> Does this mean we can expect the whole dating-and-mating process to be reduced to an algorythm?
No, because as soon as the average female enters the equation, all logic is tossed out the window, and computers must run on explicit instructions. There is no way to predict what a woman will do, except for the universal constant -- bitching.
Re:Isn't all computing biologically inspired ?
on
Biomorphic Software
·
· Score: 1
Zerr ist no computink dat ist nicht MS! Windows ist das uber-produkt.
> the mythical behavior of lemmings on which the crashing behavior of said products was modelled.
Hey, I played Lemmings on the Amiga, so there was no crashing, YIC!
Re:Isn't all computing biologically inspired ?
on
Biomorphic Software
·
· Score: 1
> The umbrella in the rear seat needs to be triple rotated bluely because Calista Flockhart has been eating too much red food lately.
Sounds crazy, but the computer knows that Calista's about to jump into your back seat (because she has realized her red food habit is getting out of control and has to "get away") as you turn the umbrella. If you had been doing that in a casual, perhaps yellow, manner she would have sat on it, breaking her hip (and she would have sued you). If you had done it four times, you would have stabbed her with it on the fourth rotation, but if you had stopped on the second rotation, you would have already turned back around and started driving again, depriving Calista her chance to get away from the red restaurant.
> Programmers, can anyone enlighten me on how to make a computer know it's hidden from enemy view
These things are nanobots, right? All they have to do is disperse to become "invisible." You don't have to make it "know" anything. You tell it that if they are all n millimeters away from each other, they are, for their purposes, invisible.
> what is it that humans have specialized in, during their evolution?
Vice. Our insane greed (in a general way, not individual) has made us strive to be more cunning and finding more ways to get "stuff" and call it our own. Note that I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing (I'm not throwing my computer away any time soon).
I don't really believe that, but it is one driving force of progress. Another HUGE specialization is curiosity, but to make truly innovative things (outside of software) these days, it almost HAS to be too complex for one person to construct, so curiosity is now good for general ideas for someone else to build, components to do a certain task, or just theories.
Anyway, I don't think that species "specialize" in anything, its just that they have certain traits that other similar species don't have -- if they didn't, they wouldn't be a different species.
> 'Communism would work if only the right people implemented it'.
Capitalism & Democracy would work, if only the right people controlled it. Well, the "right people" do not exist to run any government based on money, as long as there is greed -- and that'll never go away.
> Do you really need to see the movie *this instant*?
On the whole, your post was pretty good, but there is a point here that is missing.
Do you really need to see the movie at all? No. We watch movies, mostly, to be entertained. If I want to be entertained NOW, I would like to start the movie NOW, instead of having to wait a half-hour for the next showing. Say I have an hour & a half before I have to go somewhere, I want to see a 90 minute movie. With 1/2-hour start times, I could miss the end of the movie.
Another big advantage with On Demand is the pause, rewind, and fast forward. If you are watching a satellite stream (and don't have some kind of DVR), you can't do that. So if I missed the last 1/2 hour of a movie, I have to wait until one of the channels showing it gets to that part. With On Demand, you have a "window" (24 hours) of when you can watch it after ordering. That means I can just play the movie again, at no extra cost, and fast forward to the point at which I left.
Plus, with On Demand, you have a much larger selection of movies, TV shows, short films, etc., and aren't as limited -- you can even watch some stuff that you don't even subscribe to. I love the shows on Anime Network On-Demand, but that's the only place I can see them. I don't have the actual channel to watch. VoD is, IMO, the best way to compete with video rentals.
I hate the cable companies I've interacted with and feel odd saying something Comcast does is good, but in this case it really is a good product.
> Most kids aren't capable of making good decisions all on thier own
Depends on what you mean by "kids." There are a lot of stupid people out there who think a 14-yr old is still a "kid" and doesn't know how to make choices.
If you treat someone like they can't make decisions, they never will.
That guy's problem is not that he did drugs, but that he's mentally unstable. Corrolation, Causation, etc.
People with mental "instability" are more likely to take drugs, so someone with a bias to put forward, or someone who doesn't know better could look at the same data & say drugs cause mental problems, when it is the other way 'round.
> There's probably no reason beside conveniece that you live 15 miles away from your job.
Never priced places to live in a big city, have you? If you work in downtown NYC, but are not an executive, there is almost no way in hell you could afford to live that close to work.
> Democrats believe in paying for government services
I hate replying to trolls, but you misstated that -- Democrats believe in adding MORE AND MORE AND MORE government services, even when they aren't even close to cost-efficient or have any evidence of helping anyone.
But yes, Republicans do believe in illegal bombs. So do Democrats, so I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say.
> So why does slashdot keep advertising for commercial companies again?
Because those commercial companies come out with products that we would be interested in. Look at the logo, it doesn't say "News for Nerds, Stuff that's free."
> I understand it like "the signals could get mixed" or something.
I thought the same thing, but somewhere in this thread, someone explains that they (tags or readers? dunno) can detect a "collision," and if the tag wasn't read correctly, it will resend after a random time (prolly on the order of milliseconds).
> Imagine driving through the truck stop [...] 'asking' each truck/car what it's carrying.
Oooh, this trailer has 2330343456872389735897634523912389s!!! Kick ass, I've always wanted one!
RFIDs are an ID number, not an invoice. You would need access to the reference database first. You'd be better off opening the trucks & looking than you would trying to figure it out from an RFID.
Unless of course, different companies had different beginning tag digits, then if you get a tag number for BMW, you're set.
You could get an idea of how many items were on there, but if you don't know what the item is, or more importantly how big each one is, the count is pretty useless.
Slashdot Mirror
> Does this mean we can expect the whole dating-and-mating process to be reduced to an algorythm?
No, because as soon as the average female enters the equation, all logic is tossed out the window, and computers must run on explicit instructions. There is no way to predict what a woman will do, except for the universal constant -- bitching.
Zerr ist no computink dat ist nicht MS! Windows ist das uber-produkt.
> the mythical behavior of lemmings on which the crashing behavior of said products was modelled.
Hey, I played Lemmings on the Amiga, so there was no crashing, YIC!
> The umbrella in the rear seat needs to be triple rotated bluely because Calista Flockhart has been eating too much red food lately.
Sounds crazy, but the computer knows that Calista's about to jump into your back seat (because she has realized her red food habit is getting out of control and has to "get away") as you turn the umbrella. If you had been doing that in a casual, perhaps yellow, manner she would have sat on it, breaking her hip (and she would have sued you). If you had done it four times, you would have stabbed her with it on the fourth rotation, but if you had stopped on the second rotation, you would have already turned back around and started driving again, depriving Calista her chance to get away from the red restaurant.
Chaos at its best.
> Programmers, can anyone enlighten me on how to make a computer know it's hidden from enemy view
These things are nanobots, right? All they have to do is disperse to become "invisible." You don't have to make it "know" anything. You tell it that if they are all n millimeters away from each other, they are, for their purposes, invisible.
> what is it that humans have specialized in, during their evolution?
Vice. Our insane greed (in a general way, not individual) has made us strive to be more cunning and finding more ways to get "stuff" and call it our own. Note that I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing (I'm not throwing my computer away any time soon).
I don't really believe that, but it is one driving force of progress. Another HUGE specialization is curiosity, but to make truly innovative things (outside of software) these days, it almost HAS to be too complex for one person to construct, so curiosity is now good for general ideas for someone else to build, components to do a certain task, or just theories.
Anyway, I don't think that species "specialize" in anything, its just that they have certain traits that other similar species don't have -- if they didn't, they wouldn't be a different species.
> 'Communism would work if only the right people implemented it'.
Capitalism & Democracy would work, if only the right people controlled it. Well, the "right people" do not exist to run any government based on money, as long as there is greed -- and that'll never go away.
> You're welcome.
:)
thanks
> Save .torrent file to disk
.torrent files for a particular file that I'm looking for?
And where does one find
> bittorrent. That's my video-on-demand.
Yeah, it would be mine to if it weren't f#cking impossible to use.
> Do you really need to see the movie *this instant*?
On the whole, your post was pretty good, but there is a point here that is missing.
Do you really need to see the movie at all? No. We watch movies, mostly, to be entertained. If I want to be entertained NOW, I would like to start the movie NOW, instead of having to wait a half-hour for the next showing. Say I have an hour & a half before I have to go somewhere, I want to see a 90 minute movie. With 1/2-hour start times, I could miss the end of the movie.
Another big advantage with On Demand is the pause, rewind, and fast forward. If you are watching a satellite stream (and don't have some kind of DVR), you can't do that. So if I missed the last 1/2 hour of a movie, I have to wait until one of the channels showing it gets to that part. With On Demand, you have a "window" (24 hours) of when you can watch it after ordering. That means I can just play the movie again, at no extra cost, and fast forward to the point at which I left.
Plus, with On Demand, you have a much larger selection of movies, TV shows, short films, etc., and aren't as limited -- you can even watch some stuff that you don't even subscribe to. I love the shows on Anime Network On-Demand, but that's the only place I can see them. I don't have the actual channel to watch. VoD is, IMO, the best way to compete with video rentals.
I hate the cable companies I've interacted with and feel odd saying something Comcast does is good, but in this case it really is a good product.
> ISM (Instrument, Scientific and Medical) band.
Interesting, I had not known that (and I even work in a hospital, but do not fix the medical EQ). Thanks for the info!
> Most kids aren't capable of making good decisions all on thier own
Depends on what you mean by "kids." There are a lot of stupid people out there who think a 14-yr old is still a "kid" and doesn't know how to make choices.
If you treat someone like they can't make decisions, they never will.
That guy's problem is not that he did drugs, but that he's mentally unstable. Corrolation, Causation, etc.
People with mental "instability" are more likely to take drugs, so someone with a bias to put forward, or someone who doesn't know better could look at the same data & say drugs cause mental problems, when it is the other way 'round.
> There's probably no reason beside conveniece that you live 15 miles away from your job.
Never priced places to live in a big city, have you? If you work in downtown NYC, but are not an executive, there is almost no way in hell you could afford to live that close to work.
> Democrats believe in paying for government services
I hate replying to trolls, but you misstated that -- Democrats believe in adding MORE AND MORE AND MORE government services, even when they aren't even close to cost-efficient or have any evidence of helping anyone.
But yes, Republicans do believe in illegal bombs. So do Democrats, so I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say.
> there's no way a 4-cylinder 2 liter engine is going over 100!)
My 4cyl Grand Am can go 110. It's a 2.5, but given that it's a '91, I'm sure there are plenty of Japanese motors that can do it.
> Where is Martin Luther King Junior when you need him?
6 feet under Atlanta.
> So why does slashdot keep advertising for commercial companies again?
Because those commercial companies come out with products that we would be interested in. Look at the logo, it doesn't say "News for Nerds, Stuff that's free."
> I understand it like "the signals could get mixed" or something.
I thought the same thing, but somewhere in this thread, someone explains that they (tags or readers? dunno) can detect a "collision," and if the tag wasn't read correctly, it will resend after a random time (prolly on the order of milliseconds).
> if you get a tag number for BMW, you're set.
... with your brand new box of BMW keychains.
> Imagine driving through the truck stop [...] 'asking' each truck/car what it's carrying.
Oooh, this trailer has 2330343456872389735897634523912389s!!! Kick ass, I've always wanted one!
RFIDs are an ID number, not an invoice. You would need access to the reference database first. You'd be better off opening the trucks & looking than you would trying to figure it out from an RFID.
Unless of course, different companies had different beginning tag digits, then if you get a tag number for BMW, you're set.
You could get an idea of how many items were on there, but if you don't know what the item is, or more importantly how big each one is, the count is pretty useless.
> an evil government _could_ use it to track any person important enough.
... Who happened to be within a 15 foot radius. I think spy satellites are a more likely tracking method.
> that's not illegal anymore than assulting yourself is illegal.
Unless you are successful at assaulting yourself... Suicide is illegal.
Also, even if assaulting yourself isn't illegal, there's a chance you will be detained anyway -- for psychiatric evaluation.
> you don't want a 915KHz reader anywhere near your hospital room.
Yeah, it might interfere with your AM radio...
Seriously, why?
> there is a device in development for remote disabling of car engine control computer,
In other news, Diesel engines are making a comeback!