Well at least parents will not have to worry about their children's immune systems becomming too depresssed. I guess the modern day analogy to eating dirt will be licking the keyboard.
The case is not quite the same here in the UK. The Sunday Times (free reg) regularly has sci-fi on their top 10 booklist for the week. Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are practically permanent residents on the chart, and this week "Attack of the Clones" (R A Salvatore) tops the chart under Hardback fiction. There are also reviews of fantasy books although the genre do seem to take a bit of a backseat in this area. Many consider the Sunday Times pretty high brow here in the UK, but apparently they are recogninsing that S/F adn fantasy now is a BIG market.
I wonder how much it would cost if techies started insisting on an average 37-42 hours work week? If it costs that much to let a bunch of people go and see Star Wars, how much is gained by other sectors that service the moveigoers? Reminds me...gotaa buy some popcorn-company stocks.........
The Chinese will just have to join the queue of people that apparently discovered America before Columbus. In addition Columbus actually did not discover the American main land, but landed in the carribean. So just to round up the current list of America discoveries:
Vikings. Made short crosses from Greenland to Newfoundland, but didn't settle as such. Just popped over for the timber.There was a whole bunch of them!
Celts. St. Brendan sailed there in a leather boat. The trip was reinacted about 25 years ago The original history and The book
John Cabot finds the American main land, which if all the theories are correct would have been getting crowded already!What little is known about John Cabot.
That just about sums the current list up I believe. Did i miss out anyone?
The way i see it, the article, and a considerable number of comments below, regards evolution as only being the continous improvement of one single species. However, evolutionary development may also be reached by cross-breeding (no lame jokes, please!) and hybridisation between what we consider "species". The result? An individual with different properties than any of the two others.
Any species that are alive today and capable of reproduction must, to some extent, be said to be successful. However, some of the species on eartyh are more exposed to selection forces (e.g. early death of weaker individuals) than others, which would actually accelerate their evolution relative to our.
So theoretically, we haven't reached the pinnacle, we've slowed down.... Since there's no current need for different properties than the ones we posses, evolution will slow down for a a couple of seconds (in evolutionary time). However, once humans have destroyed heir surrounding sufficiently to face new challenges, certaon traits may become more favourable again (e.g. be able to drink polluted water and biologically filter it).
Maybe it is an evolutionary trait in humanoids to dilute their gene pool at some stage. In essence that is what we're doing today by introducing lots of medicine and lowering infant mortality (not that it is a bad thing in my eyes).
Evolution will keep rolling whether we like it or not. It is quite typical human arrogance to assume that we're the pinnacle of creation!
If these robots are to be used for monitoring oceans, i do not see why you need them that small in the first place.
Ocean currents are pretty large scale phenomenas, which are often more vertically variable that horisontally. So making a few (a few thousand anyway) fairly large sized buoys which can sink to a pre-determined depth and surface to transmit data on regualr intervals (which would also allow for re-calibration of position). Such buoys are already in progress and limited use for profiling temperature and salinity. I don't see why they can't be equipped with pollutant sensors instead.
There is still the power problem to solve as the floats in use has a limited lifetime though.
In addition the amount of data that would be generated from vast quantities of nano-bots would still require analysis...less of a problems, but enough to create terrabytes of junk data.
I guess there would have to be some kind of restriction on how much extra ore we could import to earth to avoid leaving our trajectory around the sun?
It would be like the planet in "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", where a planet hugely popular with space turists had to incur regulations on people food intake and defecation during the visit to the planet.
Although not a 100% comparable, Danish university education offers some of what has been called for.
In my own case, which was an MSc in Biology, the course structure gave a good mix of structured teaching of basic skills as well as some time to do the courses you find interesting.
There are a couple of major differences in the way a university degree in Denmark is set up (using examples from my own degree here, i'm sure there's also local variation in Denmark).
The first two years of my course was laid out before I arrived at university, with no choice of courses. Instead you were trained in the various fields in biology, having a semester in each "major" field of biology. Alongside the biology teaching, each semester also included courses in either chemistry, math or statistics (all planned out).
For the follwing two years (years 3+4) you were completely free to pick courses on your own, take semesters at other universities etc. Merits can be transferred quite easily, so i found myself doing 6 months of courses in Norway without prolonging my study time. The idea about choosing courses in year 3+4 rather than straight away is to give you some ballast in your choices. After two years of making acquaintances with all the fields, you had an idea about where you wanted to go with it.
Finally the last (fifth) year consist entirely of writing your MSc as a research project, not doing any courses, which gives you a good idea about life in research and whether continuing to a PhD is a good idea for you.
All in all, I find that the Danish university education structure does provide a very sound background and set of key skills for your chosen profession.
Although i'm certain that the education helps you obtain some key skills, once you're in a work place, you find yourself learning a lot of the same things again, simply because people there do them slightly different.
As to helping you in knowing what you want to do for the next 10 year......hmm nope still don't know!
Seems like the thing locks a computer to be used by either right-handed people or left-handers (if they produce such a version). So I hope this thing will not take off for use at universities, internet cafe's etc. I can just see the signs: "Right Hand Section this way..."
yeah sure it's neat enough, but like others have said, it's not really something that is so mind-blowingly new that companies would line up to hire this guy.
I read the letter, and I admit not knowing who he wrote it to, but if he describes his work like that in a job application i'm not surprised he's not getting a job.
Well the coin may have dropped for most Americans, but it seems like there is still one who doesn't comprehend the impact caused. Unfortunately he happends to be their president......
Although our computers are becoming more powerful and capable, they still do not allow us to create art freely. You are always bound by a certain set of algorithms.
A lot of us (yes, including me) may find art in computer generated images, but i still find them a bit too "clean". There's no flaws, the colors are perfect, no dust and speckles (ok, its a filter), which always leaves me with the feeling of the whole thing being a bit sterile.
Funny isn't it? How humans advance that is. Back then we had to run around and kill all the animals into extinction. Today we're so advanced that we simply induce the climatic change to kill all the animals (and eventually ourseslves...erhm maybe we haven't advanced that much anyway)
Don't worry! You'll be safe as long as you don't try and pronounciate any of if. Should you try and do so you amy find yourself in danger of breaking your tongue:-)
I probably spend around 45-55 hours at work every week. Bust that doesn't mean that i work for that amount of time.
I'm in the fortunate position of getting paid to study, and as such my only demand is a biannual assessment of my progress. But that's not really my point.
The point is that even though we spend many hours at work (some more than others) i find it hard to believe that you get much more than i.e. 30 hours efficient work in per week. Some may be working continously for 45 hours, but at lower efficiency because they get tired!
New surveys indicate that many national websites peak during work-hours, and thats not work-related sites.
So fact is that you've got to feel good and relaxed about your work, have the right "climate" and you'll be more productive. The more productive you are, the sooner you can go home. That's what i'd like to see.
Although the sound of free access to all papers online, there would still be a couple of issues that you need to consider to ensure a reasonable quality of the published material:
You would still need to go through a peer review of some kind to ensure that papers of low quality (or papers which has drawn a wrong conclusion) aren' just poured out.
Today people pay a lot of attention to how many publications you ahve when you're applying for jobs in science. Furthermore, not any old publication will do. The journals with the highest attention scores is better, and in essence a certain proportion of your chance of getting a job could depend on whether you have those publications or not. So who's going forward and just dumping their on the web? You still need to get your papers through these journals, as they have become an institution in science. Like it or not!
Sure mega-accelerated graphics are neat, its just a pity that you're fed up with trying to combine the same 5 moves/strategies/weapons after 30 minutes.
A lot of games seems to have good ideas for environments today, but every time i opne the box for the new game, and install it i wonder: "why did they stop there?" Generally there's too much pressure on producers to finish and publish their games before the story can be fully developed.
Maybe its time to take a break on the graphics development and start working on what we've got...
The way i see it there's a few things that makes a good game:
A good story line. This does not mean that i have to plough through 50 pages of the manual only to find that i will jsut have to keep imagining myself in that story throughout the game.
Interactivity with characters. Doesn't matter what genre. How many times haven't we walked into the mage-guild in a city at the other side of the world to find the shop completely identical. Or how about that guard who has to help you unlock the door before you can get on with blasting aliens. Did he ever tell you he was afraid?
Good graphics (to a certain standard)
Sound (quite essential)
A long gameplay. OK i can buy a game and race through 15 levels of super-spliffed grpahic enhanced dungeons, or i can walk through an environment that changes dynamically, responding to alterations not only implied by my own actions (e.g. seasons, flexible "semi-predetermined" historical events)
But making designers take a wow is never going to work. Its not the desginer who is the problem. Its the market force. People buy games because they want to, and that way they reflect the way a market will move. Sure people want to see something that pushes their graphic cards a bit (to justify to go out and spend another couple of hundred $ on a new one), but if that is the majority of products that is purchased how will a developer see any chance in developing a long lasting worked through game. Consumer power is somewhat stronger than we think.
But in order to have a computer do the grunt thinking, which is,granted, a huge help, you do need a thorough understanding of the subject first.
I don't know if it is just me that is particular stupid but i understand things better once i've been through them.
What would happend if everybody knew how to use the software, but no one knew how to code it any more?
Although it is obviously the US that is closest (if anyone actually is close at all) to colonising Mars, does that necessarily mean that they're free to work on a new habitat that could then become an exclusive extension of that country? It would be ironic to have to aquire a green card to go to Mars in a couple of hundred years:-)
It seems that there's plenty of space on earth that has not been properly colonised. The most dense urban areas needs to be reconstructed in more environmentally friendly ways, and third-world countries desparately needs infrastructure. Perhaps we should deal with some of these problems before we wreak havoc on another planet.
Although i agree that the yanks are acting in a ridiculous way, pumping out more and more greenhouse gases it must be considered that we can't blame them entirely.
The rest of the world , and in particular the western, so-called "enlightened", part of the world should obviously know better by now. Aparently the concept has not been completely understood in America. So it must be in the rest of the world's interest to make this point understood on a global scale instead of just pointing fingers. We'll all get wet when the oceans rise (yes except you few who live somewhere up on a mountain and don't give a toss).
Well they were believed not to sail where they could not see land, but similarities in technologies between the australian aboriginals and other tribes in mainland Asia have suggested that they may have migrated very early. Even though they could have been "Island-hopping" to some extent this still required long stretches of sailing with no sight of land.
Although Denmark is a member of the EU, Danish music industry took initiative to hit hard on illegal mp3 downloading and CD copying about one and a half year ago.
This lead to a couple of cases in which residents at Danish university dorms were brought to court and charged ridiculus high sums of money for allowing public access to mp3's on the university's networks.
Shortly after that followed a couple of cases against private collections of mp3's and again the sums sued for by the music industry was incredibly high for Danish standards. Normally in a lawsuit no one gets compensated over $100,000 but in the cases the demand was closer to $200,000. The cases were rejected by court, and the music industry's crusade against illegal copying fizzled. A lot of money was spent on advertising the campaign but not a lot came out of it. About a year or two ago, some danish musicians started making some of their tracks available of th web, thus forcing the industry to relate to the new media. However, there are (to the best of my knowledge) no commercial mp3-sites in Denmark today.
Slashdot Mirror
Well at least parents will not have to worry about their children's immune systems becomming too depresssed. I guess the modern day analogy to eating dirt will be licking the keyboard.
The case is not quite the same here in the UK.
The Sunday Times (free reg) regularly has sci-fi on their top 10 booklist for the week. Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are practically permanent residents on the chart, and this week "Attack of the Clones" (R A Salvatore) tops the chart under Hardback fiction.
There are also reviews of fantasy books although the genre do seem to take a bit of a backseat in this area.
Many consider the Sunday Times pretty high brow here in the UK, but apparently they are recogninsing that S/F adn fantasy now is a BIG market.
I wonder how much it would cost if techies started insisting on an average 37-42 hours work week?
If it costs that much to let a bunch of people go and see Star Wars, how much is gained by other sectors that service the moveigoers?
Reminds me...gotaa buy some popcorn-company stocks.........
- Native Americans. They walked! Well....now its suggested that they sailed!
- Vikings. Made short crosses from Greenland to Newfoundland, but didn't settle as such. Just popped over for the timber.There was a whole bunch of them!
- Celts. St. Brendan sailed there in a leather boat. The trip was reinacted about 25 years ago The original history and The book
- The basques.They sailed across to catch cod. Book by Mark Kurlansky.
- The Chinese in a 1000 ft boat....hmmmmmm!
- Columbus stumbles across the Carribean. The Columbus Navigation Homepage and The Columbus Landfall Page.
- John Cabot finds the American main land, which if all the theories are correct would have been getting crowded already!What little is known about John Cabot.
That just about sums the current list up I believe. Did i miss out anyone?The way i see it, the article, and a considerable number of comments below, regards evolution as only being the continous improvement of one single species. However, evolutionary development may also be reached by cross-breeding (no lame jokes, please!) and hybridisation between what we consider "species". The result? An individual with different properties than any of the two others.
Any species that are alive today and capable of reproduction must, to some extent, be said to be successful. However, some of the species on eartyh are more exposed to selection forces (e.g. early death of weaker individuals) than others, which would actually accelerate their evolution relative to our.
So theoretically, we haven't reached the pinnacle, we've slowed down.... Since there's no current need for different properties than the ones we posses, evolution will slow down for a a couple of seconds (in evolutionary time). However, once humans have destroyed heir surrounding sufficiently to face new challenges, certaon traits may become more favourable again (e.g. be able to drink polluted water and biologically filter it).
Maybe it is an evolutionary trait in humanoids to dilute their gene pool at some stage. In essence that is what we're doing today by introducing lots of medicine and lowering infant mortality (not that it is a bad thing in my eyes).
Evolution will keep rolling whether we like it or not. It is quite typical human arrogance to assume that we're the pinnacle of creation!
If these robots are to be used for monitoring oceans, i do not see why you need them that small in the first place.
Ocean currents are pretty large scale phenomenas, which are often more vertically variable that horisontally. So making a few (a few thousand anyway) fairly large sized buoys which can sink to a pre-determined depth and surface to transmit data on regualr intervals (which would also allow for re-calibration of position). Such buoys are already in progress and limited use for profiling temperature and salinity. I don't see why they can't be equipped with pollutant sensors instead.
There is still the power problem to solve as the floats in use has a limited lifetime though.
In addition the amount of data that would be generated from vast quantities of nano-bots would still require analysis...less of a problems, but enough to create terrabytes of junk data.
Statistics
R-Project
Solid software, similar to Splus with possible linkage to C, C++ and Fortran.
Image Analysis
UTHSCSA Image Tool
Functional image analysis with script language.
Fortran
VFort
Stadnard MDI app and g77 compiler. Good environment for inexperienced Fortran programmers.
I guess there would have to be some kind of restriction on how much extra ore we could import to earth to avoid leaving our trajectory around the sun?
It would be like the planet in "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", where a planet hugely popular with space turists had to incur regulations on people food intake and defecation during the visit to the planet.
So does that mean that we'll be getting a cheap game interrupted by "Join Uncle Sam" screens every 10 minutes....
Although not a 100% comparable, Danish university education offers some of what has been called for.
In my own case, which was an MSc in Biology, the course structure gave a good mix of structured teaching of basic skills as well as some time to do the courses you find interesting.
There are a couple of major differences in the way a university degree in Denmark is set up (using examples from my own degree here, i'm sure there's also local variation in Denmark). The first two years of my course was laid out before I arrived at university, with no choice of courses. Instead you were trained in the various fields in biology, having a semester in each "major" field of biology. Alongside the biology teaching, each semester also included courses in either chemistry, math or statistics (all planned out).
For the follwing two years (years 3+4) you were completely free to pick courses on your own, take semesters at other universities etc. Merits can be transferred quite easily, so i found myself doing 6 months of courses in Norway without prolonging my study time. The idea about choosing courses in year 3+4 rather than straight away is to give you some ballast in your choices. After two years of making acquaintances with all the fields, you had an idea about where you wanted to go with it.
Finally the last (fifth) year consist entirely of writing your MSc as a research project, not doing any courses, which gives you a good idea about life in research and whether continuing to a PhD is a good idea for you.
All in all, I find that the Danish university education structure does provide a very sound background and set of key skills for your chosen profession.
Although i'm certain that the education helps you obtain some key skills, once you're in a work place, you find yourself learning a lot of the same things again, simply because people there do them slightly different.
As to helping you in knowing what you want to do for the next 10 year......hmm nope still don't know!
Seems like the thing locks a computer to be used by either right-handed people or left-handers (if they produce such a version). So I hope this thing will not take off for use at universities, internet cafe's etc. I can just see the signs: "Right Hand Section this way..."
yeah sure it's neat enough, but like others have said, it's not really something that is so mind-blowingly new that companies would line up to hire this guy.
I read the letter, and I admit not knowing who he wrote it to, but if he describes his work like that in a job application i'm not surprised he's not getting a job.
"....kinda neat cos....."
Sorry mate, but that just doens't work.....
Well the coin may have dropped for most Americans, but it seems like there is still one who doesn't comprehend the impact caused. Unfortunately he happends to be their president......
Although our computers are becoming more powerful and capable, they still do not allow us to create art freely. You are always bound by a certain set of algorithms.
A lot of us (yes, including me) may find art in computer generated images, but i still find them a bit too "clean". There's no flaws, the colors are perfect, no dust and speckles (ok, its a filter), which always leaves me with the feeling of the whole thing being a bit sterile.
Funny isn't it? How humans advance that is. Back then we had to run around and kill all the animals into extinction. Today we're so advanced that we simply induce the climatic change to kill all the animals (and eventually ourseslves...erhm maybe we haven't advanced that much anyway)
Don't worry! You'll be safe as long as you don't try and pronounciate any of if. Should you try and do so you amy find yourself in danger of breaking your tongue :-)
I probably spend around 45-55 hours at work every week. Bust that doesn't mean that i work for that amount of time.
I'm in the fortunate position of getting paid to study, and as such my only demand is a biannual assessment of my progress. But that's not really my point.
The point is that even though we spend many hours at work (some more than others) i find it hard to believe that you get much more than i.e. 30 hours efficient work in per week. Some may be working continously for 45 hours, but at lower efficiency because they get tired!
New surveys indicate that many national websites peak during work-hours, and thats not work-related sites. So fact is that you've got to feel good and relaxed about your work, have the right "climate" and you'll be more productive. The more productive you are, the sooner you can go home. That's what i'd like to see.
- A good story line. This does not mean that i have to plough through 50 pages of the manual only to find that i will jsut have to keep imagining myself in that story throughout the game.
- Interactivity with characters. Doesn't matter what genre. How many times haven't we walked into the mage-guild in a city at the other side of the world to find the shop completely identical. Or how about that guard who has to help you unlock the door before you can get on with blasting aliens. Did he ever tell you he was afraid?
- Good graphics (to a certain standard)
- Sound (quite essential)
- A long gameplay. OK i can buy a game and race through 15 levels of super-spliffed grpahic enhanced dungeons, or i can walk through an environment that changes dynamically, responding to alterations not only implied by my own actions (e.g. seasons, flexible "semi-predetermined" historical events)
But making designers take a wow is never going to work. Its not the desginer who is the problem. Its the market force. People buy games because they want to, and that way they reflect the way a market will move. Sure people want to see something that pushes their graphic cards a bit (to justify to go out and spend another couple of hundred $ on a new one), but if that is the majority of products that is purchased how will a developer see any chance in developing a long lasting worked through game. Consumer power is somewhat stronger than we think.The unluckiest second on my birthday. It may just drop on its own :-)
But in order to have a computer do the grunt thinking, which is,granted, a huge help, you do need a thorough understanding of the subject first. I don't know if it is just me that is particular stupid but i understand things better once i've been through them. What would happend if everybody knew how to use the software, but no one knew how to code it any more?
Although it is obviously the US that is closest (if anyone actually is close at all) to colonising Mars, does that necessarily mean that they're free to work on a new habitat that could then become an exclusive extension of that country? It would be ironic to have to aquire a green card to go to Mars in a couple of hundred years :-)
It seems that there's plenty of space on earth that has not been properly colonised. The most dense urban areas needs to be reconstructed in more environmentally friendly ways, and third-world countries desparately needs infrastructure. Perhaps we should deal with some of these problems before we wreak havoc on another planet.
Although i agree that the yanks are acting in a ridiculous way, pumping out more and more greenhouse gases it must be considered that we can't blame them entirely. The rest of the world , and in particular the western, so-called "enlightened", part of the world should obviously know better by now. Aparently the concept has not been completely understood in America. So it must be in the rest of the world's interest to make this point understood on a global scale instead of just pointing fingers. We'll all get wet when the oceans rise (yes except you few who live somewhere up on a mountain and don't give a toss).
Well they were believed not to sail where they could not see land, but similarities in technologies between the australian aboriginals and other tribes in mainland Asia have suggested that they may have migrated very early. Even though they could have been "Island-hopping" to some extent this still required long stretches of sailing with no sight of land.
Although Denmark is a member of the EU, Danish music industry took initiative to hit hard on illegal mp3 downloading and CD copying about one and a half year ago.
This lead to a couple of cases in which residents at Danish university dorms were brought to court and charged ridiculus high sums of money for allowing public access to mp3's on the university's networks.
Shortly after that followed a couple of cases against private collections of mp3's and again the sums sued for by the music industry was incredibly high for Danish standards. Normally in a lawsuit no one gets compensated over $100,000 but in the cases the demand was closer to $200,000. The cases were rejected by court, and the music industry's crusade against illegal copying fizzled. A lot of money was spent on advertising the campaign but not a lot came out of it. About a year or two ago, some danish musicians started making some of their tracks available of th web, thus forcing the industry to relate to the new media. However, there are (to the best of my knowledge) no commercial mp3-sites in Denmark today.