Not to pick nits, but it isn't the TIME atlas (as in TIME magazine, owned by Time Warner), it's the Times atlas (as in The Times, the UK newspaper owned by Murdoch's News Corporation).
It's published by HarperCollins, part of News Corporation. Not that I necessarily want to reinforce your perception of it being written by moronic reporters, but that's the same News Corp who own Fox. Fun times.
100% of Hawaii isn't in America. 100% of Israel isn't in Europe. About 97% of the USA is in America (the other 3% being Hawaii). About 95% of CERN member states' territory is in Europe (including Israel, worked out very roughly).
The packets of data sent back and forth from theSkyNet to your computer are very small, but they can add up over many weeks of donating to theSkyNet. As a member, you can control how much data theSkyNet uploads and downloads each month by changing the Monthly Network Limit under Manage Account. theSkyNet team are also negotiating with Internet Service providers around Australia to make all traffic to and from theSkyNet ‘unmetered’.
I'm happy about it. I only really use SETI@Home because I want to contribute to astronomy with my CPU cycles, and it's the best of the bunch (I found Einstein@Home a little flaky in terms of work unit updates, and for some reason never saw the appeal of MilkyWay@Home). If my cycles could do something more useful for SKA, I'd definitely consider moving over.
The point of the Turing Test is that, if a bot could pass it (properly, and convincingly), it would be indistinguishable from an intelligent human. "Really showing understanding" is somewhat irrelevant- the point is that if something can pass the Turing Test, it will be able to act in an intellectual capacity in the same way that a human would. To quote Turing, the question that he was postulating was not "Do machines think?", but "Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?" (thanks Wikipedia). It's a thought experiment, but that's the gist of it.
Imagine a simple chatbot like Clever Bot, but better. One which has such a comprehensive look-up table, and clever enough tricks in its code, that whatever you said to it you would get a convincing response back. You could say anything, on any topic, and get a response back as good as you would from a human. You could have in-depth conversations with it, with context driven responses and call-backs to things said hours earlier (maybe even to things said in previous conversations). You could ask it any question and get a sensible response, and finish a conversation of any length feeling satisfied that you had been having an engaging discussion with another intelligent, mature person from your peer group. In what way would you be able to tell that apart from intelligence?
The point of the Turing Test is that if you can beat it, you've created something as intelligent as a human by any test you care to give it. It doesn't matter if you pass the Turing Test using the "brute force" approach used by Clever Bot (and the rest) or by something more sophisticated.
Which is ironic, considering Windows 8 is only the second OS in their line of (otherwise commendably simple) numerical naming scheme. Wouldn't had been a problem if they'd stuck with their unfathomable non-numbered "Windows FooBar" naming system (Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows CE).
I've not really been following the Win8 news cycle, but I'd be a little surprised if it isn't just "Win7 + tablet mode". Install it on a desktop and I'm sure you'll be able to make it clone Win7 more-or-less.
Seeing as the UK buys all its nuclear bombs from the US anyway, and currently only stocks missiles of a single type (Trident), and has little stomach for replacing them with anything substantially different (there's a big enough ruckus about building new submarines to carry the missiles we've already got), I can't see that being a huge motivator for the UK. What use we'd have for laser-triggered fusion bombs I don't know.
The promise of clean, cheap, not-foreign-dependant energy is probably enough to pull in the interest on its own.
I'm pretty sure social commentary in visually demonstrated or sculpture form is art. In the same way a protest song is still music, or a satirical novel is still prose. Unless you have a better word for hanging various objects in a gallery to convey a message, of course.
Art is what you make of it. If the guy who created it thinks it's art, and the gallery displaying it thinks it's art, then that pretty much makes it art. You can form your own opinion about whether it's good art or not.
If you buy a stack of gold now (at what, fast approaching $2000 an ounce), and then everyone decided en masse that it was no longer an investment product worth having, the only people you would be able to sell it to would be jewellers and, er, audio cable makers. Do you think you would get $2000 an ounce for your gold from them? $1000? $50? Any guesses?
With fiat currency, there's a risk that your "investment" in dollars, for example, might drop to zero if everyone stops using it all at once. Gold isn't much different- if everyone stopped buying gold, you would lose the vast majority of the money you spent buying your gold; you'd only get back pennies in the pound.
And seeing as gold price (even without it's abandonment as a currency) regularly yo-yo's around anywhere from $200 to $2000, it's a very real possibility for anyone buying an ounce of gold now. Just look at some charts showing the relative value volatility of gold and the US dollar:
I think the fact that almost every major class of airship also suffered huge numbers of disasters with massive loss of life may also have been a factor. Hopefully nothing some good-old 21st century engineering can't fix though.
For one, they're talking about the US jobs market- we here in the EU have it far better, with far stricter labour practices.
My advice is to only submit your CV to companies you actually want to work for; give any "recruiting" firms a wide berth (unless you really don't have anything to lose, i.e. you're desperate for your first job). And as a rough rule of thumb, companies don't contact you; real employers are more than inundated with high quality applications to muck around cold calling coding grunts. Unless you're respected and at the top of your field, the only people who will cold call you for a CV will be recruiting agencies.
And there I was thinking precision typing was a useful skill for a programmer. I don't think I'd trust any major code syntax to someone who can't remember that capital letters go at the beginning, full stops go on the end...
It'd be relatively common for the company itself to give you a call to inquire about the missed payment (and gather some sneaky info while they're at it). It's a whole different thing to sick the bailiffs on you. Not least because debt collection firms cost the lender quite a lot of money too; if they're too quick to call in the debt collectors, they're just throwing money away.
There was much good footage of ALMA and it's transporters in action on a recent BBC Horizon (as well as lots of good footage of some of your colleagues suffering through low-oxygen, subzero temperature conditions).
It'll be on iPlayer if you've got access (probably on YouTube if not).
The problem is that the margins are pretty thin. Apple doesn't make that chunky a profit on iPads (at least not in the US market- Europe might have some more fat built in)m certainly not compared to their iPhone and iPod ranges. They're doing it on purpose- to trump other competitors on price (in exactly the way you say).
Samsung can't make a tablet as good as the iPad and sell it at a profit for $200. $300 at cost, maybe. But if they want to make a profit on it (and that is kinda the point of a tech company making a product at all), they're looking at a similar price to Apple.
I've seen a Samsaung Galaxy out in the wild, and I don't see many tablets period- so anecdotally they seem to be doing OK in my neck of the woods. Nowhere near the market spread the iPad has, but none the less. As long as they're selling enough to pay back the R&D, I'm sure they won't abandon the sector quite yet.
Also, I'm a little sceptical of any claims a large gadget manufacturer makes about failures at their competitors. I'm sure it's no coincidence that this statement comes a few days before Lenove announce their own tablet product.
I know you probably didn't mean it in that way- but that isn't the first subway in global terms. The Metropoliton Railway (the oldest bit of the London Underground) opened in 1863, 7 years earlier than the one you linked. Plus it was a proper passenger railway, rather than just a 100m long tech demonstration.
Some will still fail though. Plenty of banks failed in the last few years, despite banking being a pretty steadily profitable industry. Have a glance at the heavily subsidised, now extinct, giants of British manufacturing, like Rover (BMC, British Leyland, etc.)- how many millions were sunk into that, for it to end in collapse and massive lay-offs?
Well, when we pay £6 per gallon for petrol at the pump (something like $10 USD), you could argue that the consumer is paying the subsidy by themself. I wouldn't be surprised if there're government subsidies in the system somewhere, though.
Who says it needs to be profitable? Roads aren't profitable. Trains aren't profitable without subsidy. Without tax breaks, air travel isn't profitable. Mass education isn't profitable either.
If your aim is profitable energy, solar probably isn't the answer. If your aim is for clean energy, or energy independence from Russia, Latin America or the Middle East, then profitability doesn't come into it. You pour money in, you get energy out. Pour enough money in (from whatever source you like), you'll get enough energy out.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to pick nits, but it isn't the TIME atlas (as in TIME magazine, owned by Time Warner), it's the Times atlas (as in The Times, the UK newspaper owned by Murdoch's News Corporation).
It's published by HarperCollins, part of News Corporation. Not that I necessarily want to reinforce your perception of it being written by moronic reporters, but that's the same News Corp who own Fox. Fun times.
100% of Hawaii isn't in America. 100% of Israel isn't in Europe. About 97% of the USA is in America (the other 3% being Hawaii). About 95% of CERN member states' territory is in Europe (including Israel, worked out very roughly).
I'm not sure I see your point.
All that aside: What Israel is doing in an institution, which has "European" in its name, is beyond questionable.
About the same as Hawaii is doing in a country with "America" in the name. A name's just a name.
According to a brief internet search, XP still has a greater than 50% market share, compared to Win7's c.30% and Vista's 9%.
People appear to be pretty much as stubborn as they say they are.
They have an FAQ section on their website.
Will this affect my internet usage / data plan?
The packets of data sent back and forth from theSkyNet to your computer are very small, but they can add up over many weeks of donating to theSkyNet. As a member, you can control how much data theSkyNet uploads and downloads each month by changing the Monthly Network Limit under Manage Account. theSkyNet team are also negotiating with Internet Service providers around Australia to make all traffic to and from theSkyNet ‘unmetered’.
I'm happy about it. I only really use SETI@Home because I want to contribute to astronomy with my CPU cycles, and it's the best of the bunch (I found Einstein@Home a little flaky in terms of work unit updates, and for some reason never saw the appeal of MilkyWay@Home). If my cycles could do something more useful for SKA, I'd definitely consider moving over.
The point of the Turing Test is that, if a bot could pass it (properly, and convincingly), it would be indistinguishable from an intelligent human. "Really showing understanding" is somewhat irrelevant- the point is that if something can pass the Turing Test, it will be able to act in an intellectual capacity in the same way that a human would. To quote Turing, the question that he was postulating was not "Do machines think?", but "Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?" (thanks Wikipedia). It's a thought experiment, but that's the gist of it.
Imagine a simple chatbot like Clever Bot, but better. One which has such a comprehensive look-up table, and clever enough tricks in its code, that whatever you said to it you would get a convincing response back. You could say anything, on any topic, and get a response back as good as you would from a human. You could have in-depth conversations with it, with context driven responses and call-backs to things said hours earlier (maybe even to things said in previous conversations). You could ask it any question and get a sensible response, and finish a conversation of any length feeling satisfied that you had been having an engaging discussion with another intelligent, mature person from your peer group. In what way would you be able to tell that apart from intelligence?
The point of the Turing Test is that if you can beat it, you've created something as intelligent as a human by any test you care to give it. It doesn't matter if you pass the Turing Test using the "brute force" approach used by Clever Bot (and the rest) or by something more sophisticated.
Which is ironic, considering Windows 8 is only the second OS in their line of (otherwise commendably simple) numerical naming scheme. Wouldn't had been a problem if they'd stuck with their unfathomable non-numbered "Windows FooBar" naming system (Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows CE).
I've not really been following the Win8 news cycle, but I'd be a little surprised if it isn't just "Win7 + tablet mode". Install it on a desktop and I'm sure you'll be able to make it clone Win7 more-or-less.
The point still stands that the UK doesn't do nuclear testing these days. We buy off-the-shelf, so to speak.
Seeing as the UK buys all its nuclear bombs from the US anyway, and currently only stocks missiles of a single type (Trident), and has little stomach for replacing them with anything substantially different (there's a big enough ruckus about building new submarines to carry the missiles we've already got), I can't see that being a huge motivator for the UK. What use we'd have for laser-triggered fusion bombs I don't know.
The promise of clean, cheap, not-foreign-dependant energy is probably enough to pull in the interest on its own.
I'm pretty sure social commentary in visually demonstrated or sculpture form is art. In the same way a protest song is still music, or a satirical novel is still prose. Unless you have a better word for hanging various objects in a gallery to convey a message, of course.
Art is what you make of it. If the guy who created it thinks it's art, and the gallery displaying it thinks it's art, then that pretty much makes it art. You can form your own opinion about whether it's good art or not.
If you buy a stack of gold now (at what, fast approaching $2000 an ounce), and then everyone decided en masse that it was no longer an investment product worth having, the only people you would be able to sell it to would be jewellers and, er, audio cable makers. Do you think you would get $2000 an ounce for your gold from them? $1000? $50? Any guesses?
With fiat currency, there's a risk that your "investment" in dollars, for example, might drop to zero if everyone stops using it all at once. Gold isn't much different- if everyone stopped buying gold, you would lose the vast majority of the money you spent buying your gold; you'd only get back pennies in the pound.
And seeing as gold price (even without it's abandonment as a currency) regularly yo-yo's around anywhere from $200 to $2000, it's a very real possibility for anyone buying an ounce of gold now. Just look at some charts showing the relative value volatility of gold and the US dollar:
I think the fact that almost every major class of airship also suffered huge numbers of disasters with massive loss of life may also have been a factor. Hopefully nothing some good-old 21st century engineering can't fix though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents
Apparently Guinness tastes like soy sauce - I don't drink piss-warm "beer" so I wouldn't know.
You're lucky, then, that Guiness is served at as cold as 3.5C (unfortunately, for those of us who do like piss-warm beer).
For one, they're talking about the US jobs market- we here in the EU have it far better, with far stricter labour practices.
My advice is to only submit your CV to companies you actually want to work for; give any "recruiting" firms a wide berth (unless you really don't have anything to lose, i.e. you're desperate for your first job). And as a rough rule of thumb, companies don't contact you; real employers are more than inundated with high quality applications to muck around cold calling coding grunts. Unless you're respected and at the top of your field, the only people who will cold call you for a CV will be recruiting agencies.
And there I was thinking precision typing was a useful skill for a programmer. I don't think I'd trust any major code syntax to someone who can't remember that capital letters go at the beginning, full stops go on the end...
It'd be relatively common for the company itself to give you a call to inquire about the missed payment (and gather some sneaky info while they're at it). It's a whole different thing to sick the bailiffs on you. Not least because debt collection firms cost the lender quite a lot of money too; if they're too quick to call in the debt collectors, they're just throwing money away.
There was much good footage of ALMA and it's transporters in action on a recent BBC Horizon (as well as lots of good footage of some of your colleagues suffering through low-oxygen, subzero temperature conditions).
It'll be on iPlayer if you've got access (probably on YouTube if not).
If only it had been 666 telescopes. Pentagrams are a good shape for triangulation, right?
The problem is that the margins are pretty thin. Apple doesn't make that chunky a profit on iPads (at least not in the US market- Europe might have some more fat built in)m certainly not compared to their iPhone and iPod ranges. They're doing it on purpose- to trump other competitors on price (in exactly the way you say).
Samsung can't make a tablet as good as the iPad and sell it at a profit for $200. $300 at cost, maybe. But if they want to make a profit on it (and that is kinda the point of a tech company making a product at all), they're looking at a similar price to Apple.
I've seen a Samsaung Galaxy out in the wild, and I don't see many tablets period- so anecdotally they seem to be doing OK in my neck of the woods. Nowhere near the market spread the iPad has, but none the less. As long as they're selling enough to pay back the R&D, I'm sure they won't abandon the sector quite yet.
Also, I'm a little sceptical of any claims a large gadget manufacturer makes about failures at their competitors. I'm sure it's no coincidence that this statement comes a few days before Lenove announce their own tablet product.
I know you probably didn't mean it in that way- but that isn't the first subway in global terms. The Metropoliton Railway (the oldest bit of the London Underground) opened in 1863, 7 years earlier than the one you linked. Plus it was a proper passenger railway, rather than just a 100m long tech demonstration.
Some will still fail though. Plenty of banks failed in the last few years, despite banking being a pretty steadily profitable industry. Have a glance at the heavily subsidised, now extinct, giants of British manufacturing, like Rover (BMC, British Leyland, etc.)- how many millions were sunk into that, for it to end in collapse and massive lay-offs?
These things happen.
Well, when we pay £6 per gallon for petrol at the pump (something like $10 USD), you could argue that the consumer is paying the subsidy by themself. I wouldn't be surprised if there're government subsidies in the system somewhere, though.
Who says it needs to be profitable? Roads aren't profitable. Trains aren't profitable without subsidy. Without tax breaks, air travel isn't profitable. Mass education isn't profitable either.
If your aim is profitable energy, solar probably isn't the answer. If your aim is for clean energy, or energy independence from Russia, Latin America or the Middle East, then profitability doesn't come into it. You pour money in, you get energy out. Pour enough money in (from whatever source you like), you'll get enough energy out.
It all depends what your aims are.