Yeah, we all know that this seismic temor theory is as much rubbish as all the other theories. If only this scientist dude had had an secret thistle-whistle (just like Eslbeth and Angus) to use to summon the Nessies, then he wouldn't have needed to waste his research grant.
Hey, try browsing at -1 nested - seems like everyone who's questioned the story about the woman who "quit" (Anne Tomlinson?) has suddenly been modded down. I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but is this surprising anyone else? I think that the question couldn't really be more on topic, and they're hardly flamebaits or trolls - what's up?
BTW, feel free to mod me down, prove my point and compound my paranoia; I've got karma to spare : )
Yeah, they made such a big deal out of how rubbish she was (and later re-worded things to sound less mysoginistic); basically pointing the finger at the support people, but this write up is all glowing adverts for Cisco and doesn't mention anything like that.
Never seen a launch from the Cape cos I'm from the UK (never really paid much attention to that stuff on the news broadcasts). Once went out to Cocoa Beach while on holiday to watch one a few years back, but it was cancelled at about T-2 mins.
And I wasn't sure how far away from the launch site (East or West, not up) any debris would be dropped (though I figured it'd probably be a fair way from land). I guess the Pacific is big enough for this to not be much of a concern though : )
BTW, the mod down of your reply was uncalled for; you were answering my question after all. Anyone got any mod points burning a hole in their pocket?
That's the sound of your joke going straight over the heads of a lot (most?) of the Slashdot crowd : )
And don't be so down on Harold - he's great comic relief from the more depressing stories in Neighbours - Lance and Toady are fighting? Well, never mind cos Harold's getting frustrated by the washing machine or something. Fantastic (and so much less depressing than Eastenders). Now if only they'd bring Mrs Mangle back....
Just think, now the Aussies can make sure that some of the junk falling back to Earth doesn't land on them : )
But could someone please tell me which way any debris like wasted booster rockets will go - East or West? I figure one of the directions has got to be a better one to launch in due to the rotation of the Earth, but I can't figure out which. Which countries will be under the path of any launches?
Ooooh. Mundie is actually contributing to this as well as various other luminaries. Maybe we'll actually get some real discussion instead of press-conference bitching and back-biting. Play nice now kids : )
Could this set a trend? Perhaps Bill G could become a regular contributor to Slashdot (that is, if he isn't already one of the CmdrTaco-luvs-dildos-trolls). In fact, I'd really love to see a Bill Vs Katz topic - how's about it? Granted, we'd have to teach Katz how to post to Slashdot first (as opposed to emailing copy to another editor and never browsing the thread), and persuade Bill that the trolls won't bite (much), but I think it would very entertaining.
OK, it's a great theory. But do we have any evidence of this? After all, the Egyptians were one of the most literate ancient civilisations; the evidence that Clemmons cites - "everything from hieroglyphs to wings etched in ancient tombs to kite-flying stances in classic Egyptian poses" - seems rather ambiguous. And I'm sure I recall seeing prints of hieroglyphs of slaves being forced to drag blocks about (or maybe that was just in The Mummy or something).
I'm all for elegant solutions, but do we have any solid (or more convincing) evidence, other than the fact that it works? Let's not forget that the Egyptians had a lot of slaves, and didn't much care if a hundred died trying to lift an obelisk the hard way.
Hell, what better way to get the smart CS and Engineering college graduates to sign up for 7 years:
Grad: Hmmm, well MegaTech Inc are offering me the chance to work on cutting edge technology, a massive salary, pension, health plan, car and other benefits, so why should I sign up for the armed forces?
But perhaps it'd be useful to give our minds something to do too, in order to stop us trying to revolt and harming ourselves. I propose a huge virtual reality system that's plugged into our brains from day one. And, so as not to be wasteful, we could harness the power produced by our bodies to power the machines watching over us...
Do we really want computers thinking like us? I don't. I want them to be able to make very reliable decisions based on the highest quality of infomation available. Cyc is a very good first step forward in this direction.
But is that the point? I'm all for the above, but is it true intelligence? That was the point that I'm trying to make - does the ability to analyse it's (limited) database for a solution to a question mean that it has an opinion?
Well, you got me there. Though I can't find anyone to own up for my lazy streak, so I reckon that's mine at least. Still, no way to tell. But it does raise the question - what happens if Cyc gets conflicting information - how does it make the cut if it's told (on seperate instances) that, for example, testing stuff on animals is good and that it's bad? Making that sort of choice comes closer to intelligence than just saying it's good/bad because the programmer said so.
Yes, but kids question the morals that they are taught, and develop them themselves (kids don't like to see their dog die, they love mom more than the dog, therefore mom dying would be worse [my apologies for my rubbish examples this afternoon]). And, as you say "We all learn things before we have our own opinions", but the point is that ultimately we do have our own opinions. Not just copy those that someone's told us to have (well, most of us do). If Cyc can demonstrate opinions it's not been taught and have an argument with it's creators then I'd be impressed. Especially if it could sulk for the next week afterwards.
And I do see some worthwhile posts on Slashdot (yours included) - hooray for the moderating system. But I think I could probably come up with a troll-script in about half an hour (and I'm no programming god). Which raises the question - do the trolls and first post addicts pass the Turing test? Nope. Any observable intelligence at all there? Nope. So, to be fair to you, Cyc's already a fair way ahead of quite a few regulars to/. : )
"HAL killed the ['2001'] crew because it had been told not to lie to them, but also to lie to them about the mission," he observes. "No one ever told HAL that killing is worse than lying. But we've told Cyc."
Um, am I the only one creeped out by this? And presumably they've told it all sorts of other moral stuff too, but who gets to decide it's morals? It's all kinda subjective. And how do we know that they've not said anything like "It's worse to let any single one of us die than it is to let any number of other people die" or something (I doubt very much that they'd do that, but I'm just trying to come up with an example and it's Friday afternoon and I'm off for the weekend in 2 hours)?
Ultimately, Cyc isn't actually making decisions, but re-gurgitating what it's been told previously - the people programming it make the decisions. I've formed opinions about a great many things, and some of those opinions contradict what a lot (or all) of my friends and family think, but I reached them myself - Cyc needs to be able to do this before it will be sentient - right now it's just a big, sophisticated database (only a way further along the line than Jeeves).
When it can make worthwhile posts to Slashdot I might look at it again : )
Re:Am I the only one who can "tune out" the noise?
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Yo - Pay Attention!
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You're not the only one; I've grown up with umpteen channels on the TV, web access since '95, etc etc etc. I couldn't tell you what the pop-up ad at the top of this page is cos I've already scrolled down, ignoring it - I don't even need software to kill banner ads. I don't know what ads I saw on TV last night. I can't remember what advertisers tried to sell me at the cinema a couple of days ago.
OK, so I've probably got great brand-recognition; show me a logo from any of the top 500 consumer retailers and I could probably identify it and tell you what the company sold. But, unlike my parents, I don't feel obliged to buy Pepsi or whatever just because a celebrity was paid a vast amount to appear in an advert and tell me it was cool. I prefer to make informed purchases. I can only think of 2 adverts in the past few years that, without any other help from reviews, have actually interested me enough to buy something, and they weren't for massive purchases. And I think this is because I (and a lot of other people about my age [22]) have learnt that advertisments can't be trusted because they're trying to make a buck, not be our friend.
And brand recognition can work negatively too - I make a point of not purchasing anything with a really annoying advert (if I can possibly avaoid it, naturally) and I suggest everyone else does the same.
Companies can do all they like to grab my attention, but ultimately it's still advertising and I'm so horribly de-sensitised to it that you could bombard me with annoying jingles all day round and I still won't buy.
Companies are going to need to start looking at brand quality again.
Re:The Solstice is a little too New Agey for me
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Total Solar Eclipse
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It's everyone's favourite editor, Michael, who posted the story, not CmdrTaco. Maybe he's more of a hippy than the rest of them. Or maybe he's just picking safe topics that'll stop people criticising him like he's a Katz substitute. Didn't work though - soooo many posts warning that sunbathing today is pretty dangerous, and folk such as yourself picking on his beliefs. Poor guy; you're gonna give him a persecution complex : )
And waddaya mean "there is no more scientific justification for a Solstice than there is for the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus or Atlantis"? Who's been bringing me all the chocolate eggs, presents, and, um, fish?
OK, so the human genome has been mapped, big deal. We're overlooking the fact that we actually don't have a clue what most of it does. It's good that the issues of nature/nurture and gene discrimination now, but I think I'll reserve final judgement until we actually understand things. Sure, we don't like to believe we're just baby factories who're faking consciousness, but we can't (currently) prove that it's not true. We used to think the Earth was flat, remember.
Having said that, I strongly believe that I'm who I am because of my experiences, but perhaps that's just my genes making me think that way...
I've not got time to check into this too much, but I can think of a possible problem with the polarising filter.
See, two polarising filters that are aligned at 90 degrees to each other prevent any light getting through. LCD pixels "twist" the polarisation of light thru 90 degrees, so when mounted between two filters they can be flipped between blocking and passing light (try rotating one of the filters in an old digital watch and watch the display change between black on white to white on black).
Anyway, my point is; I know the filter would completely block the screen one way round, but would it work the other way round? I guess it depends on how they've set it up. Anyone know any more about this? Apologies for my poor recollection of my Physics A-Level.
I just don't get it. I'm sure he wasn't meaning to portray the GPL in a positive light, so what exactly does he mean by it's Pac-Man-like nature?
I've been thinking about this, and all I can come up with from this analogy is similar stuff to the many comments modded as Funny already posted. But what's bad about Pac-Man that can be applied to the GPL? Um, he eats a lot, runs around mazes and terrorises ghosts - I don't think I can stretch that one till it makes sense.
Then again, perhaps Billy's just suffering under the strain of it all and is headed for a nervous breakdown. Or smoking crack.
Please someone explain this to me or point me to a better article (one that had more than a handful of quotes).
Hmm, it seems no-one at Phoenix is aware of those viruses that can flash a user's BIOS. Sure, mostly they just wipe it, but what if a virus is written to get the BIOS to do something more useful. Like, ooooh, say, connect to a cracker's server and download/install some sort of crack or backdoor (Back Orifice or similar).
I doubt this is beyond the realms of possibility, and once some clever hack has figured out how to do it the skript kiddeez will soon get hold of it. Hell, maybe it could even be tagged onto a VB app and turned into an Outlook worm - cue millions of cracked boxen that can only be made safe by flashing the BIOS, and how many regular (i.e. non/. visiting) users have the first idea how to do that?
Please someone tell me if I'm just scaremongering here (and give details), but I do genuinely believe this is a problem waiting to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, we all know that this seismic temor theory is as much rubbish as all the other theories. If only this scientist dude had had an secret thistle-whistle (just like Eslbeth and Angus) to use to summon the Nessies, then he wouldn't have needed to waste his research grant.
BTW, feel free to mod me down, prove my point and compound my paranoia; I've got karma to spare : )
C'mon, tell us the full story!
And I wasn't sure how far away from the launch site (East or West, not up) any debris would be dropped (though I figured it'd probably be a fair way from land). I guess the Pacific is big enough for this to not be much of a concern though : )
BTW, the mod down of your reply was uncalled for; you were answering my question after all. Anyone got any mod points burning a hole in their pocket?
That's the sound of your joke going straight over the heads of a lot (most?) of the Slashdot crowd : )
And don't be so down on Harold - he's great comic relief from the more depressing stories in Neighbours - Lance and Toady are fighting? Well, never mind cos Harold's getting frustrated by the washing machine or something. Fantastic (and so much less depressing than Eastenders). Now if only they'd bring Mrs Mangle back....
But could someone please tell me which way any debris like wasted booster rockets will go - East or West? I figure one of the directions has got to be a better one to launch in due to the rotation of the Earth, but I can't figure out which. Which countries will be under the path of any launches?
Could this set a trend? Perhaps Bill G could become a regular contributor to Slashdot (that is, if he isn't already one of the CmdrTaco-luvs-dildos-trolls). In fact, I'd really love to see a Bill Vs Katz topic - how's about it? Granted, we'd have to teach Katz how to post to Slashdot first (as opposed to emailing copy to another editor and never browsing the thread), and persuade Bill that the trolls won't bite (much), but I think it would very entertaining.
Heyyyy, who modded this down? Someone give the AC an informative point, huh?
I'm all for elegant solutions, but do we have any solid (or more convincing) evidence, other than the fact that it works? Let's not forget that the Egyptians had a lot of slaves, and didn't much care if a hundred died trying to lift an obelisk the hard way.
Grad: Hmmm, well MegaTech Inc are offering me the chance to work on cutting edge technology, a massive salary, pension, health plan, car and other benefits, so why should I sign up for the armed forces?
Captain: We can make you bionic!
I know I'd be tempted ; )
But perhaps it'd be useful to give our minds something to do too, in order to stop us trying to revolt and harming ourselves. I propose a huge virtual reality system that's plugged into our brains from day one. And, so as not to be wasteful, we could harness the power produced by our bodies to power the machines watching over us...
Well, you got me there. Though I can't find anyone to own up for my lazy streak, so I reckon that's mine at least. Still, no way to tell. But it does raise the question - what happens if Cyc gets conflicting information - how does it make the cut if it's told (on seperate instances) that, for example, testing stuff on animals is good and that it's bad? Making that sort of choice comes closer to intelligence than just saying it's good/bad because the programmer said so.
And I do see some worthwhile posts on Slashdot (yours included) - hooray for the moderating system. But I think I could probably come up with a troll-script in about half an hour (and I'm no programming god). Which raises the question - do the trolls and first post addicts pass the Turing test? Nope. Any observable intelligence at all there? Nope. So, to be fair to you, Cyc's already a fair way ahead of quite a few regulars to /. : )
Woah, imagine if one night it hits alt.2600 and similar derivatives and groups - it'd 134rN 2 5p31 1ik3 7Hi5 d00D.
Surely one of them would have had to be a woman : )
Um, am I the only one creeped out by this? And presumably they've told it all sorts of other moral stuff too, but who gets to decide it's morals? It's all kinda subjective. And how do we know that they've not said anything like "It's worse to let any single one of us die than it is to let any number of other people die" or something (I doubt very much that they'd do that, but I'm just trying to come up with an example and it's Friday afternoon and I'm off for the weekend in 2 hours)?
Ultimately, Cyc isn't actually making decisions, but re-gurgitating what it's been told previously - the people programming it make the decisions. I've formed opinions about a great many things, and some of those opinions contradict what a lot (or all) of my friends and family think, but I reached them myself - Cyc needs to be able to do this before it will be sentient - right now it's just a big, sophisticated database (only a way further along the line than Jeeves).
When it can make worthwhile posts to Slashdot I might look at it again : )
OK, so I've probably got great brand-recognition; show me a logo from any of the top 500 consumer retailers and I could probably identify it and tell you what the company sold. But, unlike my parents, I don't feel obliged to buy Pepsi or whatever just because a celebrity was paid a vast amount to appear in an advert and tell me it was cool. I prefer to make informed purchases. I can only think of 2 adverts in the past few years that, without any other help from reviews, have actually interested me enough to buy something, and they weren't for massive purchases. And I think this is because I (and a lot of other people about my age [22]) have learnt that advertisments can't be trusted because they're trying to make a buck, not be our friend.
And brand recognition can work negatively too - I make a point of not purchasing anything with a really annoying advert (if I can possibly avaoid it, naturally) and I suggest everyone else does the same.
Companies can do all they like to grab my attention, but ultimately it's still advertising and I'm so horribly de-sensitised to it that you could bombard me with annoying jingles all day round and I still won't buy.
Companies are going to need to start looking at brand quality again.
It's everyone's favourite editor, Michael, who posted the story, not CmdrTaco. Maybe he's more of a hippy than the rest of them. Or maybe he's just picking safe topics that'll stop people criticising him like he's a Katz substitute. Didn't work though - soooo many posts warning that sunbathing today is pretty dangerous, and folk such as yourself picking on his beliefs. Poor guy; you're gonna give him a persecution complex : )
And waddaya mean "there is no more scientific justification for a Solstice than there is for the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus or Atlantis"? Who's been bringing me all the chocolate eggs, presents, and, um, fish?
- Mars is really close to the Earth.
- It's a solar eclipse.
- It's the summer solstice.
I guess today's our best chance to find out if those druids were onto something : )Wait, suddenly I have a thirst for human blood....
I'm normally so careful to preview too...
Having said that, I strongly believe that I'm who I am because of my experiences, but perhaps that's just my genes making me think that way...
See, two polarising filters that are aligned at 90 degrees to each other prevent any light getting through. LCD pixels "twist" the polarisation of light thru 90 degrees, so when mounted between two filters they can be flipped between blocking and passing light (try rotating one of the filters in an old digital watch and watch the display change between black on white to white on black).
Anyway, my point is; I know the filter would completely block the screen one way round, but would it work the other way round? I guess it depends on how they've set it up. Anyone know any more about this? Apologies for my poor recollection of my Physics A-Level.
I've been thinking about this, and all I can come up with from this analogy is similar stuff to the many comments modded as Funny already posted. But what's bad about Pac-Man that can be applied to the GPL? Um, he eats a lot, runs around mazes and terrorises ghosts - I don't think I can stretch that one till it makes sense.
Then again, perhaps Billy's just suffering under the strain of it all and is headed for a nervous breakdown. Or smoking crack.
Please someone explain this to me or point me to a better article (one that had more than a handful of quotes).
I doubt this is beyond the realms of possibility, and once some clever hack has figured out how to do it the skript kiddeez will soon get hold of it. Hell, maybe it could even be tagged onto a VB app and turned into an Outlook worm - cue millions of cracked boxen that can only be made safe by flashing the BIOS, and how many regular (i.e. non /. visiting) users have the first idea how to do that?
Please someone tell me if I'm just scaremongering here (and give details), but I do genuinely believe this is a problem waiting to happen.