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Domain: lafayette.edu

Stories and comments across the archive that link to lafayette.edu.

Comments · 11

  1. Re:Power consumption is reducing in par with price by Jzanu · · Score: 1 · on Cryptocurrencies Tumble Even More, While One Asset Manager Proclaims 'Bitcoin is Dead' (marketwatch.com)

    Individual panels seem lower but like in this article from 2011, what matters more is the system efficiency. Solar panels had improved even more by 2014 , with clear pathways for further improvement and that is even before looking at concentrators. Overall though, the real question is cost per watt which was $0.35/watt without subsidy in the US in 2017 and has an even clearer path to become cheaper and more productive.

  2. Re: Shope Papillomavirus by Spiralis+Fractus · · Score: 1 · on Ubuntu 9 Is Jaunty Jackalope, Coming Next April

    Real "jackalopes" are just deformed rabbits that have [sometimes fatal] "antler-like" tumors caused by a Shope papillomavirus infection. So, Canonical is naming one of their releases after a deformed, diseased, dying animal. Tempting the Fates are they?

  3. We have the same thing, with a different name! by default+luser · · Score: 1 · on Japan "Running Out of Engineers"

    My school (Lafayette College) has the same thing, but we call it AB Engineering.

    Basically, you have two drop-out paths

    1. If you drop by your second year, there's the business school at the bottom of the hill. You can count all the math, and apply your core engineering classes as electives.

    2. If you drop later, AB Engineering is your savior. Basicaly, you stop taking technical classes, and spend the rest of your college life taking business and social sciences/humanities.

    I actually knew two people who took this major. One of them was a lazy bastard who played too much UO; somehow, he hadn't failed all his classes, but the third year of engineering was killing him, so he moved to AB. The other actually started out in the program, which really surprised me.

  4. Re:And while they are at it... by manual_overide · · Score: 1 · on SCO Demands Linux 2.7 Information

    Although it would be strange, IBM could certainly give SCO a few Snipes or yes, even Jackalopes

    But Duke Nukem Forever will only ever exist in folklore

  5. Re:Ubuntu, as a desktop and a server by alienfluid · · Score: 2, Informative · on Ubuntu and UserLinux to Combine?

    If you want to try a server running Ubuntu, here it is: Lafayette LUG

  6. cant get used to them by alienfluid · · Score: 1, Informative · on Regular Expression Recipes

    regular expressions are nice and all but i still cant get used to them .. a good manual should be kept handy at all times. Vist Lafayette Linux Users Group at http://lug.lafayette.edu. Suggestions are welcome.

  7. Mirror here by alienfluid · · Score: 5, Informative · on The Eye: Evolution versus Creationism

    Here's the mirror

  8. Mirror here by alienfluid · · Score: 1 · on So, Who Wrote Sobig?

    Here's another one

  9. Another mirror by alienfluid · · Score: 2, Informative · on So, Who Wrote Sobig?

    Another mirror here

  10. Mirror by alienfluid · · Score: 5, Informative · on The Goggles, They Do Nothing

    Here here

  11. Re:Nice try, but he's completely up the spout by kaphka · · Score: 2 · on The Physics of Consciousness
    Somebody moderate up these ACs, so it doesn't look like I'm talking to myself. :-) This is a good thread.
    Visit koko.org and you will see evidence of many things including creativity (koko and michael paint), ability to understand abstract concepts such as death; express emotion, even grieve (koko to this day still remembers her cat), ability to teach each other signs, even use certain words that they do not like as prejoratives etc.
    Which makes it all the more interesting that despite these abilities, she still can't handle basic grammar. It suggests that perhaps (grammatical) human language is a more significant achievement than we think it is, and may, in fact, be the dividing line between the conscious and and non-conscious.
    As for the mirror situation, small children have to overcome this as well. Koko is able to look at herself in the mirror and understand that it is her, as well as that she is a gorilla.
    For that matter, so can pigeons. "Self-awareness" is a better test of visual acuity than of consciousness.
    While koko often uses 2 word "phrases", she also uses 3-6 word phrases shown in most conversations on the site.
    This I just don't buy. An awful lot of documented bad science has gone on in these studies, and it is likely that the more extraordinary successes are the result of the "Clever Hans effect" -- due more to the expectations of the experimenter than the ability of the animal. I'd love to offer you a reference here, but my library is really more of dust cover for my floor right now (and my desk, and my chairs, and every other flat surface), so I'm not up to the task of digging out the relevant books.

    I do remember one anecdote, though: On one of the famous primate studies (probably Washoe), only one of the interpreters was actually a "native speaker" of sign language. She consistently saw far fewer intelligible "utterances" than her hearing counterparts saw, and ultimately concluded that the others were simply seeing signs that weren't there.
    Huh? I can tell you my mental state including emotion and thought processes at any given time.
    But there are more subtle thoughts that can't be expressed in any language. This is essentially what computability theory is about, and it's really trippy. Read Godel, Escher, Bach .

    Anyway, when I suggest that language (of a certain type) is necessary for consciousness, I don't necessarily mean language for communication. Consider this: Could you teach Koko to multiply two single digit numbers? Probably. Could you teach her to multiply two 10,000 digit numbers? No. She can handle the basic operations, but once you excede her memory capacity, she can't work it out on paper like a human can.

    This may seem like a silly distinction to make, but it turns out that the ability to handle computations of arbitrary size is a really big deal in the context of computability theory. That's why I think that the connection between language and consciousness might be significant.