Obviously Microsoft cannot compete on price or flexibility.
They could, but they won't. Instead, they make massive profits on MS-Office and MS-Windows and use the extra money to fund their many other ventures which lose money. X-Box is a good example. The goal is to survive long enough in these other arenas to become profitable there, too. Chances are that eventually they will.
This is why Linux will never kill Microsoft, only make chinks in the armor.
The reason I doubt the math is being done is that maths is a learnt skill.
Most everything we do is a learned skill. So? The brain re-learns a lot of things all the time in different sections of the brain, through reorganization. There's no one section of the brain set aside for "math", just like there's not only one section of an Athlon processor that adds two numbers together that the whole CPU would need to rely upon every time it needs to add.
I much prefer the idea of using past experience mixed with constant feedback. I see the ball so my mind is telling my body were it expects the ball to land based on experience. Then I watch the ball and constantly adjust. It's not like I go the ball will land at X, but rather based on what I've seen the ball will land sorta over there maybe, better get over there. Hang on a sec it's not falling like I'm expecting better shift back a bit. Repeat until you catch it.
Yeah, we all know that's how Tiger Woods gets his golf ball in the hole... "That's not going quite where I planned for it to... I'd better fly up there and whack it again before it lands.":)
Yeah, e-mail is going to be outdated, just like postal-mail has long been outdated, and telephones have been outdated. You heard it here first... According to 'JeffSh', IM is going to replace them all...[/sarcasm]
Pfft, yeah. What a moron. Next he'll be telling us that almost everybody has abandoned the telegraph. Crazy.:)
But is the brain calculating this or rather looking up the answer? I know as a toddler I couldn't catch squat, but as I got older I got better. Was the reason increased proceesing power, my brain got bigger. Or more experience, I'd caught a lot more balls by then.
I doubt very much the brain is clunking through calculus.
Sure it is. What do you think "more experience" means? It means that the neurons in your brain have reconnected in ways to tackle a task better each time. It doesn't necessarily mean your brain did it one way or another. Let's look at the two ways that a wetware computer could catch the ball:
A) Mathematics. [Input: (Here is the ball now. And here is where it is now. And this is roughtly how fast the wind is blowing and what direction it is coming from...) -> Process (Compare position of the ball at time A to that of time B, then to time C, the path is making an arc... Extrapolate that arc. Where will the ball be at time D? -> Output (Move those hands and catch!)]. That doesn't necessarily mean you used more neurons (your "bigger brain") to do it. It's like taking a chunk of mixed silicon and metal and turning it one step at a time into a 3GHz custom CPU. Reorganization made for faster processing.
B) Look up tables. Keep a log of past experiences, the solution to each experience and reference it each time a task is done. Certain things your brain probably only uses a lookup table for -- digit - by - digit multiplication for example. The brain recognizes a Platonistic "football-ish" object and throws it into the works. It thinks, what did I do the last time I had a football pitched it right at my noggin?
But you can't tell me that the circumstances are the same every time someone throws you the ball. If your brain was simply trying to catch by following previous experiences, it would fail to find a previous experience when the wind suddenly shifts and blows hard. Or you trip over a rock, stumble and still make the catch. Or the ball travels at a different speed. Do you just stand there, or improvise? If your brain isn't doing any actual number crunching to catch that ball, did you only catch it the last time by chance? And just think of how much storage space would be needed to hold every experience! Quite the cluttered mess. It makes much more sense in this situation to reply more upon the math than it does look up tables.
So the last poster was right. A brain does do math to catch that ball. And you're right, a brain does reference previous experiences when trying to catch that ball.
Since this math is done by specialized brain functions that were prepared to do just that, and are inseperably integrated with other brain connections -- it doesn't mean that you could take that calculus ability and use it for another task. But the math is being done.
And if you actually read the article, you would have realized that Jim Oberg is still going to write the book, but with alternative funding.
*Whew* I read that wrong and had to do a double take. I thought you said "with an alternative ending"... and I'm thinking "What, the moon was made of cheese after all?"
Surely your belief system is an intensly personal thing, and not just a pointer to talkorigins.org!
Not mine. I try to base what I believe as far as facts go to what is logical, successfully argued and well-evidenced. There is little I can think (as far as my worldly beliefs go) that has anything to do with being deeply or intensely personal. The intro to Carl Sagan's the Demon Haunted world sums it up rather well: Carl recounts the time he explained to the man who deeply wanted to believe in all sorts of things that "The evidence is crummy."
I suppose my moral beliefs could be considered "intensely personal" but even those I try to put a voice of reason to -- Pro life? Pro choice? Who's involved? Which is more imporant, the rights of a person or the life of an unborn? Is an unborn truly sentient? etc. Some of them I still don't have an answer to... but I find the idea of shutting the best methods the world uses to determine truth out of my head to be really ridiculous. I don't see how anybody who is interested in knowing what is true can do it. Or how anybody can not care about whether their beliefs are true. The concept is so alien to me.
Perhaps (ironically enough) why I want to find truth to things is because of a intensely personal desire for the truth.
You don't really stare at the light under your mouse do you?
I use my red-mouse light to blank out the memory of certain people I meet, just like the Men in Black do. I'm hoping to update mine to the blue version mentioned in the article to come in line with the sequel.
It really works, too! Watch, I'll demonst...
Who are you?
Re:How many times can the Democrats pull this crap
on
Indecision 2002
·
· Score: 2
You know, we could always just keep all polling places open longer. Or move everything to Saturday. You know, so more people can actually get away from work to vote?
(From what I've read so far, they haven't gotten much sympathy from the judge.)
Well, they *did* bungle the case pretty bad. If they had done a better job, perhaps she would have felt free to discipline Microsoft much harsher without fear of having her ruling reversed by the appeals courts later.
As to overcompensating for something, if you're trying to imply that the only use for a sports car or a pickup truck is as a penis extension, then you've had some kind of sick self esteem issues pounded into your head at some point.
I can't say what it is like where you live, but around here I frequently see other guys in trucks and sports cars peel out past old women as fast as they possibly can, blaring their engine like hell. If that's not trying to make up for a small penis, I don't know what is. At least, that's what my girlfriend frequently states.:p Yeah, you're cool Mr. speedy. You just nearly killed someone.
FWIW, I've *never* seen a woman try to frighten others on the road as they pass. They don't seem to need nearly as much attention on the road.
Gnucleus (a gnutella client) doesn't make any money, period. The author ("Swabby") created the freeware because he wanted to see a good file trading client available. It is certainly not illegal to make freeware that others will use to illegally trade files with.
Wrong kind of "freedom." The part of the U.S. government who is working on the project mentioned in this article wouldn't want anything to do with Freenet because:
a) They didn't invent it
b) They can't put backdoors in it
Besides, the government is a money-eating machine. Do you really think they would look at a decent pre-existing solution when they can burn money researching such things from scratch?
I am pretty sure that wasn't coincidence. Remember Sega was to use 3Dfx chip. And finally 3Dfx closed
They were? Sega of America wanted to use 3Dfx in the Dreamcast. Sega of Japan wanted to use the PowerVR (NEC, I believe). As usual, Sega of Japan got to pick. There's a bit of a complicated story behind it, but if they had stuck with 3Dfx they may have had the money and product supply to keep the Dreamcast floating long enough to make a profit. But anyway, Sega wasn't "to use" any 3Dfx chip. SoA just wanted to use one.
This is what Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz had to say about this way back in 1973-"Human culture, after enveloping and filling the whole globe, is in danger of being killed by its own excretion, of dying from an illness closely analogous to uraemia. Humanity will be forced to invent some sort of planetary kidney - or it will die from its own waste products."
Our planetary kindey -- biofuel. Take human and animal waste and turn it into something on which our cars and planes can run. (Which, of course, we'll use to make the planet even warmer.;)
He should see see it as enemy #1. It could very likely prove to be the source of Microsoft's demise.
There's no way that open source could turn into Microsoft's downfall. Microsoft is smart -- they have a strategy. Keep moving, keep changing, keep expanding. Imagine that StarOffice / OpenOffice / WordPerfect etc. and Linux / BSD / OSX cut off 90% of Microsoft's current revenue. By that time Microsoft will have turned their XBOX venture into a very profitable business..NET programming tools will come out for Linux and keep the cash flow going. MSN online will be far more popular than AOL. They will quickly thrive on TabletPC software while thrive while Open Source takes its time getting there. And so on. They'll survive on that while they expand to other ventures and plan ways to move back into previously profitable areas. Keep an eye out for a MS-Linux.
Look at Apple. Early in the fight between Jobs and Gates people would have laughed at the idea of Microsoft producing software for Mac. There is a MS-Office for OSX. Today Microsoft owns part of Apple. If tomorrow everybody switches to Mac, Microsoft still makes money. (I'm reminded of a Dilbert cartoon where Wally invests in the competition and becomes rich.)
Not only that, but they keep learning. I'm not trying to sound like I'm worried about the Borg here but Microsoft is smart and can see pitfalls in the road. They're like a successful virus or disease, it will evolve to avoid any cure far faster than the cure can take it out. So you've cured the cancer in your chest? Good, but it has already spread to your brain.
Open source may be an irresistable force, but Microsoft doesn't believe itself to be an immovable object. It will just live around open source.
The correct block seems to have been turned in back in July, and even though it's reasonable to not expect to have find it by now, shouldn't they have kept the stats up for what was done since? Seriously - the stats page seems to have been rewinded back to July and they seem to be pretending that then is when people stopped submitting blocks. This doesn't make me want to help Distributed.net in any future projects.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it moves down a full 2 lines. I can't find a setting to change this in the options menu.
I have yet to encounter a task that I could do with Office that can't do just as well, and often more easily, with OpenOffice and Mozilla.
Hey, you can? Keen - perhaps you could help me out. I've been trying to do this in OpenOffice for some time. Here is the task:
Press the "Enter" key and have the cursor move down exactly one line.
Obviously Microsoft cannot compete on price or flexibility.
They could, but they won't. Instead, they make massive profits on MS-Office and MS-Windows and use the extra money to fund their many other ventures which lose money. X-Box is a good example. The goal is to survive long enough in these other arenas to become profitable there, too. Chances are that eventually they will.
This is why Linux will never kill Microsoft, only make chinks in the armor.
The reason I doubt the math is being done is that maths is a learnt skill.
:)
Most everything we do is a learned skill. So? The brain re-learns a lot of things all the time in different sections of the brain, through reorganization. There's no one section of the brain set aside for "math", just like there's not only one section of an Athlon processor that adds two numbers together that the whole CPU would need to rely upon every time it needs to add.
I much prefer the idea of using past experience mixed with constant feedback. I see the ball so my mind is telling my body were it expects the ball to land based on experience. Then I watch the ball and constantly adjust. It's not like I go the ball will land at X, but rather based on what I've seen the ball will land sorta over there maybe, better get over there. Hang on a sec it's not falling like I'm expecting better shift back a bit. Repeat until you catch it.
Yeah, we all know that's how Tiger Woods gets his golf ball in the hole... "That's not going quite where I planned for it to... I'd better fly up there and whack it again before it lands."
Yeah, e-mail is going to be outdated, just like postal-mail has long been outdated, and telephones have been outdated. You heard it here first... According to 'JeffSh', IM is going to replace them all...[/sarcasm]
:)
Pfft, yeah. What a moron. Next he'll be telling us that almost everybody has abandoned the telegraph. Crazy.
Also of note is that the many of gadgets in this movie have b(r)ought the film to a record for product placement.
:p
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2488151.stm
So unless a friend tells me that Bond gets rejected by Halle Barry at the end of the movie, I'm not going to pay to see it.
But is the brain calculating this or rather looking up the answer? I know as a toddler I couldn't catch squat, but as I got older I got better. Was the reason increased proceesing power, my brain got bigger. Or more experience, I'd caught a lot more balls by then.
I doubt very much the brain is clunking through calculus.
Sure it is. What do you think "more experience" means? It means that the neurons in your brain have reconnected in ways to tackle a task better each time. It doesn't necessarily mean your brain did it one way or another. Let's look at the two ways that a wetware computer could catch the ball:
A) Mathematics. [Input: (Here is the ball now. And here is where it is now. And this is roughtly how fast the wind is blowing and what direction it is coming from...) -> Process (Compare position of the ball at time A to that of time B, then to time C, the path is making an arc... Extrapolate that arc. Where will the ball be at time D? -> Output (Move those hands and catch!)]. That doesn't necessarily mean you used more neurons (your "bigger brain") to do it. It's like taking a chunk of mixed silicon and metal and turning it one step at a time into a 3GHz custom CPU. Reorganization made for faster processing.
B) Look up tables. Keep a log of past experiences, the solution to each experience and reference it each time a task is done. Certain things your brain probably only uses a lookup table for -- digit - by - digit multiplication for example. The brain recognizes a Platonistic "football-ish" object and throws it into the works. It thinks, what did I do the last time I had a football pitched it right at my noggin?
But you can't tell me that the circumstances are the same every time someone throws you the ball. If your brain was simply trying to catch by following previous experiences, it would fail to find a previous experience when the wind suddenly shifts and blows hard. Or you trip over a rock, stumble and still make the catch. Or the ball travels at a different speed. Do you just stand there, or improvise? If your brain isn't doing any actual number crunching to catch that ball, did you only catch it the last time by chance? And just think of how much storage space would be needed to hold every experience! Quite the cluttered mess. It makes much more sense in this situation to reply more upon the math than it does look up tables.
So the last poster was right. A brain does do math to catch that ball. And you're right, a brain does reference previous experiences when trying to catch that ball.
Since this math is done by specialized brain functions that were prepared to do just that, and are inseperably integrated with other brain connections -- it doesn't mean that you could take that calculus ability and use it for another task. But the math is being done.
Am I the only person who thinks this woman might have just as well put an ad in the newspaper saying "sniper wanted"?
And if you actually read the article, you would have realized that Jim Oberg is still going to write the book, but with alternative funding.
*Whew* I read that wrong and had to do a double take. I thought you said "with an alternative ending"... and I'm thinking "What, the moon was made of cheese after all?"
Surely your belief system is an intensly personal thing, and not just a pointer to talkorigins.org!
Not mine. I try to base what I believe as far as facts go to what is logical, successfully argued and well-evidenced. There is little I can think (as far as my worldly beliefs go) that has anything to do with being deeply or intensely personal. The intro to Carl Sagan's the Demon Haunted world sums it up rather well: Carl recounts the time he explained to the man who deeply wanted to believe in all sorts of things that "The evidence is crummy."
I suppose my moral beliefs could be considered "intensely personal" but even those I try to put a voice of reason to -- Pro life? Pro choice? Who's involved? Which is more imporant, the rights of a person or the life of an unborn? Is an unborn truly sentient? etc. Some of them I still don't have an answer to... but I find the idea of shutting the best methods the world uses to determine truth out of my head to be really ridiculous. I don't see how anybody who is interested in knowing what is true can do it. Or how anybody can not care about whether their beliefs are true. The concept is so alien to me.
Perhaps (ironically enough) why I want to find truth to things is because of a intensely personal desire for the truth.
You don't really stare at the light under your mouse do you?
I use my red-mouse light to blank out the memory of certain people I meet, just like the Men in Black do. I'm hoping to update mine to the blue version mentioned in the article to come in line with the sequel.
It really works, too! Watch, I'll demonst...
Who are you?
You know, we could always just keep all polling places open longer. Or move everything to Saturday. You know, so more people can actually get away from work to vote?
(From what I've read so far, they haven't gotten much sympathy from the judge.)
Well, they *did* bungle the case pretty bad. If they had done a better job, perhaps she would have felt free to discipline Microsoft much harsher without fear of having her ruling reversed by the appeals courts later.
Isn't this exactly what the preliminary settlement between the US DOJ and Microsoft was before? Or was it modified?
Thank you! It was nice for someone to cut through all the jargon to tell us what it *really* means.
Translation: Judge Kelly accepts the Microsoft settlement.
The F-150 @ $12,000 and 20mpg does not start to cost more than the Honda @ $22,000 and 70 mpg until almost 200,000 miles.
Out of curiousity, what average gas price did you use?
> I want a car that goes 79 mph down the road without a complaint about hills...
Would you like me to write to Father Christmas for you?
Nah. Just replace Santa's cookies and milk this year with something a little more persuasive.
Behold, the power of cheese.
As to overcompensating for something, if you're trying to imply that the only use for a sports car or a pickup truck is as a penis extension, then you've had some kind of sick self esteem issues pounded into your head at some point.
:p Yeah, you're cool Mr. speedy. You just nearly killed someone.
I can't say what it is like where you live, but around here I frequently see other guys in trucks and sports cars peel out past old women as fast as they possibly can, blaring their engine like hell. If that's not trying to make up for a small penis, I don't know what is. At least, that's what my girlfriend frequently states.
FWIW, I've *never* seen a woman try to frighten others on the road as they pass. They don't seem to need nearly as much attention on the road.
Gnucleus (a gnutella client) doesn't make any money, period. The author ("Swabby") created the freeware because he wanted to see a good file trading client available. It is certainly not illegal to make freeware that others will use to illegally trade files with.
Wrong kind of "freedom." The part of the U.S. government who is working on the project mentioned in this article wouldn't want anything to do with Freenet because:
a) They didn't invent it
b) They can't put backdoors in it
Besides, the government is a money-eating machine. Do you really think they would look at a decent pre-existing solution when they can burn money researching such things from scratch?
I am pretty sure that wasn't coincidence. Remember Sega was to use 3Dfx chip. And finally 3Dfx closed
They were? Sega of America wanted to use 3Dfx in the Dreamcast. Sega of Japan wanted to use the PowerVR (NEC, I believe). As usual, Sega of Japan got to pick. There's a bit of a complicated story behind it, but if they had stuck with 3Dfx they may have had the money and product supply to keep the Dreamcast floating long enough to make a profit. But anyway, Sega wasn't "to use" any 3Dfx chip. SoA just wanted to use one.
This is what Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz had to say about this way back in 1973-"Human culture, after enveloping and filling the whole globe, is
;)
in danger of being killed by its own excretion, of dying from an illness closely analogous to uraemia. Humanity will be forced to invent some sort of planetary kidney - or it will die from its own waste products."
Our planetary kindey -- biofuel. Take human and animal waste and turn it into something on which our cars and planes can run. (Which, of course, we'll use to make the planet even warmer.
He should see see it as enemy #1. It could very likely prove to be the source of Microsoft's demise.
.NET programming tools will come out for Linux and keep the cash flow going. MSN online will be far more popular than AOL. They will quickly thrive on TabletPC software while thrive while Open Source takes its time getting there. And so on. They'll survive on that while they expand to other ventures and plan ways to move back into previously profitable areas. Keep an eye out for a MS-Linux.
There's no way that open source could turn into Microsoft's downfall. Microsoft is smart -- they have a strategy. Keep moving, keep changing, keep expanding. Imagine that StarOffice / OpenOffice / WordPerfect etc. and Linux / BSD / OSX cut off 90% of Microsoft's current revenue. By that time Microsoft will have turned their XBOX venture into a very profitable business.
Look at Apple. Early in the fight between Jobs and Gates people would have laughed at the idea of Microsoft producing software for Mac. There is a MS-Office for OSX. Today Microsoft owns part of Apple. If tomorrow everybody switches to Mac, Microsoft still makes money. (I'm reminded of a Dilbert cartoon where Wally invests in the competition and becomes rich.)
Not only that, but they keep learning. I'm not trying to sound like I'm worried about the Borg here but Microsoft is smart and can see pitfalls in the road. They're like a successful virus or disease, it will evolve to avoid any cure far faster than the cure can take it out. So you've cured the cancer in your chest? Good, but it has already spread to your brain.
Open source may be an irresistable force, but Microsoft doesn't believe itself to be an immovable object. It will just live around open source.
Of course they didn't work. The guy's not a JEDI! You can't just pull something like that off, without years and years of training. Sheesh.
Either that, or he didn't have enough Midichlorines in his blood. Poor guy, now he'll never be able to finish his C3PO robot...
The correct block seems to have been turned in back in July, and even though it's reasonable to not expect to have find it by now, shouldn't they have kept the stats up for what was done since? Seriously - the stats page seems to have been rewinded back to July and they seem to be pretending that then is when people stopped submitting blocks. This doesn't make me want to help Distributed.net in any future projects.