You're absolutely right, but still, how do you get a computer to show this complex behaviour without crashing? Although insects might be (in my opinion must be) complex robots, they are really VERY complex. That's what I wanted to explain with this example.
What I mean by 'idea' is of coarse that it has to understand the conceps 'hole', 'suitable larva to lay an egg in', etc... I wouln't even know how to begin to program that in a computer.
Often I hear people talking about their robots on TV, and they say that their robots are about as intelligent as a bee or wasp. But if I compare the behaviour of a bee or wasp or whatever insect to those footballing robots I see on TV I'm not so sure. For instance you have wasps that make a hole in the ground, fly away to find some insect larva, bring it to their hole, sedate the larva, lay an egg in it, put it in the hole and close the hole. To be able to do this it must have a general idea about what a hole in the ground is and how to make it. When it is born it cannot know exactly where to make the hole because it has to find a suitable place. So how does the wasp decide where to make the hole? And it must have a pretty good memory too, to be able to find the hole back after some flying around. If you compare this behaviour of a tiny wasp to the robots we have playing football or driving around on Mars (or vacuuming our living room for that matter) I think we still have a long long way to go. This is a very interesting subject and sometimes I envy people that are just now deciding what to study:-) I'm too old to start with this now.
In the article they talk about emergence: EMERGENCE describes the way unpredictable patterns arise from innumerable interactions between independent parts. Does anyone know more about this? How do people study it, what parameters are important, etc... I'm curious.
I agree. It's just like with HiFi sound: at a certain moment technology is so advanced that you can make better equipment but you don't see the differnce any more, or the differences are so small that people just don't care. So now it's back to the drawing board for new game genres or better stories! That's good; I just played the point-'n' click adventure game Pleurghburg, dark ages, and despite its Commodore 64-like graphics it was lots of fun to play!
That is certainly true, therefore I hope that the EU reads/. and takes the recommendations in the article to heart. Those will have a far greater impact on MS in the long term than any fine they can come up with.
I know all that but the fact is that (almost) everybody and his dog uses MS software these days, NOT Xerox, Apple, AmigaOS or what have you. So Billy must have done something right (if not for mankind then certainly for MS). O, and I'm 35 years old thank you:-)
I thought Bills' way of thinking (And Steve Jobs' for that matter) was very good depicted in Pirates of Silicon Valley. A must-see for every nerd on this planet.
They start the letter with To whom it may concern. Then I would think that if they don't even know my name, why should I trust them to know anything about my account? Ergo: it's spam. There should really be a mandatory Internet Safety Course for people who go online the first time. It's easy to be impressed by letters like this but also easy to learn how to distinguish between 'trusted' e-mail and spam like this.
But that is always the policy of MS: make your software work well for 80% of the users and ignore the rest. This is the approach that got them where they are now.
I crack every game I buy. Why? Because I don't feel like digging around for CDs every time I want to play a game. I have all my CD's neatly stacked in a cupboard. This saves me a lot of time. Instead of spending time on cracking games I can play them.
I had a Power Cartridge attached to my C-64, which speeded the diskdrive up 8-fold (among other things. It also had a nice Backup feature). Then the speed was bearable.
You can laugh about it but that's not really fair. I think the Beagle2 was just unlucky. Congrats to NASA for this achievement of course, but I don't think it feels good to be a Beagle2 team member just now. O well, wait till they find Beagle2 and it sends back images of living martians from the bottom of the chasm it fell in!
The numbers in front of some of the usernames are the telephone numbers of these politicians. This makes it more than clear that spammers do not work very accurate and with decency.
I hope Rejo was decent enough to change the numbers before publishing them on the 'net.
I agree with the above. I've also written a short story once (it's on my website (in Dutch (un)fortunately)) and I now want to publish a few more stories there before thinking about publishing. So far I've gotten mostly positive responses about my story about Sophie. However, I am quite sure many people say that it's good just to be nice, so I am not too satisfied about that. It's now time for Sophie to have her next adventure; hopefully I get more negative responses about that one. Of course this could also mean that it's really crap. O well... What I wanted to say was that I think it's a good idea to put your stories on the web first for everyone to read so you get a feeling of how good you are before going to a publisher to try to make money out of them.
Here in Holland most of the money that is made in lotteries goes to charity. So even if you lose your money is not totally wasted. So everytime I didn't win I get this warm feeling inside because some people are now happy because I gave them my money... Another reason to play in lotteries is because gambling is fun. Expensive, but fun.
Slashdot Mirror
You're absolutely right, but still, how do you get a computer to show this complex behaviour without crashing? Although insects might be (in my opinion must be) complex robots, they are really VERY complex. That's what I wanted to explain with this example.
What I mean by 'idea' is of coarse that it has to understand the conceps 'hole', 'suitable larva to lay an egg in', etc... I wouln't even know how to begin to program that in a computer.
Often I hear people talking about their robots on TV, and they say that their robots are about as intelligent as a bee or wasp. But if I compare the behaviour of a bee or wasp or whatever insect to those footballing robots I see on TV I'm not so sure. For instance you have wasps that make a hole in the ground, fly away to find some insect larva, bring it to their hole, sedate the larva, lay an egg in it, put it in the hole and close the hole. To be able to do this it must have a general idea about what a hole in the ground is and how to make it. When it is born it cannot know exactly where to make the hole because it has to find a suitable place. So how does the wasp decide where to make the hole? And it must have a pretty good memory too, to be able to find the hole back after some flying around. If you compare this behaviour of a tiny wasp to the robots we have playing football or driving around on Mars (or vacuuming our living room for that matter) I think we still have a long long way to go. This is a very interesting subject and sometimes I envy people that are just now deciding what to study :-) I'm too old to start with this now.
In the article they talk about emergence:
EMERGENCE describes the way unpredictable patterns arise from innumerable interactions between independent parts.
Does anyone know more about this? How do people study it, what parameters are important, etc... I'm curious.
I agree. It's just like with HiFi sound: at a certain moment technology is so advanced that you can make better equipment but you don't see the differnce any more, or the differences are so small that people just don't care. So now it's back to the drawing board for new game genres or better stories! That's good; I just played the point-'n' click adventure game Pleurghburg, dark ages, and despite its Commodore 64-like graphics it was lots of fun to play!
That is certainly true, therefore I hope that the EU reads /. and takes the recommendations in the article to heart. Those will have a far greater impact on MS in the long term than any fine they can come up with.
I know all that but the fact is that (almost) everybody and his dog uses MS software these days, NOT Xerox, Apple, AmigaOS or what have you. So Billy must have done something right (if not for mankind then certainly for MS). O, and I'm 35 years old thank you :-)
I thought Bills' way of thinking (And Steve Jobs' for that matter) was very good depicted in Pirates of Silicon Valley. A must-see for every nerd on this planet.
Oh come on. Like it or not, Bill Gates is the man who made computers accessible to the common people. He certainly deserves credit for that.
They start the letter with To whom it may concern. Then I would think that if they don't even know my name, why should I trust them to know anything about my account? Ergo: it's spam. There should really be a mandatory Internet Safety Course for people who go online the first time. It's easy to be impressed by letters like this but also easy to learn how to distinguish between 'trusted' e-mail and spam like this.
But that is always the policy of MS: make your software work well for 80% of the users and ignore the rest. This is the approach that got them where they are now.
I crack every game I buy. Why? Because I don't feel like digging around for CDs every time I want to play a game.
I have all my CD's neatly stacked in a cupboard. This saves me a lot of time. Instead of spending time on cracking games I can play them.
I had a Power Cartridge attached to my C-64, which speeded the diskdrive up 8-fold (among other things. It also had a nice Backup feature). Then the speed was bearable.
You'll have to make a cable to connect your 1541 discdrive to your PC. See this page for more info.
I have a VT420 terminal that I use regularly at home. When I start it up it says (c) 1989 somewhere but I have no idea how old it really is.
Well, why don't you switch it on then?
Yesterday I bought a DVD player that can play MPEG-4 and DivX. That very high-tech for me. It's a Philips DVD-737.
Maybe you should Ask Slashdot!
Maybe /. should have an 'Ask Google' next to 'Ask /.'
Maybe your CD/DVD player is getting cranky?
You can laugh about it but that's not really fair. I think the Beagle2 was just unlucky. Congrats to NASA for this achievement of course, but I don't think it feels good to be a Beagle2 team member just now. O well, wait till they find Beagle2 and it sends back images of living martians from the bottom of the chasm it fell in!
Me neighter. Now if it were an electron microscope I would be very interested.
The numbers in front of some of the usernames are the telephone numbers of these politicians. This makes it more than clear that spammers do not work very accurate and with decency.
I hope Rejo was decent enough to change the numbers before publishing them on the 'net.
I agree with the above. I've also written a short story once (it's on my website (in Dutch (un)fortunately)) and I now want to publish a few more stories there before thinking about publishing. So far I've gotten mostly positive responses about my story about Sophie. However, I am quite sure many people say that it's good just to be nice, so I am not too satisfied about that. It's now time for Sophie to have her next adventure; hopefully I get more negative responses about that one. Of course this could also mean that it's really crap. O well... What I wanted to say was that I think it's a good idea to put your stories on the web first for everyone to read so you get a feeling of how good you are before going to a publisher to try to make money out of them.
Good luck!
Here in Holland most of the money that is made in lotteries goes to charity. So even if you lose your money is not totally wasted. So everytime I didn't win I get this warm feeling inside because some people are now happy because I gave them my money... Another reason to play in lotteries is because gambling is fun. Expensive, but fun.