Let's say each of these custom chips costs $100 x 500k = $50 million just for the CPUs alone, not to mention the bus, networking, interconnects etc that would need to be developed.
Emulating 'neural networks' with serial computers (traditional chips) is horribly inefficient, I doubt combining all the top 50 supercomputers in the world could simulate 100 bill neurons in one human brain in real time.
Not to mention the cost of the doing the hard part, developing the software.
I was being slightly facetious and spelled magnetic wrong, however the principal is important. I'm not sure what you mean by 'gravity generator', the magnetosphere is a complex thing and is theorized to be powered by convection of iron in the Earth's mantle and needs three things to operate:
1. there must be a conducting fluid;
2. there must be enough energy to cause the fluid to move with sufficient speed and with the appropriate flow pattern;
3. there must be a "seed" magnetic field.
The magnetosphere is also the reason we're all still alive, and why Earth has an atmosphere. I can think of almost nothing more environmentally unsound than monkeying around with this field, of course this silly 'perpetual motion' machine will have a de minimis effect, but it's a bad precedent. If the field ever changes enough to endanger reason #3, we're cooked.
If these asses are pulling energy from Earth's magnet field (and if it looks like free energy, they probably are), somebody please stop them, we need it.
What if an AI that was only moderately smart built up a social network of "experts" and well-placed non-experts, and found ways to essentially get people to do things for it by promising various inducements?
"As the opponent is part of the AI's environment, the Hutter AI would be able to outmanouver the opponent in this particular scheme. Given that the Hutter AI needs complete knowledge of the environment, this is of no great difficulty. "
So the Hutter AI is a compression of the complete environment as well, down to every single atom of every single neuron in it's opponents brains? To my untrained eye Hutter AI appears indistinguishable from mathematical flatulence, rather than any attempt at real AI.
"Actually calculating a Hutter AI is difficult however, as the thing is intrinsically incomputable."
Of course it is, if it were computable it might actually be useful:) It seems like Hutter AI is just a somewhat tautological and uphelpful definition of problem solving.
I'm not sure what an 'emotional' chess move looks like. I can say this, kasparov's ELO has been over 2800 for quite some time (the highest rating in history). Younger players like rajdbov et all do not play more 'technically' than kasparov. He is the single greatest chess tactician ever, period (and an unmitigated jerk, meh) tactical brilliance.
The really interesting thing is that a GM combined with a computer is MUCH stronger than a GM or computer by themselves. I think some rule alteration to put a human more on 'par' with a computer could help the man vs. machine idea.
If they allowed kasparov to touch the pieces and move them on another board (like the computer can do perfectly in its memory) before making a move on the 'real' board, it might make the match more interesting. Also, as others have pointed out, humans get tired, this is the single biggest reason kasparov as faired somewhat poorly in the past.
The reason machines are strong at chess at all is because a positional advantage can usually be translated into a material advantage within 7 moves or so (14 ply) as opposted to games like Go, so brute force tends to work. The trouble with computers is they will never blunder, never, so every move the human makes must be optimal.
I think i've discovered an unnerving relationship i call the grinning idiot principal.
The 'evilness' of a corporation is highly correlated to the number of 'grinning idiot' stock photographs on a companies website. For instance MS has 3 grinning idiots, IBM and Dell, only one. Right now SCO has at least 4 GI's, maybe 5...
This relationship is not absolute however, computer associates site only shows racks, perhaps there are grinning idiots hiding behind them?
Quid.Pro.Quo. They only got caught because of the exposure of 2 email memos found during an unrelated investigation. Imagine how many cases of blatant tit for tat exist.
I still dont understand how this is all that much different than event driven programming. Obviously its syntatically different than using event triggers, but is it conceptually?
Every example of AOP I've seen uses the "logging example" (is AOP actually useful for anything else?) In this example some sysout is printed after certain method calls. methodFoo(); methodBar(); both trigger message();
so what? Can't this be done with java style event handlers and triggers? Are there benefits of AOP beyond oberserver/oberserved type relationships?
(homer)I mean S M A R T(/homer)
The Turning test is a lame way to test for human intelligence, its pretty easy to fool regular people into thinking you're human (dick cheney etc).
Turing test for a dirty sock:
human> hello?
sock>
human> wow! it must be a dirty sock!
human> hello?
computer pretending to be a sock>
human> wow! it must be a dirty sock!
Here are some better tests that computers will always fail:
Teach the subject (human/computer) to play an invented game.
Describe a conversation and then ask the subject to relay the motivations of the parties involved and continuation of actions.
Read the subject any poem from that is metaphorical, ask the subject what the poem is really about.
Ask the subject to come up with general strategies for solving types of problems. (like how to solve the traveling salesman problem in a generally faster manner)
'course these problems assume the subject has an idea about humans and the world.
I'm tired of lame symbolic logic programs like ALICE, or some very specific program designed for a very specific function to be called 'intelligent'. In my book, something is only intelligent if it can reorganize its 'thinking', ie. can learn how to solve problems by its lonesome, otherwise the intelligence is derived from the programmer, not the program.
As other posters have pointed out, the main effects of the DMCA appear through fear of litigation rather than Federal court cases. A group of us, telecom grad students, wrote a paper on quantitative effects (chilling) of the DMCA on security research. We used the bugtraq incidence list as our source of raw data. We concluded there were some measurable effects, though kinda small.
(its an academic paper, you have to find some sort of effect right!)
XML/XSLT is indeed a good way to seperate things in very simple cases, however it still doesn't come close to providing the flexibility of something like java tag libraries. Your XSLT engine is also going to get reamed if you get any decent traffic.
PHP has a nice OO clas structue,
What!? PHP's class structure is worse than VBA or JavaScript. Just because something has a supposid 'class structure' does not mean that its OO. Can I write a transaction processing layer in PHP and have it maintain concurrency with a RDBMS? PHP is great for simple things, but just not built to do anything really robust.
PHP is not 'so bad,' but there are reasons why you might not want to use it.
Here are a list of reasons why PHP may be suboptimal for web publishing.
1. Lack of seperation between content and logic.
Embedded logic code inside presentation can lead
to a bewildering jungle of death for anyone who tries to maintain the code.
Also, repeated logic must be maintained across all pages, instead of changing it in one place.
(this goes for all ASP, PHP, perl type scripts)
2. Performance problems with interpreted languages
3. Can't take advantage of OO goodness. php is a flat procedural-like language, you can't do the robust object modeling, or any of the other spiffy OO things you can do with c++, java, (maybe.net) etc.
4. HTML lock in. Your code will forever live in HTML, if you want a different display format (unlikely) you're stuck. ie. what if you want to have a propriatary client instead of html on your plam, you have to rewrite all the logic.
5. Fancy features availible in Java (maybe.net) first. Oracle Objects, native DB connectors, will probably be written for Java before anyone tries to implement them (if ever) in PHP. You might not need these features of a small site, so its not that big of a deal.
Don't get me wrong, i think PHP is great for certain types of applications, but for large sites like yahoo, I think they'd be better off choosing something else (they wont use java because they claim FreeBSD has threading problems)
These are mostly addressed in the linked Y! eng slides. I'd be interested in hearing others opinion on this topic.
#1. Jamming the signal would probably be very difficult since im sure the military uses extremely advanced radio communications using spread specturm, hidden signals, probably also uses microwave and optical communication etc and the source of the 'jam' would probably earn a visit from a cruise missle PDQ. #2. The reason these things took so long to come out is because they need to be smart enough to fly themselves. even if you jammed the signal, who cares, its already programmed to do its objective, think cruise missles.
A better question would be is the x-45 worthwhile. Its like comparing the cost of an electric razor as compared to disposables if you're probably only going to shave 10 times. For 15 mil you can buy 10 or so cruise missles, with prices falling and capabilities rising faster than standard aircraft. Do you really think each of your UCAV's are going to fire over 10 times? I'd prefer the pay as you go approach with cruise missles rather than the much more complicated UCAV idea (UCAV has to come back and land!). If you buy a UCAV, you are locked into its static capabilities for a much longer period than if you just fired missles as you go. Of course they probably have recon value, but as a weapons platform, really what's the point.
"Instead of building new weapons, i think we should be getting more use out of the ones we already have" - Jack Handy:)
Transcript of Osama Bin Ladin interview by Peter Arnett
The first-ever television interview with Osama Bin Ladin was conducted by Peter Arnett in eastern Afghanistan in late March 1997. Questions were submitted in advance. Bin Ladin responded to almost all of the questions. CNN was not allowed to ask follow up questions. The interview lasted just over an hour.
ARNETT: Mr. Bin Ladin, could you give us your main criticism of the Saudi royal Family that is ruling Saudi Arabia today?
Osama bin Ladin
MR. BIN LADIN: Regarding the criticisms of the ruling regime in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian peninsula, the first one is their subordination to the US. So, our main problem is the US government while the Saudi regime is but a branch or an agent of the US. By being loyal to the US regime, the Saudi regime has committed an act against Islam. And this, based on the ruling of Shari'a (Islamic jurisprudence), casts the regime outside the religious community. Subsequently, the regime has stopped ruling people according to what God revealed, praise and glory be to Him, not to mention many other contradictory acts. When this main foundation was violated, other corrupt acts followed in every aspect of the country, the economic, the social, government services and so on.
REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, if the Islamic movement takes over Arabia, what kind of society will be created and will Saudi Arabia, for example, return to the laws of the Qur'an at the time of the Prophet?
BIN LADIN: We are confident, with the permission of God, Praise and Glory be to Him, that Muslims will be victorious in the Arabian peninsula and that God's religion, praise and glory be to Him, will prevail in this peninsula. It is a great pride and a big hope that the revelation unto Muhammad, Peace be upon him, will be resorted to for ruling. When we used to follow Muhammad's revelation, Peace be upon him, we were in great happiness and in great dignity, to God belong credit and praise.
REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, if the Islamic movement takes over Saudi Arabia, what would your attitude to the West be and will the price of oil be higher?
BIN LADIN: We are a nation and have a long history, with the grace of God, Praise and Glory be to Him. We are now in the 15th century of this great religion, the complete and comprehensive methodology, has clarified the dealing between an individual and another, the duties of the believer towards God, Praise and Glory be to Him, and the relationship between the Muslim country and other countries in time of peace and in time of war. If we look back at our history, we will find there were many types of dealings between the Muslim nation and the other nations in time of peace and in time of war, including treaties and matters to do with commerce. So it is not a new thing that we need to come up with. Rather, it already, by the grace of God, exists. As for oil, it is a commodity that will be subject to the price of the market according to supply and demand. We believe that the current prices are not realistic due to the Saudi regime playing the role of a US agent and the pressures exercised by the US on the Saudi regime to increase production and flooding the market that caused a sharp decrease in oil prices.
"At the moment, it's AMD 1, Intel 0. But thats going to change pretty quickly, and thats a fact."
How quickly we forget the past. The short-term future does look like it's shaping up to be AMD's x86-64 vs the Intel IA-64. Most of the posts i've seen favor Intel's chances in this bout. However if you look at any tech industry, you'll notice a startling trend towards jerry-rigging the past (x86-64) instead of adopting some shinny new standard (IA-64).
The best and clearest example of this is the IBM PS/2 Microchannel architecture vs the Clones. Obviously the clones won, even though IBM had exponentially more market power.
The AMD vs Intel situation is similar, but AMD is in an even better position than the Clones of the 80's in that they are of similar market power to Intel.
Both AMD and Intel know this, they are both worried about the future and will weedle as much as possible to advance their respective architectures. In a way Intel is further up the creek than AMD. Intel HAS to outright win with IA-64, its their only hope as far as their stock price evaluation goes (which is inflated, like MS, based on the fact that they have CONTROL)
Obviously this situation is nowhere near resolved, its chaotic (highly dependant on minute conditions), and anyone that says they have the definitive opinion (a multi-billion $ question) cleary does not understand the complexity or the historical context involved.
The standard is at least 75% of the battle, the one that emerges with the winning standard basically wins, how this happens is anything but simple
(think ms, think cisco, think ie, etc...)
I've been reading about nano tech for years, both in journals and in sci fi. The revolution is supposed to happen when, 2050, 2040 etc... However there is a fundamental problem that no researches seem to address or admit to. The simple problem with nano tech is that our mechanical engineering isn't there yet. Im not referring to our ability to create small things, im referring to our ability to design systems that do interesting things by themselves. ie. its almost ubiquitiously assumed that nano tech devices can replicate themselves or build other nano tech devices. really? have you ever seen a macro device that even comes close to doing this? ever see a robot that could build a copy of itself from basic parts? ever see a robot that could do anything really useful and complicated without constant supervision? about as good an example as i can think of is an auto factory robot, but there is no factory in the world where robots can build a whole car, actually they can't even get close. recently I think IBM was trying to build a nano tech device that had little 'fingers' that would move pieces around. thats great, now we have tiny little fingers that someday can move other tiny things in 2d. this type of device is easy to build in the macro world, and almost immediately you notice is it almost totally useless for building anything. If engineers can't even make complicated replicating systmes in the macro world, how can they hope to make something usefull in the micro one.
'first time m$ has been 'hacked'' really? i thought office.microsoft.com had been hacked, but then i learned it was supposed to look like that. (and have javascript unsuppored by IE on it too) cracking is err, bad. must stave off relative morality... must adhere to objective standards, argh! can't do it, go lil cracker go!
Even knowledgable Uncle Robin is a bit of a spring grasshoppa when it comes to women. (he's maybe been with what, 10 tops?) What if you are not seeking a steady (and demeaning in uncl'robins case) realtionship. Can you, from the depths of your geekdom, actually fathom attracting multiple women? In my home state of colorado i have never met a(nother) young person who is both socially skillfull and an experienced geek. (i do know some people like this in cali, only a few though)
I have however helped geeks in the past find a partner. lets say we're not interested in a life partner, lets say we want what every 22 year old wants... i've complied a little list of things that should help deep kernel hackers reach for more than their jolt cola's at night. Note: This list is not politically correct, nor is it fair, but it is honest.
1. on first meeting, physical attractivness is 95% of the game. you can't get around it, its hard wired into our brains and its reinforced throughout life. (even if you're ugly and pasty you have to try)
1.1 Dress well, (ps, this is not your idea of well dressed, its someone else's, ask people who they know that dresses well - dress like them) 1.1.1 Alternately - dress like the kind of person you are trying to attract. (dangerous) 1.2 work out, (this means lift) even if you are butt ugly you can attract certain women if you are cut like a 3000k diamond. 1.3 Look at people when you talk to them (uncle robin)
2. Never talk about anything remotely geeky until you're absolutely sure the person is interested. (which is almost never) This means never on a first meeting with a person, no exceptions, even if the person you're talking with asks you about something geeky. ie. what do you do? right: oh, i work on computer crap. wrong: im a java developer working on a client to interface with an oracle 8 database using the JDBC.
3. Admit that you dont understand how to talk to women and watch someone who does. Youre smart right? well then how do those stupid guys do it and you can't... Look, you're going to have to change yourself and adapt, evolve. your're smarter, so prove it, learn to speak down to the level of everyone else you're talking with, learn how to small talk, mostly that means talk about things that are going on in the room right now.
4. If you have any antisocial habits find them and get rid of them. Nobody likes to admit they have a stupid laugh, or that they're ADD and bother the people around them, but if you have a bad habit you're going to have to change. ie. you can videotape yourself talking with 'regular' people then watch it, it might be harsh, but you'll notice the stupid things you're doing/saying. if you cant change, stop reading, its a lost cause.
5. learn how to dance. (i mean really dance) Pick something and go with it, like 2 step or swing or anything, even learning can hook you up, become really good, not just ok. this step alone can get you all the heated nights you'd ever want. (and all the std's too, but that's your problem)
6. Clean up your place and make it look like a regular/cool person lives there.
7. Own a nice (looking) vehicle.
8. If everybody knows your a geek and they aren't likely to give you second chance, move.
9. Smile (but not like that)
10. Learn how to act. Looking like you're after 'fresh meat' will never get you any (unless your really attractive in which case you needn't read any of this). Learn how to look concerned, friendly, helpful, remember you're just a fun loving person who wants to have good clean fun (convince yourself of this), if you look/act like you're after anything else, you can forget it.
11. THE MAIN POINT. you think you're smart? really? then why can't you install mod_perl and sleep with someone every night? because you have failed to adapt, you haven't learned how to play the social game. you may look down on it, think its sophomoric or pointless, (in reality so do most of the people who can play it) but you still have to play. Attracting people may not be something you have an aptitude for. but you can force yourself, you are intelligent, observe human behavior, learn from it, pretend you're an anthropologist trying to fit in with a new tribe. pretend its a game, pretend you are a new ad and d character, pretend anything as long as it lets you soak in social dogma and react to it with charisma. the main idea here is adapt to the situation. (your ancestors did)
13. there are many things you must know once you've attracted a partner, but this is too long already, good luck:)
Slashdot Mirror
You're vastly underestimating the cost of developing a strong AI machine (not serial).
As an example of Strong AI, take a human brain: it has ~100 billion neurons, this is about 500k worth of custom 'neural' FACETS chips.
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22339/?a=f
Let's say each of these custom chips costs $100 x 500k = $50 million just for the CPUs alone, not to mention the bus, networking, interconnects etc that would need to be developed.
Emulating 'neural networks' with serial computers (traditional chips) is horribly inefficient, I doubt combining all the top 50 supercomputers in the world could simulate 100 bill neurons in one human brain in real time.
Not to mention the cost of the doing the hard part, developing the software.
Apparently not too hard; you only took 9 months of development.
That's only 9 months of manufacturing, it took over a billion years of R&D to flesh out the design.
Have you ever gotten a flu shot?
I was being slightly facetious and spelled magnetic wrong, however the principal is important. I'm not sure what you mean by 'gravity generator', the magnetosphere is a complex thing and is theorized to be powered by convection of iron in the Earth's mantle and needs three things to operate:
1. there must be a conducting fluid;
2. there must be enough energy to cause the fluid to move with sufficient speed and with the appropriate flow pattern;
3. there must be a "seed" magnetic field.
The magnetosphere is also the reason we're all still alive, and why Earth has an atmosphere. I can think of almost nothing more environmentally unsound than monkeying around with this field, of course this silly 'perpetual motion' machine will have a de minimis effect, but it's a bad precedent. If the field ever changes enough to endanger reason #3, we're cooked.
If these asses are pulling energy from Earth's magnet field (and if it looks like free energy, they probably are), somebody please stop them, we need it.
Stairs
This sounds like a good mythbusters experiment. Do adam and jamie read slashdot?
"As the opponent is part of the AI's environment, the Hutter AI would be able to outmanouver the opponent in this particular scheme. Given that the Hutter AI needs complete knowledge of the environment, this is of no great difficulty. "
:) It seems like Hutter AI is just a somewhat tautological and uphelpful definition of problem solving.
So the Hutter AI is a compression of the complete environment as well, down to every single atom of every single neuron in it's opponents brains? To my untrained eye Hutter AI appears indistinguishable from mathematical flatulence, rather than any attempt at real AI.
"Actually calculating a Hutter AI is difficult however, as the thing is intrinsically incomputable."
Of course it is, if it were computable it might actually be useful
Transcript of the speech here Unfortuately the white house uses real audio/video:
audio
. Kasparov plays very emotional games
I'm not sure what an 'emotional' chess move looks like. I can say this, kasparov's ELO has been over 2800 for quite some time (the highest rating in history). Younger players like rajdbov et all do not play more 'technically' than kasparov. He is the single greatest chess tactician ever, period (and an unmitigated jerk, meh) tactical brilliance.
The really interesting thing is that a GM combined with a computer is MUCH stronger than a GM or computer by themselves. I think some rule alteration to put a human more on 'par' with a computer could help the man vs. machine idea.
If they allowed kasparov to touch the pieces and move them on another board (like the computer can do perfectly in its memory) before making a move on the 'real' board, it might make the match more interesting. Also, as others have pointed out, humans get tired, this is the single biggest reason kasparov as faired somewhat poorly in the past.
The reason machines are strong at chess at all is because a positional advantage can usually be translated into a material advantage within 7 moves or so (14 ply) as opposted to games like Go, so brute force tends to work. The trouble with computers is they will never blunder, never, so every move the human makes must be optimal.
I think i've discovered an unnerving relationship i call the grinning idiot principal.
The 'evilness' of a corporation is highly correlated to the number of 'grinning idiot' stock photographs on a companies website. For instance MS has 3 grinning idiots, IBM and Dell, only one.
Right now SCO has at least 4 GI's, maybe 5...
This relationship is not absolute however, computer associates site only shows racks, perhaps there are grinning idiots hiding behind them?
Do you have any evidence that this happens?
Yes.
Quid.Pro.Quo. They only got caught because of the exposure of 2 email memos found during an unrelated investigation. Imagine how many cases of blatant tit for tat exist.
I still dont understand how this is all that much different than event driven programming. Obviously its syntatically different than using event triggers, but is it conceptually?
Every example of AOP I've seen uses the "logging example" (is AOP actually useful for anything else?)
In this example some sysout is printed after certain method calls.
methodFoo();
methodBar();
both trigger message();
so what? Can't this be done with java style event handlers and triggers? Are there benefits of AOP beyond oberserver/oberserved type relationships?
The Turning test is a lame way to test for human intelligence, its pretty easy to fool regular people into thinking you're human (dick cheney etc).
Turing test for a dirty sock:
human> hello?
sock>
human> wow! it must be a dirty sock!
human> hello?
computer pretending to be a sock>
human> wow! it must be a dirty sock!
Here are some better tests that computers will always fail:
-
Teach the subject (human/computer) to play an invented game.
-
Describe a conversation and then ask the subject to relay the motivations of the parties involved and continuation of actions.
-
Read the subject any poem from that is metaphorical, ask the subject what the poem is really about.
-
Ask the subject to come up with general strategies for solving types of problems. (like how to solve the traveling salesman problem in a generally faster manner)
'course these problems assume the subject has an idea about humans and the world.I'm tired of lame symbolic logic programs like ALICE, or some very specific program designed for a very specific function to be called 'intelligent'. In my book, something is only intelligent if it can reorganize its 'thinking', ie. can learn how to solve problems by its lonesome, otherwise the intelligence is derived from the programmer, not the program.
As other posters have pointed out, the main effects of the DMCA appear through fear of litigation rather than Federal court cases. A group of us, telecom grad students, wrote a paper on quantitative effects (chilling) of the DMCA on security research. We used the bugtraq incidence list as our source of raw data. We concluded there were some measurable effects, though kinda small.
.doc is bad! sorry, lost the pdf version)
(its an academic paper, you have to find some sort of effect right!)
you can check it out here
(I know
Least Damage Ever! (we are here to protect you)
Right Thigh
Heading:182.39
Pitch:-0.81
291
Did anyone else notice the pusher robot shoves and the shover robot pushes?
Space (and stairs) have a terrible power.
What!? PHP's class structure is worse than VBA or JavaScript. Just because something has a supposid 'class structure' does not mean that its OO. Can I write a transaction processing layer in PHP and have it maintain concurrency with a RDBMS? PHP is great for simple things, but just not built to do anything really robust.
PHP is not 'so bad,' but there are reasons why you might not want to use it.
.net) etc.
.net) first. Oracle Objects, native DB connectors, will probably be written for Java before anyone tries to implement them (if ever) in PHP. You might not need these features of a small site, so its not that big of a deal.
Here are a list of reasons why PHP may be suboptimal for web publishing.
1. Lack of seperation between content and logic. Embedded logic code inside presentation can lead to a bewildering jungle of death for anyone who tries to maintain the code. Also, repeated logic must be maintained across all pages, instead of changing it in one place. (this goes for all ASP, PHP, perl type scripts)
2. Performance problems with interpreted languages
3. Can't take advantage of OO goodness. php is a flat procedural-like language, you can't do the robust object modeling, or any of the other spiffy OO things you can do with c++, java, (maybe
4. HTML lock in. Your code will forever live in HTML, if you want a different display format (unlikely) you're stuck. ie. what if you want to have a propriatary client instead of html on your plam, you have to rewrite all the logic.
5. Fancy features availible in Java (maybe
Don't get me wrong, i think PHP is great for certain types of applications, but for large sites like yahoo, I think they'd be better off choosing something else (they wont use java because they claim FreeBSD has threading problems)
These are mostly addressed in the linked Y! eng slides. I'd be interested in hearing others opinion on this topic.
#1. Jamming the signal would probably be very difficult since im sure the military uses extremely advanced radio communications using spread specturm, hidden signals, probably also uses microwave and optical communication etc and the source of the 'jam' would probably earn a visit from a cruise missle PDQ.
:)
#2. The reason these things took so long to come out is because they need to be smart enough to fly themselves. even if you jammed the signal, who cares, its already programmed to do its objective, think cruise missles.
A better question would be is the x-45 worthwhile. Its like comparing the cost of an electric razor as compared to disposables if you're probably only going to shave 10 times. For 15 mil you can buy 10 or so cruise missles, with prices falling and capabilities rising faster than standard aircraft. Do you really think each of your UCAV's are going to fire over 10 times? I'd prefer the pay as you go approach with cruise missles rather than the much more complicated UCAV idea (UCAV has to come back and land!). If you buy a UCAV, you are locked into its static capabilities for a much longer period than if you just fired missles as you go. Of course they probably have recon value, but as a weapons platform, really what's the point.
"Instead of building new weapons, i think we should be getting more use out of the ones we already have" - Jack Handy
I was searching for sites (don't ask) and this article came up.
www.ishipress.com/osamaint.htm
coincidence? stenography? idiocy? you decide
Transcript of Osama Bin Ladin interview by Peter Arnett The first-ever television interview with Osama Bin Ladin was conducted by Peter Arnett in eastern Afghanistan in late March 1997. Questions were submitted in advance. Bin Ladin responded to almost all of the questions. CNN was not allowed to ask follow up questions. The interview lasted just over an hour. ARNETT: Mr. Bin Ladin, could you give us your main criticism of the Saudi royal Family that is ruling Saudi Arabia today?
Osama bin Ladin
MR. BIN LADIN: Regarding the criticisms of the ruling regime in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian peninsula, the first one is their subordination to the US. So, our main problem is the US government while the Saudi regime is but a branch or an agent of the US. By being loyal to the US regime, the Saudi regime has committed an act against Islam. And this, based on the ruling of Shari'a (Islamic jurisprudence), casts the regime outside the religious community. Subsequently, the regime has stopped ruling people according to what God revealed, praise and glory be to Him, not to mention many other contradictory acts. When this main foundation was violated, other corrupt acts followed in every aspect of the country, the economic, the social, government services and so on.
REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, if the Islamic movement takes over Arabia, what kind of society will be created and will Saudi Arabia, for example, return to the laws of the Qur'an at the time of the Prophet?
BIN LADIN: We are confident, with the permission of God, Praise and Glory be to Him, that Muslims will be victorious in the Arabian peninsula and that God's religion, praise and glory be to Him, will prevail in this peninsula. It is a great pride and a big hope that the revelation unto Muhammad, Peace be upon him, will be resorted to for ruling. When we used to follow Muhammad's revelation, Peace be upon him, we were in great happiness and in great dignity, to God belong credit and praise.
REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, if the Islamic movement takes over Saudi Arabia, what would your attitude to the West be and will the price of oil be higher?
BIN LADIN: We are a nation and have a long history, with the grace of God, Praise and Glory be to Him. We are now in the 15th century of this great religion, the complete and comprehensive methodology, has clarified the dealing between an individual and another, the duties of the believer towards God, Praise and Glory be to Him, and the relationship between the Muslim country and other countries in time of peace and in time of war. If we look back at our history, we will find there were many types of dealings between the Muslim nation and the other nations in time of peace and in time of war, including treaties and matters to do with commerce. So it is not a new thing that we need to come up with. Rather, it already, by the grace of God, exists. As for oil, it is a commodity that will be subject to the price of the market according to supply and demand. We believe that the current prices are not realistic due to the Saudi regime playing the role of a US agent and the pressures exercised by the US on the Saudi regime to increase production and flooding the market that caused a sharp decrease in oil prices.
"At the moment, it's AMD 1, Intel 0. But thats going to change pretty quickly, and thats a fact." How quickly we forget the past. The short-term future does look like it's shaping up to be AMD's x86-64 vs the Intel IA-64. Most of the posts i've seen favor Intel's chances in this bout. However if you look at any tech industry, you'll notice a startling trend towards jerry-rigging the past (x86-64) instead of adopting some shinny new standard (IA-64). The best and clearest example of this is the IBM PS/2 Microchannel architecture vs the Clones. Obviously the clones won, even though IBM had exponentially more market power. The AMD vs Intel situation is similar, but AMD is in an even better position than the Clones of the 80's in that they are of similar market power to Intel. Both AMD and Intel know this, they are both worried about the future and will weedle as much as possible to advance their respective architectures. In a way Intel is further up the creek than AMD. Intel HAS to outright win with IA-64, its their only hope as far as their stock price evaluation goes (which is inflated, like MS, based on the fact that they have CONTROL) Obviously this situation is nowhere near resolved, its chaotic (highly dependant on minute conditions), and anyone that says they have the definitive opinion (a multi-billion $ question) cleary does not understand the complexity or the historical context involved. The standard is at least 75% of the battle, the one that emerges with the winning standard basically wins, how this happens is anything but simple (think ms, think cisco, think ie, etc...)
I've been reading about nano tech for years, both in journals and in sci fi. The revolution is supposed to happen when, 2050, 2040 etc...
However there is a fundamental problem that no researches seem to address or admit to. The simple problem with nano tech is that our mechanical engineering isn't there yet. Im not referring to our ability to create small things, im referring to our ability to design systems that do interesting things by themselves.
ie. its almost ubiquitiously assumed that nano tech devices can replicate themselves or build other nano tech devices.
really? have you ever seen a macro device that even comes close to doing this? ever see a robot that could build a copy of itself from basic parts? ever see a robot that could do anything really useful and complicated without constant supervision?
about as good an example as i can think of is an auto factory robot, but there is no factory in the world where robots can build a whole car, actually they can't even get close.
recently I think IBM was trying to build a nano tech device that had little 'fingers' that would move pieces around. thats great, now we have tiny little fingers that someday can move other tiny things in 2d. this type of device is easy to build in the macro world, and almost immediately you notice is it almost totally useless for building anything.
If engineers can't even make complicated replicating systmes in the macro world, how can they hope to make something usefull in the micro one.
'first time m$ has been 'hacked'' really? i thought office.microsoft.com had been hacked, but then i learned it was supposed to look like that. (and have javascript unsuppored by IE on it too) cracking is err, bad. must stave off relative morality... must adhere to objective standards, argh! can't do it, go lil cracker go!
Even knowledgable Uncle Robin is a bit of a spring grasshoppa when it comes to women. (he's maybe been with what, 10 tops?)
:)
What if you are not seeking a steady (and demeaning in uncl'robins case) realtionship.
Can you, from the depths of your geekdom, actually fathom attracting multiple women?
In my home state of colorado i have never met a(nother) young person who is both socially skillfull and an experienced geek. (i do know some people like this in cali, only a few though)
I have however helped geeks in the past find a partner. lets say we're not interested in a life partner, lets say we want what every 22 year old wants...
i've complied a little list of things that should help deep kernel hackers reach for more than their jolt cola's at night.
Note: This list is not politically correct, nor is it fair, but it is honest.
1. on first meeting, physical attractivness is 95% of the game. you can't get around it, its hard wired into our brains and its reinforced throughout life.
(even if you're ugly and pasty you have to try)
1.1 Dress well, (ps, this is not your idea of well dressed, its someone else's, ask people who they know that dresses well - dress like them)
1.1.1 Alternately - dress like the kind of person you are trying to attract. (dangerous)
1.2 work out, (this means lift) even if you are butt ugly you can attract certain women if you are cut like a 3000k diamond.
1.3 Look at people when you talk to them (uncle robin)
2. Never talk about anything remotely geeky until you're absolutely sure the person is interested. (which is almost never) This means never on a first meeting with a person, no exceptions, even if the person you're talking with asks you about something geeky. ie. what do you do?
right: oh, i work on computer crap.
wrong: im a java developer working on a client to interface with an oracle 8 database using the JDBC.
3. Admit that you dont understand how to talk to women and watch someone who does. Youre smart right? well then how do those stupid guys do it and you can't... Look, you're going to have to change yourself and adapt, evolve. your're smarter, so prove it, learn to speak down to the level of everyone else you're talking with, learn how to small talk, mostly that means talk about things that are going on in the room right now.
4. If you have any antisocial habits find them and get rid of them. Nobody likes to admit they have a stupid laugh, or that they're ADD and bother the people around them, but if you have a bad habit you're going to have to change. ie. you can videotape yourself talking with 'regular' people then watch it, it might be harsh, but you'll notice the stupid things you're doing/saying. if you cant change, stop reading, its a lost cause.
5. learn how to dance. (i mean really dance) Pick something and go with it, like 2 step or swing or anything, even learning can hook you up, become really good, not just ok. this step alone can get you all the heated nights you'd ever want. (and all the std's too, but that's your problem)
6. Clean up your place and make it look like a regular/cool person lives there.
7. Own a nice (looking) vehicle.
8. If everybody knows your a geek and they aren't likely to give you second chance, move.
9. Smile (but not like that)
10. Learn how to act. Looking like you're after 'fresh meat' will never get you any (unless your really attractive in which case you needn't read any of this). Learn how to look concerned, friendly, helpful, remember you're just a fun loving person who wants to have good clean fun (convince yourself of this), if you look/act like you're after anything else, you can forget it.
11. THE MAIN POINT. you think you're smart? really? then why can't you install mod_perl and sleep with someone every night? because you have failed to adapt, you haven't learned how to play the social game. you may look down on it, think its sophomoric or pointless, (in reality so do most of the people who can play it) but you still have to play. Attracting people may not be something you have an aptitude for. but you can force yourself, you are intelligent, observe human behavior, learn from it, pretend you're an anthropologist trying to fit in with a new tribe. pretend its a game, pretend you are a new ad and d character, pretend anything as long as it lets you soak in social dogma and react to it with charisma. the main idea here is adapt to the situation. (your ancestors did)
13. there are many things you must know once you've attracted a partner, but this is too long already, good luck