).

He is championing the case for restraint before we smash the atom so to speak. I also think his usage of the word 'happiness' encapsulates more than the pedestrian need to maximize our individual dopamine levels; it also encapsulates notions of transcendence, meaning, altruism to the extent that our selfish genes will allow us to derive happiness from these 'higher' ideals.

Thx cronyx. I really liked this talk.

I saw this movie today after seeing this post. The movie drips of raw genius. I would suggest watching the movie without watching this post to enhance the suspense.

" I loved this movie. Too bad it was poorly done. I thought the idea was awesome...they should re-do this one."

They did remake it. I believe the remake was called 'The Matrix'.

"The porn industry would love this. Take a picture of some B-cup porn star and BOOM, double D's."

I didn't realize there were B-cup porn stars Unfortunately the B-to-DD cup transitions will probably have to be made by the cosmetic surgeons for now since the work being shown here can only handle videos of static scenes (i.e., videos shot with a moving camera but containing no moving objects in the scene). Efforts are being made to lift this restriction in future work.

"Though similarly unappealing is prohibitively expensive software for the "amateur user." Do you suspect that we will be seeing significant cost reductions in this industry anytime soon?"

I think what is going to happen is that the visual effects industry is going to have to expand it's user base to include amateur users by creating software packages with the right pricing, UI, etc. Until recently there simply wasn't the automation technology nor the amateur auteur community of the size created by youtube (and other technologies) to realistically go after the amateur user market.

But obviously the market exits today and its ripe for harvesting. Just look at the difference between the quality of work produced by amateur photographers on Flicr and the quality of amateur videos on youtube. The difference is night and day. My feeling is that people really want to create aesthetically pleasing videos and edit them in interesting ways but they just don't have the right tools.

Hopefully the market forces will ensure that these tools are created and I for one can't wait for that to happen. Humans as a whole are a highly creative bunch. Its high time every visual storyteller out there had the tools to tell his/her story.

"Sadly, even entry level video editing software of any decent quality has yet to manifest in the open source realm"

Virtualdub is a freely available tool (and its open source) that I really like. But you are right, the current state of affairs leaves much to be desired.

lucky760 - What you are seeing here are results generated using some research quality code. There is no UI, no extensive error handling, and its not optimizied for speed because the code is usually written by one or two graduate students. The hope with such research projects is that some product team (e.g., Adobe After Effects) will read the publication and create a professional quality implementation of the ideas presented in the paper. But that usually takes a while to happen.