Whenever a group of people wishes to control another group, the first thing they do is prohibit that group from having weapons.
You are sounding rather limited in your own grasp of world history - many enlightened countries of the modern world prohibit weapons, and none of of them have totalitarian governments. There is simply no need for anyone to possess powerful weapons if nobody else does either. And why does your government want to "control" you (hint: that's a big part of what they're for)?
First of all, it's totally disrespectful and hypocritical to imply that someone else is unable to handle weapons responsibly, while claiming you are able to do so.
Who says anyone has to have them? Here in the UK, gun ownership is illegal, and the police do not carry guns either. Nobody feels they need a gun, criminals rarely use them, and nobody is upset by the army having them. Over here, the hysteria is about pen knives instead.
If people have weapons, there is only so far you can push then before they fight back... if people lack weapons they will only fight back once they've literally decided it is not worthwhile to live.
Or in other words, "black is not white, therefore it must be red". Are you mental? Why would people not express their opinion just because they don't have a gun?? Shooting people isn't the only (or even a likely, or indeed effective) way to fight back, surely you can't think it is? In your vision of the future, are rednecks going hand to hand with robotic agents of the government in the streets, heroically winning through their wise stockpiling of assault weaponry? And then the government says "OK, we give up" and everything is hunky dory again? Methinks you've missed about a million steps in between (probably involving an election). I hear this time and time again, and it's always from people who secretly fantasise about an apocalypse in which they get to shoot a looter/robot/zombie/graboid in the face.
There is simply no good reason for a benevolent government to ban weapons. That means that any government that wishes to do so must be malevolent
Err, reasons to ban weapons:
1. weapons are dangerous
2. people with weapons are dangerous
3. without weapons, weapons are unnecessary
4. the government is there to make life good for people (which includes keeping them alive)
What reason exactly are you suggesting for your malevolent government's wish to "control" you? I could just as easily turn your statement around and suggest that a benevolent government has no reason to allow ordinary citizens to take up arms.
I don't know what you spent your time doing whilst you were writing patent claims, but this is totally incorrect. The patents are not of the sequence of naturally occurring DNA, they are for the creation of the clone. The operative word in Claim 1 above is "isolated". It's like patenting the invention of photography - sure you can't patent fruit, but you can patent the photograph (as in, all photographs). See some of the comments below for more details. Unfortunately diagnostic tests etc typically covered by the patented technique, and often specific methods surrounding the isolation are explicit claims too.
In my opinion it's still a dodgy patent because after the first one, each gene is not sufficiently different to warrant a patent - it lacks the "inventive step". The world has been waiting a long time for a viable challenge, though to be honest it isn't such a big deal any more for public research at least.
Re:Sorry, Loebner Has Done Nothing for AI
on
Loebner Talks AI
·
· Score: 1
This is a valid point. Arguably the primary aim of a prize is to establish motivation towards achieving a goal. If the goal of the prize is to create computer programs that can fool humans into thinking they are talking to other humans (hopefully making more sense than your average YouTube comment), fine. But it's unlikely to do anything for advancing "artificial intelligence", for the reason that efforts are clearly converging on a "local minimum": sentence analysis and programmed responses.
Achieving something like "real" adaptive learning is not likely to come about in one massive jump, but rather through small steps of evolution. Unfortunately, these steps are not rewarded in any way by this prize.
It would be good to have a test that does satisfy this goal, the problem is that it would be very difficult to design. The reason the Turing test is "successful" is that it can assess across the whole range of ability - programs initially perform poorly, fooling someone for a few sentences, then get better and better, fooling more and more people for longer periods. To do something similar for "intelligence" is going to be difficult or impossible. There are similar tests for specific fields of robotics though - adaptive navigation for instance.
Researcher discovers that freely available material is misleading average people. And publishes his findings to a non-open-access journal where it cannot be read by average people.
I do believe this is a different village, with a much smaller scale of problem. The village this article refers to apparently "is host to some 15,000 vehicles a day", with a population of 3145 in the 2001 census according to Wikipedia.
1) Why not just get a test for the one or two diseases it may actually help with?
2) The test will give false positives. It may tell you you're 50% more likely to develop the disease than average. Acting rationally, you may make lifestyle changes and endure medical interventions. And then you don't get the disease after all because it was only an 'increased risk'. What estimate of perceived risk would it take for you to make changes? Do you even know?
3) The test will give false negatives. You may carry a variant at a position that is statistically associated with increased risk. But what about all the other sites that aren't tested or, perhaps more importantly, already known about?
The problem is that you may be capable of correctly making a 'diagnosis', but the vast majority of others will not. Aside from the fact that "searching to see if you have a gene" is a totally misleading description of what you can do, if you do find something 'bad' (which every single person will, simply through chance), what you are talking about in almost every case is a statistical association with an ailment. Without professional guidance, most people will be totally unable to make a proper inference about what that association means for them and their relatives.
I think that's a little unfair on the company. It sounds like they have a patent protecting a technology, and that patent is being infringed. The allegation is that OLPC bought some of these keyboards and then reverse engineered them (rather than licensing the technology). Sounds like infringement to me. Whether the infringement is by a charity is frankly irrelevant.
How would you feel if you spent a lot of money on something (say a house), and then somebody stole it from you? Would the fact that they then gave it away to somebody else change how you feel?
If there is no infringement, OLPC can successfully defend the litigation. The only criticism I can offer is that perhaps more effort could have been made to reach a licensing agreement.
This is little different than the old scam of finding some reason to sue a company(mental suffering was popular), then carefully asking for a settlement that would be less than what court costs to successfully fight it would be. Many businesses folded, paying to satisfy the accountants until it was pointed out that it was cheaper to fight 1 of these cases than to pay a hundred, which was the case.
I'm not sure I follow the logic here. I'm sure it may be cheaper to fight one than settle a hundred, but a successful defense doesn't necessarily preclude other suits. I mean, chances are the claimant expects to lose anyway, so the only effect is to try to convince would-be-claimants that the company will fight future suits.
Devil's advocate here, but if the company was hit by a second suit, would that not give them the impression that defending the suits wasn't going to work...?
I don't see how: a) 13:00 is the centre of our lives b) 12:00 is better
Ideally for most people, sunrise would be just before they get up, and sundown just before they go to bed. That's not possible in winter, so since the vast majority in the represented nations do not have a 'centred' day (rather they have daytime for work then evening for play), DST does in fact make good sense.
There's not much point in calibrating to winter (light when kiddies go to school, light when kiddies come home from school) and then applying it to summer, because we don't particularly want it to be light at 4am...
Or we could just change the circadian rhythms of everyone on the planet, as you suggest:)
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever a group of people wishes to control another group, the first thing they do is prohibit that group from having weapons.
You are sounding rather limited in your own grasp of world history - many enlightened countries of the modern world prohibit weapons, and none of of them have totalitarian governments. There is simply no need for anyone to possess powerful weapons if nobody else does either. And why does your government want to "control" you (hint: that's a big part of what they're for)?
First of all, it's totally disrespectful and hypocritical to imply that someone else is unable to handle weapons responsibly, while claiming you are able to do so.
Who says anyone has to have them? Here in the UK, gun ownership is illegal, and the police do not carry guns either. Nobody feels they need a gun, criminals rarely use them, and nobody is upset by the army having them. Over here, the hysteria is about pen knives instead.
If people have weapons, there is only so far you can push then before they fight back ... if people lack weapons they will only fight back once they've literally decided it is not worthwhile to live.
Or in other words, "black is not white, therefore it must be red". Are you mental? Why would people not express their opinion just because they don't have a gun?? Shooting people isn't the only (or even a likely, or indeed effective) way to fight back, surely you can't think it is? In your vision of the future, are rednecks going hand to hand with robotic agents of the government in the streets, heroically winning through their wise stockpiling of assault weaponry? And then the government says "OK, we give up" and everything is hunky dory again? Methinks you've missed about a million steps in between (probably involving an election). I hear this time and time again, and it's always from people who secretly fantasise about an apocalypse in which they get to shoot a looter/robot/zombie/graboid in the face.
There is simply no good reason for a benevolent government to ban weapons. That means that any government that wishes to do so must be malevolent
Err, reasons to ban weapons:
1. weapons are dangerous
2. people with weapons are dangerous
3. without weapons, weapons are unnecessary
4. the government is there to make life good for people (which includes keeping them alive)
What reason exactly are you suggesting for your malevolent government's wish to "control" you? I could just as easily turn your statement around and suggest that a benevolent government has no reason to allow ordinary citizens to take up arms.
I don't know what you spent your time doing whilst you were writing patent claims, but this is totally incorrect. The patents are not of the sequence of naturally occurring DNA, they are for the creation of the clone. The operative word in Claim 1 above is "isolated". It's like patenting the invention of photography - sure you can't patent fruit, but you can patent the photograph (as in, all photographs). See some of the comments below for more details. Unfortunately diagnostic tests etc typically covered by the patented technique, and often specific methods surrounding the isolation are explicit claims too.
In my opinion it's still a dodgy patent because after the first one, each gene is not sufficiently different to warrant a patent - it lacks the "inventive step". The world has been waiting a long time for a viable challenge, though to be honest it isn't such a big deal any more for public research at least.
This is a valid point. Arguably the primary aim of a prize is to establish motivation towards achieving a goal. If the goal of the prize is to create computer programs that can fool humans into thinking they are talking to other humans (hopefully making more sense than your average YouTube comment), fine. But it's unlikely to do anything for advancing "artificial intelligence", for the reason that efforts are clearly converging on a "local minimum": sentence analysis and programmed responses.
Achieving something like "real" adaptive learning is not likely to come about in one massive jump, but rather through small steps of evolution. Unfortunately, these steps are not rewarded in any way by this prize.
It would be good to have a test that does satisfy this goal, the problem is that it would be very difficult to design. The reason the Turing test is "successful" is that it can assess across the whole range of ability - programs initially perform poorly, fooling someone for a few sentences, then get better and better, fooling more and more people for longer periods. To do something similar for "intelligence" is going to be difficult or impossible. There are similar tests for specific fields of robotics though - adaptive navigation for instance.
I would guess it's because breast tissue is comparatively accessible, making it easier to biopsy and operate on with new technology such as this.
Researcher discovers that freely available material is misleading average people. And publishes his findings to a non-open-access journal where it cannot be read by average people.
*facepalm*
I do believe this is a different village, with a much smaller scale of problem. The village this article refers to apparently "is host to some 15,000 vehicles a day", with a population of 3145 in the 2001 census according to Wikipedia.
1) Why not just get a test for the one or two diseases it may actually help with?
2) The test will give false positives. It may tell you you're 50% more likely to develop the disease than average. Acting rationally, you may make lifestyle changes and endure medical interventions. And then you don't get the disease after all because it was only an 'increased risk'. What estimate of perceived risk would it take for you to make changes? Do you even know?
3) The test will give false negatives. You may carry a variant at a position that is statistically associated with increased risk. But what about all the other sites that aren't tested or, perhaps more importantly, already known about?
The problem is that you may be capable of correctly making a 'diagnosis', but the vast majority of others will not. Aside from the fact that "searching to see if you have a gene" is a totally misleading description of what you can do, if you do find something 'bad' (which every single person will, simply through chance), what you are talking about in almost every case is a statistical association with an ailment. Without professional guidance, most people will be totally unable to make a proper inference about what that association means for them and their relatives.
I think that's a little unfair on the company. It sounds like they have a patent protecting a technology, and that patent is being infringed. The allegation is that OLPC bought some of these keyboards and then reverse engineered them (rather than licensing the technology). Sounds like infringement to me. Whether the infringement is by a charity is frankly irrelevant.
How would you feel if you spent a lot of money on something (say a house), and then somebody stole it from you?
Would the fact that they then gave it away to somebody else change how you feel?
If there is no infringement, OLPC can successfully defend the litigation. The only criticism I can offer is that perhaps more effort could have been made to reach a licensing agreement.
This is little different than the old scam of finding some reason to sue a company(mental suffering was popular), then carefully asking for a settlement that would be less than what court costs to successfully fight it would be. Many businesses folded, paying to satisfy the accountants until it was pointed out that it was cheaper to fight 1 of these cases than to pay a hundred, which was the case.
I'm not sure I follow the logic here. I'm sure it may be cheaper to fight one than settle a hundred, but a successful defense doesn't necessarily preclude other suits. I mean, chances are the claimant expects to lose anyway, so the only effect is to try to convince would-be-claimants that the company will fight future suits.
Devil's advocate here, but if the company was hit by a second suit, would that not give them the impression that defending the suits wasn't going to work...?
Interesting topic.
Except lithium ion and lithium ion polymer (aka LiPo) batteries can indeed explode...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUXuEg3fNE
Actually this is a bit sensationalist, 'catch fire' is a better description. And it ain't gonna be caused by a bullet.
I don't see how:
:)
a) 13:00 is the centre of our lives
b) 12:00 is better
Ideally for most people, sunrise would be just before they get up, and sundown just before they go to bed. That's not possible in winter, so since the vast majority in the represented nations do not have a 'centred' day (rather they have daytime for work then evening for play), DST does in fact make good sense.
There's not much point in calibrating to winter (light when kiddies go to school, light when kiddies come home from school) and then applying it to summer, because we don't particularly want it to be light at 4am...
Or we could just change the circadian rhythms of everyone on the planet, as you suggest