Let's not forget the iPhone, iPad, and all the other devices which are (hopefully) not going to support Silverlight OR Flash. Lots of users, users who actually pay money for things, and business-people thinks they are fashionable. (Imagine telling your investors that you don't want Flash because you want to support Linux desktop users... then mentioning that it's also iPhone compatible).
I also wonder about the whole "computers replacing humans pretty soon". The finance sector is pretty much all AI these days, but it's more bloated than ever with highly-paid employees. (Sorta kinda).
Google will get better and better at parroting good translating and interpreting decisions, but software will never be able to make those decisions, because, in the final analysis, they are subjective decisions.
Think about how successful google has been with search. Prior to the web, we would have idealized search as speaking with an expert who has all the knowledge that exists on the web. Various efforts still strive for that vision today (askjeeves, wolphramalpha, etc). But clearly it is unreachable for the forseeable future. Yet, search is very useful.
Similarly, this universal translator may well reach a point that it is possible to visit a place, buy things, have a meal, ask where the toilets are, and get back home, particularly when both parties in the conversation are familiar with the limitations of translation. That would be extremely useful, even if it's only 1/100 of all a native bilingual speaker understands, or what you would need for nuanced treaty negotiations or to author a respectable translation of War and Peace.
In Chinese, then back to English:
Think about how the success has been with Google search. Prior to site, we will work with specialists who have all the knowledge and presence on the network to speak idealized search. However, efforts to fight the idea, (it is by virtue of, wolphramalpha, etc.). But obviously can not access the foreseeable future. However, the search is very useful.
Similarly, the universal translator is likely to reach a point of view, is that we can visit places, buy things, eat a meal, and asked where the toilets and get back home, especially when the parties are familiar with the limitations of dialogue and translation. This will be very useful, even if only 1 / 100 of the machine for all those who understand the bilingual, or you need to nuanced negotiation of a treaty, or the author's respect for the translation of war and peace.
Well, it's more about the boards of directors. And directors are generally recommended by the CEO (unless you have an activist shareholder), who then elect the CEO.
So board members and CEOs both have an incentive to recommend / elect insular, conservative old boys.
If you were sitting on the board, would you elect a tall guy with a firm handshake who liked to talk about continuity and trust, or a someone who liked talking about "the best person for the job"?
Girls are fine at that age, it is when they start dating that their IQ drops to room temperature.
What? In a date, the guy asks the girl out, plans the evening, arranges transport, spends his cash, and tries to make sure she has the most enjoyable time possible. The girl deigns to accept (or turns him down if he's not good enough), takes his offerings, then grades him based on his efforts while her contribution is limited to choosing her clothes and makeup. Who's the one with the high IQ in this exchange?
You know it sounds like you've asked a rhetorical question, but I'm not sure what the answer is.
Only fundamental research into particle physics. There are plenty of equally fundamental research areas (genetics if you are practically-minded, math if you're not) which don't require billion dollar budgets.
Personally, I see the whole "physics is the ultimate science" as a con to graft in more grad students.
It won't just need to be a bit random. It will need to be capable of spotting (and following up) on false leads. Making mistakes. Look at John Nash. Look at Kepler (yes, that Kepler) who spent most of his time trying to make the planets' orbits "fit inside" his crazy "Harmonices Mundi" theories. A bit of geometry (Kepler solids) that he tried to extended to "harmonic analysis to music, meteorology and astrology; harmony resulted from the tones made by the souls of heavenly bodies—and in the case of astrology, the interaction between those tones and human souls" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonices_Mundi).
The problem is that people are not influenced by well-quantified risk. The Day After Tomorrow has done more to raise awareness of the risks of Climate Change than the well-quantified UNCCC work.
It's all in the presentation, and people who give the best presentations don't always have the best quantification.
Also, people tend to flip between a passive stance to oh-my-goodness-we-are-all-going-to-die, with very little gray areas.
Why does IT deserve some special recognition though? Accounting is a cost center, as are marketing, advertising, legal, secretarial, etc. employees. IT is the only one who has this martyr complex.
Good question. I guess that most managers have a fair idea what the accountants, marketeers, advertisers, legal teams, secretaries, HR specialists, etc do.
Managers don't (generally) have a clue about IT. What's worse, they think they do.
Google manages to get high reliability at a low cost by using redundancy. Medical devices be set up the same way. Not always (you can't cut with two scalpels), but in a lot of cases it could be done.
Imaging software could run on three independently developed code paths (on separate machines) to check that the results are processed correctly.
Three separate actuators could maintain gas pressure.
Apple wouldn't sue if there wasn't a product in the pipe. That's how you can tell when Apple is bringing out a new product - they start sending C&D letters.
Movies have lots of tricks to make the shots look "real", and CGI plays catch-up a bit. Remember that scene in Starlight Express, where the two kids looked cross-eyed when they stared at each other? No "grabber".
Or Radioactive Man:
Martin Prince: Uh, sir, why don't you just use real cows?
Painter: Cows don't look like cows on film. You got to use horses.
Ralph Wiggum: What do you do if you want something that looks like a horse?
Painter: Usually we just tape a bunch of cats together.
In Shrek 1, they actually made Fiona look more "cartoonish", because she was almost photo-realistic. But the slight differences made her look like an animated manikin, rather than a real human. Freaky - thus the uncanny valley.
IIRC, Final Fantasy (the movie) tried to beat the uncanny valley by matching the actors lips very well. But then they re-dubbed it from Japanese to English, and made it even worse.
I heard a rumor that there's some fundamental geophysical program that's been around for decades. It doesn't accumulate the results in an array, because memory was too expensive when fortran 66 was the hot new thing.
It has a write-to-disk instruction in an inner loop. But it works, and nobody wants to touch it.
A little micro-optimization there would grant a 1000x speedup.
I can see collaborative social media overtaking a lot of traditional education. But telling professors to "use Twitter" will *not* be any use for anyone.
Getting professors to blog, perhaps giving students a window onto the ongoing process of research (as opposed to the sanitized version they can read in journals) might be a step.
Did I say getting? Hmm, professors seem to professionally blog more any than anyone else already (except VCs, startup founders, and a few other niche professions).
So machines (a new life-form) have evolved in a symbiotic relationship with humans? Perhaps Ford Prefect was correct when he took cars to be the dominant species.
TM doesn't even require originality. AFAIK (and IANAL), it should just be a phrase that isn't in common usage. Even if you're from Kentucky and you sell fried chicken, you can't sell "Kentucky Fried Chicken", because KFC has that TM. It might just be a term, but it's a trade marked term.
Trade Marks are a pretty good idea, really. If you build a brand, and use distinctive signs to show that products are made by your company then people shouldn't be able to pass off as you. There are abuses (try making a moving about a talking mouse with big round ears), but brands are an important thing really.
I think that a viral (but free) license might be innovative and non-obvious enough to warrant a patent, had RMS wanted one. Something as basic as a TM should be a piece of cake.
Yes. Linux has many, many things that are pretty cool.
Unfortunately, they haven't had a good all-together tied-in user experience.
Claiming things like "we have chroot" and "we have sudo" and other code/geek-ish type of coolnesses is like claiming that your car has awesome engine with new piston technology, very secure door locks, and can run on almost ANY fuel currently available; unfortunately, the seats are rather uncomfortable and the controls on the dashboard look more like a commercial airliner's cockpit.
Yes, I know it's getting better. That's good. I hope they keep it up and continue to improve issues that apparently many geeks don't care about and many average users do (like flash video [youtube] and audio) and being able to use their iPods and scanners).:)
And you can't drive it into town because it's a boat, not a car. And the "road compatibility mode" is a little wonky.
Doesn't FreeBSD has some sort of "jail" functionality? And has since the year 2000?
I'm not convinced that virtualizing a whole frigging OS is always the best. It's great for running XP or Linux on a MacBook; or XP on a Linux box (if Wine isn't enough), but the RAM use high enough to severely limit it's uses for security.
I'm not using a browser if it opens a new OS for every damn tab, for example.
OS tools (jails, lower level user accounts, etc) are going to be better. Or using a State Machine, or some other real engineering paradigm (instead of nasty hacked up code that kinda looks like it works).
Slashdot Mirror
Let's not forget the iPhone, iPad, and all the other devices which are (hopefully) not going to support Silverlight OR Flash. Lots of users, users who actually pay money for things, and business-people thinks they are fashionable. (Imagine telling your investors that you don't want Flash because you want to support Linux desktop users ... then mentioning that it's also iPhone compatible).
I also wonder about the whole "computers replacing humans pretty soon". The finance sector is pretty much all AI these days, but it's more bloated than ever with highly-paid employees. (Sorta kinda).
Think about how successful google has been with search. Prior to the web, we would have idealized search as speaking with an expert who has all the knowledge that exists on the web. Various efforts still strive for that vision today (askjeeves, wolphramalpha, etc). But clearly it is unreachable for the forseeable future. Yet, search is very useful.
Similarly, this universal translator may well reach a point that it is possible to visit a place, buy things, have a meal, ask where the toilets are, and get back home, particularly when both parties in the conversation are familiar with the limitations of translation. That would be extremely useful, even if it's only 1/100 of all a native bilingual speaker understands, or what you would need for nuanced treaty negotiations or to author a respectable translation of War and Peace.
In Chinese, then back to English:
Think about how the success has been with Google search. Prior to site, we will work with specialists who have all the knowledge and presence on the network to speak idealized search. However, efforts to fight the idea, (it is by virtue of, wolphramalpha, etc.). But obviously can not access the foreseeable future. However, the search is very useful.
Similarly, the universal translator is likely to reach a point of view, is that we can visit places, buy things, eat a meal, and asked where the toilets and get back home, especially when the parties are familiar with the limitations of dialogue and translation. This will be very useful, even if only 1 / 100 of the machine for all those who understand the bilingual, or you need to nuanced negotiation of a treaty, or the author's respect for the translation of war and peace.
Mod parent tragically informative.
Well, it's more about the boards of directors. And directors are generally recommended by the CEO (unless you have an activist shareholder), who then elect the CEO.
So board members and CEOs both have an incentive to recommend / elect insular, conservative old boys.
If you were sitting on the board, would you elect a tall guy with a firm handshake who liked to talk about continuity and trust, or a someone who liked talking about "the best person for the job"?
Girls are fine at that age, it is when they start dating that their IQ drops to room temperature.
What? In a date, the guy asks the girl out, plans the evening, arranges transport, spends his cash, and tries to make sure she has the most enjoyable time possible. The girl deigns to accept (or turns him down if he's not good enough), takes his offerings, then grades him based on his efforts while her contribution is limited to choosing her clothes and makeup. Who's the one with the high IQ in this exchange?
You know it sounds like you've asked a rhetorical question, but I'm not sure what the answer is.
Riiiight. Like parents never have any expectations for their children. And if they do, it's a bad thing.
Only fundamental research into particle physics. There are plenty of equally fundamental research areas (genetics if you are practically-minded, math if you're not) which don't require billion dollar budgets.
Personally, I see the whole "physics is the ultimate science" as a con to graft in more grad students.
It's not even a car analogy!
It won't just need to be a bit random. It will need to be capable of spotting (and following up) on false leads. Making mistakes. Look at John Nash. Look at Kepler (yes, that Kepler) who spent most of his time trying to make the planets' orbits "fit inside" his crazy "Harmonices Mundi" theories. A bit of geometry (Kepler solids) that he tried to extended to "harmonic analysis to music, meteorology and astrology; harmony resulted from the tones made by the souls of heavenly bodies—and in the case of astrology, the interaction between those tones and human souls" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonices_Mundi).
Tell them what they should do. If they ignore it, it's their data. Just don't tell them you told them so - nobody likes a smartass.
The problem is that people are not influenced by well-quantified risk. The Day After Tomorrow has done more to raise awareness of the risks of Climate Change than the well-quantified UNCCC work.
It's all in the presentation, and people who give the best presentations don't always have the best quantification.
Also, people tend to flip between a passive stance to oh-my-goodness-we-are-all-going-to-die, with very little gray areas.
Why does IT deserve some special recognition though? Accounting is a cost center, as are marketing, advertising, legal, secretarial, etc. employees. IT is the only one who has this martyr complex.
Good question. I guess that most managers have a fair idea what the accountants, marketeers, advertisers, legal teams, secretaries, HR specialists, etc do.
Managers don't (generally) have a clue about IT. What's worse, they think they do.
I agree. Why should the works of a long-living author be worth less than the works of an author who dies early?
Wouldn't installing Wine by default be enough?
Google manages to get high reliability at a low cost by using redundancy. Medical devices be set up the same way. Not always (you can't cut with two scalpels), but in a lot of cases it could be done.
Imaging software could run on three independently developed code paths (on separate machines) to check that the results are processed correctly.
Three separate actuators could maintain gas pressure.
You get the picture.
Apple wouldn't sue if there wasn't a product in the pipe. That's how you can tell when Apple is bringing out a new product - they start sending C&D letters.
It's a funny old way to do PR releases.
Movies have lots of tricks to make the shots look "real", and CGI plays catch-up a bit. Remember that scene in Starlight Express, where the two kids looked cross-eyed when they stared at each other? No "grabber".
Or Radioactive Man:
Martin Prince: Uh, sir, why don't you just use real cows?
Painter: Cows don't look like cows on film. You got to use horses.
Ralph Wiggum: What do you do if you want something that looks like a horse?
Painter: Usually we just tape a bunch of cats together.
In Shrek 1, they actually made Fiona look more "cartoonish", because she was almost photo-realistic. But the slight differences made her look like an animated manikin, rather than a real human. Freaky - thus the uncanny valley.
IIRC, Final Fantasy (the movie) tried to beat the uncanny valley by matching the actors lips very well. But then they re-dubbed it from Japanese to English, and made it even worse.
I heard a rumor that there's some fundamental geophysical program that's been around for decades. It doesn't accumulate the results in an array, because memory was too expensive when fortran 66 was the hot new thing.
It has a write-to-disk instruction in an inner loop. But it works, and nobody wants to touch it.
A little micro-optimization there would grant a 1000x speedup.
I can see collaborative social media overtaking a lot of traditional education. But telling professors to "use Twitter" will *not* be any use for anyone.
Getting professors to blog, perhaps giving students a window onto the ongoing process of research (as opposed to the sanitized version they can read in journals) might be a step.
Did I say getting? Hmm, professors seem to professionally blog more any than anyone else already (except VCs, startup founders, and a few other niche professions).
So machines (a new life-form) have evolved in a symbiotic relationship with humans? Perhaps Ford Prefect was correct when he took cars to be the dominant species.
TM doesn't even require originality. AFAIK (and IANAL), it should just be a phrase that isn't in common usage. Even if you're from Kentucky and you sell fried chicken, you can't sell "Kentucky Fried Chicken", because KFC has that TM. It might just be a term, but it's a trade marked term.
Trade Marks are a pretty good idea, really. If you build a brand, and use distinctive signs to show that products are made by your company then people shouldn't be able to pass off as you. There are abuses (try making a moving about a talking mouse with big round ears), but brands are an important thing really.
I think that a viral (but free) license might be innovative and non-obvious enough to warrant a patent, had RMS wanted one. Something as basic as a TM should be a piece of cake.
Yes. Linux has many, many things that are pretty cool.
Unfortunately, they haven't had a good all-together tied-in user experience.
Claiming things like "we have chroot" and "we have sudo" and other code/geek-ish type of coolnesses is like claiming that your car has awesome engine with new piston technology, very secure door locks, and can run on almost ANY fuel currently available; unfortunately, the seats are rather uncomfortable and the controls on the dashboard look more like a commercial airliner's cockpit.
Yes, I know it's getting better. That's good. I hope they keep it up and continue to improve issues that apparently many geeks don't care about and many average users do (like flash video [youtube] and audio) and being able to use their iPods and scanners). :)
And you can't drive it into town because it's a boat, not a car. And the "road compatibility mode" is a little wonky.
Doesn't FreeBSD has some sort of "jail" functionality? And has since the year 2000?
I'm not convinced that virtualizing a whole frigging OS is always the best. It's great for running XP or Linux on a MacBook; or XP on a Linux box (if Wine isn't enough), but the RAM use high enough to severely limit it's uses for security.
I'm not using a browser if it opens a new OS for every damn tab, for example.
OS tools (jails, lower level user accounts, etc) are going to be better. Or using a State Machine, or some other real engineering paradigm (instead of nasty hacked up code that kinda looks like it works).