Real-Time, Detailed Face Tracking On a Nokia N900 139
ptresadern writes "Researchers at the University of Manchester this week revealed a detailed face tracker that runs in real-time on the Nokia N900 mobile phone. Unlike existing mobile face trackers (video) that give an approximate position and scale of the face, Manchester's embedded Active Appearance Model accurately tracks a number of landmarks on and around the face such as the eyes, nose, mouth and jawline. The extra level of detail that this provides potentially indicates who the user is, where they are looking and how they are feeling. The face tracker was developed as part of a face- and voice-verification system for controlling access to mobile internet applications such as e-mail, social networking and on-line banking."
Finally, something to do with this phone (Score:4, Interesting)
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As soon as Apple releases an iPhone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard, I'm in.
Why would you bother? That's a completely different class of gear.
iPhone is a phone with a bunch of toys, N900 is a full sub-notebook with phone capabilities tacked on.
The former can run just a few random "apps", the latter allows you to install a regular OS with all of its functionality.
The keyboard is one of significant advantages of N900, but definitely not the main one.
For one, the research done in this article would be flat out impossible on iPhone due to its closed nature.
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In all honesty, just get a Droid, root it and be done with it. Better hardware and better support than the N900.
The N900 was a great idea with a terrible implementation, no ability to buy it subsidized in the US at launch from any major carrier, low amount of apps, etc.
Nokia should have just
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Re:Finally, something to do with this phone (Score:5, Interesting)
... low amount of apps, etc.
You can install Debian packages on an N900. It's essentially a tiny ARM tablet running Linux.
N900 without phone? (Score:2)
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re N810:
You can chroot Debian, but not run it natively. Too many drivers are locked down, so you're pretty much forced to use the shipping OS if you expect all your hardware to work.
If you want the unrestricted Linux freedom you're come to expect from a PC on a device of that form factor the N900 is 80% there, the N810 is 50% there.
Re:N900 without phone? (Score:4, Informative)
If I want something like an N900, but I don't plan to use it on a cell phone carrier, is the N810 any good?
IMHO, you should still be much better off with an N900. The N810 is already quite old and have a lot of annoying limitations. It got only 128MB of RAM, which is a major limitation. You can easily get out of memory with the N810 if you browse a heavy web site, and multi-tasking is limited as well. In addition, it got a relatively slow CPU, no OS support for GPU accelaration, 2GB internal storage and a limited size of system space for installing apps.
The N900 got 256MB RAM and 1GB virtual memory (with swap space), faster CPU, 32GB internal storage and up to 2GB for applications.
The N810 have a larger screen, which can be an advantage in some cases, but it is also bigger and heavier.
Better go with an N900. You can find used/refurb units for quite cheap prices on ebay.
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"There is an app for that!" ... use it as you please :)
There is an app called "Cellular Modem Control Buttons" which turns off the cell phone circuits.
Once off you can have the N900 connected to Wifi and use Skype, Browse the web (including YouTube)
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/cell-modem-ui/ [maemo.org]
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You'll get a warning message during boot up if your N900 has no SIM card, no other issues arise.
You could prevent this message by putting in some old SIM card. I'd recommend against that however as you'll probably save cpu time and batteries if the GSM stack does not initialize.
An N810's only advantage over an N900 is the larger screen, plus maybe you can find one uber cheap on ebay, but really I'd say either buy an N900 or wait for Nokia's first MeeGo device.
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I don't see why you couldn't get a N900 and just not use the phone feature. Unless you live somewhere where you have to buy a phone plan to buy a phone (read: The U.S., the only country I know where you can't buy all phones separately without a subscription from any phone stores. And even there
Nokia USA: N900? Oops sorry, 404. (Score:2)
The U.S., the only country I know where you can't buy all phones separately without a subscription from any phone stores.
I do in fact live in the United States. I went to NokiaUSA.com, searched for N900, clicked "Buy online", and got "Oops sorry, the page you're looking for isn't available." I walked into a T-Mobile store, asked about Nokia N900, and the salesperson had never heard of it. Is it discontinued?
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Is it discontinued?
Not in sweden. http://www.prisjakt.nu/produkt.php?p=474421 [prisjakt.nu]
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Anyone who thinks there is a "low amount of apps" for the N900 must be counting the apps in the Ovi Store.
The Ovi Store is where all the crappy commercial apps are, and there are few. I have 2 apps installed from there. The good apps are in the community repos, and there are MANY.
Plus there are the Debian packages on top of that.
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If you had 15 mod points all in one go, I presume you must have multiple sockpuppet accounts, which you're using to mod down people for liking the N900, and then you come and violate the spirit of the rules by posting in the same thread.
And you accuse them of being fanatical?
(And yes, it is a once in a blue moon thread about Nokia, the number one phone company. If you don't like people praising devices and being unable to cope with any criticism, why not have a go on the many Iphone stories?)
Re:Finally, something to do with this phone (Score:4, Insightful)
As soon as Apple releases an iPhone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard, I'm in.
Why would you bother? That's a completely different class of gear.
iPhone is a phone with a bunch of toys, N900 is a full sub-notebook with phone capabilities tacked on.
The former can run just a few random "apps", the latter allows you to install a regular OS with all of its functionality.
Are you seriously this delusional?
1) "A few random apps" = over 250,000. How many apps were there in Maemo repos again?
2) Who the fuck is going to bother installing a "regular OS" on an N900? Next thing you will be probably suggesting people "work" in commandline on a phone or try to use Abiword on it.
And this is coming from a person who has owned and used N900 since December.
Re:Finally, something to do with this phone (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the iPhone apps fall under the following categories:
-small flash-like games
-videos wrapped in an app api
-sound boards
If you are going to count apps like that, then lets add the following to the n900's list
-*actual* flash games (addictinggames.com, etc all work)
-built in unix tools (top, etc)
I'm fairly certain if you compared these now-equivalent lists, you would probably find the n900 has MANY more apps, and that most of them are probably MUCH better written to boot.
Oh, did I mention you can literally write your own apps in almost ANY language you want without paying $100 for a developers key. You can even distribute your own software repository publicly without paying a fee or asking users to void their warranties.
Yeah, 250 000 apps sounds kind of pathetic to me...
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Exactly, most iPhone apps are crappy offline readers for blogs/news sites, social networking clients, crappy little games and such shit. On the N900 these are a small minority. Most apps are truly useful things, not a news reader with a spherical 3D interface.
And really who could have any use for anywhere near 250K apps? Even if you count all the games I've ever played and all the Linux and Windows CLI apps, It's a very safe guess to say I've used under 10K different programs in my lifetime.
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Troll harder.
The number of ARM packages in the Debian repo vastly outnumber the "apps" on your iDevice.
Also, guess which device is rooted BY DEFAULT.
Seriously, what's your point? Who gives a shit about your ARM Debian packages? Noone sane is going to be using them on a phone. People don't want nor need command-line applications for a phone. People also aren't going to be using Gnome or KDE on a phone. They want a rich selection of applications optimized for their device.
The N900 ISN'T (just) a phone (Score:5, Insightful)
Course, Nokia is a phone company and that's how they market it.
The N900 is a Linux box, which fits in your pocket, and which can talk to GSM, UMTS, WiFi, Bluetooth, FM transmitter and receiver, infrared transmitter, GPS.. Has an accelerometer, touchscreen, 5MP camera, audio (obviously), and TV out.
Lets put it this way. The N900 is a general purpose mobile computing module with battery backup that can do everything, talk to everything, uses open standards and is easy to use.
You can write bog standard shell/python/java/c/ASM/whatever software for it and distribute them as Debian packages.
Anything you can think of to do with a computer, you can do with the blessing of Nokia and you can do it mobile with full knowledge of location and movement. That is the difference between open and closed.
No offense or anything, but it's a no brainer.
Mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you filled in the extensive questionnaire Nokia sent N900 owners, you were asked to rate the N900 on a scale from "computer with phone functions" to "phone with computer functions". Nokia understands the issue well. I don't think the N900 is anything at all to do with the iPhone/Android world. It is simply a completely different class of machine, and Nokia's low key approach suggests they regard it as a research vehicle. In exchange for supporting their research, you get a piece of equipment targeted at software developers. Yes, it's slower than an iPhone or recent Android devices. It's heavier. It's clunkier. But it's lighter, smaller and more convenient than anything else which I can use to do the same job.
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But...
this is what is wrong with Nokia. They market shit heavily like the n97 which I have and is subtlety not quite right in almost every way while not marketing something awesome. They suffer from the "not invented here" problem just as badly as Motorola in my opinion.
Also for an awesome augmented reality game check out http://cellagames.com/ [cellagames.com] stuff. It has made more non-geeks look at my e71 and say that is cooler than an iPhone then anything else.
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I have to agree with you, including with my N900. Don't get me wrong, my N900 is good - I love that I can ssh into my company servers, but truthfully, I'm not using that sort of thing nearly as much as the phone, contacts and alarm clock. In my view, these three things meet the marketing spec sheet, but really aren't as good as they should be. I'd love to think I could just hack them, but they're not actually hackable, as they're part of the core phone OS.
Of course, if I can get hold of this face-rec app, t
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but it seems like the last two or three years have seen a big decline in passion for nerdy computing, with discussion here now little different from other sites like Reddit
Yes. I'd say that the popularity of discussions about completely non-nerd-friendly, hacker-useless products like the iPhone and iPad indicates a shift in viewership. I've never owned an N900, but after reading the above comments I must say it sounds like a device that I would get something out of. I say that as a software developer, but as you point out, this is a site that's supposed to be "News for Nerds."
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>> People don't want nor need command-line applications for a phone.
Yes. Going by iphone's popularity, people don't even want phone functionality on their phones anymore. What's your point?
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Wassup crazy buddy? GAAH SPIDERS!
rm -rf *spider*
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Oh and, you've got that completely backwards. The amount of apps on the App Store outnumbers the amount of ALL PACKAGES (including libs and sources) for Debian/ARM by several orderes of magnitute.
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You go to App Manager, System, install Rootsh. There you go, all done, allowed and encouraged by the manufacturer. There's just an extra step to getting root access via the terminal to keep noobs from falling for rm -rf jokes.
Before this it was possible to install random .debs via the GUI by enabling "red pill mode," but this was removed later as it was no longer necessary.
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>>> Why would you bother? That's a completely different class of gear.
Different in what way? Both use pretty much the same Cortex A8 processor and share many similar specifications - in that regard both units are just 'sub-notebook' type computers with different operating systems.
To put the difference in a nutshell, iPhone is an "embedded device", ie. software and hardware are meant to be inseparable. It is a device with fixed features (of course running approved "apps" and limited (no Flash) browsing of web services are very powerful features). N900 is a PC in the sense that it/Nokia/Maemo does not try to limit what you can do with it. Real limits (as opposed to limits enforced by software only) of the hardware are the only limitation.
N900 has one software feature: it can run softw
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You can say exactly the same about laptops, and somehow quite a lot of people use them.
Re:Finally, something to do with this phone (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm not going to treat my phone as a subnetbook, then why do I need an iPhone in the first place? I can make calls onmy cell phone without having to pay Apple for a walled garden.
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The N900 was always marketed as a "Mobile Computer", not a phone. (http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/) This is why those who think it should be a phone are whining.
I don't care whether I can talk to my friends on it. I care whether it has connectivity. The 810 wifi is less than wonderful (it's OK, but no iTouch...) but as soon as I step away from a wifi hotspot, it's an island.
Adding cell connectivity is a big win for me.
Re:Finally, something to do with this phone (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahem.
I had an iPhone before my N900, and frankly I adore the N900. It's fast, responsive, and it's easy to understand what's going on. If the music's skipping (which happened on both devices), I pull up top, then renice my music player. If I want a nice note-taking program, I just run emacs & org-mode on it. Then I'll 'git push' those notes for my other machines. I use citrix to run an app at work (note: despite what the website says, it doesn't actually require motif). The map program (not the stock one, but one you can download a package for) is utterly fantastic. I even have a subway map for my city.
Really, advanced users of the iPhone really just want a mobile computer, with a phone tacked on. The UI on the N900 is pretty good, and it does what I want with few problems, and many, many wonderful plusses over the iPhone platform.
Also, it has a keyboard, replaceable battery, and flash :-) I can stream full-screen flash videos in a cab.
Emacs? WTF? (Score:2)
No way! I'm not getting a phone to run emacs. OTOH, give me a phone that runs vi and I'll buy it.
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Ah, but Nokia recognises the One True Text Editor, and the N900 runs vi out of the box. (It's the minimal BusyBox implementation, but vim is available as an optional package too.)
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Actually there is fix for PulseAudio which reduces skipping by factor of magnitude. With this my overclocked (1GHz) N900 is able to play 256kbit/s oggs in background while surfing the web without skipping. However, it is not perfect, heavy multitasking still causes skips.
Instructions how to get updated PA for N900 in Maemo.org talk thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=60788&page=1
Re:Finally, something to do with this phone (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah Mappero's nice, just keep a .deb for any working versions you get, the package maintainer sometimes breaks important stuff like POIs and fixes it whenever he gets around to it. I tried to download the source and fix it myself once but the git clone operation always hung half way through >:(
The current version works well.
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You're an idiot. The iPhone runs a regular OS (OS X) just with a different UI designed for small touch-screen usage and it is locked down so you can only do Apple approved things with it. The N900 runs a regular OS (a Linux variant) with a custom UI designed for small touch-screen usage and it is deliberately left wide open and unrestricted so the user can do whatever they want with the device. The big difference between the devices is the restrictions placed on the users and developers.
And who are you to
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I've gone from a smartphone-type phone (Treo 650) to a netbook-like phone (N900) and I'm happier and more productive. It's like going from a luxury sedan to an offroad-capable pickup: Not as convenient for everyday things but MUCH more fun and useful, you can do things that would never be possible with the "convenient" solution.
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The point is, if he did want that, there are many phones to consider besides the Iphone. Even sticking with Nokia, they have the number one smartphone platform, Symbian.
Stop trying to treat your phone like a desktop ... or even a sub notebook and you'll be a lot happier AND more productive.
If you just want a phone, get a locked down feature phone that does Internet access and apps, and is way cheaper than Apple's. But the point of a smartphone is, or was before Apple redefined the term, to provide something
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Offtopic I know, but what tweaks are these? If there's a single major downside to the phone it's that the user interface is sluggish.
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If you OC to 700 or more the UI will run smooth enough to satisfy an Apple fan. At 850 it's blazing fast.
The stock clock speed isn't too slow though, but the GUI doesn't run silky smooth. I'd like to OC on a regular basis but the power kernel causes a problem with some DD-WRT APs, so I'm at stock speeds for now.
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I love my N900, it's a shame Nokia doesn't. Still waiting for MeeGo, and to get the best out of my device I've OC'ed it slightly, not to mention transition and touch screen sensitivity tweaks which all make the phone much more usable. What I want to know is why can't they get it right the first time? Since they didn't, how hard would it be to adopt similar tweaks directly into the OS so it doesn't feel so sluggish? It had/has so much potential, but I'm afraid for now, we'll never see it. As soon as Apple releases an iPhone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard, I'm in.
You'll have to wait for N9 (if you haven't check the pics or videos of something that may be N9, google for it!). Hopefully it'll be this year, but I'm not holding my breath, even considering how important it would be to get it to stores before Christmas. There'll be a lot iPads and stuff bought for Christmas, and some of those are permanently lost sales for Nokia, if N9 isn't out and available by then.
About N900, I've got a feeling, that the desperate(?) need to get N9 ready and out ASAP might have somethi
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Personal Minority Report (Score:5, Funny)
The extra level of detail that this provides potentially indicates who the user is, where they are looking and how they are feeling.
Phone: I noticed that you've been watching that blonde over there, and you appear to be sad. Would you like a list of local escort services?
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<quote><p>The extra level of detail that this provides potentially indicates who the user is, where they are looking and how they are feeling.</p></quote>
<p>Phone: I noticed that you've been watching that blonde over there, and you appear to be sad. Would you like a list of local escort services?</p></quote>
There's an app for that
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Oh, you mean M-x M-c M-spy-on-my?
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Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Possibly, but at least he knows the difference between Minority Report and Lord of the Rings.
Congrats, Smidge207, you win the Fuckwit of the Day award.
was the n900 a good buy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Articles like this make me glad that I bought the n900 because it is the premier development environment for phone based science, unfortunately, the downside is that there aren't very mainstream apps for the n900 (google maps being the most glaring absence).
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Check out mappero: http://www.mardy.it/mappero [mardy.it]
The UI's a little strange, but it treats me reasonably well!
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(google maps being the most glaring absence).
The web version works quite well though IIRC, at least after you've noticed that you can actually get a mouse cursor on the screen with N900 browser...
OpenCV (Score:3, Informative)
Those game demos looked a lot like the standard implementation of OpenCV. It's too bad there isn't any security on this technology as merely showing a picture of the person to the camera defeats it.
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Should be easy enough to add detection to reduce the chances of this occurring. By asking the person to turn their head slowly, you can make sure that the various features move according to a 3-d object rotating as opposed to a flat object rotating. Another paper that I just found suggests checking for blinking. This wouldn't solve holding up the phone to a video display showing a person turning their head or blinking, of course, but it would make it marginally more difficult to spoof. And you should al
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Not quite.
For example - face recognition plus "now smile" "now frown" - required the attacker to be using some sort of video system.
Face recognition plus a short list of words that the user has assigned an emotion - for example - the phone ...
displays in sequence the words
Fish (erman drowned) = frown
Localsportsteam (won) = smile
Or gaze tracking on a virtual keyboard.
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Blacks? (Score:5, Interesting)
How well do they work with black people? These have been issues in other face recognition systems.
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He's talking about the fact that some facial-recognition software works better on lighter-skinned people.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/34514093/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/ [msn.com]
Gut reaction.. (Score:4, Insightful)
controlling access to mobile internet applications such as e-mail, social networking and on-line banking.
First one kinda iffy.. second one makes sense.. third one, no way in hell!
It's the old convenience vs. security argument. Personally for things like my money, I'm willing to go the extra mile and enter a password (or some kind of one time code if only my bank offered it).
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If you have access to someone's email account you generally have access to every single other account they have anywhere...
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If I ever found such a "feature" on my bank's website, they would find THEIR accounts drained and closed VERY quickly.
FTFY
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Viola-Jones? (Score:2, Interesting)
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There's also an open source C++ implementation. [imm.dtu.dk]
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Anyway, I remember I did some work with Active Shape Models many many years ago, though we were trying to fit a 3d face model on the image instead of a 2d template -- much harder (and painfully slow with the computers we had in those days).
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Active Appearance Models work by creating a deformable model of appearance built by combining a point distribution model with a texture model using principal component analysis (PCA). Basically what that means you take a bunch of faces, located landmark points like the corners of eyes, apex of the chin, etc., create an average face and use PCA to statistically model the variations. Next you morph the faces together from their original landmark points to average face, and do a PCA on the pixel values. This c
Mood Banking (Score:2)
The extra level of detail that this provides potentially indicates who the user is, where they are looking and how they are feeling. The face tracker was developed as part of a face- and voice-verification system for controlling access to mobile internet applications such as e-mail, social networking and on-line banking.
We're sorry, but we do not recognise the sad face with which you view your bank account. Please try again when you are more happy.
What Repository? (Score:3, Insightful)
exras-testing or extras-devel ?
Surely it's not in the Ovi Store?
Photos (Score:2)
Can it be fooled with a photo though? this is the whole problem with using face recognition alone for security.
It really needs to do more than just look at the front of your face.
Two cameras would be better, 3D image. Although even that could be fooled with a 3D model of someone's face. If gaining access to a famous person's bank account you could steal a waxwork dummy head and use that, okay a bit far fetched but if the stakes were high?
Let's not forget the scene in Demolition Man where Simon Phoenix needs
Some weird anomalies in that video... (Score:2)
If you look close at the video during the '360 rotation' segment you'll see the tracking dot for the guy's chin on top of the video camera lens and after that on top of his finger. Does it actually track that part of the face or does it merely deduce the presence of a chin in that region from the position of the eyes?
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Atleast... (Score:2)