I wish I had mod points. You're absolutely right. If you believe strong AI is on the foreseeable horizon, you're so incredibly wrong.
As an analogy, think about how much information is in your DNA. Even compressed, the data fills up a CD-ROM (650 MB). We are nowhere near explaining how our DNA or the brain that our DNA prescribes work. How can we arrange the petabytes of data on the internet into something useful? It's going to take work, and lots of it.
I'm flabbergasted that the author didn't even mention the possibility of errors in data, especially since the author specifically mentions shotgun gene sequencing. It is highly unlikely that one will get a completely accurate DNA sequence using even the most sophisticated sequence assembly algorithms. If we tried to clone Venter using solely his sequenced DNA (and not a copy of the actual molecule) we would end up with a different human being, guaranteed.
It is the possibility that the wealth of data on the internet is full of errors that forces scientists to re-do experiments and come up with new and better ways to gather accurate data. If you start putting absolute trust in the data gathered from the internet, stop pretending to do science and rightly call yourself a theologist.
The question posed is, as other commenters have pointed out, ridiculous, as science must be peer reviewed.
However, a question that should be asked is whether or not printed journals are obsolete. Whenever I need to research papers, I search almost exclusively through online journals and professors' publication pages. Google scholar makes this search pretty painless, and there are free, open journals that are getting quite decent. Is it time to move to online-only publications to save costs and speed up distribution?
Cheers for that, interesting to know. Can you give any details on the legal agreements? In particular, do students retain ownership of the code they create, to the extent that they can license it however they choose?
In all honesty, I think this is a very interesting program, and if there are any profs out there who actually use it, it will be a boon to students and the industry.
However, I wanted to point out something that no one has mentioned yet (oddly):
Of course, there are a couple caveats (aren't there always?): Yes, your school will need to sign some legal agreements with us and yes, "get access to" means that your school will need to purchase the hardware.
For the record, no, there aren't always caveats. While the legal agreemenst may be harmless, I wouldn't be surprised if the fine print makes this program far less attractive than the first impression. If it involves the transfer of intellectual property, I'll be livid. Yes, the Playstation blog is probably not where that information should be, but a link would be appreciated.
Also, the fact that money still changes hands is a bit confusing. Were colleges and universities were not allowed to buy dev kits before? It seems like this program is just Sony marketing its dev kits to a specific audience.
Again, I'm not saying that this isn't a good idea - it would undoubtedly be a great learning tool for many university classes. But saying "You get the development software, the hardware, and the SDK to learn and experiment with" is a bit disingenuous given that the school has to purchase it, something that they could have always done.
I would say even more questionable is the last part, that findings suggest that high or low arousal is key to creativity. What do they mean by arousal? I'd saying being angry is definitely one form of it. If anything, I'd say the finding suggest the exact opposite, that medium amounts of arousal are optimal: not angry, yet not relaxed.
Wikipedia agrees with me: "The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that there is a relationship between arousal and task performance, essentially arguing that there is an optimal level of arousal for performance, and too little or too much arousal can adversely affect task performance." (Considering that task performance would clearly encompass creative task performance as well)
Actually, a watch can be created through random chance if you think about what watches are made of: gears, ratchets, hands and springs. Randomly put them together in various configurations, keep the good ones (through a natural selection-like process) and randomly mutate those, over and over and over. Eventually you'll get clocks.
I'm an amateur science journalist, writing for my university's newspaper. I don't claim to know anything about journalism (just science), but one thing that I continually hear from experienced journalists is that every article needs to have a story. It's not enough to say that a theory that has undergone rigorous testing has now been extended in an esoterically exciting way. As much as the discovery is truly newsworthy, the effort to convince the audience that something is newsworthy in a non-technical forum is usually not worth the effort. However, if there is a narrative behind the story -- a conflict -- then perhaps people will keep reading and be compelled to research the science underlaying the story.
The author has a good point: mainstream media outlets focus far too much on the story and not the science, so much so that they will lie and equivocate to generate conflict. Yet, I would rather see a light science articles that are interesting and easy to read than none at all, as long as the science is actually correct.
"Science is interesting, and if you don't think so, you can fuck off." This Dawkins quote sums up the other side of the argument. It bothers me that people would be so protective and elitist about having science portrayed perfectly in the media that they would rather it not be written about at all. We need to be criticizing the accuracy of science journalism, not its glamorization.
The two things that keep me using gmail:
- Grouping related emails into conversations
- Unobtrusive chat built-in
I don't use chat enough to remember to start up MSN or AIM or whatever when I'm at the computer. But I'll chat occasionally on gmail because it's always open if I'm at my computer anyway.
Put those two things into Thunderbird and I'll use it.
It's interesting to look at the evolution of computing whenever we talk about our brains. CPUs and operating systems both started off similarly one-tracked: single core CPUs with some pipelining; serial and batch processing operating systems that could only execute one process at a time. As computers evolved, we realized that some things are faster than others, and started doing more things at once while we waited for the slower things to finish: superscalar CPUs, then multicore/multiprocessor setups; multiprogramming and multiuser operating systems. As computers evolve, we're only moving further towards doing more things at once.
Now on the biological side, as shown in TFA, our brains have evolved in such a way that we are better suited to working serially with single tasks. Even if we were to assume, for example, that need to multitask has existed since humans developed language, we have not had nearly enough evolutionary time to develop brains better suited to multitasking. In a sense, we may be approaching the limit to what our brains can do as serial processing devices that can do some basic task switching. Given how computers (and culture) have evolved to exploit multitasking, no doubt given many millions of years of evolution, humans would evolve in a similar direction. Unfortunately, for the time being, we're stuck with what we've got.
Re:Factual Error!
on
Geekonomics
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I'll be honest, I Googled it. But not doing your research is the kind of carelessness that produces insecure software! ANALOGIED
I will concur that strong atheism is not the default position, as a strong atheist actively believes that no gods exist. Weak atheism, on the other hand, is just a lack of belief. Agnosticism requires one to consider the possibility of deities and decide that the truth value is unknowable.
Consider someone that grows up removed from society, and is not exposed to any religious texts. If they don't think up the idea of gods on their own, then I would argue that weak atheism is the default. If they think up the idea of gods on their own but remain agnostic, perhaps that is the default. Maybe it's more likely that there is no universal default and it varies from person to person.
Either way, I'd argue we are born weak atheists because we have no knowledge of gods. Not that that it really matters, we're all born illiterate too.
The paraphrases were opportunities to replace a well-written, well-crafted sentence with something that makes the player chuckle -- but also tells them exactly what will happen if they make that choice.
I found that there were a significant number of times where my expectation of what Shepard would say didn't quite match what he/she ended up saying. And even more annoying, sometimes I would agonize over a choice, only to later find out that the resulting dialogue was the same for either choice. Why are we given the ability to decide what's going through Shepard's head if it doesn't make a difference?
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing how the engine evolves for the next game. Any improvement is going to seem really significant if most of the engine is the same.
Theistic evolution is a good middle ground way of looking at things, but in believing it, you have to interpret the bible non-literally. That doesn't work for fundamentalists.
athiesm is the site relgion
Atheism is not a religion, it's just the lack of belief in deities. It is the default position. There is no doctrine, ritual, or morality associated with a lack of belief.
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest.
I'll accept that if Christians stop telling me I'm going to hell for, apparently, being what god wants me to be.
For JRPGs, I would suggest Eternal Sonata. Wonderful music, visuals, and gameplay that JRPG fans will find familiar but still interesting. I haven't finished it, but so far I've been very happy with it.
Mass Effect is also amazing. It's North American, but I think it still appeals to fans of JRPGs.
For platformers, The Simpsons Game is surprisingly decent. The real strength of the game is its humourous writing, but platformer fans should similarly find the gameplay familiar but still interesting. Give it a try if you haven't yet.
I'm not saying that I don't want to see more games in these categories, but there are some already, and they shouldn't be overlooked.
Read the summary and article carefully: They wrote "Call to duty 4." That's the confusion. to != of
Of course, if you google "call to duty 4" (with quotes) the Wikipedia article for Call of Duty 4 is the first hit. Without quotes, you get http://www.callofduty.com/
I wish I had mod points. I love that concept: we measure time relative to the total amount of time we've experienced. It's not all encompassing (there are still differences day-by-day), but I think it's a better explanation of why we experience time differently as we grow up than "when we're young, we are experiencing new things and learning." I may learn some things slower than when I was a kid (languages, for example) but I am still constantly learning.
Here's another thing I've always thought about: do people experience time relative to their brain's 'processing speed?' This is a very computer science way of thinking about things, but think about two identical CPUs with different clock rates: the same instructions are being processed, but it appears to us to be faster when the CPU has a higher clock rate. Our ability to process sensory information must differ from person to person, so does that mean that people with brains that process sensory information slower experience time at a different relative rate?
What's it going to take to get people to see that parental ignorance is NOT OKAY? Any parent can cause damage if they don't know how kids work. I'm not saying people should know how to raise a handicapped kid, but you don't know the difference between breastfeeding and using formula, stop fucking until you've read your first "for dummies" book.
Here's how to get rid of stupid people: license parents. If you don't know enough about the technology to keep your kid from harming the rest of society, you don't get to have one. If you can't keep your kids well behaved, you get to use the pill, condoms, and start babysitting to get practice.
Quit making excuses for people who don't want to learn how kids work. They are the cause of many of the problems that good parents have to deal with.
When I played my first video game in 1992, my parents explained to me the difference between violence in video games and violence in real life. We should go back to that.
Don't make excuses for idiots. If Joe Sixpack doesn't want to learn how his kid works, take away his penis.
I don't see why Nintendo needs to improve anything if the current offering is already "printing money."
So that it continues printing money in the future. This is why you don't see a lot of lottery winners in lists of 'top x richest people:' they get a windfall of money and instead of using it to make even more money in the future, they just spend it.
Universities and textbook publishers exploit students, plain and simple. New editions of textbooks come out yearly with minor incremental changes, yet professors must officially require the newest edition of a book. First year students (a very nice resource, as many drop out after the first year) who don't know the liberal meaning of 'required' often feel pressured to have the newest edition. If they can make the book harder to find online or at other bookstores, they will do it.
Good example from a friend that works for a used bookstore that sells on consignment: the main bookstore on campus is run by the university, while the used bookstore is run by the students' union. The used store only accept books that are currently being used in a class. The main bookstore on campus has a list of textbooks in use, which they won't share with the used bookstore. Once the used bookstore had built a list of the majority of the textbooks in use, the main bookstore switched from 9-digit to 13-digit ISBN numbers, so the used bookstore couldn't use ISBN's listed on information pages anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I had mod points. You're absolutely right. If you believe strong AI is on the foreseeable horizon, you're so incredibly wrong.
As an analogy, think about how much information is in your DNA. Even compressed, the data fills up a CD-ROM (650 MB). We are nowhere near explaining how our DNA or the brain that our DNA prescribes work. How can we arrange the petabytes of data on the internet into something useful? It's going to take work, and lots of it.
I'm flabbergasted that the author didn't even mention the possibility of errors in data, especially since the author specifically mentions shotgun gene sequencing. It is highly unlikely that one will get a completely accurate DNA sequence using even the most sophisticated sequence assembly algorithms. If we tried to clone Venter using solely his sequenced DNA (and not a copy of the actual molecule) we would end up with a different human being, guaranteed.
It is the possibility that the wealth of data on the internet is full of errors that forces scientists to re-do experiments and come up with new and better ways to gather accurate data. If you start putting absolute trust in the data gathered from the internet, stop pretending to do science and rightly call yourself a theologist.
Counterexample: Starbucks coffee. Ridiculous prices for the same benefit has only made them more popular.
The question posed is, as other commenters have pointed out, ridiculous, as science must be peer reviewed.
However, a question that should be asked is whether or not printed journals are obsolete. Whenever I need to research papers, I search almost exclusively through online journals and professors' publication pages. Google scholar makes this search pretty painless, and there are free, open journals that are getting quite decent. Is it time to move to online-only publications to save costs and speed up distribution?
Cheers for that, interesting to know. Can you give any details on the legal agreements? In particular, do students retain ownership of the code they create, to the extent that they can license it however they choose?
However, I wanted to point out something that no one has mentioned yet (oddly):For the record, no, there aren't always caveats. While the legal agreemenst may be harmless, I wouldn't be surprised if the fine print makes this program far less attractive than the first impression. If it involves the transfer of intellectual property, I'll be livid. Yes, the Playstation blog is probably not where that information should be, but a link would be appreciated.
Also, the fact that money still changes hands is a bit confusing. Were colleges and universities were not allowed to buy dev kits before? It seems like this program is just Sony marketing its dev kits to a specific audience.
Again, I'm not saying that this isn't a good idea - it would undoubtedly be a great learning tool for many university classes. But saying "You get the development software, the hardware, and the SDK to learn and experiment with" is a bit disingenuous given that the school has to purchase it, something that they could have always done.
I would say even more questionable is the last part, that findings suggest that high or low arousal is key to creativity. What do they mean by arousal? I'd saying being angry is definitely one form of it. If anything, I'd say the finding suggest the exact opposite, that medium amounts of arousal are optimal: not angry, yet not relaxed.
Wikipedia agrees with me: "The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that there is a relationship between arousal and task performance, essentially arguing that there is an optimal level of arousal for performance, and too little or too much arousal can adversely affect task performance." (Considering that task performance would clearly encompass creative task performance as well)
Actually, a watch can be created through random chance if you think about what watches are made of: gears, ratchets, hands and springs. Randomly put them together in various configurations, keep the good ones (through a natural selection-like process) and randomly mutate those, over and over and over. Eventually you'll get clocks.
Video that illustrates the process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0
Will this laser have to be attached to significantly more powerful sharks?
I'm an amateur science journalist, writing for my university's newspaper. I don't claim to know anything about journalism (just science), but one thing that I continually hear from experienced journalists is that every article needs to have a story. It's not enough to say that a theory that has undergone rigorous testing has now been extended in an esoterically exciting way. As much as the discovery is truly newsworthy, the effort to convince the audience that something is newsworthy in a non-technical forum is usually not worth the effort. However, if there is a narrative behind the story -- a conflict -- then perhaps people will keep reading and be compelled to research the science underlaying the story.
The author has a good point: mainstream media outlets focus far too much on the story and not the science, so much so that they will lie and equivocate to generate conflict. Yet, I would rather see a light science articles that are interesting and easy to read than none at all, as long as the science is actually correct.
"Science is interesting, and if you don't think so, you can fuck off." This Dawkins quote sums up the other side of the argument. It bothers me that people would be so protective and elitist about having science portrayed perfectly in the media that they would rather it not be written about at all. We need to be criticizing the accuracy of science journalism, not its glamorization.
The two things that keep me using gmail:
- Grouping related emails into conversations
- Unobtrusive chat built-in
I don't use chat enough to remember to start up MSN or AIM or whatever when I'm at the computer. But I'll chat occasionally on gmail because it's always open if I'm at my computer anyway.
Put those two things into Thunderbird and I'll use it.
It's interesting to look at the evolution of computing whenever we talk about our brains. CPUs and operating systems both started off similarly one-tracked: single core CPUs with some pipelining; serial and batch processing operating systems that could only execute one process at a time. As computers evolved, we realized that some things are faster than others, and started doing more things at once while we waited for the slower things to finish: superscalar CPUs, then multicore/multiprocessor setups; multiprogramming and multiuser operating systems. As computers evolve, we're only moving further towards doing more things at once.
Now on the biological side, as shown in TFA, our brains have evolved in such a way that we are better suited to working serially with single tasks. Even if we were to assume, for example, that need to multitask has existed since humans developed language, we have not had nearly enough evolutionary time to develop brains better suited to multitasking. In a sense, we may be approaching the limit to what our brains can do as serial processing devices that can do some basic task switching. Given how computers (and culture) have evolved to exploit multitasking, no doubt given many millions of years of evolution, humans would evolve in a similar direction. Unfortunately, for the time being, we're stuck with what we've got.
I'll be honest, I Googled it. But not doing your research is the kind of carelessness that produces insecure software! ANALOGIED
It's spelled Britney Spears.
I will concur that strong atheism is not the default position, as a strong atheist actively believes that no gods exist. Weak atheism, on the other hand, is just a lack of belief. Agnosticism requires one to consider the possibility of deities and decide that the truth value is unknowable.
Consider someone that grows up removed from society, and is not exposed to any religious texts. If they don't think up the idea of gods on their own, then I would argue that weak atheism is the default. If they think up the idea of gods on their own but remain agnostic, perhaps that is the default. Maybe it's more likely that there is no universal default and it varies from person to person.
Either way, I'd argue we are born weak atheists because we have no knowledge of gods. Not that that it really matters, we're all born illiterate too.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing how the engine evolves for the next game. Any improvement is going to seem really significant if most of the engine is the same.
I can't disagree with you there. The camera was insanely annoying whenever you were in a cramped or even semi-cramped space.
For JRPGs, I would suggest Eternal Sonata. Wonderful music, visuals, and gameplay that JRPG fans will find familiar but still interesting. I haven't finished it, but so far I've been very happy with it.
Mass Effect is also amazing. It's North American, but I think it still appeals to fans of JRPGs.
For platformers, The Simpsons Game is surprisingly decent. The real strength of the game is its humourous writing, but platformer fans should similarly find the gameplay familiar but still interesting. Give it a try if you haven't yet.
I'm not saying that I don't want to see more games in these categories, but there are some already, and they shouldn't be overlooked.
Read the summary and article carefully: They wrote "Call to duty 4." That's the confusion. to != of
Of course, if you google "call to duty 4" (with quotes) the Wikipedia article for Call of Duty 4 is the first hit. Without quotes, you get http://www.callofduty.com/
I wish I had mod points. I love that concept: we measure time relative to the total amount of time we've experienced. It's not all encompassing (there are still differences day-by-day), but I think it's a better explanation of why we experience time differently as we grow up than "when we're young, we are experiencing new things and learning." I may learn some things slower than when I was a kid (languages, for example) but I am still constantly learning.
Here's another thing I've always thought about: do people experience time relative to their brain's 'processing speed?' This is a very computer science way of thinking about things, but think about two identical CPUs with different clock rates: the same instructions are being processed, but it appears to us to be faster when the CPU has a higher clock rate. Our ability to process sensory information must differ from person to person, so does that mean that people with brains that process sensory information slower experience time at a different relative rate?
I wrote a piece for my school's paper on racism and xenophobia in Japan, as a response to the new fingerprinting law. It goes into a bit more depth about the other issues facing foreigners in Japan. http://www.themanitoban.com/2007-2008/1114/127.The.Land.of.the.Rising.Shun.php
What's it going to take to get people to see that parental ignorance is NOT OKAY? Any parent can cause damage if they don't know how kids work. I'm not saying people should know how to raise a handicapped kid, but you don't know the difference between breastfeeding and using formula, stop fucking until you've read your first "for dummies" book.
Here's how to get rid of stupid people: license parents. If you don't know enough about the technology to keep your kid from harming the rest of society, you don't get to have one. If you can't keep your kids well behaved, you get to use the pill, condoms, and start babysitting to get practice.
Quit making excuses for people who don't want to learn how kids work. They are the cause of many of the problems that good parents have to deal with.
When I played my first video game in 1992, my parents explained to me the difference between violence in video games and violence in real life. We should go back to that.
Don't make excuses for idiots. If Joe Sixpack doesn't want to learn how his kid works, take away his penis.
So that it continues printing money in the future. This is why you don't see a lot of lottery winners in lists of 'top x richest people:' they get a windfall of money and instead of using it to make even more money in the future, they just spend it.
Universities and textbook publishers exploit students, plain and simple. New editions of textbooks come out yearly with minor incremental changes, yet professors must officially require the newest edition of a book. First year students (a very nice resource, as many drop out after the first year) who don't know the liberal meaning of 'required' often feel pressured to have the newest edition. If they can make the book harder to find online or at other bookstores, they will do it.
Good example from a friend that works for a used bookstore that sells on consignment: the main bookstore on campus is run by the university, while the used bookstore is run by the students' union. The used store only accept books that are currently being used in a class. The main bookstore on campus has a list of textbooks in use, which they won't share with the used bookstore. Once the used bookstore had built a list of the majority of the textbooks in use, the main bookstore switched from 9-digit to 13-digit ISBN numbers, so the used bookstore couldn't use ISBN's listed on information pages anymore.