What all you nay-sayers forget is that this is only the very beginning of (debatable) usefulness. What comes out of this research over the next 10, 30 or 50 years, however, may prove surprising, and not just for how far this "mule" has come, but what other technologies it throws off along the way.
Mod parent up. This always bothers me with these kinds of stories. While the immediate usefulness of this particular project may be questionable, the long-term benefit of this type of research is potentially huge, and the best way to find the flaws and improve the technology is to put it to the test in real situations.
DARPA and NASA (and other similar organizations) projects very often result in tons of technologies that provide huge benefits across the board. When you aim for the stars, even if you fall a little short, you still often hit a worthwhile target. Just think about robotics, the internet, advanced materials, all kinds of food safety improvements, etc. All of these things that we take for granted now were the direct result or biproducts of DARPA and NASA projects. The world would NOT be the same as it is without this type of research.
The last time I used Myth (within a few months I believe), the commercial detection worked flawlessly for the few shows I recorded. My Myth box unfortunately does not handle HD well and doesn't get much use anymore, but it seems to have improved since the box was under the TV a few years ago. If the Myth guys can get it that good, I think there's hope for Dish. (Though if the AC is correct and it's all done by people, it doesn't really matter what I say)
I'm sure someone will post that Myth sucks and never detects commercials properly, but it worked for me.
While the RIAA and US government are far from innocent, it is in fact YOUR government that is to blame if you have a problem with the laws in your country. Get busy fixing it instead of blaming others for your problems.
But lots of companies don't work anything like their mission statements would suggest. While I'm not a fan of KDE myself, it would be a shame if they are going in that direction.
To understand elements and chemical reactions you need to know how many protons an atom has, which requires knowledge of integers. Atoms are also discrete units, again integers. Even from an astronomical point of view planets and stars for distinct countable (integer) units. If we find aliens they may not understand integers, but if aliens find us they would pretty much have to have all the mathematical and scientific knowledge we do (and a lot more) to get here.
That is how we see things. Regardless of whether we're right or not, an alien civilization could very well have come up with a theory that adequately explains chemical reactions that is completely different. To think otherwise is to succumb to your own bias.
Now, I agree that a space-faring civilization would most likely understand integers, but you can't possibly know that. The universe holds too many amazing things. We have only the tiniest understanding of it, and much of what we 'know' could very well be wrong.
Let's take a slight detour: Imagine a species that evolved in space, rather than on a planet's surface. To meet our current definitions of life, they would need to be able to move around and interact with their environment, which means some sort of propulsion in space. If this species managed to make it to our planet, they could be very intelligent and still not necessarily have any need for integers or subatomic particles.
Plus at least simple counting has been shown in many animals, even those only distantly related to primates, so it's not like humans are even the only species on earth that can count integers.
True, but they also evolved on the same planet with the same conditions. You can't assume that alien life would be anything like the life forms on this planet. Some people think they might be, but we don't KNOW.
Your link isn't working for me, but unemployment numbers only count people who are actively looking. If they gave up and got jobs at McDonalds or Walmart to keep from starving, they wouldn't be counted as unemployed.
They've scaled it back in the past and it just comes back in another game. In six months or a year, if they've kept that crap out of their games, maybe I'll consider giving them money again. Maybe.
Maybe in principle, but in my experience using the hardware, the drivers that NVIDIA is providing are far superior to the AMD drivers available for all but the most basic uses. This seems to be the general consensus, at least where I tend to spend my time.
If you're more concerned about software freedom than I am, maybe you'd rather have AMD. My Linux boxes are much happier with NVIDIA, especially my HTPC. If I get enough cash to throw at it, I might try a low power Ivy Bridge or one of the new Atoms for a new HTPC, but the low-power standalone NVIDIA cards are just so easy...
My grandfather was an uneducated farmer. He's a smart guy, but his education included only basic math/reading and common sense. He put all six of his kids through college. Two are engineers, two are teachers, one owns a very successful paving company, and one runs a restaurant. They didn't get where they are because my grandfather knew everything and passed it down. They got there because he and his wife created an environment where they could (and had to) learn.
Anyone who knows about small-time farming knows that it can be very hard to make ends meet. If my grandfather could do it and make it look so easy, then there is no reason that all these office and factory drones can't.
Exactly this. I wish that the firefox people would add that as a feature, rather than the claptrap I've seen them do lately. Oh. While I'm talking about things they will never do, they should bring back the 3.6 UI as an option.
A bit off topic, but if you really don't like the new Firefox interface, it only takes about a minute to change it back using their 'Customize' feature. And torrent downloads can be done with an add-on in about the same amount of time.
As far as torrents being for piracy... I have no doubt that the vast majority of torrent activity is copyright infringement of some kind (I hesitate to call it truly illegal), but it could be extremely useful if it were more widespread on the internet. It has a lot of potential to lighten the load on the infrastructure and increase download speeds at the same time.
It really is. I flew out of LAX in early May last year and the security line zig-zagged through ropes twice, up stairs in the middle of those, then went down the road for a quarter mile or more. Around a major holiday, I'm surprised people even make their flights.
All this means is that I will never again sign into my Google accounts in my browser. You can't give me screwed up results if you don't know who I am. If it gets too much worse, I'm probably just going to bail altogether. Thanks, Google.
As teslafreak said, people are rarely ticketed/arrested for it. In my view, the law is on the books to protect drivers from legal trouble from idiot pedestrians and to attempt to protect the pedestrians from themselves. That way, when I hit you with my car because you want to cross the street NOW, you can't mindlessly sue me because you're too stupid to not jump in front of a moving car. If you were in the crosswalk, you may have a more valid case, but that's a different matter.
No. I'm saying that, without a a society large enough and diverse enough to grow on its own, we would never have enough of the things to be at risk for what the GP is talking about.
Absolutely, they are still used. I'm certainly not saying they aren't. I wish they were used MORE. I'm just pointing out the fact that way too many manager types think computer simulations are good enough. Whether it's because of TV or some kind of strange trust in salesmen, I don't know, but it's becoming a bigger problem in some industries.
Anyone who uses computer simulations to model physical things knows that computers just plain can't do everything for you. ie. In the case of a physical part, you still need to do hands-on testing and at least verify your simulation results.
I want to say I'm a bit surprised that physical models aren't used more, but I'm really not. I just pray it's because people are trying to trim costs and are rolling the dice that the simulations are good enough and not because they actually believe the simulations are perfect... At least if it's a cost-cutting measure, they probably know they could run into trouble. Maybe.
All of that is extremely unlikely to be an issue, considering they only have one sample of DNA that's any good. You would need AT least a male and female to start producing more mammoths in any kind of normal fashion, and you'd need a good number more than that to provide enough genetic diversity for them to be healthy.
While it's POSSIBLE we could eventually resurrect the species, it's unlikely, and we're not even close to that yet.
What is wrong with taking customer complaint calls and responding that way? There will always be a few people that whine about bad coverage; that doesn't mean the problem is on the carrier's end. If the majority of customers have a good experience, things will work out.
Verizon, the US's largest carrier, does not use CarrierIQ. Verizon is also largely believed to have the best/most reliable coverage of the big four. Clearly, you don't NEED CarrierIQ to successfully manage a network.
Napster, as it stood back then, is long dead. The Napster being discussed now is (was?) a music store that was formed from the ashes of the old music-sharing service. The second sentence of the summary even explains it.
Smart companies realize they can hire the top grads at a lesser known school for less money.
How exactly is that a good thing? You just said that he's every bit as capable as someone at a top 10 school. If his ability is really the same, he should make the same money. If he doesn't, then you're arbitrarily raising up students based on less meaningful (or entirely meaningless) criteria.
Regardless, a business student is the wrong example for this discussion. The majority of our problems in STEM fields are related to incentives. Scientists and engineers are the foundation of technology and, as a result, society. Yet many scientists end up making pennies doing academic research, or face huge ethical dilemmas working for corporations. Even worse, their degrees often go unused because of the sorry state of the system. It should not be so difficult for them to find meaningful work.
I'm not the first one to say this here or anywhere: Fix the incentives, and the majority of the problems will go away. And please please PLEASE do not let the standards for STEM majors drop anymore. There are already far too many incompetent engineers out here in corporationland.
AC or not, he has a point. There are any number of promising (or at least feasible) energy projects out there that could use a boost. Many of them are small and relatively cheap, as well.
The Polywell research is already funded by the Navy, so that might get complicated is we start mixing piles of money, but more funding could speed things up and free up time for the researchers to do more research instead of looking for money. There are tons of these small fusion projects going, each with their own little twist on IEC containment or similar.
You answered your own question, really. 'Normal' people don't care about having stock android, dual-core processors, and the like. They want a phone that also does apps and internet stuff, which means they follow the crowd to an iPhone or get a cheaper Android phone that still does everything but make their coffee in the morning.
Google knows very well who they are targeting with these flagship phones and it's not hurting them one bit. They're trying to show off what Android can do and they're letting the carriers fill the rest of the market. Remember that Google doesn't care about dominating the market with their specific phone. They just want the advertising money and the carriers are doing that for them just fine.
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What all you nay-sayers forget is that this is only the very beginning of (debatable) usefulness. What comes out of this research over the next 10, 30 or 50 years, however, may prove surprising, and not just for how far this "mule" has come, but what other technologies it throws off along the way.
Mod parent up. This always bothers me with these kinds of stories. While the immediate usefulness of this particular project may be questionable, the long-term benefit of this type of research is potentially huge, and the best way to find the flaws and improve the technology is to put it to the test in real situations.
DARPA and NASA (and other similar organizations) projects very often result in tons of technologies that provide huge benefits across the board. When you aim for the stars, even if you fall a little short, you still often hit a worthwhile target. Just think about robotics, the internet, advanced materials, all kinds of food safety improvements, etc. All of these things that we take for granted now were the direct result or biproducts of DARPA and NASA projects. The world would NOT be the same as it is without this type of research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/ten-nasa-inventions.htm
Wait 'til RoboCop finds out. Boy will he be jealous.
Don't worry, the Kiwis are preparing to get Snoopy on the case...
"The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) has teamed up with Mini Cooper in New Zealand to teach three dogs how to drive." http://mashable.com/2012/12/05/driving-dogs-campaign/
Finally. When that catches on, it'll be a nice improvement over the people on the road during my commute.
The last time I used Myth (within a few months I believe), the commercial detection worked flawlessly for the few shows I recorded. My Myth box unfortunately does not handle HD well and doesn't get much use anymore, but it seems to have improved since the box was under the TV a few years ago. If the Myth guys can get it that good, I think there's hope for Dish. (Though if the AC is correct and it's all done by people, it doesn't really matter what I say)
I'm sure someone will post that Myth sucks and never detects commercials properly, but it worked for me.
While the RIAA and US government are far from innocent, it is in fact YOUR government that is to blame if you have a problem with the laws in your country. Get busy fixing it instead of blaming others for your problems.
Probably true, and it looks great on the surface.
But lots of companies don't work anything like their mission statements would suggest. While I'm not a fan of KDE myself, it would be a shame if they are going in that direction.
To understand elements and chemical reactions you need to know how many protons an atom has, which requires knowledge of integers. Atoms are also discrete units, again integers. Even from an astronomical point of view planets and stars for distinct countable (integer) units. If we find aliens they may not understand integers, but if aliens find us they would pretty much have to have all the mathematical and scientific knowledge we do (and a lot more) to get here.
That is how we see things. Regardless of whether we're right or not, an alien civilization could very well have come up with a theory that adequately explains chemical reactions that is completely different. To think otherwise is to succumb to your own bias.
Now, I agree that a space-faring civilization would most likely understand integers, but you can't possibly know that. The universe holds too many amazing things. We have only the tiniest understanding of it, and much of what we 'know' could very well be wrong.
Let's take a slight detour:
Imagine a species that evolved in space, rather than on a planet's surface. To meet our current definitions of life, they would need to be able to move around and interact with their environment, which means some sort of propulsion in space. If this species managed to make it to our planet, they could be very intelligent and still not necessarily have any need for integers or subatomic particles.
Plus at least simple counting has been shown in many animals, even those only distantly related to primates, so it's not like humans are even the only species on earth that can count integers.
True, but they also evolved on the same planet with the same conditions. You can't assume that alien life would be anything like the life forms on this planet. Some people think they might be, but we don't KNOW.
Your link isn't working for me, but unemployment numbers only count people who are actively looking. If they gave up and got jobs at McDonalds or Walmart to keep from starving, they wouldn't be counted as unemployed.
How long will it last this time?
They've scaled it back in the past and it just comes back in another game. In six months or a year, if they've kept that crap out of their games, maybe I'll consider giving them money again. Maybe.
Maybe in principle, but in my experience using the hardware, the drivers that NVIDIA is providing are far superior to the AMD drivers available for all but the most basic uses. This seems to be the general consensus, at least where I tend to spend my time.
If you're more concerned about software freedom than I am, maybe you'd rather have AMD. My Linux boxes are much happier with NVIDIA, especially my HTPC. If I get enough cash to throw at it, I might try a low power Ivy Bridge or one of the new Atoms for a new HTPC, but the low-power standalone NVIDIA cards are just so easy...
Mod parent up.
My grandfather was an uneducated farmer. He's a smart guy, but his education included only basic math/reading and common sense. He put all six of his kids through college. Two are engineers, two are teachers, one owns a very successful paving company, and one runs a restaurant. They didn't get where they are because my grandfather knew everything and passed it down. They got there because he and his wife created an environment where they could (and had to) learn.
Anyone who knows about small-time farming knows that it can be very hard to make ends meet. If my grandfather could do it and make it look so easy, then there is no reason that all these office and factory drones can't.
Exactly this. I wish that the firefox people would add that as a feature, rather than the claptrap I've seen them do lately. Oh. While I'm talking about things they will never do, they should bring back the 3.6 UI as an option.
A bit off topic, but if you really don't like the new Firefox interface, it only takes about a minute to change it back using their 'Customize' feature. And torrent downloads can be done with an add-on in about the same amount of time.
As far as torrents being for piracy... I have no doubt that the vast majority of torrent activity is copyright infringement of some kind (I hesitate to call it truly illegal), but it could be extremely useful if it were more widespread on the internet. It has a lot of potential to lighten the load on the infrastructure and increase download speeds at the same time.
It really is. I flew out of LAX in early May last year and the security line zig-zagged through ropes twice, up stairs in the middle of those, then went down the road for a quarter mile or more. Around a major holiday, I'm surprised people even make their flights.
All this means is that I will never again sign into my Google accounts in my browser. You can't give me screwed up results if you don't know who I am. If it gets too much worse, I'm probably just going to bail altogether. Thanks, Google.
As teslafreak said, people are rarely ticketed/arrested for it. In my view, the law is on the books to protect drivers from legal trouble from idiot pedestrians and to attempt to protect the pedestrians from themselves. That way, when I hit you with my car because you want to cross the street NOW, you can't mindlessly sue me because you're too stupid to not jump in front of a moving car. If you were in the crosswalk, you may have a more valid case, but that's a different matter.
No. I'm saying that, without a a society large enough and diverse enough to grow on its own, we would never have enough of the things to be at risk for what the GP is talking about.
Absolutely, they are still used. I'm certainly not saying they aren't. I wish they were used MORE. I'm just pointing out the fact that way too many manager types think computer simulations are good enough. Whether it's because of TV or some kind of strange trust in salesmen, I don't know, but it's becoming a bigger problem in some industries.
This.
Anyone who uses computer simulations to model physical things knows that computers just plain can't do everything for you. ie. In the case of a physical part, you still need to do hands-on testing and at least verify your simulation results.
I want to say I'm a bit surprised that physical models aren't used more, but I'm really not. I just pray it's because people are trying to trim costs and are rolling the dice that the simulations are good enough and not because they actually believe the simulations are perfect... At least if it's a cost-cutting measure, they probably know they could run into trouble. Maybe.
All of that is extremely unlikely to be an issue, considering they only have one sample of DNA that's any good. You would need AT least a male and female to start producing more mammoths in any kind of normal fashion, and you'd need a good number more than that to provide enough genetic diversity for them to be healthy.
While it's POSSIBLE we could eventually resurrect the species, it's unlikely, and we're not even close to that yet.
What is wrong with taking customer complaint calls and responding that way? There will always be a few people that whine about bad coverage; that doesn't mean the problem is on the carrier's end. If the majority of customers have a good experience, things will work out.
Verizon, the US's largest carrier, does not use CarrierIQ. Verizon is also largely believed to have the best/most reliable coverage of the big four. Clearly, you don't NEED CarrierIQ to successfully manage a network.
Napster, as it stood back then, is long dead. The Napster being discussed now is (was?) a music store that was formed from the ashes of the old music-sharing service. The second sentence of the summary even explains it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster
How you people get informative mods, I'll never understand.
Smart companies realize they can hire the top grads at a lesser known school for less money.
How exactly is that a good thing? You just said that he's every bit as capable as someone at a top 10 school. If his ability is really the same, he should make the same money. If he doesn't, then you're arbitrarily raising up students based on less meaningful (or entirely meaningless) criteria.
Regardless, a business student is the wrong example for this discussion. The majority of our problems in STEM fields are related to incentives. Scientists and engineers are the foundation of technology and, as a result, society. Yet many scientists end up making pennies doing academic research, or face huge ethical dilemmas working for corporations. Even worse, their degrees often go unused because of the sorry state of the system. It should not be so difficult for them to find meaningful work.
I'm not the first one to say this here or anywhere: Fix the incentives, and the majority of the problems will go away. And please please PLEASE do not let the standards for STEM majors drop anymore. There are already far too many incompetent engineers out here in corporationland.
AC or not, he has a point. There are any number of promising (or at least feasible) energy projects out there that could use a boost. Many of them are small and relatively cheap, as well.
A couple of examples of promising fusion research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell (http://www.emc2fusion.org/)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus (http://focusfusion.org/)
The Polywell research is already funded by the Navy, so that might get complicated is we start mixing piles of money, but more funding could speed things up and free up time for the researchers to do more research instead of looking for money. There are tons of these small fusion projects going, each with their own little twist on IEC containment or similar.
I think netflix also has this as a streaming feature also, not sure now since i canceled my netflix :P
Yup, it's on there. We watched it last week. Surprisingly, it was fairly interesting.
I've also heard many times that the Chinese now own all our major banks or some such.
As always, the truth lies somewhere in between the extremes...
You answered your own question, really. 'Normal' people don't care about having stock android, dual-core processors, and the like. They want a phone that also does apps and internet stuff, which means they follow the crowd to an iPhone or get a cheaper Android phone that still does everything but make their coffee in the morning.
Google knows very well who they are targeting with these flagship phones and it's not hurting them one bit. They're trying to show off what Android can do and they're letting the carriers fill the rest of the market. Remember that Google doesn't care about dominating the market with their specific phone. They just want the advertising money and the carriers are doing that for them just fine.