Why? No atmosphere = no wind, no erosion, no need for rigid walls
Re:Artificial intelligence and intellectual proper
on
Marvin Minsky On AI
·
· Score: 1
I think that lots of people associate 'intelligence' with 'conscience' or perhaps even 'soul'.
Do we need - or want - machines that will pass Bladerunner-like Turing tests?
Or do we want machines that are capable of solving ever-more complex tasks?
Not the same thing IMHO
Plenty of good advice aleady given, my 10c.
Seems to me people are either saying "don't block" (with or without a clear policy on acceptable use of internet) or "this is how to block". Also, "as long as I'm getting the job done, who cares?'
Some problems with this.
You actually need both - blocking / filtering & a fair, clear policy.
1. Blocking harmful sites is intelligent - anybody here *never* been redirected to a prOn site by accident?
Some of the really nasty sites can cause a lot of harm - or distress - very fast. OK, you'll never block the really determined user, which brings us on to point 2.
2. As another poster mentioned, if someone does circumvent the controls in place, then it's hard for them to say "yup, used a proxy by accident". Not respecting policy = dishonesty = fired.
On the "getting the job done" point, well, if you've finished your work, then go and find some more. Decent bosses reward initiative. If boss not decent then leave - staying with a bad boss was the worse mistake I ever made.
Finally, re: the point about people (such as contractors) needing access, what I find depressing here is that nobody mentioned that it might be an idea to get people togther and talk about what needed to be used, how often, when & why... Hey, if my team can convince me that they're bringing in business or enrichening their skills, via MySpace then why not?
Urm, why IBM?
They make their money from SI these days, not hardware. There's no strategic threat, and neither immediate financial nor echnical upside I can see.
Sun - no way. They've taken a bath with their own hardware recently, (good though it is), and are struggling with s/w.
Apple. Hmmm. Interesting play.
For: Jobs trying to re-create Apple's 'glory days' (did they exist?) but this time owning both the platform AND the CPU.
Against: Common sense. The vast majority of AMD's revenue comes from sales to vendors selling to people who'll run Windows.
Wildcards:
Chinese company: (E.g. Lenovo?) who'd like to vertically integrate / break into higher value-added tech?
Samsung / Toshiba: Get away from commodity chips?
Motorola: Grasping at straws?
FTA "but insist the servers that administer those functions are balkanized from databases"
That proves it - he IS from Romania!
But seriously, if Ebay's servers really are Balkanized, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkanize), "Balkanization is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region into smaller regions that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other", maybe it's no wonder they have problems.
Quote "Most of the enhancements I've noticed are little things"
And they spent how much on developing this?
And it costs how much to upgrade? (Forget the crazy pricing, that's peanuts compared to the time you spend)
See the reviews of recent 'Vista-ready' motherboards which include USB headers ready-populated with flash memory for this explict purpose.
(OK, you can also use them as an extra drive, but why would you?)
They conclude that the benefit is marginal, if only because the test systems were - as always - loaded with memory.
It's just a sop for people trying to get Vista to run on systems without gonzobytes of ram.
I'm no Gibson fanboy, and have used - and mentioned - other tools (and others are referenced in the Wiki).
Was just saying that I've used SpinRite, and it worked for me.
If you've better tools to suggest, why not mention them, please?
OK, this is for the very extreme (and rare) cases where the disk is physically very damaged.
Most of the time, you'll find that available tools are enough.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite, for example.
Has worked for me, but
1. Copy the entire disk contents first. 'Low-level' disk-to-disk dup utilities (Seagate...) can work fine here.
2. Be prepared to wait.
Of course, if your disk is on its way out, the intensive reading, (and writing, in the case of SpinRite) may accelerate its demise. Keep the disk at a constant, cool temperate, (stick it in a domestic freezer if you've no aircon).
So, you are suggesting that somehow it's OK for people in the education sector to have "documents and communication all run, unencrypted to a third party"?
OK, but are you sure that they really want Win + MS Office, or would they be happy with something that offered the same functionality and a familiar interface (no steep learning curve)?
Sure they would. There's a lot of debate here about Linux etc. being too 'hard' for the non-geek user - from my direct experince, it's a valid point. However, this is less applicable in a 'big company' environment where most PCs are (or should be) pre-configured and then locked down. I use, and have installed for clients, both XP with Office and *nix with OO. Once you've got things setup OK, (takes similar time with both) there's little difference in training and support. People familiar with Office can move to OO quickly.
Also, when the function is compelling enough, and the learning experience not too tough, non tech-professionals can adopt new functions & applications quickly. Do you think that all the people using MySpace, YouTube, Flickr etc. are all geeks? For a more 'serious' application, what about salesforce.com?
Many of the posters here seem to want to dump this debate into the same old black/white right/wrong box. ONE of them is more insightful - this stuff is complementary, not a return to the old 'dumb terminal' days, just another possibility to be evaluated and used where appropriate.
A small group of animals use 'tools', these include many birds, (seagulls dropping stones onto shellfish - or dropping shellfish onto stones, a kind of finch that uses cactus spines to get at grubs), otters (the stones & shellfish thing again), chimps etc.
But this is not what the article was getting at - there is a difference between using naturally-occuring objects and actually fashioning a tool for a specific purpose. This would imply a higher level of intelligence, including intent, the ability to plan...
From http://giantsquid.msstate.edu/Background/squidtxt. html
OK, it's for Giant, but no reason to suppose there're not similar..
"Giant squids do not have any gas spaces in their bodies, which means they do not have soft bladders filled with gas to keep them from sinking as fish have. In fact, no squids do, and neither do really deep sea fishes. Air is so compressible in high pressure habitats that the bladder would be squeezed until it imploded and would be useless. How then is the giant squid able to survive in very deep waters without sinking or being crushed? The answer is ammonium ions. (Ammonia in water splits into ammonium (NH4±) and hydroxyl (OH-) ions.) Unlike air, liquids cannot be crushed or compacted or compacted. Ammonium also solves the sinking problem, since, like oil, it is lighter than seawater. A giant squid concentrates ammonium in its body and is either slightly buoyant (floats) or neutrally buoyant (does not float but does not sink). Ammonia is a natural waste product, like urine. Instead of eliminating or urinating waste out as humans do, giant squids store some of the waste in their bodies. This is why so many giant squids float to the surface and wash ashore when they die. That is also why giant squids are not very tasty to eat!"
And if you can't wait for it to fall apart..
1. Tell the DHS that 90% of bot attacks / cybercrime / * insert made up stats & factoids here * come from ISS, or
2. Just wait for the debris from the lastest Chinese 'peaceful test' to plough into it...
Sigh..
It's not called the bleeding edge of technolgy for nothing but hey, if you started on a Pet, you're used to crap resolution, right?
(Full disclosure - I started on a Research Machines RM 280Z...)
Post title is misleading, but parallels do exist
on
Biology Goes Open Source
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This is not really about 'open source', it's about 'Big Pharma' trying to address its problems by leveraging its (diminishing) assets, and trying to access multiple sources of innovation.
See the informative article in 'The Economist' - Jan 25th - 'Billion dollar pills' (Economist.com).
Since it's a subscription site, here are a few extracts, (fair use):
"The industry's share prices have performed pitifully and a new report from Accenture, a consultancy, calculates that a whopping $1 trillion of "enterprise value", which measures future profitability, has been wiped out because investors have lost faith in drugmakers' growth prospects"
"Three of the biggest drugs firms have brought in new bosses to help turn things around."
"The risks have been compounded by vertical integration"
"Mr Kindler [new boss of Pfizer] also wants his secretive researchers to open up and work more closely with outsiders. He has put the company's drugs pipeline on the internet for all to scrutinise and declared his intention to pursue outside collaborations and acquisitions keenly.
There's much more, but the underlying truth is that large corporations seem to have to have problems 'institutionalising innovation', and thus end up like Cisco, Microsoft & others - spending fortunes on R&D, but then spending even more on buying ideas in from start-ups or Academe. You can bet that as soon as someone finds a use for this information, 'Big Pharma' will be there with it's chequebook wide open. Is that a bad thing? Well, as another poster noted, perhaps it would be better if so-called 'underdeveloped' countries had the rights to produce & distribute in their local markets.
Of course, another wildcard could be the Bill & Melinda et al. foundation.
That would be ironic, the 'king' of closed-source using his $ to finance a somewhat 'open-source' model.
Cmon guys, stop trolling about 'registration' sites when you can just use bugmenot (http://www.bugmenot.com/) to get a sign-in.
But then you'll have to download the pdf...
As for the article, other posters are right - better solutions already exist than those outlined in this 'slashvertising' piece for DB2.
As for local search - Google desktop, anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
Why? No atmosphere = no wind, no erosion, no need for rigid walls
I think that lots of people associate 'intelligence' with 'conscience' or perhaps even 'soul'. Do we need - or want - machines that will pass Bladerunner-like Turing tests? Or do we want machines that are capable of solving ever-more complex tasks? Not the same thing IMHO
Plenty of good advice aleady given, my 10c. Seems to me people are either saying "don't block" (with or without a clear policy on acceptable use of internet) or "this is how to block". Also, "as long as I'm getting the job done, who cares?' Some problems with this. You actually need both - blocking / filtering & a fair, clear policy. 1. Blocking harmful sites is intelligent - anybody here *never* been redirected to a prOn site by accident? Some of the really nasty sites can cause a lot of harm - or distress - very fast. OK, you'll never block the really determined user, which brings us on to point 2. 2. As another poster mentioned, if someone does circumvent the controls in place, then it's hard for them to say "yup, used a proxy by accident". Not respecting policy = dishonesty = fired. On the "getting the job done" point, well, if you've finished your work, then go and find some more. Decent bosses reward initiative. If boss not decent then leave - staying with a bad boss was the worse mistake I ever made. Finally, re: the point about people (such as contractors) needing access, what I find depressing here is that nobody mentioned that it might be an idea to get people togther and talk about what needed to be used, how often, when & why... Hey, if my team can convince me that they're bringing in business or enrichening their skills, via MySpace then why not?
Yeah, and then your employer then gives it to everybody else. Or lets it get stolen.
Urm, why IBM? They make their money from SI these days, not hardware. There's no strategic threat, and neither immediate financial nor echnical upside I can see. Sun - no way. They've taken a bath with their own hardware recently, (good though it is), and are struggling with s/w. Apple. Hmmm. Interesting play. For: Jobs trying to re-create Apple's 'glory days' (did they exist?) but this time owning both the platform AND the CPU. Against: Common sense. The vast majority of AMD's revenue comes from sales to vendors selling to people who'll run Windows. Wildcards: Chinese company: (E.g. Lenovo?) who'd like to vertically integrate / break into higher value-added tech? Samsung / Toshiba: Get away from commodity chips? Motorola: Grasping at straws?
A whole bunch of comments gettings 5s, which are totally offtopic? And no, I'm not new here.
FTA "but insist the servers that administer those functions are balkanized from databases" That proves it - he IS from Romania! But seriously, if Ebay's servers really are Balkanized, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkanize), "Balkanization is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region into smaller regions that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other", maybe it's no wonder they have problems.
Quote "Most of the enhancements I've noticed are little things" And they spent how much on developing this? And it costs how much to upgrade? (Forget the crazy pricing, that's peanuts compared to the time you spend)
See the reviews of recent 'Vista-ready' motherboards which include USB headers ready-populated with flash memory for this explict purpose. (OK, you can also use them as an extra drive, but why would you?) They conclude that the benefit is marginal, if only because the test systems were - as always - loaded with memory. It's just a sop for people trying to get Vista to run on systems without gonzobytes of ram.
I'm no Gibson fanboy, and have used - and mentioned - other tools (and others are referenced in the Wiki). Was just saying that I've used SpinRite, and it worked for me. If you've better tools to suggest, why not mention them, please?
OK, this is for the very extreme (and rare) cases where the disk is physically very damaged. Most of the time, you'll find that available tools are enough. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite, for example. Has worked for me, but 1. Copy the entire disk contents first. 'Low-level' disk-to-disk dup utilities (Seagate...) can work fine here. 2. Be prepared to wait. Of course, if your disk is on its way out, the intensive reading, (and writing, in the case of SpinRite) may accelerate its demise. Keep the disk at a constant, cool temperate, (stick it in a domestic freezer if you've no aircon).
So, you are suggesting that somehow it's OK for people in the education sector to have "documents and communication all run, unencrypted to a third party"?
OK, but are you sure that they really want Win + MS Office, or would they be happy with something that offered the same functionality and a familiar interface (no steep learning curve)? Sure they would. There's a lot of debate here about Linux etc. being too 'hard' for the non-geek user - from my direct experince, it's a valid point. However, this is less applicable in a 'big company' environment where most PCs are (or should be) pre-configured and then locked down. I use, and have installed for clients, both XP with Office and *nix with OO. Once you've got things setup OK, (takes similar time with both) there's little difference in training and support. People familiar with Office can move to OO quickly. Also, when the function is compelling enough, and the learning experience not too tough, non tech-professionals can adopt new functions & applications quickly. Do you think that all the people using MySpace, YouTube, Flickr etc. are all geeks? For a more 'serious' application, what about salesforce.com? Many of the posters here seem to want to dump this debate into the same old black/white right/wrong box. ONE of them is more insightful - this stuff is complementary, not a return to the old 'dumb terminal' days, just another possibility to be evaluated and used where appropriate.
Cue flamewar about evolution vs. intelligent design
A small group of animals use 'tools', these include many birds, (seagulls dropping stones onto shellfish - or dropping shellfish onto stones, a kind of finch that uses cactus spines to get at grubs), otters (the stones & shellfish thing again), chimps etc. But this is not what the article was getting at - there is a difference between using naturally-occuring objects and actually fashioning a tool for a specific purpose. This would imply a higher level of intelligence, including intent, the ability to plan...
From http://giantsquid.msstate.edu/Background/squidtxt. html
OK, it's for Giant, but no reason to suppose there're not similar..
"Giant squids do not have any gas spaces in their bodies, which means they do not have soft bladders filled with gas to keep them from sinking as fish have. In fact, no squids do, and neither do really deep sea fishes. Air is so compressible in high pressure habitats that the bladder would be squeezed until it imploded and would be useless. How then is the giant squid able to survive in very deep waters without sinking or being crushed? The answer is ammonium ions. (Ammonia in water splits into ammonium (NH4±) and hydroxyl (OH-) ions.) Unlike air, liquids cannot be crushed or compacted or compacted. Ammonium also solves the sinking problem, since, like oil, it is lighter than seawater. A giant squid concentrates ammonium in its body and is either slightly buoyant (floats) or neutrally buoyant (does not float but does not sink). Ammonia is a natural waste product, like urine. Instead of eliminating or urinating waste out as humans do, giant squids store some of the waste in their bodies. This is why so many giant squids float to the surface and wash ashore when they die. That is also why giant squids are not very tasty to eat!"
Great series - worthy of an FAQ, (OK, nobody would read it) But...where's the sharks & laser one? Operators with mod points are standing by...
You missed the most important - zero gravity sex!
And if you can't wait for it to fall apart.. 1. Tell the DHS that 90% of bot attacks / cybercrime / * insert made up stats & factoids here * come from ISS, or 2. Just wait for the debris from the lastest Chinese 'peaceful test' to plough into it... Sigh..
Hey, mod up! We don't see enough of this here..
It's not called the bleeding edge of technolgy for nothing but hey, if you started on a Pet, you're used to crap resolution, right? (Full disclosure - I started on a Research Machines RM 280Z...)
Hey, give us their URL, we'll /. the bastards...
This is not really about 'open source', it's about 'Big Pharma' trying to address its problems by leveraging its (diminishing) assets, and trying to access multiple sources of innovation. See the informative article in 'The Economist' - Jan 25th - 'Billion dollar pills' (Economist.com). Since it's a subscription site, here are a few extracts, (fair use): "The industry's share prices have performed pitifully and a new report from Accenture, a consultancy, calculates that a whopping $1 trillion of "enterprise value", which measures future profitability, has been wiped out because investors have lost faith in drugmakers' growth prospects" "Three of the biggest drugs firms have brought in new bosses to help turn things around." "The risks have been compounded by vertical integration" "Mr Kindler [new boss of Pfizer] also wants his secretive researchers to open up and work more closely with outsiders. He has put the company's drugs pipeline on the internet for all to scrutinise and declared his intention to pursue outside collaborations and acquisitions keenly. There's much more, but the underlying truth is that large corporations seem to have to have problems 'institutionalising innovation', and thus end up like Cisco, Microsoft & others - spending fortunes on R&D, but then spending even more on buying ideas in from start-ups or Academe. You can bet that as soon as someone finds a use for this information, 'Big Pharma' will be there with it's chequebook wide open. Is that a bad thing? Well, as another poster noted, perhaps it would be better if so-called 'underdeveloped' countries had the rights to produce & distribute in their local markets. Of course, another wildcard could be the Bill & Melinda et al. foundation. That would be ironic, the 'king' of closed-source using his $ to finance a somewhat 'open-source' model.
Cmon guys, stop trolling about 'registration' sites when you can just use bugmenot (http://www.bugmenot.com/) to get a sign-in. But then you'll have to download the pdf... As for the article, other posters are right - better solutions already exist than those outlined in this 'slashvertising' piece for DB2. As for local search - Google desktop, anyone?
Hey, people here quote Wikipedia all the time!