But... fair point... could a radio blast travel up the wires controlling the radar? Or could those be separately shielded from outside influences?
Alternatively... couldn't a circuit be visually inspected for antennae by a qualified engineer? If the hypothesis is the mobo has a stealth radio receiver circuit on it to catch these kill signals... should be easy to see.
The articles smack of FUD to me. Sure it *could* happen, but is there evidence that it is?
On the one hand I absolutely love our military for thinking paranoid like this, I feel my tax dollars are being well spent. The slow progression from US building stuff to US outsourcing stuff is an insidious thing that may well catch our military off guard one day if they weren't worrying about it now.
But the articles were not clear on what the trigger mechanism of the purported Israeli-Syrian kill switch was. The articles talk about hardware back doors, but that leaves me even more confused. Are they assuming the Syrian systems were on the internet and all the Israelis had to do was remotely login to the Syrian air defense system? That seems like the sort of thing a robust firewall can stop or an even more old fashioned internet disconnect switch. And further, what sort of hardware back door would work like that up at the OS level? The ethernet port at the hardware level is continously scanning for kill orders before passing it up the stack to the OS level?
Alternatively if the kill signal were to be broadcast by radio... seems a faraday cage could solve that.
I believe this sort of thing can happen some day, but I find it hard to believe that it's happening now without clearer after-the-fact evidence.
I'm against the music mafia as much at the next slashdotter, but one thing I favor on general terms that still doesn't seem to apply here is the right to charge for music being played in the customer-facing end of a business.
I mean it could be the case that music gives you a competitive advantage over your competition if you play music on the customer facing side and that one of the reasons for the music mafia to exist is to give the artists a share of that. In an ideal world I see this as a sort of micro transaction and furthermore in an ideal world I see technology replacing the music mafia as a way of executing these micro transactions and give more dollars to the artists.
BUT THIS WAS THE BACK OFFICE... the stock room. Both the radio and the singing should be allowed there. Furthermore about the singing... I still don't understand why a novice singer in a non-professional setting should have to pay. I mean... are they really doing justice to the songs?
What sect of Islam is that that's against music? If this keeps up... only regulated music can be played... then I'll start wondering if the execs in the music mafia are closet muslims from this anti-music sect executing a long term strategy to deny the whole human race access to music.
This is GREAT! If we can just get a good parody going that makes direct references to the music mafia then perhaps that would exemplify how crazy the music mafia really is.
sales of a recipe book would generate royalties similar to how sales of sheet music does. cooking a recipe would be a "performance" and would generate royalties similar to playing (someone else's music) at an auditorium eating food prepared from a recipe would be similar to buying music and... sampling/taste testing
And before long I won't be able to eat at all without generating royalties for someone.
The news coverage certainly seems to indicate that there is an ever increasing set of taxes. It would be nice that if this tax was enacted it simultaneously removed the gas-tax.
What about police dash cams? From footage I've seen on TV, some (but not all) of those have audio. I wonder if those with audio are any of the 12 states cited in the article.
Yea and so is the summary... The very next line says that of those 12 mutations, 8 of them occurred in the lab. Only 4 occurred naturally (which btw confirms JBS Haldane's conjecture).
What I'd like to know is WHEN those 4 occurred. Roughly 200 years since these fellows last shared an ancestor, say 10 generations. Yea.. it happens gradually but it DOES happen so... somewhere in the sequence granddad-dad-son at least one mutation occurred for someone. What was that mutation like? Did the kid not look like the father? Was it completely unnoticeable (by eye)? Was it a random cosmic ray to the balls that caused it?
If this post is not good enough now...It will be tomorrow.
Funny as your intent may be I think it is also spot on target.
On the one hand, I'm one of those folks who would rather buy a pint of high quality ice cream than a gallon of cheap stuff (who wants to eat a gallon of cheap stuff) but on the other hand technology is different.
How many of us get a tinge of depression a year after a new technology purchase only to find newer technology that does more than what we bought for cheaper? Chasing the high end tech game is expensive. Chasing the low end tech game is a way to "get in the game" now and wait to see when things settle down enough that you'll buy into the higher end.
Put it another way, I think the folks who can afford it analyze it this way: I can buy a low end gizmo today for $100 or a high end gizmo for $1000 but I also think that in 3 years there will be a low-end gizmo for $100 that does what the high end one does now. So I'll buy the $100 version now and wait and see how the market shapes up.
And the folks who can't afford it say: I can either buy a gizmo for $100 today, save up a long time for the $1000 gizmo or completely go without. I'll buy the $100 gizmo today.
I agree. While I like the idea of increasing the punishment for texting and driving, I think all the way up to drunk driving is excessive.
When you're drunk and driving, you're on the road continuously impaired for your whole trip. Your chances of getting into an accident are MUCH higher because the time you're impaired is much higher. Texting could be a quick 10 second thing and then you're done for the rest of your trip. Reckless, sure. The same level of recklessness as drunk driving? IMHO for most texters, probably not.
While I'll admit that there may be some texters who may perhaps do it continuously (I in fact do not know), the point here is that should the justice system treat all texters as if they were these hypothetical worst case continuous texters or... well... should our justice system be more just?
The reason why the average user doesn't care is because this is one of 2 things that affect actual disk capacity. The other is the formatting process. I'm typing this on a PC with a 120GB drive in it. After formatting (according to windows) I have 110,506,xxx,xxx bytes of capacity which then gets reported as 102GB.
I think the average user doesn't really care about the numbers as long as they're comparable to each other. Is a 120GB drive by WD bigger or smaller than a 120GB drive by seagate? In either case they know they won't actually be able to store 120GB of files on those drives for "obscure computer reasons", but when they're comparison shopping, they're OK with the numbers.
My complaint about his complaint on R2D2 is that "the voice chip wouldn't get past Accounting". Does he even pay attention to the SW Universe??? C3PO was built by Anakin in his home in his spare time. There apparently are no mega corporations in the SW universe (something I've been meaning to blog about for awhile). So there's no "accounting" to complain.
What's weird for me is that the wrong-homonym thing is happening for me *and I know the difference*. It's like a lazy part of my brain "hears" the word and uses the most frequently used spelling for that word and runs with it. "your" for "you're" and "there" for either "their" or "they're" are the ones I mess up most often. This doesn't happen often mind you but it's way more than I'm happy with.
Regarding the L8R thing of SMS... once I got a cell phone with a keyboard, this has disappeared for me as it's harder now to switch to digit mode. So I find myself in this bizarre middle land (I figure for folks who get my texts) of using phrases like "C U later".
First you make the mistake of implying that BM is a leftist event. It's not.
Actually no, I was looking for a counter example. I didn't assume anything about BM though in light of your response I'll admit my counter example was poorly chosen.
All I was trying to do is frame what I perceived as your argument better. Thus... there are some rights that I'll cede to specific others (and I'll trust them to not abuse that) because of who they are. Then there are other rights that I'll never cede regardless of who asks because they are "unalienable rights".
All I was trying to say is people should be clear which is which.
And if you do digg searches on BM photos, you'll see they hardly ever exercise discretion.
You seem to be saying that the rights BM is trying to reserve for themselves are OK because it's BM. By extension I assume you'd not be happy with another, possibly right wing organization reserving similar rights for themselves?
If so, the law is the law and it should apply to all equally. To say "I cede my rights in this area only to BM" is fine for you, but in the larger world such concessions quickly morph into "I cede my rights in this area."(period)
You should be aware that the request for you to cede those rights is crazy even if you trust the entity asking you to cede those rights.
Let's not forget that "murder" is also a legal term. I have not read the Florida case, but I'd expect "manslaughter" would have been a better crime for the DA to prosecute. We've all seen this happen, a DA apparently under public pressure, tries to prosecute a death as a murder instead of a manslaughter and sometimes succeeds sometimes fails.
He'd have this info if you had to buy the subscription directly from the WSJ rather than through Amazon.
Yes, but he wouldn't have this information if you walked into a book store and bought the paper from them, even if you bought the paper every single day which seems closer to how the Kindle process works.
It's an interesting question. should there be 2 ways to buy? an anonymizing service through amazon as you suggest above and a newspaper like subscription service where Murdock would get the same info as a print subscriber?
Also, Comcast has my subscriber info even though I used to buy HBO. Did comcast share my info with HBO? If not... how does HBO do w/o this info and why can't Murdock do the same?
A lot of lobbyists are lawyers, a lot of politicians are lawyers, the current system had been made to push every challenge into court with accompanying major court costs. Honestly how likely do you think major patent reform is.
When the patent office complains then I think the chances are higher than you apparently do. Not great mind you, but not abysmal either.
The patent system is not going to reform itself. Industry will not reform it. The public will not reform it. The legal system will not reform it.
I only partially agree with this. The "reform" that we're looking for can simply come if the PTO admits what it is doing. A very cursory glance at prior art and other patentability issues and then granting a patent. If the PTO was honest with itself that it is relying on the legal system to help it flush out the prior art claim then they should also FOSTER the ability of John Q Citizen to bring such a claim.
In envision a cheap prior art challenge (cheaper than a full court case) perhaps filling out a few standard forms the PTO could concoct and then let that run.
Alternatively, maybe the EFF can step up to this too?
I believe in the singularity as much as probably any slashdotter (actually I believe in the pressure to get there but not so sure how it will play out). But with that said I have always had a few problems with this simple chain of logic.
Problem 1: Just throw more "neurons" at it (electronic or biological). As far as we know, the "design" of a human brain is simply a matter of neurons (although I'll take exception to that in #3 below). All we gotta do is build a big enough neural chip. The problem then becomes one of engineering, it's the HOW we make it that seems to be our current bottle neck. What will more intelligence add here? Doubtful it will improve the design per-se, but instead will improve the engineering? If it weren't for the engineering problems, *we* could build something at our level or higher. Improvements in the engineering doesn't seem as exponential an improvement as improvements in the design could be.
Problem 2: Hardware doesn't change, but bio-systems do. I haven't RTFA, but other articles I have read in the past on neural networks have a training phase (where synapses are made) and a working phase (where questions are answered). After the training phase no more synapses are made. This is not at all like biological brains where synapses are made throughout life. Until a hardware system can mimic this behavior IMHO these systems will always be below the fully human capabilities.
Problem 3: Can a system of complexity "N" design a system of complexity "2N"? We haven't done this yet. Our "design" is plan for a computer brain is copy the human one. Once that copy is used, it may well be the case that to get to a significantly higher "thought cycle" level we'd need a new design (and not more neurons (see #1 above)). For all we know, this may be a/the bottleneck. Problems here are perhaps with terminology, what do we mean by "smarter"? It is clear that a hardware based human intelligence will get the benefit of increased clock speed. What's less clear is what a faster thinking human can do. There may be some problems that one human, even if he lives forever/thinks infinitely fast, can not solve because of other limitations of the human brain design. And one of those problems may be the design, actual design, of a better brain.
yea... from the article... "How did famously technologically-challenged reporters manage the feat without BT catching on"
My take: By preying on even more technologically challenged victims. Celebrities that are too stupid to change their default pin or have their "handlers" do it for them.
I sense a feeding frenzy here. You don't have to be smart, just smarter than your victims.
Excellent points... My fear is that GPS is destroying our non-verbal memory. But as you would say, only to those who rely exclusively on it. Case in point... (not just to the parent but to anyone)... if you use GPS to get to a place you've never been before, can you find your way back WITHOUT GPS? IMHO the legitimate reason for a "no" answer is because you were too busy paying attention to the GPS to take note of landmarks. But after visiting that same place again and again I would hope that most folks would develop the ability to navigate the return trip sans-GPS before they're able to navigate the main trip sans-GPS.
This is slashdot after all... if there's anything that unites us it would be a desire to exercise our brains. Over reliance on GPS stops/slows our use of a key part of our brains (IMHO).
Actually, I think this could be the showcase event for the free/low-cost advertising model vs pay.
The summary indicates that this would apply to "old/rare/out of print" books. I assume this may also be code for "copyright expired" books too. So... with no heirs to complain and multiple parties having access to the same material, we could have a show down.
Now what would you rather have? Pay $5.00 (say) for a Dickens work sans adverts or pay "$0.00" for the same thing with tacky ads thrown in? The market can decide this one.
stop pursuing thought crime or thinking that blurring reality and simulation will make criminals out of people
I agree. My main concern though... ahem... is for the children, but let me explain. Watching bugs bunny cartoons as a young kid I kinda had the impression that nothing bad would happen to you when something exploded. All that would happen is you'd get black soot on your face. As games get more realistic looking but still with "fantasy" consequences I'm afraid that young kids will not be able to tell the difference and think that the fantasy consequences will still occur in real life. The only conversation I have with my kids when they play these sort of games is to reset their expectations as to what the real-life consequences of various in-game actions would be. As long as they keep that straight... it's just a game.
That said, IMHO the most violent show on TV these days is America's Funniest Home Videos. Talk about hiding consequences from actions. I often wonder how many of those people are hurt very badly in some of those antics. The exact same scene, but in the guise of a movie would be laughable as I'd assume it was a well choreographed stunt. But on AFV... I gotta wonder if that show is causing more kids to be reckless.
Yea... as I understand it, since a qubit can represent 0 and 1 simultaneously. In a sense a single qubit represents 2 bits, one bit in a 0 state and one bit in a 1 state. Ten qubits, can represent all 2^10 states simultaneously, so in that same sense 10 qubits can represent 1024 normal bits. 640K qubits can represent a HUGE number of classical orientation of bits. (This is about 10^800 times the larger than the number of atoms in the universe)
That said... I'd be curious to get some more expert feedback on this. I would not be surprised to learn that the above calculation only applies to certain aspects of quantum computing and that a more classical usage could come up in certain circumstances. For example, the above analysis assumed you only need to store a single "qu-number". I would not be surprised to learn that some problems would need to store 2 or more "qu-numbers"... For the sake of discussion let's assume a qu-byte and a qu-word. A qu-byte can represent all 256 states and a qu-word can represent all 65536 states, but if you need 2 qu-bytes you've just restricted yourself to 2 different sets of 256 states. What you can do with those 16 qu-bits in that configuration is MUCH smaller than 65536.
Either way 640k qu-bits (or qu-bytes) should be enough.
Climatologists have already reached a very solid consensus that CO2 emissions *must* be reduced at *any* cost.
That completely misrepresents the opinion of climatologists. The consensus is that CO2 is increasing, that CO2 is highly correlated with historical temperature changes, and that the last century of climate change is caused primarily by humans. There is far less consensus over the exact changes that will occur, that they will all necessarily all be bad, or that we must reduce them at all costs.
NO NO NO.
In this debate MOST OF ALL it is very important to understand the difference between FACTS, THEORY and OPINION. While this post may seem to be picking nits... it's a big deal when things that are facts get circulated around the popular culture as "opinions". The whole debate loses coherence when that happens.
What am I talking about???
The FACTS are that CO2 is increasing and that CO2 is highly correlated with historical temperature changes. No one doubts this. It's a fact, you can find lots of data that support this. (Why you chose to a FACT an OPINION is beyond me.) What's not known is why the CO2 has risen in the last century. The CONSENSUS is that the last century of climate change is caused primarily by humans. A fair number of people (many of whom are not climatologists) doubt this.
Slashdot Mirror
Control circuitry in a Faraday cage?
But... fair point... could a radio blast travel up the wires controlling the radar? Or could those be separately shielded from outside influences?
Alternatively... couldn't a circuit be visually inspected for antennae by a qualified engineer? If the hypothesis is the mobo has a stealth radio receiver circuit on it to catch these kill signals... should be easy to see.
The articles smack of FUD to me. Sure it *could* happen, but is there evidence that it is?
EXACTLY!!!!
On the one hand I absolutely love our military for thinking paranoid like this, I feel my tax dollars are being well spent. The slow progression from US building stuff to US outsourcing stuff is an insidious thing that may well catch our military off guard one day if they weren't worrying about it now.
But the articles were not clear on what the trigger mechanism of the purported Israeli-Syrian kill switch was. The articles talk about hardware back doors, but that leaves me even more confused. Are they assuming the Syrian systems were on the internet and all the Israelis had to do was remotely login to the Syrian air defense system? That seems like the sort of thing a robust firewall can stop or an even more old fashioned internet disconnect switch. And further, what sort of hardware back door would work like that up at the OS level? The ethernet port at the hardware level is continously scanning for kill orders before passing it up the stack to the OS level?
Alternatively if the kill signal were to be broadcast by radio... seems a faraday cage could solve that.
I believe this sort of thing can happen some day, but I find it hard to believe that it's happening now without clearer after-the-fact evidence.
I'm against the music mafia as much at the next slashdotter, but one thing I favor on general terms that still doesn't seem to apply here is the right to charge for music being played in the customer-facing end of a business.
I mean it could be the case that music gives you a competitive advantage over your competition if you play music on the customer facing side and that one of the reasons for the music mafia to exist is to give the artists a share of that. In an ideal world I see this as a sort of micro transaction and furthermore in an ideal world I see technology replacing the music mafia as a way of executing these micro transactions and give more dollars to the artists.
BUT THIS WAS THE BACK OFFICE... the stock room. Both the radio and the singing should be allowed there. Furthermore about the singing... I still don't understand why a novice singer in a non-professional setting should have to pay. I mean... are they really doing justice to the songs?
What sect of Islam is that that's against music? If this keeps up... only regulated music can be played... then I'll start wondering if the execs in the music mafia are closet muslims from this anti-music sect executing a long term strategy to deny the whole human race access to music.
This is GREAT! If we can just get a good parody going that makes direct references to the music mafia then perhaps that would exemplify how crazy the music mafia really is.
sales of a recipe book would generate royalties similar to how sales of sheet music does.
cooking a recipe would be a "performance" and would generate royalties similar to playing (someone else's music) at an auditorium
eating food prepared from a recipe would be similar to buying music
and... sampling/taste testing
And before long I won't be able to eat at all without generating royalties for someone.
crazy crazy crazy.
The news coverage certainly seems to indicate that there is an ever increasing set of taxes. It would be nice that if this tax was enacted it simultaneously removed the gas-tax.
What about police dash cams? From footage I've seen on TV, some (but not all) of those have audio. I wonder if those with audio are any of the 12 states cited in the article.
Yea and so is the summary... The very next line says that of those 12 mutations, 8 of them occurred in the lab. Only 4 occurred naturally (which btw confirms JBS Haldane's conjecture).
What I'd like to know is WHEN those 4 occurred. Roughly 200 years since these fellows last shared an ancestor, say 10 generations. Yea.. it happens gradually but it DOES happen so... somewhere in the sequence granddad-dad-son at least one mutation occurred for someone. What was that mutation like? Did the kid not look like the father? Was it completely unnoticeable (by eye)? Was it a random cosmic ray to the balls that caused it?
If this post is not good enough now...It will be tomorrow.
Funny as your intent may be I think it is also spot on target.
On the one hand, I'm one of those folks who would rather buy a pint of high quality ice cream than a gallon of cheap stuff (who wants to eat a gallon of cheap stuff) but on the other hand technology is different.
How many of us get a tinge of depression a year after a new technology purchase only to find newer technology that does more than what we bought for cheaper? Chasing the high end tech game is expensive. Chasing the low end tech game is a way to "get in the game" now and wait to see when things settle down enough that you'll buy into the higher end.
Put it another way, I think the folks who can afford it analyze it this way:
I can buy a low end gizmo today for $100 or a high end gizmo for $1000 but I also think that in 3 years there will be a low-end gizmo for $100 that does what the high end one does now. So I'll buy the $100 version now and wait and see how the market shapes up.
And the folks who can't afford it say:
I can either buy a gizmo for $100 today, save up a long time for the $1000 gizmo or completely go without. I'll buy the $100 gizmo today.
I agree. While I like the idea of increasing the punishment for texting and driving, I think all the way up to drunk driving is excessive.
When you're drunk and driving, you're on the road continuously impaired for your whole trip. Your chances of getting into an accident are MUCH higher because the time you're impaired is much higher. Texting could be a quick 10 second thing and then you're done for the rest of your trip. Reckless, sure. The same level of recklessness as drunk driving? IMHO for most texters, probably not.
While I'll admit that there may be some texters who may perhaps do it continuously (I in fact do not know), the point here is that should the justice system treat all texters as if they were these hypothetical worst case continuous texters or ... well... should our justice system be more just?
The reason why the average user doesn't care is because this is one of 2 things that affect actual disk capacity. The other is the formatting process. I'm typing this on a PC with a 120GB drive in it. After formatting (according to windows) I have 110,506,xxx,xxx bytes of capacity which then gets reported as 102GB.
I think the average user doesn't really care about the numbers as long as they're comparable to each other. Is a 120GB drive by WD bigger or smaller than a 120GB drive by seagate? In either case they know they won't actually be able to store 120GB of files on those drives for "obscure computer reasons", but when they're comparison shopping, they're OK with the numbers.
My complaint about his complaint on R2D2 is that "the voice chip wouldn't get past Accounting". Does he even pay attention to the SW Universe??? C3PO was built by Anakin in his home in his spare time. There apparently are no mega corporations in the SW universe (something I've been meaning to blog about for awhile). So there's no "accounting" to complain.
What's weird for me is that the wrong-homonym thing is happening for me *and I know the difference*. It's like a lazy part of my brain "hears" the word and uses the most frequently used spelling for that word and runs with it. "your" for "you're" and "there" for either "their" or "they're" are the ones I mess up most often. This doesn't happen often mind you but it's way more than I'm happy with.
Regarding the L8R thing of SMS... once I got a cell phone with a keyboard, this has disappeared for me as it's harder now to switch to digit mode. So I find myself in this bizarre middle land (I figure for folks who get my texts) of using phrases like "C U later".
First you make the mistake of implying that BM is a leftist event. It's not.
Actually no, I was looking for a counter example. I didn't assume anything about BM though in light of your response I'll admit my counter example was poorly chosen.
All I was trying to do is frame what I perceived as your argument better. Thus... there are some rights that I'll cede to specific others (and I'll trust them to not abuse that) because of who they are. Then there are other rights that I'll never cede regardless of who asks because they are "unalienable rights".
All I was trying to say is people should be clear which is which.
And if you do digg searches on BM photos, you'll see they hardly ever exercise discretion.
You seem to be saying that the rights BM is trying to reserve for themselves are OK because it's BM. By extension I assume you'd not be happy with another, possibly right wing organization reserving similar rights for themselves?
If so, the law is the law and it should apply to all equally. To say "I cede my rights in this area only to BM" is fine for you, but in the larger world such concessions quickly morph into "I cede my rights in this area."(period)
You should be aware that the request for you to cede those rights is crazy even if you trust the entity asking you to cede those rights.
Let's not forget that "murder" is also a legal term. I have not read the Florida case, but I'd expect "manslaughter" would have been a better crime for the DA to prosecute. We've all seen this happen, a DA apparently under public pressure, tries to prosecute a death as a murder instead of a manslaughter and sometimes succeeds sometimes fails.
Yes, but he wouldn't have this information if you walked into a book store and bought the paper from them, even if you bought the paper every single day which seems closer to how the Kindle process works.
It's an interesting question.
should there be 2 ways to buy? an anonymizing service through amazon as you suggest above and a newspaper like subscription service where Murdock would get the same info as a print subscriber?
Also, Comcast has my subscriber info even though I used to buy HBO. Did comcast share my info with HBO? If not... how does HBO do w/o this info and why can't Murdock do the same?
A lot of lobbyists are lawyers, a lot of politicians are lawyers, the current system had been made to push every challenge into court with accompanying major court costs. Honestly how likely do you think major patent reform is.
When the patent office complains then I think the chances are higher than you apparently do. Not great mind you, but not abysmal either.
The patent system is not going to reform itself. Industry will not reform it. The public will not reform it. The legal system will not reform it.
I only partially agree with this. The "reform" that we're looking for can simply come if the PTO admits what it is doing. A very cursory glance at prior art and other patentability issues and then granting a patent. If the PTO was honest with itself that it is relying on the legal system to help it flush out the prior art claim then they should also FOSTER the ability of John Q Citizen to bring such a claim.
In envision a cheap prior art challenge (cheaper than a full court case) perhaps filling out a few standard forms the PTO could concoct and then let that run.
Alternatively, maybe the EFF can step up to this too?
I believe in the singularity as much as probably any slashdotter (actually I believe in the pressure to get there but not so sure how it will play out). But with that said I have always had a few problems with this simple chain of logic.
Problem 1:
Just throw more "neurons" at it (electronic or biological).
As far as we know, the "design" of a human brain is simply a matter of neurons (although I'll take exception to that in #3 below). All we gotta do is build a big enough neural chip. The problem then becomes one of engineering, it's the HOW we make it that seems to be our current bottle neck. What will more intelligence add here? Doubtful it will improve the design per-se, but instead will improve the engineering? If it weren't for the engineering problems, *we* could build something at our level or higher. Improvements in the engineering doesn't seem as exponential an improvement as improvements in the design could be.
Problem 2:
Hardware doesn't change, but bio-systems do.
I haven't RTFA, but other articles I have read in the past on neural networks have a training phase (where synapses are made) and a working phase (where questions are answered). After the training phase no more synapses are made. This is not at all like biological brains where synapses are made throughout life. Until a hardware system can mimic this behavior IMHO these systems will always be below the fully human capabilities.
Problem 3:
Can a system of complexity "N" design a system of complexity "2N"?
We haven't done this yet. Our "design" is plan for a computer brain is copy the human one. Once that copy is used, it may well be the case that to get to a significantly higher "thought cycle" level we'd need a new design (and not more neurons (see #1 above)). For all we know, this may be a/the bottleneck. Problems here are perhaps with terminology, what do we mean by "smarter"? It is clear that a hardware based human intelligence will get the benefit of increased clock speed. What's less clear is what a faster thinking human can do. There may be some problems that one human, even if he lives forever/thinks infinitely fast, can not solve because of other limitations of the human brain design. And one of those problems may be the design, actual design, of a better brain.
yea... from the article... "How did famously technologically-challenged reporters manage the feat without BT catching on"
My take: By preying on even more technologically challenged victims. Celebrities that are too stupid to change their default pin or have their "handlers" do it for them.
I sense a feeding frenzy here. You don't have to be smart, just smarter than your victims.
Excellent points... My fear is that GPS is destroying our non-verbal memory. But as you would say, only to those who rely exclusively on it. Case in point... (not just to the parent but to anyone) ... if you use GPS to get to a place you've never been before, can you find your way back WITHOUT GPS? IMHO the legitimate reason for a "no" answer is because you were too busy paying attention to the GPS to take note of landmarks. But after visiting that same place again and again I would hope that most folks would develop the ability to navigate the return trip sans-GPS before they're able to navigate the main trip sans-GPS.
This is slashdot after all... if there's anything that unites us it would be a desire to exercise our brains. Over reliance on GPS stops/slows our use of a key part of our brains (IMHO).
Actually, I think this could be the showcase event for the free/low-cost advertising model vs pay.
The summary indicates that this would apply to "old/rare/out of print" books. I assume this may also be code for "copyright expired" books too. So... with no heirs to complain and multiple parties having access to the same material, we could have a show down.
Now what would you rather have? Pay $5.00 (say) for a Dickens work sans adverts or pay "$0.00" for the same thing with tacky ads thrown in? The market can decide this one.
stop pursuing thought crime or thinking that blurring reality and simulation will make criminals out of people
I agree. My main concern though ... ahem... is for the children, but let me explain. Watching bugs bunny cartoons as a young kid I kinda had the impression that nothing bad would happen to you when something exploded. All that would happen is you'd get black soot on your face. As games get more realistic looking but still with "fantasy" consequences I'm afraid that young kids will not be able to tell the difference and think that the fantasy consequences will still occur in real life. The only conversation I have with my kids when they play these sort of games is to reset their expectations as to what the real-life consequences of various in-game actions would be. As long as they keep that straight... it's just a game.
That said, IMHO the most violent show on TV these days is America's Funniest Home Videos. Talk about hiding consequences from actions. I often wonder how many of those people are hurt very badly in some of those antics. The exact same scene, but in the guise of a movie would be laughable as I'd assume it was a well choreographed stunt. But on AFV ... I gotta wonder if that show is causing more kids to be reckless.
Yea... as I understand it, since a qubit can represent 0 and 1 simultaneously. In a sense a single qubit represents 2 bits, one bit in a 0 state and one bit in a 1 state. Ten qubits, can represent all 2^10 states simultaneously, so in that same sense 10 qubits can represent 1024 normal bits. 640K qubits can represent a HUGE number of classical orientation of bits. (This is about 10^800 times the larger than the number of atoms in the universe)
That said... I'd be curious to get some more expert feedback on this. I would not be surprised to learn that the above calculation only applies to certain aspects of quantum computing and that a more classical usage could come up in certain circumstances. For example, the above analysis assumed you only need to store a single "qu-number". I would not be surprised to learn that some problems would need to store 2 or more "qu-numbers"... For the sake of discussion let's assume a qu-byte and a qu-word. A qu-byte can represent all 256 states and a qu-word can represent all 65536 states, but if you need 2 qu-bytes you've just restricted yourself to 2 different sets of 256 states. What you can do with those 16 qu-bits in that configuration is MUCH smaller than 65536.
Either way 640k qu-bits (or qu-bytes) should be enough.
Climatologists have already reached a very solid consensus that CO2 emissions *must* be reduced at *any* cost.
That completely misrepresents the opinion of climatologists. The consensus is that CO2 is increasing, that CO2 is highly correlated with historical temperature changes, and that the last century of climate change is caused primarily by humans. There is far less consensus over the exact changes that will occur, that they will all necessarily all be bad, or that we must reduce them at all costs.
NO NO NO.
In this debate MOST OF ALL it is very important to understand the difference between FACTS, THEORY and OPINION. While this post may seem to be picking nits... it's a big deal when things that are facts get circulated around the popular culture as "opinions". The whole debate loses coherence when that happens.
What am I talking about???
The FACTS are that CO2 is increasing and that CO2 is highly correlated with historical temperature changes. No one doubts this. It's a fact, you can find lots of data that support this. (Why you chose to a FACT an OPINION is beyond me.) What's not known is why the CO2 has risen in the last century. The CONSENSUS is that the last century of climate change is caused primarily by humans. A fair number of people (many of whom are not climatologists) doubt this.