Why should rich countries give the poor countries anything? The rich countries do not have a duty to give their wealth to poorer countries. Why not let them buy WiFi? The real problem is that these countries are ruled by socialist dictatorships. If the countries embraced freedom and capitalism, they could afford to buy food and even WiFi for themselves. When these countries are given things for free (like food), it only increases the wealth of the ruler and helps him stay in power.
You are ignoring the fact that both Russia and Britain would have fallen if not for the assistance of the United States. It wasn't just cash that we gave them. We gave the British food, equipment, and airplanes. We gave the Soviets food and war supplies. The British had not won North Africa by the time the United States showed up.
If I'd been in charge during WWII, I would have let the Soviet Union and Germany destroy each other, then clean up the mess.
I saw an article on this subject in MIT Technology Review a couple of months ago. What we need is to make senders solve an NP-hard problem that involved the sending email address, recipient email address, date, subject, and message body. Target the problem so that it takes about 10 seconds on a modern computer. Because the problem is in NP, it can be checked quickly. This computing cost will prevent spammes from sending out millions of emails. If you are on a mailing list, you could specify that you accept unsigned emails from a certain address.
I really don't see why everyone is so obsessed with an absent-minded PC user who can't even remember to save her work. It's just common sense because you never know if the power is going to suddenly turn off or something else unexpected will happen. I'm not going to switch to a Mac because some airhead couldn't even use a word processor. For the record, I've been using a Microsoft OS and word processor for about 10 years and the computer has never eaten my paper.
The 'auto-detecting' is useless. They told me that the video wasn't available at my prefered format and bandwidth, but they didn't tell me which ones they do support. Could they be any less helpful?
I was there too, assuming that we're all talking about the presentation at CMU yesterday. The handwriting recognition was really impressive. He had bad handwriting and it still recognized it. There was some handwriting that I even had trouble reading that was converted to text correctly. The tablet recognized handwriting from all angles, even upside down! As other people have mentioned, it is using a dictionary to figure out what you probably wrote. The only time that it messed up it read "This is a test" as "This is arrest." He then clicked on arrest and pulled up the alternatives. The closest thing there was atest, which he selected and then entered a space.
The Article does not mention how the robot will schmooze with the contestents. Here is how it will work. GRACE has a sony camera that can pan/tilt/zoom. Swathmore will work on code to zoom in on people's name badges and use OCR to read their names. GRACE will look up information on them and use it to engage the person in conversation. I think that's a pretty cool idea. When was the last time you had an intelligent conversation with a robot?
I was at AAAI and I saw GRACE "cut in line." Here's what happened: There were 5 judges in line and the robot bumped the middle judge. If you've really done a lot of robotics work, you would know that sensors aren't perfect. Later that night I was talking to the person who wrote the code for waiting in line. He was using GRACE's laser rangefinder to detect people. It is worth noting that the judge was wearing black, which could have absorbed the laser. An important part of the waiting in line code is telling which people are actually in line and which people are just standing around. The code assumed that the last two people weren't in line because of the perceived gap. GRACE does have bump sensors, they are in the panels surrounding the robot. GRACE did stop after bumping the judge.
Re:Why a social robot?
on
Social Robot?
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· Score: 1
I know the person who taught Grace to ride the elevator. He did the project for an a class, which I was also in. At the end of the spring semester, there was a robot exibition where we all showed the public what we had been working on for the semester. The elevator robot was a big hit. There was no shortage of people interested in getting into an elevator with the robot. Admittedly, the exposition was in Newell-Simon hall, where the CMU robotics department is. The robot uses its laser range finder to keep from hitting people and nobody got hurt for the hour or so that it took the elevator. For AAAI, it will be using an altimiter to detect which floor it is on.
Re:Is it too much to ask journalists to know Engli
on
The Rise of CSI
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· Score: 2, Funny
The series really started to get worse several seasons ago. There has been more of a shift from drama to comedy.
I now prefer to watch Alias, which has the same time slot and is much better show.
How much space does it take to store a word?
on
The Story Of GMR Heads
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· Score: 2, Funny
Talking about how much modern HD's can hold. . .
The present record holder, a pocket-sized 120 gigabyte hard-drive from
Western Digital, can store the equivalent of a stack of double-spaced
typewritten pages taller than an 18-storey building.
Assume that one story is 10 feet
Assume that 300 pages stack 1" high.
Assume 250 words per typewritten page.
120,000,000,000 / (18 * 10 * 12 * 300 * 250) = ~740 bytes per word!
If an word averages 6 characters, then they are using over 100 bytes to
represent each word!
> That, my friend, is the sound of the current and past US governments' foreign policies coming home to roost. I agree with you that there are problems with the foreign policy of the United States, but I disagree with what our foreign policy should be. We need a clear and consistent foreign policy that puts America first. We have to support allies in the Middle East like Israel and we should not support countries that do not share our interests.
Why not do something productive with the savings? If they really wanted to do something good in Mexico, they should clean up the corruption. Or lower taxes. (:
Atlas Shrugged is my favorite book and I beleive that logos and commercialism is good. Think of all of the free services that have been made possible through advertising. There is TV, and on the internet you can get phone calls, internet access, money, etc
I really can't believe that all of the Linux freaks on this site think that Microsoft has a monopoly and that you don't have a choice. You chose to use Linux over Windows! Microsoft has more competition than ever before. Linux is proof that alternative technoligies will emerge and a complete melevoloent monopoly is not possible. In a free market, new ideas easily surface. The purpose of any company is to create profit. Breaking up Microsoft for trying to get bigger and create market share is basically punishing them for doing too good a job. The reason that Linux has not gained greater use is because it is harder to use than Windows. The real threat to capitalism is from the goernment itself. This is sending a message to all companies out there that if they create products that are too good, they will punished. This is very disappointing.
Slashdot Mirror
Why should rich countries give the poor countries anything? The rich countries do not have a duty to give their wealth to poorer countries. Why not let them buy WiFi?
The real problem is that these countries are ruled by socialist dictatorships. If the countries embraced freedom and capitalism, they could afford to buy food and even WiFi for themselves. When these countries are given things for free (like food), it only increases the wealth of the ruler and helps him stay in power.
You are ignoring the fact that both Russia and Britain would have fallen if not for the assistance of the United States. It wasn't just cash that we gave them. We gave the British food, equipment, and airplanes. We gave the Soviets food and war supplies.
The British had not won North Africa by the time the United States showed up.
If I'd been in charge during WWII, I would have let the Soviet Union and Germany destroy each other, then clean up the mess.
I saw an article on this subject in MIT Technology Review a couple of months ago. What we need is to make senders solve an NP-hard problem that involved the sending email address, recipient email address, date, subject, and message body. Target the problem so that it takes about 10 seconds on a modern computer. Because the problem is in NP, it can be checked quickly. This computing cost will prevent spammes from sending out millions of emails. If you are on a mailing list, you could specify that you accept unsigned emails from a certain address.
I really don't see why everyone is so obsessed with an absent-minded PC user who can't even remember to save her work. It's just common sense because you never know if the power is going to suddenly turn off or something else unexpected will happen. I'm not going to switch to a Mac because some airhead couldn't even use a word processor.
For the record, I've been using a Microsoft OS and word processor for about 10 years and the computer has never eaten my paper.
The 'auto-detecting' is useless. They told me that the video wasn't available at my prefered format and bandwidth, but they didn't tell me which ones they do support. Could they be any less helpful?
This trailer has been out for months. A long time ago a link was posted here on /. Why was this posted again?
I was there too, assuming that we're all talking about the presentation at CMU yesterday.
The handwriting recognition was really impressive. He had bad handwriting and it still recognized it. There was some handwriting that I even had trouble reading that was converted to text correctly. The tablet recognized handwriting from all angles, even upside down!
As other people have mentioned, it is using a dictionary to figure out what you probably wrote. The only time that it messed up it read "This is a test" as "This is arrest." He then clicked on arrest and pulled up the alternatives. The closest thing there was atest, which he selected and then entered a space.
The Article does not mention how the robot will schmooze with the contestents. Here is how it will work. GRACE has a sony camera that can pan/tilt/zoom. Swathmore will work on code to zoom in on people's name badges and use OCR to read their names. GRACE will look up information on them and use it to engage the person in conversation.
I think that's a pretty cool idea. When was the last time you had an intelligent conversation with a robot?
I was at AAAI and I saw GRACE "cut in line." Here's what happened: There were 5 judges in line and the robot bumped the middle judge.
If you've really done a lot of robotics work, you would know that sensors aren't perfect.
Later that night I was talking to the person who wrote the code for waiting in line. He was using GRACE's laser rangefinder to detect people. It is worth noting that the judge was wearing black, which could have absorbed the laser.
An important part of the waiting in line code is telling which people are actually in line and which people are just standing around. The code assumed that the last two people weren't in line because of the perceived gap.
GRACE does have bump sensors, they are in the panels surrounding the robot. GRACE did stop after bumping the judge.
I know the person who taught Grace to ride the elevator. He did the project for an a class, which I was also in. At the end of the spring semester, there was a robot exibition where we all showed the public what we had been working on for the semester.
The elevator robot was a big hit. There was no shortage of people interested in getting into an elevator with the robot. Admittedly, the exposition was in Newell-Simon hall, where the CMU robotics department is. The robot uses its laser range finder to keep from hitting people and nobody got hurt for the hour or so that it took the elevator.
For AAAI, it will be using an altimiter to detect which floor it is on.
Ah, c'mon, he uses it correctly half of the time.
The series really started to get worse several seasons ago. There has been more of a shift from drama to comedy.
I now prefer to watch Alias, which has the same time slot and is much better show.
Talking about how much modern HD's can hold. . .
The present record holder, a pocket-sized 120 gigabyte hard-drive from
Western Digital, can store the equivalent of a stack of double-spaced
typewritten pages taller than an 18-storey building.
Assume that one story is 10 feet
Assume that 300 pages stack 1" high.
Assume 250 words per typewritten page.
120,000,000,000 / (18 * 10 * 12 * 300 * 250) = ~740 bytes per word!
If an word averages 6 characters, then they are using over 100 bytes to
represent each word!
> That, my friend, is the sound of the current and past US governments' foreign policies coming home to roost.
I agree with you that there are problems with the foreign policy of the United States, but I disagree with what our foreign policy should be. We need a clear and consistent foreign policy that puts America first. We have to support allies in the Middle East like Israel and we should not support countries that do not share our interests.
Why not do something productive with the savings? If they really wanted to do something good in Mexico, they should clean up the corruption. Or lower taxes. (:
one week after pi day
Atlas Shrugged is my favorite book and I beleive that logos and commercialism is good. Think of all of the free services that have been made possible through advertising. There is TV, and on the internet you can get phone calls, internet access, money, etc
I really can't believe that all of the Linux freaks on this site think that Microsoft has a monopoly and that you don't have a choice. You chose to use Linux over Windows! Microsoft has more competition than ever before. Linux is proof that alternative technoligies will emerge and a complete melevoloent monopoly is not possible. In a free market, new ideas easily surface. The purpose of any company is to create profit. Breaking up Microsoft for trying to get bigger and create market share is basically punishing them for doing too good a job. The reason that Linux has not gained greater use is because it is harder to use than Windows. The real threat to capitalism is from the goernment itself. This is sending a message to all companies out there that if they create products that are too good, they will punished. This is very disappointing.