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the signal (useful info) to noise (useless noise) will be huge.

with that much actually EXTRANEOUS data (how many hours
of staring at the bathroom wall do you really want to store??),
discarding what is useless will be a huge task -- because editing
takes lots of time -- thus...

    'As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful
    as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a
    vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value
    than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over
    for yourself.' (Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena v2)

3cents
j

| > Interestingly, Microsoft forgoes a touch-sensitive scrollwheel
| > in favour of wheel-shaped buttons.
|
| Duh, patents. They didn't "forgo",
| they "prevented a giant lawsuit they were sure to lose."

they also forewent the fastest way to scroll...

imho -- after you've used the scroll wheel
on an ipod, it will just feel so clunky to use a zune.

apple paid a lot of attention to getting the details right on the ipod,
because they know that a small thing repeated often enough is a big thing.
make the interface slightly slower, and generally less elegant,
and it adds up to being a clunker in comparison.

the ipod rules, because it is really usable,
and integrates all its features in an elegant way.
it is very hard for a beaurocracy to produce something elegant.
and this is why microsoft will never kill the ipod...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0&search= microsoft%20iPod

2cents
j

our mutual survival depends on our cooperation.

j

survival depends on the human race cooperating
with each other instead of fighting each other.

j

a REALLY productive programmer would be one
who could REDUCE the lines of code with a simpler
and more generalized algorithm.

2cents
j

Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like
measuring progress on an aeroplane by how much it weighs.
(Bill Gates)

this point has been made before,
by cognitive scientist john searle in his paper:

    is the brain a digital computer?

in the summary, searle puts it this way:

--| Summary of the Argument |---

This brief argument has a simple logical structure and I will lay it out:

On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.

But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.

This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.

It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you think that I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"

Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.

But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.

The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.

We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". The brain, as far as its intrinsic operations are concerned, does no information processing. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.\**

--

regards,
j.

i guess they expect most people will connect through highspeed
or wireless, because they put in the video camera, and pulled out
the modem (its now an external usb adaptor cable).

theiDoctor

> It will also 'search computers for music
> and movies and remove any illegal copies'

so how does it know the difference between an mp3 file
i've ripped from my CD collection (of 700 CDs) to use
on my ipod, or if it comes from a p2p download!?!?

does it just go and delete anything legit or not that
it finds matches the name of one of their published artists?

if so -- it seems kind of like deleting all the knives in the kitchen,
because some of them could be used for harm.

best regards,
j