If I recall an article several years ago on Discovery magazine, regarding Cyc, one of the long-term goals was to make Cyc a self-learning machine. Meaning that eventually they would just hook it up to, say, Usenet, and let it learn from all it read.
If that doesn't make it want to kill all humans I don't know what will.
For example, diabetes runs in my family (Type 2). If I'm found to have enough of the 15 or so gene sequences linked to diabetes, my insurance company could decide to drastically increase my rates.
And if you didn't they could reduce your rates. Chances are the insurance company already takes into account your family's history of diabetes. Genetic tests just provide a more accurate assesment of your genetic propensity for diabetes.
At the end of the day as long as you don't have to take the genetic tests I don't see a problem. You can keep paying the higher rate because of your family history or you could take the tests and hope they come out negative. On average people would be better off taking the tests (insurance companies can provide cheaper insurance if there is less uncertainty).
Maybe the insurance companies can use these satellites to catch those pesky aliens mutilating farmers' cattle. Those aliens must cost the insurance companies a fortune in payouts.
Fans aren't angry simply because the film was bad. Bad films happen. Life goes on. Fans were angry because so much of Episode I was specificly tailored to spawn marketable products.
Good point but I'd like to add one thing. I think the main reason fans were angry was because they felt betrayed.
Eps IV-VI were teenager's films with little real depth. Fans who were teenagers when IV-VI came out are adults now and want to know the history of the Empire, how it came about, how it turned bad and why the Jedi couldn't/wouldn't stop it. They wanted a film with more intelligence than the action movies that were the first trilogy, because they have grown up.
Instead they got a children's movie.
Re:Curiosity killed the cat
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Star In A Jar
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· Score: 1
I certainly expected to read more logical arguments on Slashdot.
And how about The Silmarillion, argueably Tolkien's best work.
I suppose it depends how "unfinished" this book is.
Re:Best Pratchett's put out in a while...
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Thief of Time
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· Score: 1
Carrot Ironfoundersson's internal monologue, like Lobsang and Jeffery's is never indicated, and their thoughts are *only* shown by their actions and dialogue. This would be okay if Pratchett did this consistently with all or just one of his characters.
In Carrot's case this is intentional, we are supposed to wonder, as the other characters do, "How does his mind work?". If Pratchett let us know what Carrot thought about everything the mystery would be lost.
I got this message when trying to get a price for a server:
We apologize that certain parts of ibm.com are not available at this time.
We are in the process of implementing improvements to make buying online from IBM even easier.
Can somebody explain to me how dynamic pricing makes buying "easier".
The term evolution denotes that a certain
species is generally "better" than all the species that preceded it on the planet...
No it doesn't. It merely says the new species is different from those before it. Evolution has been observed, it is a scientific fact. Natural selection is a theory about what drives evolution (and a very good one IMO).
Websters definition of evolution in the biological sense:
4 a : the historical development of a biological group (as a race or
species) : PHYLOGENY b : a theory that the various types of animals and
plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the
distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive
generations
1) Use ISO format in a comment submitted to this story - don't
e-mail me. ISO format is 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'. Thus, a
prediction for the afternoon of March 13 would be '2001-03-13_14:23:07'. All times are Eastern Standard Time in the United
States, unless Mir makes it until we go on Daylight Savings Time.
[underscore inserted in example date]
So I guess 2001-10-28 02:00:00 (that way I get 2 chances:-).
I hear these can do an infinite loop in 2.3 seconds!
Infinite loops are one of the applications you really need a conventional supercomputer for. Running an infinite loop in parallel just means you have to run multiple infinite loops, so clustering doesn't help you. As long as people need to run infinite loops there will be a market for conventional supercomputers.
Actually as it's ".NET" rather than ".net" it is more sensible to pronounce it as an abbreviation. That is: en-ee-tee or "any tea" in which case it sounds even less like java.
Microsoft has a long history of employing people just to keep the brain cells off the market. I've read
articles by people who were *trying* to get fired from MS but couldn't (until, of course, they finally
managed to do something bad enough).
Suddenly the reason MS software sucks becomes clear.
Re:What's the point - Illegal doesn't mean 'Wrong'
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New Crypto-OS
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"Even if something *is* illegal, that doesn't make it wrong"
That's what we have a court system for.
No, the court system decides whether a person is guilty or not. The government decides which laws should and should not exist. What really iritates me is when people protest outside a court when someone is convicted fairly under a law they disagree with. They should be protesting to the government.
I don't like the idea of a jury of 12 people deciding that a law is unjust and not inforcing it when a democratically elected government passed the law.
Slashdot Mirror
The Web - Tim Berners-Lee
At the end of the day as long as you don't have to take the genetic tests I don't see a problem. You can keep paying the higher rate because of your family history or you could take the tests and hope they come out negative. On average people would be better off taking the tests (insurance companies can provide cheaper insurance if there is less uncertainty).
Maybe the insurance companies can use these satellites to catch those pesky aliens mutilating farmers' cattle. Those aliens must cost the insurance companies a fortune in payouts.
Eps IV-VI were teenager's films with little real depth. Fans who were teenagers when IV-VI came out are adults now and want to know the history of the Empire, how it came about, how it turned bad and why the Jedi couldn't/wouldn't stop it. They wanted a film with more intelligence than the action movies that were the first trilogy, because they have grown up.
Instead they got a children's movie.
I suppose it depends how "unfinished" this book is.
Aging Gen-Xer Doesn't Find Bad Movies Funny Anymore
Note: the reverse is not true.
Websters definition of evolution in the biological sense:
4 a : the historical development of a biological group (as a race or species) : PHYLOGENY b : a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations
Don't forget that speed of access is important. And remember: Free memory is wasted memory.
Actually as it's ".NET" rather than ".net" it is more sensible to pronounce it as an abbreviation. That is: en-ee-tee or "any tea" in which case it sounds even less like java.
I don't like the idea of a jury of 12 people deciding that a law is unjust and not inforcing it when a democratically elected government passed the law.
Shouldn't that be "there's no such thing as a free launch"?