Incredible design. Fresh like dew on flowers in the morning. VERY good.

If have ever been a designer....

] Document Image Analysis is concerned with the problem of
] transferring the document images into electronic form.
] This would involve the automatic interpretation of images
] of printed and handwritten documents, including text,
] forms, postal envelopes, bank cheques, engineering
] drawings, maps etc [1]. Several systems which work in
] specific domains, like the ones mentioned above, have
] been developed. Document Image Analysis can be defined as
] the process that performs the overall interpretation of
] document images [2]. It is a key area of research for
] various applications in machine vision and media
] processing, including page readers, content-based
] document retrieval, and digital libraries. The first step
] of a Document Image Analysis system would be to extract
] the text, figures, tables, graphs, charts, mathematical
] equations, etc, from the background. This would involve
] segmentation of the document image into equations,
] tables, charts and text. An important follow up problem
] in multi-lingual documents is the segmentation of text
] based on the scripts. This project aims to separate out
] the regions of different scripts in the scanned image of
] a document. Such a system would be essential in a
] multilingual country like India, where a single document
] (example. passport application form, public examination
] question paper, railway booking form etc) page may
] contain words in two or more language scripts, typically
] English, Hindi and the local language.%

Good explanation of Gaussian/Luplasian pyramids.

Introduction to Guassian/Luplasian Pyramids

PSCP (yes, there IS a patent application) is not simple encryption. It goes much further. "Encryption works by leveraging millions of possibilities," says Paul Tyma, chief scientist (I suspect the ONLY scientist) at PreEmptive. "To decrypt a message you only need one key, but there are millions or billions of possible keys to choose from. That's a challenge, sure, but once you get the key, you are in and in forever. PSCP is vastly more complex. When a computer program runs, the computer can follow millions of paths to get the job done. We leverage those millions of paths and transform them into billions of paths instead. We no longer let a hacker reverse-engineer a program on paper, we force them to reverse-engineer as the program runs. Every time a piece (of code) runs, it can be different. You can't just examine program parts, you have to watch everything at once. It is orders of magnitude more difficult to reverse-engineer. And the increase in processing overhead is trivial. PSCP, if done right, costs almost nothing."

Misinterpretation PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column

] TRIM5-alpha stymies HIV but not SIV, which explains why
] monkeys can contract only one of the two viruses. "The
] maintenance of a strong block to HIV-1 in Old World
] monkeys implies a selective advantage, presumably imposed
] by the presence of HIV-1-like viruses during the
] evolution of this primate lineage," the scientists write,
] adding that although humans carry a version of
] TRIM5-alpha, it is not as effective in thwarting HIV
] transmission.

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Monkey Protein Blocks HIV

] The range of applications in the area of motion analysis
] and image sequence processing is expanding with the
] steady increase in the use of video and television
] systems in a variety of different fields. A consequence
] of this expansion is the increased interest in research
] in this area. Motion Analysis and Image Sequence
] Processing brings together the fundamentals of various
] aspects of image sequence processing, as well as the most
] recent developments and applications.

Find myself regretting large holes in my mathematical education as I work my way through this bad boy. Am working on a quality assurance system that compares a known good video output to one generated by automated user input, to make sure nothing got broked in the new version.

Anyone got helpful links? ;)

Motion Analysis and Image Sequence Processing|KLUWER academic publishers

] The researcher accidentally pricked herself with a needle
] that contained a weakened form of the Ebola virus last
] week while she was injecting mice with the virus as part
] of a research effort.

[ Oh *man* that sucks! You can't even hyperbolize it, like, "That sucks like ...", because anything you put in there for ... is probably less bullshit than "accidentally giving yourself Ebola." Sure, she may be fine (god willing), but shit man, that's so, so not good. -k]

CNN.com - Researcher isolated after possible Ebola exposure - Feb. 19, 2004

] Even so, Atlanta is "the most dangerous city in America,"
] and the positive momentum is "fragile," according to the
] summary. Atlanta's violent crime is 463 percent higher
] than the average city's, and its homicide rate is 520
] percent higher than the national average, Linder &
] Associates found.

The vast majority of this is in South Atlanta. Atlanta has some very scary neighborhoods, like the low rent apartments surrounding Atlanta's projects. Razor wire and fear. That being said, in downtown, and mid-town... I've never feared for my safety in 5 years. Being 6'3" 250 pounds doesn't hurt... but Atlanta seems less dangerous than this is making it out to be. There are really two Atlanta's. The crime is divided across the racial and economic divide that seperates North and South Atlanta. The area they cut out of maps of Atlanta for the Olympics. Outside of the more dangerous neighborhoods, Atlanta isn't THAT bad.

Atlanta is the most dangerous city in America

] PARIS -- The dormant Garden Gnome Liberation Front has
] sprung back to life, stealing about 20 gnomes during a
] nighttime raid on a Paris exhibition.
]
] "We demand ... that garden gnomes are no longer ridiculed
] and that they be released into their natural habitat,"
] the Front's Paris wing said in a statement following its
] weekend strike.

Still makes me laugh to think about....

CNN.com - Garden Gnome Liberation Front strikes Paris show - April 12, 2000

Yukos' main shareholders are ready to negotiate on ceding control of the oil company to the state if jailed founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is freed, key Yukos shareholder Leonid Nevzlin said Monday.

Nevzlin said his offer comes amid mounting Kremlin pressure aimed at forcing the core group of shareholders out of Yukos.

"The Kremlin does not want to see the shareholders of Menatep as owners of a controlling stake in Yukos. This is what I hear via intermediaries almost every day. Such proposals are made, as are threats of a personal nature," Nevzlin said by telephone from Israel, where he lives in self-imposed exile.

He would not elaborate on what the threats were. He also refused to identify the intermediaries, but said he was waiting for the Kremlin to appoint an official mediator.

"I have opened the door for negotiations," he said.

Nevzlin, as well as other core Yukos shareholders, who have all been charged with fraud or tax evasion or both, hold a 44 percent stake in Yukos via the Group Menatep holding company. The stake is currently worth $14.6 billion.

Nevzlin, however, qualified his proposal, saying it was only a starting point for negotiations. He said talks on ways to hand over the stake could only take place if Khodorkovsky was freed on bail or under house arrest.

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Xodorkovsky goes against Putin, Xodorkovsky goes to jail. This is one of the last of the big Oligarchs from the Early 90s. He'll get out, lose his assets, and move to Israel, or London and have tea with Berezovsky. To charge someone with tax evasion in Russia is somewhat absurd. You might have heard about the flat tax there... but the reality is that the tax load, not including money that must be paid to the FSB for protection, is something like 50%. Tarifs on EVERYTHING. The tax code is so complicated... no one can pay up how much is owed, because its not certain how much is owed.

This is more of Putin the President becoming Putin the dictator. The Russian people escaping from "freedom" into bondage. Gangster capitalism has been traumatic. Where will Putin lead them once he has his iron grip?

Nevzlin Offers Shares for Freedom

] This weeks illustration was originally slated for the
] cover of this months Popular Science Magazine but it got
] bumped to the interior... too bad... would have loved to
] have seen it in full on cover goodness. DARPA (R&D of
] Defense department, if you didn't already know that) is
] putting together a race of autonomous (robotic) vehicles
] that runs from LA to Las Vegas. Completely remote, no one
] at the wheel. They are recruiting people (these guys are
] serious robot geeks who build and tinker with this stuff
] as a hobby and obsession) to build their own vehicles to
] participate in the race. The vehicles range from
] motorcycles to HumVees. The point of this story is to
] illustrate DARPA's interest in this technology, and that
] they hope to have autonomous vehicles waging war by 2015.
] Mark Pauline eat your heart out. ;-)

Some very interesting images and thoughts here. Its really stupid that this website doesn't offer article specific links instead of one link that changes every week. This might be gone when you see it.

Image of the week: DARPA Terminators