Java is far more likely to go the way of the dodo bird than is COBOL. COBOL is well-optimized for business data processing. It's a fine language. What does Java have over it? COBOL is many multitudes easier to learn, code with, read, and modify. Programming languages started getting more complex, harder to learn, and use starting with C++. And OO design and programming has failed in each and every goal for which it was originally proposed. I understand that most modern programmers have learned OO from the start and have difficulty thinking of problems differently but contemporary COBOL supports OO, too... just not often used.
Their design will require special landing and take-off zones, such as on the roofs of parking garages. Why?
The obvious solution is a quad (or multi) copter design with elevator that lowers on cables from the ends of the arms (near the propellers). This will enable it to drop-off and pick-up close to anywhere, without causing wind damage. The elevator should stay stable even in high winds at a reasonable distance under the multicopter.
It also makes sense to design the propellers for lower noise, drop-off from high to keep noise down (lower if there is more wind), and have its batteries quickly swappable for rapidly shifting between paying rides. I'm sure you'd be swapping out the battery pack between every two rides but the fuel efficiency would make this system significantly less expensive to operate than would gasoline powered cars.
Many KDE users were lost and feel displaced to this day. I am among them. I used KDE from version 1.x through 3.5 but... all the criticisms of 4+ are valid. I've met many others who feel the same--that the loss of KDE with the advent of version 4 was the biggest technological tragedy ever. It was fast, intuitive, and comprehensively functional. It was very practical and a joy to use... not perfect but very near to perfect. And it was the most preferred desktop for Linux, even if not adopted as the default for any major distributions. I think that said a lot, in and of itself.
At the time, Gnome had done some things better but not much. Mostly, Gnome had a great menu layout. It's file browsers, however, couldn't even sort dates as dates but rather as strings. I haven't looked at Gnome for some time. At the moment, I am using the awful slow and non-intuitive thing Ubuntu defaults to. On my laptop, I run Trinity--and that's where I do all my programming.
Trinity is an effort to keep KDE 3.5 alive.. It seems the maintainers are struggling to keep it functional. It has some nuances and broken aspects that didn't originally exist in KDE 3.5 (such as K3B not always working). However, I want to give the people who took it up all the credit I can. Even as they seem to be struggling to keep it functional, it's in many ways the most practical desktop system to date.
Pneumatic cylinders are stronger per volume but vacuum can be immensely strong, regardless of volume. So if a cylinder is made very tiny but geared up massively then the same pneumatic air tank could give hugely more energy for its volume and structural integrity--right? Some day, building, filling, and dropping cylinders of space vacuum to Earth could therefore be the only truly infinite source of renewable energy. Perhaps vacuum cylinders could even be used to blow back captured air (a vacuum jet) to slow descending space vehicles... Does this seem reasonable?
Why not use a dirigible (zeplin) for space launch? 17,500mph at 99 kilometers up is considered orbitable. Why not use use a dirigible in these stages for cheap, heavy lift into orbit: (1) hydrogen lift until the air density is low enough to make pushing a balloon energy efficient (perhaps 60 kilometers); (2) vacuum out the hydrogen as the balance between air density and structural integrate allow and heat it for rocket thrust. Use a large aerodynamic shape such that this thrust pushes the ever lighter vehicle faster, easier.. and so long as there is air resistance, there must also be lift.. When there is no longer air resistance/lift, stable orbit is thereby achievable. Helium balloons have gone as high as 59 kilometers. Hydrogen is far lighter and nothing is lighter than vacuum. A small thorium reactor is perhaps the most ideal choice to heat the hydrogen... which expands quickly and greatly when heated. I do wonder if heat at high speeds in ultra thin atmosphere would pose a problem but if it does, then use that the expand the hydrogen for thrust.... so ever better.
Modern neural science and biologically realistic neural simulations (such as some of the best Deep Learning systems) use the neuron as its most fundamental primitive. One neural does a lot, actually. It draws in new correlating axons (those firing when its other receptors are firing) when its total potentiation is insufficient to excite. It weakens and destroys them in the inverse case. It also draws in non-correlating axons as inhibitory receptors. And long term potentiation (widely viewed as the basis of long term memory) is increased as the same axon produces more receptors to the same neuron. Furthermore, a neuron perpetually exciting will shut itself down for an extended time.. Each is like a little computer of its own, really..
As for what "intelligence actually is". The real problem is the lack of consensus on a common definition. The word "is" only indicates a relationship between two things without specifying what that relationship, eh hem, actually is. It's a matter of defining it in a way that is broadly acceptible. Defining something can sometimes also determine it. I think that's the case with intelligence. Most people (who care) want to determine what it is so they can define it.. and yet you cannot search for it without knowing what you are searching for, in other words defining it.
I think this is a ridiculous per suite. Pick one of the many working definitions that you like, and work with that. If it feels insufficient then pick or create another. Here's a few I use..... any of which could be more or less complex, evolved, or designed:
Reactive Intelligence -- the ability to react to pre-defined stimulus in a way that, under ordinary conditions, furthers a goal
E.g.: An iron that turns itself off when sitting face down and not moving (often referred to as an intelligent feature) Conditioning Intelligence -- the ability to identify what reactions to what stimulus has most often in the past furthered a goal and thereafter to react accordingly
E.g.: Pavlov's Dog...or any trial & error aka reward and punishment learning Substitution Intelligence -- the ability to identify and model observed phenomenon from among interaction pattern sequences and swap out a missing component in one that furthers a goal, if the original is missing. The swap is of one that shares most characteristics with others that had taken the same place in the past.
E.g.: In building a hut, you've used many different kinds of hammers to bang in the nails but today you don't have a hammer. However, you have a rock that shares most characteristics with the other hammer styles (heavy, hard, and with a flat side), so you use the rock where you'd normally have used a hammer.
Substitution Intelligence is shared only among the so-called higher animals, and mostly humans. It requires general imitation learning. That is, the ability to identify that two things/people/animals have a lot of similarities and therefore one could take the place of the other....
Of course, if everyone would just stfu until they have a peer reviewed journal article, there would never be any peer reviewed journal articles... Perhaps one reason AI hasn't progressed might be this kind of brutal cynicism toward new ideas.
Granted, every premise I provided in the modal derives from established science, though replicated, peer review journals.. in fact, much through basic text books in Neural Science... But let's stfu about that, too, since these things don't appear to be yet discussed at the same time in any peer reviewed journal article. I suppose we can only read anything if it comes directly from a peer review journal article..... and only what's in one particular such article at a time... perhaps requiring a holy moment of silence between each article, to ensure a clean separation.
I've been working on these models for decades... I've done science (six accepted peer review articles) but am really an engineer, not a scientist. I prefer it that way. I can leave publishing research to others, who require it for their tenure. At one time, slashdot was actually a mostly intellectually stimulating conversational environment...
Neural Net's were traditionally based off old Hodgkins and Huxley models and then twisted for direct application for specific objectives, such as stock market prediction. In the process they veered from a only very vague notion of real neurons to something increasingly fictitious.
Hopefully, the AI world is on the edge of moving away from continuously beating their heads against the same brick walls in the same ways while giving themselves pats on the heads. Hopefully, we realize that human-like intelligence is not a logic engine and that conventional neural nets are not biologically valid and posses numerous fundamental flaws.
Rather--a neurons draws new correlating axons to itself when it cannot reach threshold (-55mv from a resting state of -70mv) and weakens and destroys them when over threshold. In living systems, neural potential is almost always very close to threshold--it bounces a tiny bit over and under. Furthermore, inhibitory connections are also drawn in from non-correlating axons. For example, if two neural pathways always excite when the other does not, then each will come to inhibit the other. This enables contexts to shut off irrelevant possible perceptions, e.g. If you are in the house, you are not going to get rained on. More likely, somebody is squirting you with a squirt gun.
Also--a neuron perpetually excited for too long shuts itself off for a while. We love a good song but hearing it too often makes us sick of it, at least for a while.. like Michael Jackson in the late 1980's.
And very importantly--signal streams that dissappear but recur after increasing time lapses stay potentiated longer.. their potentiation dissipates slower. After 5 pulses with a pause between a new receptor is brought in from the same axon as an existing one. This causes slower dissipation. It will happen again after another 5 pulses repeatedly, except that the time lapse between them must be increased. It falls in line with the scale found on the Wikipedia page for Graduated Interval Recall--exponentially increasing time lapses 5 times, each... take a look at it. Do the math. It matches what is seen in biology, even though this scale was developed in the 1920's.
I have a C++ neural modal that does this. I am mostly done also with a Javascript modal (employing techniques for vastly better performance), using Nodejs.
For me, the grand appeal of the Rasbperri PI is it's 26 I/O lines--It's difficult to find a microcontroller with so many I/O lines and particularly with any reasonable CPU power.. This provides both. The downside is that the gyros in smartphones are also very useful in robotics projects. And I'd sure be nice to also have access to some GPU power, computationally...
I've considered T-Mobile but my work really requires that I have good cellular connectivity... The very limited areas of service would substantially hurt me. What I really need is verizon's network but AT&T or Sprint will due. I will look into "Consumer Cellular" but you never know.. Others I've looked at all had some difficult to deal with catch to them. I understand no service is likely to ever be ideal...
Furthermore, the representatives of each carrier explicitly told me that the policy was instituted by them all at about the same time. They were clearly aware of this, collectively.. They clearly wanted to take aware our option of switching to another.
Every major carrier instituted this policy right about the same time. The first thing I did, was try to change carriers.... before filing an FCC complaint. I really want to fight those bastards.
My contact was over and I wanted a smartphone but not a data plan. Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon all said that if I used any kind of smartphone, I must have a data plan. My brother bought a Nexus One outright and his carrier discovered this and added a $30 charge per month for data against his will. My plan was to use WiFi only for data...
Each carrier responded by calling me and telling me that that is their policy and therefore I was not wronged. I responded that I think law trumps company policy. As far as the FCC was concerned, that was it... they had done their due diligence, I suppose..
I send an email to one law firm that specializes in class action suites but never got a response.
If a lawyer anywhere on this planet would be willing to take up this as a class action suite, I will strongly support it. I am a web developer, I can build an excellent web site to begin the process of finding the many, many other victims.
I love PostgreSQL in theory but hate it in practice. It's a pain in the ass to work with... not very productive. For a long time, I felt it was worth it to endure this for the superior design, feature set, and technical correctness.
But one day I realized that I need to get things done, switched the MySQL. The learning curve was small but the main kicker was that things just worked and easily reworked. There are risks, limitations, and problems. It's very imperfect but I get things done now... and never have or care to think about the purist philosophies with which I used to love to indulge in.
In the end, you have to give up perfection to go anywhere.. Otherwise, it's like having to get half-way there first, meaning you have to get half-way to half-way first, etc. recursively forever.. With MySQL I take a reasonable number of precautions for things that can go wrong, ensure there are good backups, and deal with the others as they come.
Now I think MySQL is superior for practical use by a long shot. And I think that's why its adopted so heavily.
The key ingredients to successful technologies are:
(1) You can do something obviously cool or useful with it. (2) It's quick and easy to learn and use.
And that's it. This is why so many successful things are made by idiots. Look at HTML. It was made by Tim Burners Lee back when he knew very little. But 12 year olds were picking it up and making cool (at the time) web pages. Now he know so much more and has tons of backing from heavy weight organizations and money but cannot seem to even force the success of the Semantic Web. It's hard to learn and hard to work with even when you learn it. Furthermore, it's not obvious to most what cool or useful things you can do with it. Proponents keep saying it'll mature and will be easier when tools and libraries are available to make it easier... That misses the point. Even the tools mostly suck and are buggy because the basic tech. is a pain in the ass to work with. There are philosophical visionaries galore but no substantial progress beyond what grants and job requirements force people to do... and there won't be.
Like most with experience in older SDLC (Software Development Life cycle) and newer Agile, my first thought off the headline was "What kind of idiot? What questions did they ask?". As I read on, several glaring problems with the "analysis" stood out.
(1) I see no mention of comparisons with what other methodology? It's just a focused criticism of Agile, implying that other paradigms are far better. The truth is, the percentage of successful software development projects have always been terrible. It started out with something like 90% failure rates and has very slowly improved to this day. Furthermore, the metrics to measure success are apples and oranges. For SDLC, it's that requirements are met. For Agile, it's the same repeatedly until the product is acceptable. In practice, SDLC leads to marking off a checkbox for each requirement and test. Other problems to solve or improvement ideas to make are thrown by the wayside unless they were specified or contractually obligated. No software has ever been completed without the developers thinking, "We could have done it better like..". Agile provides that opportunity. The quality is better not only in terms of more opportunity to make it better but also in that the customer flushes out all the issues that never would have come to mind otherwise, until it was too late. In other words, an SDLC "success" is a bunch of marked off features and test results on a usually crappy first generation but barely functional piece of work. In contrast, Agile "success" is a more thoroughly fleshed out understanding of the problem and a better fitted and all-round higher quality solution for what the customers wants/needs--not just his first inclination of what he imaged of the same.
(1) They are engineering / cherry-picking to create support for their conclusions. Examples follow:
(a) "Out of over 200 survey participants, we received only four detailed comments describing success with Agile." -- oh really? Just before that, they said 28% reported success with agile. For how many did they receive smiley faces at the end of detailed comments describing success with Agile? Zero?! Geez, then it was really a total flop!! (b) "Sixty-four percent (64%) of survey participants found the transition to Agile confusing, hard, or slow. Twenty-eight percent (28%) report success with Agile." Also from my own experience, the transition to agile was extremely hard. In fact, it's hard to get people to convert from Christianity to Islam, too (or vice-versa). That in no way addresses the effectiveness of Agile over SDLC/waterfall or anything else, as they strongly imply. It suggests that people do not like moving out of their comfort zones.. people like doing things they way they always have. It's typical human nature... and consequently, they resist and prejudices arise. (c) Ridiculous levels of outright subjective and judgmental prejudice to the exclusion of any proper measures.. and repeated in different examples of the same, rather than just tallying up the levels of negative personal feelings toward Agile.... I have to say, this sounds very much like a survey given only to managers--it's a typical manager point of view. These are just ignorant and arrogant personal insults. This is not professional at all. Examples follow: - Survey participants report that developers use the guise of Agile to avoid planning and to avoid creating documentation required for future maintenance. - We received some unprecedented scathing and shocking comments about the level of competence, professionalism, and attitudes of some members of the Agile movement. - Be aware that the Agile movement might very well just be either a developer rebellion against unwanted tasks and schedules or just an opportunity to sell Agile services including certification and training.
So... Is doing a bunch of these in parallel on the horizon? I mean, perhaps they could use it to produce an explosive material at a distant location without having to traverse there.. Or perhaps just something else that would be damaging...
I have worked on three patents that I feel might have substantial impact on national security, if released to the world. I am curious if a mechanism exists to apply and acquire a patent kept in secret. I understand that the patent process is about sharing our inventions while still being able to maintain exclusive profitability over an initial period of time. However, not having a way to protect the invention and simultaneously prevent other governments (such as potential enemies) from acquiring the technology doesn't seem possible. It puts me in the tongue-in-cheek position of considering publishing this to the world and seeking less ideal secondary methods of protection (in the sense of national security). For example, I might engineering a less capable design that includes some but not all key components. Or, I could merely rely on the superiority of existing U.S. military capabilities over the manufacturing advantageous of countries like China (quality of quantity). I suppose that is what keeps us safe today. For example, the untappable and unjammable nature of frequency hop radio communications, longer range and smarter target acquisitioning, longer range and faster air-to-air missiles. If North Korea's 13,000 pieces of artillery augmented with frequency hop radio technology, that alone would enable them a target acquisitioning capability multiplying their forces far in excess of being able to storm over the South. Once done, they would be able to aim NBC capable missiles within range of Osaka (Japan) and sue for peace to retain their holdings. Frequency hop radio technology was sold and bought by the Department of Defense as a very difficult technology to develop--another grand example of our fat-headed defense contractors vastly exaggerating their wears. This one capability has an absolutely pivotal influence in warfare: first on C3 (Command, Control, and Communications); and second, on target acquisitioning. To safe guard us, we rely on the fact that our potential and current adversary's level of incompetence far exceeding our own. And luckily so far, it does.
Uhm.. Seriously? You are really kidding me.. I mean REALLY? It is not any of those things boasted--not remotely close. I worked with Sharepoint for the last two years, installing, administering, and using for a state university. It is absolutely the most unrecommendable software product I have EVER worked with. It has worked reasonably well (not great) only for one purpose for us: a document repository. Version control only really works when using Microsoft Office 2007. Otherwise, it'll wipe out your version histories.
(1) Ease of installation -- It's highly complex. You really do need to read the 700 page book Microsoft has to know how to install it. This is because numerous options at install time cannot be changed later except by re-installation. And I mean many numerous options that are very difficult to understand how each relates to the other.. We reinstalled so many times, paid for expensive consulting both with Microsoft and with an outside firm. We still couldn't get it right. The nuances are many and hit you repeatedly often with the only fix being a reinstallation.... and usually rebuilding of content, along with it.
AND users almost universally hate it. Management fights hard against the wishes of users to implement Sharepoint--not only at our organisation but also at every other organisation I've had to privilege to ask their sysadmins about. Management usually hails its success but on the ground, it's almost universally hated and a disaster. Oh, yes.. Our universities library system also had a successful use of a simple trouble ticket management system... so there were two exceptions. It's also easier to install and administer as a single server than as a farm, but still not so easy and no easier on users.
I cannot stress enough--the problem with Sharepoint are the many many MANY critical nuances.
(2) Inexpensive -- No. It's very expensive. The learning curve is quite high so training is really required. In our case, the expense was bundled in with a variety of other software licenses such as that for Exchange. Alone, the license is very expensive--particularly if you want to open it up to outside your organisation's intranet.
But the real expense is in administration. Both training costs, immense amounts of time spent with it, and dealing with problems ongoing are the highest costs I've ever seen for a server application. Upgrades are also a huge difficulty. They present as opportunities to resolve some former configuration problems but taking advantage thereof often means your data is not restorable.
Of all the alternative applications I've worked with, "Typo 3" is the most Sharepoint-like, functionally. It is, however, far easier to learn and it is reliable. Sharepoint is reliable only in the sense that its processes keep running--that doesn't mean it doesn't break regularly. The best general purpose CMS I have worked with is definitely Drupal. Drupal lacks some of the capabilities of Sharepoint (presuming those capabilities were actually usable in Sharepoint in any meaningful sense) but has many others.
The problem is that Sharepoint is not exactly a CMS. It is (and I am speaking in theory--not practice in practical terms) a collaboration environment. There really is a difference. Drupal itself has a learning curve that I don't like. It's more administrator focused and not user focused, as manifested by the fact that you cannot edit things were they are seen by users but rather must work through a back panel. Drupal also lacks a WebDAV document repository and the ability to do things like email in documents and other kinds of content and get email notifications of content or documents modified.
Drupal is about setting up a classical website for users to use and administrators to administer. Sharepoint (in theory) is about providing a service where users can create their own sites, document and data repositories and means of presenting and sharing the same (via tags and filters). It's about working together within an or
Relational databases need to die. I loved them and preached the goodness of them 10 years ago, but they are just too rigid for contemporary needs. I've learned better ways of organizing and filtering data.. but the old RDBMS school is too canonical (stubborn) and self-indulging to realize that needs are changing and their model doesn't fit.
We need efficient attribute/value models. We need to stop referencing data by where it is and start referencing it by what it is. There is too much data that needs to exist in different views, based on policy--not explicit placement.
Dumb-tags (attributes without values) like those used with Delicious bookmarks are also broken. They are too vague.
My own approach is that every attribute may have any number of value instances. Each value instance may, in turn, have sub-attributes. So you can look up data based on its characteristics even with disregard for its name. For example:/mycompany/mailserver1/ip of zone = infirewall
This returns all IP addresses under the "zone" attribute while also under the mailserver1 attribute that is under the mycompany attribute.
When validating instances of the "ip" attribute, it looks backward in the path because it is extremely quick that way.
The data server's sole responsibility is storing and retrieving information (not just data) in context (aka filtering).
Sorting is the responsibility of the client. This makes sense because there are an infinite number of algorithms one could have for sorting data (e.g. alphabetic mixed case, ASCII order, etc). To facilitate this, I wrote a method to return the number of values that would be returned if the values were requested. If too big a bite for the client, it can re-request the size of a smaller chunk, segmented according to the client's ordering method. This is useful for scale, in any case. Processing in chunks makes sense whether over a network of limited capacity or from directly form disk with limited memory.
And--this is a columnar approach like Google's BigTable is.. That means you get 10+ times faster read performance.
I've been trying to code cognition since about 1986 (I was 16). I studied existing literature heavily around 1988 and 1989, before concluding the directions were fundamentally flawed. At that point I decided to avoid existing literature in AI and focused more on psychology, cybernetics, physics, ancient history and pre-history, and above all, neural science.
With many starts and stops in a variety of directions and false hopes, I have collected a small set of interesting approaches... I will give a broad overview (overly simplified) of my favorite three (from least to most favorite):
(3) A text pattern parsing engine that results in something very much like jabberwacky (although I have no knowledge of the philosophy behind Jabberwacky). In my case, I right-directionally parse statement-response patterns into a chronologic tree. Then, I parse the cross-section of the tree (seeking semantic patterns) of recent statement-response patterns. This approach can have numerous variations each of which trades off different problems... It's really just a fun puzzle system for me to ponder.
(2) A Contextual Interpreter--this is an interpretive programming language based on a refined subset of English. It has very few keywords and is strongly object-oriented. The language is also, in third person. E.g. "a car" instantiates a "car" object while "the car" references the nearest (in context) "car" object instantiated. "color of the car" or "car's color" references the "color" attribute of the object "car". An attribute is merely another object in the context of its super. Methods are determined by positioning in the syntax, such as "a person drives the car"--the wording between thus-far known objects is interpreted as a method. That's method execution. Method description is like "When a person drives a car: The wheels turn. The car moves. The engine is on."... Richly built contexts then allows one to ask questions or propose scenerios and get common-sense-ish answers and/or implications out of it. For example, if an object (such as a method) is requested on an object that doesn't have it, it'll reach back and grab the nearest in context. For example, "driving a person" where only "driving a car" has been defined. Everything about driving a car can still be applied so long as the person has its pre-requisits. Can "The car moves." work for "The person moves"? If so, that method is useableon "person", too. This is effectively mimickry--a powerful method of learning and essential for innovation. We learn by mimicking someone else's actions (internally modeling the other doing the action, then switching the model of myself with the model of the other doing the action). The idea here is that you can switch any two objects in these internal models--not just yourself with someone else but a rock for a hammer.. and the model will or will not break down, depending upon its application... as I exampled with driving a car verses driving a person. Both a rock and a hammer, could potentially drive a nail into wood. This approach is more than a fun puzzle. It has very potential uses.
(1) My favorite approach of all, however, derives strongly from neural science. Contrary to popular opinion, I take the point of view that a single neuron can be a fully functional brian for a relatively complex animal--given the right environment (around the neuron). I focus strongly on the molecular level of analysis to hypothesize around how a neuron forms, strengthens, weakens, and destroys afferent connects, the maintenance of short term and long term potentiation in each receptor, and the determination of whether a receptor will be polarizing or hyperpolarizing. I have a theory very solidly based on literature (mostly Erick Kendall's work) for everything but polarizing vs hyperpolarizing (I have concepts for this, just not good backing in literature). A also have a "Central Process" (CP) theory for cognition. Take the view that the general nature of neural substrate all can be fed signals ("co
While I don't like our currently Nazi regime in the U.S., I am nevertheless A U.S. citizen and it is paramount for our defenses to strive for such capabilities.. Even more paramount to defend from such capabilities as they have already been developed by other countries and are being used against us.
I do wonder, however, how a growing awareness of these issues will drive adoption of open source operating software.. and, what tricky techniques will be used to trojan it? We must be able to take throw punches but we must be able to take them, too. We are behind in this area (except for the fact that the NSA very likely already has access to all networked Windows machines in the world).
His arguments are categorically not accurate or very weak. (1) OpenOffice.org certainly provides more road-map than Microsoft does; (2) case studies are much larger deployments (such as the city of Munich, Germany) demonstrated that little to no training was necessary, and the only remain area of difficulty calculating costs for OpenOffice over MS Office is in incompatibilities--but the incompatibilities are far less than those between older versions of MS Office and MS Office 2007.
I have worked at a variety of large organizations and the decision-making for Microsoft is made repeatedly inspite of the agreement/disagreement of those who will use or support the software. The Microsoft product only has to arguably, minimally meet the requirements for which it will be deployed. I, like many, have scratched my head repeatedly over this phenomenon--and at times directly asked for the rationale behind such decisions. Imperically demonstrating the inaccuracy of presumptions can only agitate the decision-maker and get you in politically hot-water. From my experience, this is either caused by the decision-makers personal experiences and biases or else it is a result of Microsoft's strenuous efforts at wining and dining them, and sometimes offering the prospects of grant money or other free-deals. That is, a guess, good salesmanship. It is, however, very bad for the corporate departments that have to live with the consequences.
Right now, Microsoft's big strategic push is Microsoft Sharepoint. The product is far more business-talk than actual product or capabilities, but that doesn't stop executives from buying into it. The actual product is, essentially a crude, web CMS (Content Management System) with tightly integrated WebDAV. Technically, it is a slew of parts of other Microsoft applications crudely integrated into one product, and is very difficult to properly configure most of its services.
However, Microsoft Sharepoint will provide all of an organization's content/document collaboration needs and web presence in one web-based software suite. Users generally need Microsoft Office and internet explorer to work with it. This is clearly a drive to dominate the Internet and Intranet in the same way Microsoft dominates the desktop.
The 2 to 3 times pay increase is for pay while in a combat zone. Granted, the definition of what areas are considered to be combat zones can vary greatly in different parts of the world--from totally peaceful areas to areas of regular, well.. combat that the U.S. Army doesn't want publicized like on the DMZ in Korea.
Also.. While the government does cover a food and housing for single soldiers, the stipends are generally not much to support families (the ones who normally live off-base). And both the single and married are still made to pay for a variety of clothing and equipment items to do their jobs. I was a soldier in the U.S. Army for 9 years. And the hours are, essentially 24x7.
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Java is far more likely to go the way of the dodo bird than is COBOL. COBOL is well-optimized for business data processing. It's a fine language. What does Java have over it? COBOL is many multitudes easier to learn, code with, read, and modify. Programming languages started getting more complex, harder to learn, and use starting with C++. And OO design and programming has failed in each and every goal for which it was originally proposed. I understand that most modern programmers have learned OO from the start and have difficulty thinking of problems differently but contemporary COBOL supports OO, too... just not often used.
Their design will require special landing and take-off zones, such as on the roofs of parking garages. Why?
The obvious solution is a quad (or multi) copter design with elevator that lowers on cables from the ends of the arms (near the propellers). This will enable it to drop-off and pick-up close to anywhere, without causing wind damage. The elevator should stay stable even in high winds at a reasonable distance under the multicopter.
It also makes sense to design the propellers for lower noise, drop-off from high to keep noise down (lower if there is more wind), and have its batteries quickly swappable for rapidly shifting between paying rides. I'm sure you'd be swapping out the battery pack between every two rides but the fuel efficiency would make this system significantly less expensive to operate than would gasoline powered cars.
Many KDE users were lost and feel displaced to this day. I am among them. I used KDE from version 1.x through 3.5 but... all the criticisms of 4+ are valid. I've met many others who feel the same--that the loss of KDE with the advent of version 4 was the biggest technological tragedy ever. It was fast, intuitive, and comprehensively functional. It was very practical and a joy to use... not perfect but very near to perfect. And it was the most preferred desktop for Linux, even if not adopted as the default for any major distributions. I think that said a lot, in and of itself.
At the time, Gnome had done some things better but not much. Mostly, Gnome had a great menu layout. It's file browsers, however, couldn't even sort dates as dates but rather as strings. I haven't looked at Gnome for some time. At the moment, I am using the awful slow and non-intuitive thing Ubuntu defaults to. On my laptop, I run Trinity--and that's where I do all my programming.
Trinity is an effort to keep KDE 3.5 alive.. It seems the maintainers are struggling to keep it functional. It has some nuances and broken aspects that didn't originally exist in KDE 3.5 (such as K3B not always working). However, I want to give the people who took it up all the credit I can. Even as they seem to be struggling to keep it functional, it's in many ways the most practical desktop system to date.
Pneumatic cylinders are stronger per volume but vacuum can be immensely strong, regardless of volume. So if a cylinder is made very tiny but geared up massively then the same pneumatic air tank could give hugely more energy for its volume and structural integrity--right? Some day, building, filling, and dropping cylinders of space vacuum to Earth could therefore be the only truly infinite source of renewable energy. Perhaps vacuum cylinders could even be used to blow back captured air (a vacuum jet) to slow descending space vehicles... Does this seem reasonable?
Why not use a dirigible (zeplin) for space launch? 17,500mph at 99 kilometers up is considered orbitable. Why not use use a dirigible in these stages for cheap, heavy lift into orbit: (1) hydrogen lift until the air density is low enough to make pushing a balloon energy efficient (perhaps 60 kilometers); (2) vacuum out the hydrogen as the balance between air density and structural integrate allow and heat it for rocket thrust. Use a large aerodynamic shape such that this thrust pushes the ever lighter vehicle faster, easier.. and so long as there is air resistance, there must also be lift.. When there is no longer air resistance/lift, stable orbit is thereby achievable. Helium balloons have gone as high as 59 kilometers. Hydrogen is far lighter and nothing is lighter than vacuum. A small thorium reactor is perhaps the most ideal choice to heat the hydrogen... which expands quickly and greatly when heated. I do wonder if heat at high speeds in ultra thin atmosphere would pose a problem but if it does, then use that the expand the hydrogen for thrust.... so ever better.
Modern neural science and biologically realistic neural simulations (such as some of the best Deep Learning systems) use the neuron as its most fundamental primitive. One neural does a lot, actually. It draws in new correlating axons (those firing when its other receptors are firing) when its total potentiation is insufficient to excite. It weakens and destroys them in the inverse case. It also draws in non-correlating axons as inhibitory receptors. And long term potentiation (widely viewed as the basis of long term memory) is increased as the same axon produces more receptors to the same neuron. Furthermore, a neuron perpetually exciting will shut itself down for an extended time.. Each is like a little computer of its own, really..
As for what "intelligence actually is". The real problem is the lack of consensus on a common definition. The word "is" only indicates a relationship between two things without specifying what that relationship, eh hem, actually is. It's a matter of defining it in a way that is broadly acceptible. Defining something can sometimes also determine it. I think that's the case with intelligence. Most people (who care) want to determine what it is so they can define it.. and yet you cannot search for it without knowing what you are searching for, in other words defining it.
I think this is a ridiculous per suite. Pick one of the many working definitions that you like, and work with that. If it feels insufficient then pick or create another. Here's a few I use..... any of which could be more or less complex, evolved, or designed:
Reactive Intelligence -- the ability to react to pre-defined stimulus in a way that, under ordinary conditions, furthers a goal
E.g.: An iron that turns itself off when sitting face down and not moving (often referred to as an intelligent feature)
Conditioning Intelligence -- the ability to identify what reactions to what stimulus has most often in the past furthered a goal and thereafter to react accordingly
E.g.: Pavlov's Dog...or any trial & error aka reward and punishment learning
Substitution Intelligence -- the ability to identify and model observed phenomenon from among interaction pattern sequences and swap out a missing component in one that furthers a goal, if the original is missing. The swap is of one that shares most characteristics with others that had taken the same place in the past.
E.g.: In building a hut, you've used many different kinds of hammers to bang in the nails but today you don't have a hammer. However, you have a rock that shares most characteristics with the other hammer styles (heavy, hard, and with a flat side), so you use the rock where you'd normally have used a hammer.
Substitution Intelligence is shared only among the so-called higher animals, and mostly humans. It requires general imitation learning. That is, the ability to identify that two things/people/animals have a lot of similarities and therefore one could take the place of the other....
Of course, if everyone would just stfu until they have a peer reviewed journal article, there would never be any peer reviewed journal articles... Perhaps one reason AI hasn't progressed might be this kind of brutal cynicism toward new ideas.
Granted, every premise I provided in the modal derives from established science, though replicated, peer review journals.. in fact, much through basic text books in Neural Science... But let's stfu about that, too, since these things don't appear to be yet discussed at the same time in any peer reviewed journal article. I suppose we can only read anything if it comes directly from a peer review journal article..... and only what's in one particular such article at a time... perhaps requiring a holy moment of silence between each article, to ensure a clean separation.
I've been working on these models for decades... I've done science (six accepted peer review articles) but am really an engineer, not a scientist. I prefer it that way. I can leave publishing research to others, who require it for their tenure. At one time, slashdot was actually a mostly intellectually stimulating conversational environment...
Neural Net's were traditionally based off old Hodgkins and Huxley models and then twisted for direct application for specific objectives, such as stock market prediction. In the process they veered from a only very vague notion of real neurons to something increasingly fictitious.
Hopefully, the AI world is on the edge of moving away from continuously beating their heads against the same brick walls in the same ways while giving themselves pats on the heads. Hopefully, we realize that human-like intelligence is not a logic engine and that conventional neural nets are not biologically valid and posses numerous fundamental flaws.
Rather--a neurons draws new correlating axons to itself when it cannot reach threshold (-55mv from a resting state of -70mv) and weakens and destroys them when over threshold. In living systems, neural potential is almost always very close to threshold--it bounces a tiny bit over and under. Furthermore, inhibitory connections are also drawn in from non-correlating axons. For example, if two neural pathways always excite when the other does not, then each will come to inhibit the other. This enables contexts to shut off irrelevant possible perceptions, e.g. If you are in the house, you are not going to get rained on. More likely, somebody is squirting you with a squirt gun.
Also--a neuron perpetually excited for too long shuts itself off for a while. We love a good song but hearing it too often makes us sick of it, at least for a while.. like Michael Jackson in the late 1980's.
And very importantly--signal streams that dissappear but recur after increasing time lapses stay potentiated longer.. their potentiation dissipates slower. After 5 pulses with a pause between a new receptor is brought in from the same axon as an existing one. This causes slower dissipation. It will happen again after another 5 pulses repeatedly, except that the time lapse between them must be increased. It falls in line with the scale found on the Wikipedia page for Graduated Interval Recall--exponentially increasing time lapses 5 times, each... take a look at it. Do the math. It matches what is seen in biology, even though this scale was developed in the 1920's.
I have a C++ neural modal that does this. I am mostly done also with a Javascript modal (employing techniques for vastly better performance), using Nodejs.
For me, the grand appeal of the Rasbperri PI is it's 26 I/O lines--It's difficult to find a microcontroller with so many I/O lines and particularly with any reasonable CPU power.. This provides both. The downside is that the gyros in smartphones are also very useful in robotics projects. And I'd sure be nice to also have access to some GPU power, computationally...
I just started this Petition. Please SIGN IT! Fight these !#@$ EXPLETIVES #@@
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/order-doj-prosecute-3-major-cell-carriers-forcing-smartphone-customers-buy-data-plans/rVCM7bj0?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl
Thanks!
I've considered T-Mobile but my work really requires that I have good cellular connectivity... The very limited areas of service would substantially hurt me. What I really need is verizon's network but AT&T or Sprint will due. I will look into "Consumer Cellular" but you never know.. Others I've looked at all had some difficult to deal with catch to them. I understand no service is likely to ever be ideal...
Giving up cell phones will affect almost anyone in modern society. No--there is no realistic option of just not buying their service.
Furthermore, the representatives of each carrier explicitly told me that the policy was instituted by them all at about the same time. They were clearly aware of this, collectively.. They clearly wanted to take aware our option of switching to another.
Every major carrier instituted this policy right about the same time. The first thing I did, was try to change carriers.... before filing an FCC complaint. I really want to fight those bastards.
My contact was over and I wanted a smartphone but not a data plan. Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon all said that if I used any kind of smartphone, I must have a data plan. My brother bought a Nexus One outright and his carrier discovered this and added a $30 charge per month for data against his will. My plan was to use WiFi only for data...
Each carrier responded by calling me and telling me that that is their policy and therefore I was not wronged. I responded that I think law trumps company policy. As far as the FCC was concerned, that was it... they had done their due diligence, I suppose..
I send an email to one law firm that specializes in class action suites but never got a response.
If a lawyer anywhere on this planet would be willing to take up this as a class action suite, I will strongly support it. I am a web developer, I can build an excellent web site to begin the process of finding the many, many other victims.
I love PostgreSQL in theory but hate it in practice. It's a pain in the ass to work with... not very productive. For a long time, I felt it was worth it to endure this for the superior design, feature set, and technical correctness.
But one day I realized that I need to get things done, switched the MySQL. The learning curve was small but the main kicker was that things just worked and easily reworked. There are risks, limitations, and problems. It's very imperfect but I get things done now... and never have or care to think about the purist philosophies with which I used to love to indulge in.
In the end, you have to give up perfection to go anywhere.. Otherwise, it's like having to get half-way there first, meaning you have to get half-way to half-way first, etc. recursively forever.. With MySQL I take a reasonable number of precautions for things that can go wrong, ensure there are good backups, and deal with the others as they come.
Now I think MySQL is superior for practical use by a long shot. And I think that's why its adopted so heavily.
The key ingredients to successful technologies are:
(1) You can do something obviously cool or useful with it.
(2) It's quick and easy to learn and use.
And that's it. This is why so many successful things are made by idiots. Look at HTML. It was made by Tim Burners Lee back when he knew very little. But 12 year olds were picking it up and making cool (at the time) web pages. Now he know so much more and has tons of backing from heavy weight organizations and money but cannot seem to even force the success of the Semantic Web. It's hard to learn and hard to work with even when you learn it. Furthermore, it's not obvious to most what cool or useful things you can do with it. Proponents keep saying it'll mature and will be easier when tools and libraries are available to make it easier... That misses the point. Even the tools mostly suck and are buggy because the basic tech. is a pain in the ass to work with. There are philosophical visionaries galore but no substantial progress beyond what grants and job requirements force people to do... and there won't be.
Matthew
Like most with experience in older SDLC (Software Development Life cycle) and newer Agile, my first thought off the headline was "What kind of idiot? What questions did they ask?". As I read on, several glaring problems with the "analysis" stood out.
(1) I see no mention of comparisons with what other methodology? It's just a focused criticism of Agile, implying that other paradigms are far better. The truth is, the percentage of successful software development projects have always been terrible. It started out with something like 90% failure rates and has very slowly improved to this day. Furthermore, the metrics to measure success are apples and oranges. For SDLC, it's that requirements are met. For Agile, it's the same repeatedly until the product is acceptable. In practice, SDLC leads to marking off a checkbox for each requirement and test. Other problems to solve or improvement ideas to make are thrown by the wayside unless they were specified or contractually obligated. No software has ever been completed without the developers thinking, "We could have done it better like ..". Agile provides that opportunity. The quality is better not only in terms of more opportunity to make it better but also in that the customer flushes out all the issues that never would have come to mind otherwise, until it was too late. In other words, an SDLC "success" is a bunch of marked off features and test results on a usually crappy first generation but barely functional piece of work. In contrast, Agile "success" is a more thoroughly fleshed out understanding of the problem and a better fitted and all-round higher quality solution for what the customers wants/needs--not just his first inclination of what he imaged of the same.
(1) They are engineering / cherry-picking to create support for their conclusions. Examples follow:
(a) "Out of over 200 survey participants, we received only four detailed comments describing success with Agile." -- oh really? Just before that, they said 28% reported success with agile. For how many did they receive smiley faces at the end of detailed comments describing success with Agile? Zero?! Geez, then it was really a total flop!!
(b) "Sixty-four percent (64%) of survey participants found the transition to Agile confusing, hard, or slow. Twenty-eight percent (28%) report success with Agile." Also from my own experience, the transition to agile was extremely hard. In fact, it's hard to get people to convert from Christianity to Islam, too (or vice-versa). That in no way addresses the effectiveness of Agile over SDLC/waterfall or anything else, as they strongly imply. It suggests that people do not like moving out of their comfort zones.. people like doing things they way they always have. It's typical human nature... and consequently, they resist and prejudices arise.
(c) Ridiculous levels of outright subjective and judgmental prejudice to the exclusion of any proper measures.. and repeated in different examples of the same, rather than just tallying up the levels of negative personal feelings toward Agile.... I have to say, this sounds very much like a survey given only to managers--it's a typical manager point of view. These are just ignorant and arrogant personal insults. This is not professional at all. Examples follow:
- Survey participants report that developers use the guise of Agile to avoid planning and to avoid creating documentation required for future maintenance.
- We received some unprecedented scathing and shocking comments about the level of competence, professionalism, and attitudes of some members of the Agile movement.
- Be aware that the Agile movement might very well just be either a developer rebellion against unwanted tasks and schedules or just an opportunity to sell Agile services including certification and training.
So... Is doing a bunch of these in parallel on the horizon? I mean, perhaps they could use it to produce an explosive material at a distant location without having to traverse there.. Or perhaps just something else that would be damaging...
I have worked on three patents that I feel might have substantial impact on national security, if released to the world. I am curious if a mechanism exists to apply and acquire a patent kept in secret. I understand that the patent process is about sharing our inventions while still being able to maintain exclusive profitability over an initial period of time. However, not having a way to protect the invention and simultaneously prevent other governments (such as potential enemies) from acquiring the technology doesn't seem possible. It puts me in the tongue-in-cheek position of considering publishing this to the world and seeking less ideal secondary methods of protection (in the sense of national security). For example, I might engineering a less capable design that includes some but not all key components. Or, I could merely rely on the superiority of existing U.S. military capabilities over the manufacturing advantageous of countries like China (quality of quantity). I suppose that is what keeps us safe today. For example, the untappable and unjammable nature of frequency hop radio communications, longer range and smarter target acquisitioning, longer range and faster air-to-air missiles. If North Korea's 13,000 pieces of artillery augmented with frequency hop radio technology, that alone would enable them a target acquisitioning capability multiplying their forces far in excess of being able to storm over the South. Once done, they would be able to aim NBC capable missiles within range of Osaka (Japan) and sue for peace to retain their holdings. Frequency hop radio technology was sold and bought by the Department of Defense as a very difficult technology to develop--another grand example of our fat-headed defense contractors vastly exaggerating their wears. This one capability has an absolutely pivotal influence in warfare: first on C3 (Command, Control, and Communications); and second, on target acquisitioning. To safe guard us, we rely on the fact that our potential and current adversary's level of incompetence far exceeding our own. And luckily so far, it does.
Uhm.. Seriously? You are really kidding me.. I mean REALLY? It is not any of those things boasted--not remotely close. I worked with Sharepoint for the last two years, installing, administering, and using for a state university. It is absolutely the most unrecommendable software product I have EVER worked with. It has worked reasonably well (not great) only for one purpose for us: a document repository. Version control only really works when using Microsoft Office 2007. Otherwise, it'll wipe out your version histories.
(1) Ease of installation -- It's highly complex. You really do need to read the 700 page book Microsoft has to know how to install it. This is because numerous options at install time cannot be changed later except by re-installation. And I mean many numerous options that are very difficult to understand how each relates to the other.. We reinstalled so many times, paid for expensive consulting both with Microsoft and with an outside firm. We still couldn't get it right. The nuances are many and hit you repeatedly often with the only fix being a reinstallation.... and usually rebuilding of content, along with it.
AND users almost universally hate it. Management fights hard against the wishes of users to implement Sharepoint--not only at our organisation but also at every other organisation I've had to privilege to ask their sysadmins about. Management usually hails its success but on the ground, it's almost universally hated and a disaster. Oh, yes.. Our universities library system also had a successful use of a simple trouble ticket management system... so there were two exceptions. It's also easier to install and administer as a single server than as a farm, but still not so easy and no easier on users.
I cannot stress enough--the problem with Sharepoint are the many many MANY critical nuances.
(2) Inexpensive -- No. It's very expensive. The learning curve is quite high so training is really required. In our case, the expense was bundled in with a variety of other software licenses such as that for Exchange. Alone, the license is very expensive--particularly if you want to open it up to outside your organisation's intranet.
But the real expense is in administration. Both training costs, immense amounts of time spent with it, and dealing with problems ongoing are the highest costs I've ever seen for a server application. Upgrades are also a huge difficulty. They present as opportunities to resolve some former configuration problems but taking advantage thereof often means your data is not restorable.
Of all the alternative applications I've worked with, "Typo 3" is the most Sharepoint-like, functionally. It is, however, far easier to learn and it is reliable. Sharepoint is reliable only in the sense that its processes keep running--that doesn't mean it doesn't break regularly. The best general purpose CMS I have worked with is definitely Drupal. Drupal lacks some of the capabilities of Sharepoint (presuming those capabilities were actually usable in Sharepoint in any meaningful sense) but has many others.
The problem is that Sharepoint is not exactly a CMS. It is (and I am speaking in theory--not practice in practical terms) a collaboration environment. There really is a difference. Drupal itself has a learning curve that I don't like. It's more administrator focused and not user focused, as manifested by the fact that you cannot edit things were they are seen by users but rather must work through a back panel. Drupal also lacks a WebDAV document repository and the ability to do things like email in documents and other kinds of content and get email notifications of content or documents modified.
Drupal is about setting up a classical website for users to use and administrators to administer. Sharepoint (in theory) is about providing a service where users can create their own sites, document and data repositories and means of presenting and sharing the same (via tags and filters). It's about working together within an or
Relational databases need to die. I loved them and preached the goodness of them 10 years ago, but they are just too rigid for contemporary needs. I've learned better ways of organizing and filtering data.. but the old RDBMS school is too canonical (stubborn) and self-indulging to realize that needs are changing and their model doesn't fit.
We need efficient attribute/value models. We need to stop referencing data by where it is and start referencing it by what it is. There is too much data that needs to exist in different views, based on policy--not explicit placement.
Dumb-tags (attributes without values) like those used with Delicious bookmarks are also broken. They are too vague.
My own approach is that every attribute may have any number of value instances. Each value instance may, in turn, have sub-attributes. So you can look up data based on its characteristics even with disregard for its name. For example: /mycompany/mailserver1/ip of zone = infirewall
This returns all IP addresses under the "zone" attribute while also under the mailserver1 attribute that is under the mycompany attribute.
When validating instances of the "ip" attribute, it looks backward in the path because it is extremely quick that way.
The data server's sole responsibility is storing and retrieving information (not just data) in context (aka filtering).
Sorting is the responsibility of the client. This makes sense because there are an infinite number of algorithms one could have for sorting data (e.g. alphabetic mixed case, ASCII order, etc). To facilitate this, I wrote a method to return the number of values that would be returned if the values were requested. If too big a bite for the client, it can re-request the size of a smaller chunk, segmented according to the client's ordering method. This is useful for scale, in any case. Processing in chunks makes sense whether over a network of limited capacity or from directly form disk with limited memory.
And--this is a columnar approach like Google's BigTable is.. That means you get 10+ times faster read performance.
Matthew
I've been trying to code cognition since about 1986 (I was 16). I studied existing literature heavily around 1988 and 1989, before concluding the directions were fundamentally flawed. At that point I decided to avoid existing literature in AI and focused more on psychology, cybernetics, physics, ancient history and pre-history, and above all, neural science.
With many starts and stops in a variety of directions and false hopes, I have collected a small set of interesting approaches... I will give a broad overview (overly simplified) of my favorite three (from least to most favorite):
(3) A text pattern parsing engine that results in something very much like jabberwacky (although I have no knowledge of the philosophy behind Jabberwacky). In my case, I right-directionally parse statement-response patterns into a chronologic tree. Then, I parse the cross-section of the tree (seeking semantic patterns) of recent statement-response patterns. This approach can have numerous variations each of which trades off different problems... It's really just a fun puzzle system for me to ponder.
(2) A Contextual Interpreter--this is an interpretive programming language based on a refined subset of English. It has very few keywords and is strongly object-oriented. The language is also, in third person. E.g. "a car" instantiates a "car" object while "the car" references the nearest (in context) "car" object instantiated. "color of the car" or "car's color" references the "color" attribute of the object "car". An attribute is merely another object in the context of its super. Methods are determined by positioning in the syntax, such as "a person drives the car"--the wording between thus-far known objects is interpreted as a method. That's method execution. Method description is like "When a person drives a car: The wheels turn. The car moves. The engine is on." ... Richly built contexts then allows one to ask questions or propose scenerios and get common-sense-ish answers and/or implications out of it. For example, if an object (such as a method) is requested on an object that doesn't have it, it'll reach back and grab the nearest in context. For example, "driving a person" where only "driving a car" has been defined. Everything about driving a car can still be applied so long as the person has its pre-requisits. Can "The car moves." work for "The person moves"? If so, that method is useableon "person", too. This is effectively mimickry--a powerful method of learning and essential for innovation. We learn by mimicking someone else's actions (internally modeling the other doing the action, then switching the model of myself with the model of the other doing the action). The idea here is that you can switch any two objects in these internal models--not just yourself with someone else but a rock for a hammer.. and the model will or will not break down, depending upon its application... as I exampled with driving a car verses driving a person. Both a rock and a hammer, could potentially drive a nail into wood. This approach is more than a fun puzzle. It has very potential uses.
(1) My favorite approach of all, however, derives strongly from neural science. Contrary to popular opinion, I take the point of view that a single neuron can be a fully functional brian for a relatively complex animal--given the right environment (around the neuron). I focus strongly on the molecular level of analysis to hypothesize around how a neuron forms, strengthens, weakens, and destroys afferent connects, the maintenance of short term and long term potentiation in each receptor, and the determination of whether a receptor will be polarizing or hyperpolarizing. I have a theory very solidly based on literature (mostly Erick Kendall's work) for everything but polarizing vs hyperpolarizing (I have concepts for this, just not good backing in literature). A also have a "Central Process" (CP) theory for cognition. Take the view that the general nature of neural substrate all can be fed signals ("co
While I don't like our currently Nazi regime in the U.S., I am nevertheless A U.S. citizen and it is paramount for our defenses to strive for such capabilities.. Even more paramount to defend from such capabilities as they have already been developed by other countries and are being used against us.
I do wonder, however, how a growing awareness of these issues will drive adoption of open source operating software.. and, what tricky techniques will be used to trojan it? We must be able to take throw punches but we must be able to take them, too. We are behind in this area (except for the fact that the NSA very likely already has access to all networked Windows machines in the world).
His arguments are categorically not accurate or very weak. (1) OpenOffice.org certainly provides more road-map than Microsoft does; (2) case studies are much larger deployments (such as the city of Munich, Germany) demonstrated that little to no training was necessary, and the only remain area of difficulty calculating costs for OpenOffice over MS Office is in incompatibilities--but the incompatibilities are far less than those between older versions of MS Office and MS Office 2007.
I have worked at a variety of large organizations and the decision-making for Microsoft is made repeatedly inspite of the agreement/disagreement of those who will use or support the software. The Microsoft product only has to arguably, minimally meet the requirements for which it will be deployed. I, like many, have scratched my head repeatedly over this phenomenon--and at times directly asked for the rationale behind such decisions. Imperically demonstrating the inaccuracy of presumptions can only agitate the decision-maker and get you in politically hot-water. From my experience, this is either caused by the decision-makers personal experiences and biases or else it is a result of Microsoft's strenuous efforts at wining and dining them, and sometimes offering the prospects of grant money or other free-deals. That is, a guess, good salesmanship. It is, however, very bad for the corporate departments that have to live with the consequences.
Right now, Microsoft's big strategic push is Microsoft Sharepoint. The product is far more business-talk than actual product or capabilities, but that doesn't stop executives from buying into it. The actual product is, essentially a crude, web CMS (Content Management System) with tightly integrated WebDAV. Technically, it is a slew of parts of other Microsoft applications crudely integrated into one product, and is very difficult to properly configure most of its services.
However, Microsoft Sharepoint will provide all of an organization's content/document collaboration needs and web presence in one web-based software suite. Users generally need Microsoft Office and internet explorer to work with it. This is clearly a drive to dominate the Internet and Intranet in the same way Microsoft dominates the desktop.
Matthew
The 2 to 3 times pay increase is for pay while in a combat zone. Granted, the definition of what areas are considered to be combat zones can vary greatly in different parts of the world--from totally peaceful areas to areas of regular, well.. combat that the U.S. Army doesn't want publicized like on the DMZ in Korea.
Also.. While the government does cover a food and housing for single soldiers, the stipends are generally not much to support families (the ones who normally live off-base). And both the single and married are still made to pay for a variety of clothing and equipment items to do their jobs. I was a soldier in the U.S. Army for 9 years. And the hours are, essentially 24x7.
Matthew