Image-Recognition Meets A Persistent Cat

DaveJay writes: "The folks at Quantum Picture have set up a system that demonstrates a creative and evidentally very effective use of image-recognition algorhytms: The 'Flo Control' system. It's a pet door that locks out their cat whenever she tries to carry another animal (mouse, bird, whatever) into the house. The system even uploads a picture of each attempt, along with its acceptance or rejection by the system, to their web server so the world can see what the cat didn't drag in."

WHorin for karma.

[Unknown Poltroon]

Bad karma!! Heres the link to the post about this saturday!!
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/ 03/24/153520 5&mode=thread&tid=126

Re:WHorin for karma.

[zpengo]

Slashdot long ago hit the recursion point, where Slashdot itself became news for nerds, and wound up simply reporting its own stories.

Let me be the first to say it....

[WasterDave]

Look, does the New York times have the same story on the front page two days in a row? No.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/24/1535 20 5&mode=thread

So why does slashdot? There are thousands of submissions, and yet this happens all the time. If you're getting bored of working on the site, just quit, I'm sure there are hundreds who would jump at the chance.

FFS
Dave

Re:Let me be the first to say it....

[ichimunki]

They might if the story was newsworthy. Remember 9/11 coverage? Same 60 minutes of destruction played out non-stop for a few days running, analyzed every possible which way. You see the same thing all the time. While I agree that Slashdot lacks a certain professionalism about this stuff, they probably have a lot of trouble keeping up with "thousands of submissions". If someone who can front-page a story misses a day, they have 30 potential stories they might screw up and accidentally front-page again.

FWIW, I think /. should simply be choosier about publishing anything, rather than Rob's goal of having some 30 new stories every day. Ten top notch submissions, where a Slashdot writer actually investigates the article for more than 10 seconds would be worth a lot more to me than 30 mindless links. It might also be cool if they batched them, rather than forcing constant reloads all day to see if anything new pops up. Like a morning edition and an evening edition.

Man this sucks!

[kasper37]

The editors are really dropping the ball today. Cuban missile crises, Vietnamese pin ball ban, and now a DUP?! WHAT'S GOING ON?!

Repeat

[KieranElby]

This is a repeat from Sunday:

Cat Recognition Alogrithms [slashdot.org]

duplicates...

[NaturePhotog]

Bad Timothy! No dead mouse for you! :-)

Read the FAQ :)

[NWT]

Sometimes I see duplicate stories on Slashdot. What's up with that?

These are just mistakes on the part of the staff. They happen. We have posted over ten thousand stories in our history. The occasional duplicate is inevitable.

If you see a duplicate, you can mail the story's author. If the story is still quiet, we may pull it down. However, once the comments are rolling in, we often leave the story up so that the discussion can continue.

Some people have suggested that there might be a software solution to this problem. If you think you've got one, visit the Slashcode site and submit a diff. As long as it isn't a performance hit, I'd consider using it. (Be aware however that the trick of searching for duplicate URLs isn't as helpful as you might think, since the same story can appear in multiple locations.)

Re:Read the FAQ :)

[Tersevs]

Just an idea (am no Slash hacker), but why not just migrate the new discussion threads from the duplicate story to the original one, once it is clear that its a "rerun"? (And afterwards pull the dup down).

Oh, perhaps the original story would have been archived by then, Well it was worth a shot...

In other news:

[Ieshan]

-Ximian Connector 1.0 Available
-Neverwinter Nights Coming in June
-Developers: Designing Good Linux Applications
-O'Reilly Showcases PS2 Linux Gear
-Apple Cuts Off Under-18 Darwin Developer
-Red Hat CTO Testifies at MS trial
-Sizing Up StarOffice 6.0
-(Almost) I-mode Service Coming in April
-Verisign Sending Deceptive Domain Renewal Mail?
-LoTR Takes 4 Oscars

New Idea for Karma Whoring Slashdot

[Jester998]

1) Read front page religiously. Note any cool hacks, or other interesting headlines.
2) Wait 2 days.
3) Submit news with same information but different headline.
4) Karma += 5;
5) Goto 1;

This is a dangerous precedence!

[discoinferno]

I'm surprised that the readership of Slashdot so easily accepts this encroachment on our personal freedoms. It starts out innocently enough, with a limited rollout of these privacy invasion systems in specific problem areas. But if we don't stand up now and demand an end to it, the freedom of cats everywhere to carry animals that they legally procured will soon be taken away.

Am I paranoid to imagine that this technology may someday be used in airports to keep cats from boarding flights while carrying small animals? Then what about bus stations? Churches? Restaurants? Hotels? Doesn't this amount to an illegal search by feline authorities? Where is the army of angry geeks to protest this behavior? Ahh, too busy bitching about Morpheus. I see where your priorities lie. Our founding fathers must be turning over in their graves.

Don't forget, the first thing Hitler did when he rose to power was to demand that all cats register their kills with the government. Perhaps you think I'm being an alarmist, but Midnight and I are going to be stockpiling dead woodchucks in my basement.

No, This is a dangerous precedent!

[Dyvion]

Ahh, you laugh now, but what happens when his neighbor finds his lost parakeet in the mouth of this cat on a web page and uses it as evidence in small claims court? Hope you got enough dough to cover a new parakeet, and the emotional damage! Or worse, shows it to the dreaded Animal Control Officer? Menace to the neighborhood! See? I have evidence at this link! (Yes, I did see the pictures were taken from inside the door... but oooooh the possibilities... being able to prove who's dog in the neighborhood is defiling your lawn without sending off DNA...)

I see duplicate stories...

[stienman]

I see duplicate stories.
They're everywhere -
They don't even know they're duplicate...

-Adam

Let me just say...

[OneFix]

I realize this is a duplicate, but since those posts are kind of off topic and I didn't seem to see anyone else mention it in the earlier thread...

Has anyone else noticed that the system seems flawed [quantumpicture.com]. Seeing as how this was obviously Squirrel...

It seems like there are alot of false alarms [quantumpicture.com] with the system even so much that the previous link sems to have denied entry to a cat that was leaving :)

I think the question has to be, how can we improve image recognition to be more accurate???

Actually, these problems seem to be apparent with most voice recognition systems as well.

Just an observation...I could be wrong :)

The Slashdot Effect ^2

[discoinferno]

So... the poor guy gets his server hammered, bandwidth bill goes through the roof... 2 days later the server is just starting to recover, and BOOM! Hammered again, double the charges, etc... Eep!

Ah well, maybe they did some upgrades after the first one and now they get to see if it can handle the load any better now. ;-)

Alas Babinski

[fm6]

Not so long ago, a significant part of my pathetic social life consisted of a large orange American Shorthair named Babinski. He was fanatically indoor-outdoor when I inherited him. Once, when he was recovering from minor surgery, I refused to let him out. He retaliated by spraying me in the face! I took it as a given that retraining him was a lost cause. Beside, I enjoyed watching him wander around outside. And it was most pleasant to have a sudden thud-meow the very moment I finished parking my car each evening.

The least pleasant part of our relationship was the animals he would catch. I think there's still a garter snake loose somewhere in my apartment. That's not so bad, but having to finish off all those poor baby birds he assumed were toys...

Then one day he just disappeared. Run over? No, he was smarter than that. More likely he played Ambush with one dog or fox or coyote too many. Or maybe the large raptor I spotted about the same time (they take out ducks; Babinski wasn't any bigger) got him.

Used to be big fan of the Kodak FalconCam [kodak.com]. Fun's gone now.

So my next cat's indoor only. Adopt one that grew up indoors, and doesn't even want to go out. Or raise a kitten that way. Less grief, less hassle, less environmental impact.

Dear Timothy.

[billcopc]

Please go find some other job. Why not go flirt with the chicks from finance ? Might as well bring Cliff along while you're at it and find out what the girls think of AskSlashdot.

The only people who have any brains here are Taco and Hemos (Michael's also ok). All the other editors should jump ship and go ruin someone else's fun instead.