The obvious point here should be that the countyr was sellign them too cheap. Wasting taxpayer dollars. They should have sold them on ebay where they could have gotten much more than $50 without the liability of riots.
Oh, great idea. Of course, selling them on ebay would mean that the only people who could buy them would be people who already had access to a computer. But at least they would have maximized the cash flow, which is the most important thing, right?
Actually, I bet most of 'em were Windows users, driven around the bend by viruses, bugs, and bloat, and desperate to switch. It's the only thing that could explain it.
You gotta love how liberals believe that if you write enough stuff, people will think it is true. They build bad cases upon flawed logic based on opinions. It's all third grade logic.
Sorta like the case for the Iraq invasion? Oh, wait, that was the Repub spin machine. IOKIYAR.
What I am saying is that people are forgetting that the main "accuser" of DeLay, that joker down in Texas is a partisan Democrat and hasn't been able to pin anything on DeLay.
How could we forget when DeLay or his spokesdroids take pains to remind us of it every other day?
Funny though, they always forget to mention that the "partisan Democrat" has a long, solid record of going after corrupt Repubs and Dems. Perhaps it's just hard for them to believe that some people do their jobs without checking party affiliation (or bank accounts).
it's right here:
- see it?
Excellent work! And your method is so easy to use that we've already adapted it to our own uses. For instances, your $11 million check is here:
Nothing starts my day better than the pleasant scent of vaporware wafting from my computer. We live in a great time. This shows what a kid with nothing but a formalism and a dream can accomplish.
Yeah, Hawkins has a history of making a big deal of concepts that never get anywhere. I remember a decade ago when there was all sorts of vaporware BS about a programmable handheld electronic organizer that could be operated with a stylus and easily synchronized with a desktop computer. What a farce that turned out to be.
According to the Numeta site, the company is supposedly funded "by its founders, board members, and close associates", but I doubt Hawkins was able to ante up much, given the complete failure of his silly "organizer" thingy.
From what I remember from my neural networks days the human brain/neocortex works so well because of its massively parallel nature (not because of the processing power of any one neuron), and that computers simply aren't able to exploit this as they aren't designed to work like this...
Most current computers aren't designed to work like this.
We know that it's possible to make a machine think, because we already have a working example (in fact, lots of 'em).
I wish.
Think about how your brain works and what your "conscious experience" really is. When you break it down you find that it's really not that amazing.
I disagree. It is amazing. But it's not miraculous. I doubt that anyone will ever be able to create AI. But I won't be at all surprised if some folks eventually figure out (or stumble onto) the conditions necessary for AI to emerge.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome ! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
My job when your resume' includes experimental proof in the form of a portfolio that includes your worshippers.
Only an insecure deity would want or need worship. Wouldn't it be embarrasing to have a deity with the divine equivalent of acne, a stupid laugh, and no social skills? The only form of worship I'd want is an occasional sapient showing up at the temple and saying things like, "Look! We have invented this excellent thing to do with grains; we call it 'beer'! Want to try some?"
For years we have every couple of months there a new revolutionary way to convert solar rays to electricity.
And despite all the great work being done in the field, people keep dismissing the potential. Sad.
Yes, some science writers are sloppy, and some editors are more interested in selling fishwrap than getting the story right. But compared to the standards of hype in the computer/tech press, science writing is the voice of reason.
Hmmm, I assume this means that I have to go outside?
Um... yeah, yeah, that's what it means. And once you're outside, you might as well start walking, because the closer you are to the equator, the better it works. Really.
Give me a call when you get there and let us know how well it works. (You can reach me at 1-888-URN-IJIT.)
The last thing free software proponents need is to associate themselves with a failed economic ideology that has resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths worldwide.
Just for a minute here, I wasn't sure you were talking about communism or corporatism.
Re:This should solve a dilemma
on
Re-Pet a Reality
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The client claims that the cloned cat has the same personality as its donor...but then again, how closely was this one raised to its predecessor?
A better question to ask is how delusional the client is.
Look, my partner I have a cat (or maybe vice-versa). We're damned fond of her, and we like to pretend we understand her, but we're both smart enough to know that our perception of her personality is massively garbled by the fact that we're human and she's not. There is no friggin' way that this woman's claim that Little Nicky's personality is "identical" to Nicky's is anything other than wishful thinking.
Our cat is dying. When she's dead, we'll miss her, but she will be dead. Even if $50,000 was pocket change to us, we wouldn't clone her because it'd be a really shallow way to treat our memories of her.
However, the "It said something -- or someone -- had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels" sounds very unscientific. Did the New Scientist magazine really say this?
I haven't read the latest issue yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did phrase it that way. It's not unscientific, it's just a bit of British humor. (New Scientist is based in the UK and isn't exactly a formal journal.)
At what point do people start breaking them open to see what's inside and spilling the boiling contents on their laps? Do they have a warning telling people not to do that? Or is self-responsibility considered more widespread across the pond?
More likely scenario: Someone who hasn't trimmed their fingernails down to the quick accidentally breaks it open, causing crippling third degree burns. After finding out that the company knew that this was a problem (from countless other similar accidents) but decided that keeping a corporate legal team was cheaper than redesigning the container, the customer managed to find a lawyer who hadn't sold their soul to a corporation. After that lawyer somehow manages to get the case into court despite the well-practiced tactics of the corporate team, a jury examines the evidence and awards the customers enough to pay their medical bills, plus a punitary award that seems large for an individual but is corporate pocket change. After multiple appeals by the corporate team, the settlement is whittled down to enough for the medical bills and free coffee for a year.
Meanwhile, politicians whose re-election coffers are fattened with corporate checks make a big deal about how "lawsuit happy" the country is, and -- once enough gullible people have bought into grossly exaggerated "examples" -- push for "tort reform". For some reason, "responsibility" isn't seen as a concept that should apply to corporations.
The trick is that it takes patience and respect, which are qualities that -- judging from evidence here and elsewhere -- seem to be at least as rare among the pro-nuclear folks as among the anti-nuclear folks.
Actually, if you listen to the director's commentary on Star Trek II: Wrath of Kahn, this wasn't always the case. The director of Star Trek II specifically introduced naval terminology and traditions into the series from that film. It seemed to have taken and stuck.
While Nicholas Meyer may have come up with that independantly, the naval paradigm for spacecraft in SF pre-dates Wrath of Khan by at least decades. For instance, Robert Heinlein used it quite a bit, which is not surprising given his naval background. Jerry Pournelle has also used that approach in much of his fiction, again decades prior to Wrath.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll love it -- it's a joke based on a myth, too.
Oh, great idea. Of course, selling them on ebay would mean that the only people who could buy them would be people who already had access to a computer. But at least they would have maximized the cash flow, which is the most important thing, right?
Actually, I bet most of 'em were Windows users, driven around the bend by viruses, bugs, and bloat, and desperate to switch. It's the only thing that could explain it.
And we all know that the cost of producing something never changes due to unimportant factors like economy-of-scale or technological developments.
Where did you buy your abacus?
Sorta like the case for the Iraq invasion? Oh, wait, that was the Repub spin machine. IOKIYAR.
How could we forget when DeLay or his spokesdroids take pains to remind us of it every other day?
Funny though, they always forget to mention that the "partisan Democrat" has a long, solid record of going after corrupt Repubs and Dems. Perhaps it's just hard for them to believe that some people do their jobs without checking party affiliation (or bank accounts).
"We came in peace for all mankind."
Don't spend it all in one place!
Yeah, Hawkins has a history of making a big deal of concepts that never get anywhere. I remember a decade ago when there was all sorts of vaporware BS about a programmable handheld electronic organizer that could be operated with a stylus and easily synchronized with a desktop computer. What a farce that turned out to be.
According to the Numeta site, the company is supposedly funded "by its founders, board members, and close associates", but I doubt Hawkins was able to ante up much, given the complete failure of his silly "organizer" thingy.
Most current computers aren't designed to work like this.
Well, it's a comic movie about ghosts. Somehow it never occurred to me to expect a high degree of scientific accuracy.
I wish.
Think about how your brain works and what your "conscious experience" really is. When you break it down you find that it's really not that amazing.
I disagree. It is amazing. But it's not miraculous. I doubt that anyone will ever be able to create AI. But I won't be at all surprised if some folks eventually figure out (or stumble onto) the conditions necessary for AI to emerge.
Kubla Khan
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Only an insecure deity would want or need worship. Wouldn't it be embarrasing to have a deity with the divine equivalent of acne, a stupid laugh, and no social skills? The only form of worship I'd want is an occasional sapient showing up at the temple and saying things like, "Look! We have invented this excellent thing to do with grains; we call it 'beer'! Want to try some?"
Yeah, so nice and everything, but will it run Linux?
Alright, all you AJ-X7c's into the hot tub. It's time for a Beowulf cluster!
And despite all the great work being done in the field, people keep dismissing the potential. Sad.
Yes, some science writers are sloppy, and some editors are more interested in selling fishwrap than getting the story right. But compared to the standards of hype in the computer/tech press, science writing is the voice of reason.
Um ... yeah, yeah, that's what it means. And once you're outside, you might as well start walking, because the closer you are to the equator, the better it works. Really.
Give me a call when you get there and let us know how well it works. (You can reach me at 1-888-URN-IJIT.)
Just for a minute here, I wasn't sure you were talking about communism or corporatism.
A better question to ask is how delusional the client is.
Look, my partner I have a cat (or maybe vice-versa). We're damned fond of her, and we like to pretend we understand her, but we're both smart enough to know that our perception of her personality is massively garbled by the fact that we're human and she's not. There is no friggin' way that this woman's claim that Little Nicky's personality is "identical" to Nicky's is anything other than wishful thinking.
Our cat is dying. When she's dead, we'll miss her, but she will be dead. Even if $50,000 was pocket change to us, we wouldn't clone her because it'd be a really shallow way to treat our memories of her.
I haven't read the latest issue yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did phrase it that way. It's not unscientific, it's just a bit of British humor. (New Scientist is based in the UK and isn't exactly a formal journal.)
More likely scenario: Someone who hasn't trimmed their fingernails down to the quick accidentally breaks it open, causing crippling third degree burns. After finding out that the company knew that this was a problem (from countless other similar accidents) but decided that keeping a corporate legal team was cheaper than redesigning the container, the customer managed to find a lawyer who hadn't sold their soul to a corporation. After that lawyer somehow manages to get the case into court despite the well-practiced tactics of the corporate team, a jury examines the evidence and awards the customers enough to pay their medical bills, plus a punitary award that seems large for an individual but is corporate pocket change. After multiple appeals by the corporate team, the settlement is whittled down to enough for the medical bills and free coffee for a year.
Meanwhile, politicians whose re-election coffers are fattened with corporate checks make a big deal about how "lawsuit happy" the country is, and -- once enough gullible people have bought into grossly exaggerated "examples" -- push for "tort reform". For some reason, "responsibility" isn't seen as a concept that should apply to corporations.
The trick is that it takes patience and respect, which are qualities that -- judging from evidence here and elsewhere -- seem to be at least as rare among the pro-nuclear folks as among the anti-nuclear folks.
Of course not. The New York Times also has some news coverage of suburbs of The City ... like D.C., Bahgdad, and Hong Kong, for example.
Interesting. That's very close to usage in the US, where it means something that happens before everybody gets screwed.
While Nicholas Meyer may have come up with that independantly, the naval paradigm for spacecraft in SF pre-dates Wrath of Khan by at least decades. For instance, Robert Heinlein used it quite a bit, which is not surprising given his naval background. Jerry Pournelle has also used that approach in much of his fiction, again decades prior to Wrath.