Human Computation

We were asked to write a description for a YouTube movie, called Human Computation. My description is pretty long, but just deal with it. :0

If you want to see the movie yourself, it's located here --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlzM3zcd-lk

The movie, if you want to call it that, starts out by talking about "Captchas", which are those little scrambled words or sentances that people have to decode when they register on websites. They have them so that it's a lot harder for hackers/spammers to mass produce accounts on pages. The real aim of the presentation as a whole is to talk about human computation, or the things that humans can do but that computers can not yet do on their own, like the "captcha" problem.

The next example the speaker brings up is labeling images with words. Describing and identifying something visual with a written response is very hard to do for a computer. Basically, one of the ways a computer can translate between images and text is with filenames or tags or something similar, like when you do an image search on Google. This method is obviously not very accurate. :0 The speaker wants a method for labeling all the images that appear on the web. And accurately so, I persume. Fast and cheap, too.

Humans will need to lable the images, as computers don't have the ability to do so. The speaker proposes an online game where players will see images, and then get to suggest words that describe that image. Then, the words are matched up together and the words the players had in common become describers for the picture. Pretty damn smart, if you ask me. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea. It's apparently called "The ESP Game." They have apparently already been running it for a while to great success.

Next, the speaker talks about locating actual objects in the images, like distinguishing what exact areas in an image a specific object is located. This problem is also solved with a game, this one called "Peekaboom", and is apparently linked with "The ESP Game". One player clicks in an image, and thus reveals an area in the picture to the other player, which can only see the selected area. Player 1 can see a word describing the image, and player 2 has to guess what the word is. Once again, simple yet ingenious. :) Using this method, and by combining a bunch of testresults, you end up with a computer that can locate a specific word in an image.

After this, the speaker moves on to common-sense facts. Ideas and things people have in their heads, billions at a time, like "water is wet" or whatever. To make a computer able to understand such ideas, the speaker suggests ANOTHER game, this one called "Verbosity." Here, player 1 has a word, and adds a sentance to it, then only shows the other player the sentance without the word. Like, "X is wet", and player 2 can guess that "X" is water, and they would be correct, or something.

The speaker calls these types of games: "Asymmetric Verification Games"

The basic idea is, Player 1 is given an input, and they give an output on that. Player 2 is shown the output, and needs to guess what the original input that Player 1 was given.

Apparently, just the first game was a SYMMETRIC game, rather than asymmetric, cause both players are given an input and need to match eachothers outputs.

Then the speaker goes on to compare the two things to eachother. :0

In symetric games: Constraint is number of outputs per input.
In asymetric games: Constraint is number of inputs that yield the same output.

The general idea he suggests is that when a computer can't solve a problem on it's own, you could provide a test for humans to interact with so that the computer and the human can solve the problem together.

He keeps hinting that this will eventually turn into The Matrix. =P

Then it's question time! And I can't be arsed to write the rest down. :|

Now I'll go enjoy my time off from school instead! :D

-Fredrik "Leo" Gustafsson

Flickr

Now for something non-ranty. We were asked to upload some pictures to Flickr, and I though I could post a link here so you can go in and check the ones I submitted out.

We were supposed to put up 5 pictures, but at time of writing, I only have 3 up. I'll have to add 2 more soon, I just have to find some nice ones to put up there. P:

Here's the link, click me!

-Fredrik "Leo" Gustafsson

Rant about Failbook

Once upon a time, Facebook didn't exist. Yeah, it's hard to believe these days. Nowadays, everyone and their grandmother has an account there. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, I guess, it makes it easy to keep in touch with people, or something. It's supposedly great for working on projects, or getting in touvh with old friends, or expanding your social network, and things like that.

I honestly just never cared.

Untill I had to make an account for school.... :/

So, something that annoys me about it? The fact that notifications, messages and e-mails come flying up your arse from every direction even imaginable the second you register! Pokes here, friends there, activities everywhere. Unless you go in and specifically un-mark every single notification option in the settings page, your inbox is going to be so flooded you'll be begging that you never signed up for the damned thing.

Sure, it's easy to fix this little problem, once you find it, but it really, really annoys me. It's like they made Facebook as annoying and nosy as possible, just so that people wouldn't forget about it.

Apparently, in order to terminate your account (I haven't tried it yet, I've only been told about it, so I'm not sure), you have to delete absolutely everything that you have on your account and send an email to the administrators or something and ask them to shut your account off. Tedious, timewasting and completely retarded.

No wonder everyone's on there, once you register, you don't have a choice but to go back day after day after day. >:/

I just really don't like Facebook or how it works. Some of it's features are "ineresing", but it's nothing you couldn't acomplish on your own wth e-mail, MSN or even phonecall or two.

But I guess I just have a bad oppinion about it, a lot of people enjoy it, but I'm trying my best to stay as far away from it as I can...

And now my rant is over. :0

-Fredrik "Leo" Gustafsson

3 Favorite Sites?

Well, so we were asked to find 3 of our favorite websites and do a little rant about them. I guess we'll get started!

1. DeviantART


I love this page wholeheartedly. It alows the user to upload art in basically any form and lets other people view it, comment on it, favorite it, or request prints of it. It's basically the ultimate art-sharing-forum. One can also write journals, make polls and even toy arround some with the HTML/CSS of their own personal page.

Browsing the page itself is easy and painfree, with all the submitted pieces sorted into categories that are all easy to navigate. Complete with a fantastic search-function, it's never hard to find others art.

2. Gametrailers


A website which very well provides a constantly updated view on everything and anything "game". Videogames, that is. The official site itself hosts all new trailers, gameplay footage, previews, reviews, an assortment of shows and even live feeds at occasion. Combined with an awesome support for users to upload their own movies results in a close to flawless source of gaming news and updates. If you concider yourself a gamer and haven't been to this site yet, shame on you.

3. The Piratebay


Probably one of the most famous, or infamous, sites ever. It alows the user to access a plethora of downloadable content. Sure, most of it isn't really "free-to-download", but it doesn't really stop people from getting it. Games, applications, movies, music, books. Anything you can think of, at the click of a button. Ingenious, if you ask me. And I absolutely love it.

Now, the thing is, most people look at sites such as The Piratebay and shun them because they infringe copyright laws and such. I see it as a way to experience an extended demo, so to say, of a product. Usually, if I download a product and really, really enjoy it, I'll go out and buy an actual copy of it, if it's not too expensive, to show my support to the producers. No harm done, really. Just saves me time and money...

--

I'll leave it as such for now, I hope you enjoy my choices! :B

-Fredrik "Leo" Gustafsson

Check this vid out, yo!

Hello, world, this is my first entry!

Hai gais!

Well, this is my first stumbling entry into the world of blogs, and don't expect too much of it. You can't really concider it too serious yet either, casue I had to do this for a university assignment.

I'm guessing I could turn this into something actually usefull over time, but for now, I'll just leave it like this.

If you're really, really interested in who the hell I am, I have a deviantART page, which you can find here.

Talk to you all later. ;D

-Lulzman