"In fact, it sounds a bit like Google Now on steroids—or like the smartphone precursor to SkyNet, the supercomputer from the Terminator movies that's so intelligent, it decides that the world would be better off if it ruled over humanity."
Oh, good, well, I'm glad we're not overstating it or anything:) Lots of sensors != self-awareness. For my part, I'm more concerned about Wikipedia achieving sentience before my smartphone does. The last thing humanity will see is a teeming swarm of nanobots tearing apart the civilized world in search of the Ultimate Citation.
What it says is that everyone has a different idea of fun. The parent said nothing about addicts. Contrary to your belief, not everyone who goes to casinos is an addict. Some, yes, but not all. Most are there just to have a good time.
As for throwing money away, the parent made it pretty clear that he is spending money on an experience that he enjoys. It's pretty likely that there are people who consider the things you call fun to be a waste of money and time. It's all relative.
Yes, exactly. Nero wanted Spock to live with the pain of Vulcan's destruction so he left him on DV where he could watch helplessly and eventually get to safety. The real punishment was to allow Spock to live.
However, I am afraid that Palin wants to force my wife to have a baby with cystic fibrosis, or even a brain dead one like Terry Shivo. I find that artificially keeping these babies alive with medical technology only to have die in teens, when they are fully aware of what is happening, to be no less barbaric than Nazi medical experiments.
I had a cousin who died of cystic fibrosis at the age of 15. When she died, it was tragic. The thing is, she did more living in those fifteen years than many people experience in six times that. She had a beautiful and meaningful life.
I consider myself pro-choice, but it gives me great pause when I hear people talk about aborting a fetus that has one condition or another, ostensibly to spare the child a life of suffering. It is not our place to decide what experiences or life circumstances will or will not lead to a meaningful and fulfilling life, albeit different from our own.
Abortion should absolutely remain legal, but it is not a decision to be made lightly.
There is a very real reason why it's Anaheim and not Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles has been resisting the LV-LA maglev project for years because if there is suddenly a cheap, fast train from LA to LV, the direction of cash flow would almost entirely be out of LA and into LV. Far fewer people would decide to leave Las Vegas and spend a bunch of money in Los Angeles than the other way around.
I would, however, prefer a maglev line between two cities of equivalent tourism value so the cash flow is more balanced. They're probably doing it between those two cities because it's mostly open desert. Imagine having to get permission to lay down new track between New York and Philadelphia. If they can prove the technology out west, though, they'll have a stronger case when they want to build more ambitious projects elsewhere in the country.
Rather than this nonsense perhaps the PETA people might want to sponsor some genetic engineering research to allow humans to digest the plant matter that cows can eat that we can't. For my part, I'd rather eat lab-grown meat than have someone mess up my genome so I can digest plant matter that cows can eat. I'm reasonably certain that most people, given the choice between the two, would say the same.
"IMO, the only way to reduce NP-Complete problems is using something like quantum entanglement or another similar characteristic that is not bounded by classical physics" - Which light fits nicely.. so what's your problem? The problem is that using such a technology or technique does not change the complexity of the problem. NP-complete is still NP-complete, and P still != NP. NP-complete refers to that set of problems whose best solutions can only be solved in nondeterministic polynomial time. That means that using a standard CPU running one or any fixed constant number of operations per clock tick, the time needed to find a solution increases very quickly. The solution in TFA essentially creates an approximation of a nondeterministic Turing machine. They do this specifically because you need one in order to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time. Since the algorithm still requires a nondeterministic approach (such as quantum entanglement or optics), the problem is still in NP and not in P, as far as current mathematics is concerned.
While it is true that technology of this type could revolutionize computer science by creating systems that can rapidly solve NP-complete problems, it does not change our current mathematical understanding of the underlying problems in any way.
Rather, they are saying that if they effectively simulate a limited nondeterministic turing machine by increasing the number of compute units (in this case, photons) to effectively infinite numbers, then there is a polynomial solution. Which, since the travelling salesman problem is known to be in NP, is not surprising. Or am I misreading this? That sounds right to me. I don't like how they're claiming that "the complexity of the traveling salesman problem can be dramatically reduced from N! to N^2 by optical means." They're not reducing the complexity of the problem at all. What they're doing is designing a parallel processing system that can approximate a nondeterministic Turing machine, thereby allowing the problem to be solved in polynomial time. This does nothing to indicate that P=NP. While they do make that point clear, I still take issue with their claim that they're doing anything at all to the complexity of the original problem.
'Highbrow' all but screams "serious" to me, but a game taken seriously is no longer a game.
I think chess falls squarely into the category of highbrow gaming. It is taken extremely seriously by many players, yet still considered to be a game. I'd say Go also fits the criteria, along with card games such as bridge, cribbage, even poker.
As far as computer gaming, the only ones I can think of are the Civilization games. "Highbrow" games, to me, seem to be restricted to strategy games. There are some FPSs that require strategy, but for some reason, I'm less inclined to call any of them "highbrow".
Yes. Although PvP is not the primary means of advancement, we are considering several different PvP opportunities. The holodeck will offer a large array of configurable dueling and arena scenarios, and though we're committed to providing PvP gameplay outside the holodeck, we are not yet ready to share specific plans.
Oh I see NASA is uniquely qualified to provide laser light shows to rock music and the presence of museums and planetariums are instrumental to the exploration of aeronaughtics and space.
TFA never said anything about laser light shows. As for planetariums and museums, those are valuable in that they inspire kids to take up careers in science.
Money for computers, classrooms, and lab space in schools and colleges is actually a good thing. I'm not sure what your middle argument is getting at, but for one thing, funding for schools, especially public schools, is, on average, pretty poor. I'm glad to see that money is going to providing schools with the things they need to help kids get a decent start on a science career. It does upset me somewhat that the money has to come from actual science being done on the ISS, but the article headline had me thinking that these "pet projects" were going to be something like diamond-crusted toilet seats or something. At least the money is still going to promoting science and education.
Hypnosis and its use in understanding the brain are not unscientific. As with anything in science, there is the potential for drawing unscientific conclusions about hypnosis based on assumption or faulty reasoning, but one should not dismiss hypnosis based on some people's misrepresentation of its scope and capabilities. Stage hypnosis is not the same as clinical hypnosis. It is known that electrical impulses fire at certain frequencies during various levels of alertness and relaxation, and that the brain behaves differently at each of these frequencies. The controversy surrounding hypnosis concerns the attempt to objectively quantify its effects and generalize the results. Since hypnosis is tied to behavior, and everyone's behavior is different, it is difficult to obtain objective results.
What is unscientific is to assume that hypnosis cannot be valid simply because it touches upon controversial and subjective elements and is presented by some in an unscientific way. While stage hypnotists practice theatrics and not science, making false claims about the capabilities of hypnosis, there are still valid elements to hypnosis that can be empirically observed and replicated. It is important to keep this in mind and not throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.
So in the time between reading the parent post and writing my response, it looks like lots of people already beat me to it. Since I can't delete my posts, I'll just scurry off to the corner for a while...
The article writers have made a mistake in addition. 60% of the population is below 20, and 40% is under 15, that makes 100% of the population under 21.
Maybe this was an intentional mistake for the sake of a joke, but in the event that it's not...
Since those people aged 15 and under are also under the age of 20, to say that 60% of the population is below 20 and 40% of the population is below 15 means you're talking about overlapping groups, so to add them and get 100% is wrong because you're counting those under 15 twice.
So 60% of the population is under 20, and 40% of the population is over 20. It all works out.
Once again, if you were being sarcastic or facetious, then never mind.
Wil Wheaton has always struck me as a whining sap. The whole "I just don't know who I really am, please read about me not knowing who I am!" thing just reeks of "I can't deal without daily affirmations in my inbox!"
Oh, give the guy a break. Everybody's got crap to deal with, and for him, one of those things is trying to break out of the Wesley mold. I think he's done that pretty well, what with the books he's written and his blog. As for whether or not he's a geek, I maintain that "geek" is a state of mind more than anything else.
I really think the writers could have had a lot more fun with Wesley's character if they'd had a clue how to write a realistic teenager. For one thing, his father had been killed because of a command decision made by the man who's captain of the starship where he now lives. He'd probably be holding a grudge about that, and Picard would be plagued by the guilt of what he'd done. Wesley would be a constant reminder of the family he'd broken, and Picard's own feelings for Beverly would only compound the guilt by making him constantly wonder if he intentionally let Jack Crusher die.
I occasionally wonder how I'd have written various characters, including Wesley, if I took some time to try to get inside their heads. TNG didn't feature the greatest character development on television by a long shot. I sorta pictured Wesley sneaking off when they'd visit starbases and come back with all sorts of smuggled Romulan comics and Klingon death metal that he bought from some Ferengi merchant. That would have been fun. I think if Wesley had it to do over again, he'd have been a badass.
Last episode? The episode you're describing was the season finale for season 3, right at the height of the shadow war story arc. There were two complete seasons after that...
IIRC, on one run of the show on Channel 4 in the UK, Babylon 5 was originally only aired up to season 3, and they couldn't get the rights for seasons 4 and 5. So it's not beyond the realm of possibility for some people to think that S3 was the last season of the show.
Giving them Earth DNA just gives them clues that we are here (which is of course the point) but more importantly tells them everything they need to know to make some bug spray especially for us.
That is, assuming there are other alien life forms whose biological structure uses DNA. If not, it would be the equivalent of finding thousands of pages of assembly code for a processor you've never heard of and operates in a way that's completely different from anything you've ever seen, and trying to figure out what the code does. And if DNA is unique to this planet, how do they know it's our building block for life? For all the aliens would know, DNA could be our form of communication.
And how would we represent the data? A visual image is only useful if the alien life in question perceives visible light the way we do. Same goes for audio transmissions. We take our senses for granted, but contact with alien life will require us to grapple with these fundamental issues of reality and perception in a way we've never done before.
Then again, they may look just like us except for ridges on their foreheads and noses. And somewhere, Rick Berman will be there, saying, "I told you so!"
I mean, yes, he did play the character of Niles, but I think that's as far as it goes. DHP hasn't really been seen in many roles that allow him a great deal of flexibility, so I have to suppose that there's depth to his acting ability beyond the "'pinstripe' conviction" for which Niles was notorious.
I mean, hell... look at Wil Wheaton. You can't exactly judge the guy based on Wesley Crusher. I say, give the guy a chance.
At my school, we used a non-tech acronym that still managed to get the point across. Particularly dim users would be automatically inaugurated into the Drew University Mountain Bike Aerial Stunt Society.
Sweet merciful crap! If it wasn't for these games, nobody would have wanted to grow up to be a game designer and create some of the games we see today. Some of those kids' parents need to just slap those brats across the face!
I like how these kids are quoted talking about GTA3 when they can't be older than 12. Apparently someone has to explain the finer points of the ratings system to these parents. As another poster pointed out, though, they're probably the editors' kids and therefore get all the games they could ever want.
And the kids also seemed to be having tremendous difficulty with Tetris. So I think we've figured out the source of the problem. They're apparently morons:)
But hey, they'll get over it, most likely. Thinking back, I was probably as critical of older-generation games as these kids. With any luck they'll acquire a more appreciative taste of gaming history.
The downside? You're now competing with the rest of the world.
And what jobs are left for Americans when middle-class white collar jobs are mostly offshored to cheaper countries? How do you propose that ordinary Americans make a living when the only job that pulls in an income is "owner and CEO of large multinational corporation"?
We're going to end up with an ultra-privileged upper class, and the bulk of the American population below the poverty line. Thus far, I have seen not a single viable argument that convinces me that this isn't happening. Proponents of offshoring claim that it will create jobs in the US, but they fail to provide a convincing argument that the resulting jobs will be plentiful enough or pay enough to be a realistic replacement. In fact, they fail to even mention what those jobs will even be.
It's great monetarily for the ones running the companies. Never mind the fact that the thousands of people now out of work still have families to feed while the CEOs bask in their rising stock prices.
Slashdot Mirror
You had me at microSD slot.
"In fact, it sounds a bit like Google Now on steroids—or like the smartphone precursor to SkyNet, the supercomputer from the Terminator movies that's so intelligent, it decides that the world would be better off if it ruled over humanity."
Oh, good, well, I'm glad we're not overstating it or anything :) Lots of sensors != self-awareness. For my part, I'm more concerned about Wikipedia achieving sentience before my smartphone does. The last thing humanity will see is a teeming swarm of nanobots tearing apart the civilized world in search of the Ultimate Citation.
Suck it, Robert J. Sawyer!
(BTW, this was my post - I forgot to log in first)
What it says is that everyone has a different idea of fun. The parent said nothing about addicts. Contrary to your belief, not everyone who goes to casinos is an addict. Some, yes, but not all. Most are there just to have a good time.
As for throwing money away, the parent made it pretty clear that he is spending money on an experience that he enjoys. It's pretty likely that there are people who consider the things you call fun to be a waste of money and time. It's all relative.
*Spoiler alert*
Yes, exactly. Nero wanted Spock to live with the pain of Vulcan's destruction so he left him on DV where he could watch helplessly and eventually get to safety. The real punishment was to allow Spock to live.
However, I am afraid that Palin wants to force my wife to have a baby with cystic fibrosis, or even a brain dead one like Terry Shivo. I find that artificially keeping these babies alive with medical technology only to have die in teens, when they are fully aware of what is happening, to be no less barbaric than Nazi medical experiments.
I had a cousin who died of cystic fibrosis at the age of 15. When she died, it was tragic. The thing is, she did more living in those fifteen years than many people experience in six times that. She had a beautiful and meaningful life.
I consider myself pro-choice, but it gives me great pause when I hear people talk about aborting a fetus that has one condition or another, ostensibly to spare the child a life of suffering. It is not our place to decide what experiences or life circumstances will or will not lead to a meaningful and fulfilling life, albeit different from our own.
Abortion should absolutely remain legal, but it is not a decision to be made lightly.
There is a very real reason why it's Anaheim and not Los Angeles. The City of Los Angeles has been resisting the LV-LA maglev project for years because if there is suddenly a cheap, fast train from LA to LV, the direction of cash flow would almost entirely be out of LA and into LV. Far fewer people would decide to leave Las Vegas and spend a bunch of money in Los Angeles than the other way around.
I would, however, prefer a maglev line between two cities of equivalent tourism value so the cash flow is more balanced. They're probably doing it between those two cities because it's mostly open desert. Imagine having to get permission to lay down new track between New York and Philadelphia. If they can prove the technology out west, though, they'll have a stronger case when they want to build more ambitious projects elsewhere in the country.
this nonsense perhaps the PETA people might want to sponsor some
genetic engineering research to allow humans to digest the plant
matter that cows can eat that we can't. For my part, I'd rather eat lab-grown meat than have someone mess up my genome so I can digest plant matter that cows can eat. I'm reasonably certain that most people, given the choice between the two, would say the same.
Damn you, sir! That post managed to hurt my brain even when I knew it was meant in jest. Grammar... terrible... must... correct...
- Which light fits nicely.. so what's your problem? The problem is that using such a technology or technique does not change the complexity of the problem. NP-complete is still NP-complete, and P still != NP. NP-complete refers to that set of problems whose best solutions can only be solved in nondeterministic polynomial time. That means that using a standard CPU running one or any fixed constant number of operations per clock tick, the time needed to find a solution increases very quickly. The solution in TFA essentially creates an approximation of a nondeterministic Turing machine. They do this specifically because you need one in order to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time. Since the algorithm still requires a nondeterministic approach (such as quantum entanglement or optics), the problem is still in NP and not in P, as far as current mathematics is concerned.
While it is true that technology of this type could revolutionize computer science by creating systems that can rapidly solve NP-complete problems, it does not change our current mathematical understanding of the underlying problems in any way.
I think chess falls squarely into the category of highbrow gaming. It is taken extremely seriously by many players, yet still considered to be a game. I'd say Go also fits the criteria, along with card games such as bridge, cribbage, even poker.
As far as computer gaming, the only ones I can think of are the Civilization games. "Highbrow" games, to me, seem to be restricted to strategy games. There are some FPSs that require strategy, but for some reason, I'm less inclined to call any of them "highbrow".
YMMV
Actually, Perpetual does plan to offer PvP outside of the holodeck. Details are sparse, but it is a priority.
From the Gameplay FAQ:
Will there be player vs. player combat?
Yes. Although PvP is not the primary means of advancement, we are considering several different PvP opportunities. The holodeck will offer a large array of configurable dueling and arena scenarios, and though we're committed to providing PvP gameplay outside the holodeck, we are not yet ready to share specific plans.
TFA never said anything about laser light shows. As for planetariums and museums, those are valuable in that they inspire kids to take up careers in science.
Money for computers, classrooms, and lab space in schools and colleges is actually a good thing. I'm not sure what your middle argument is getting at, but for one thing, funding for schools, especially public schools, is, on average, pretty poor. I'm glad to see that money is going to providing schools with the things they need to help kids get a decent start on a science career. It does upset me somewhat that the money has to come from actual science being done on the ISS, but the article headline had me thinking that these "pet projects" were going to be something like diamond-crusted toilet seats or something. At least the money is still going to promoting science and education.
Hypnosis and its use in understanding the brain are not unscientific. As with anything in science, there is the potential for drawing unscientific conclusions about hypnosis based on assumption or faulty reasoning, but one should not dismiss hypnosis based on some people's misrepresentation of its scope and capabilities. Stage hypnosis is not the same as clinical hypnosis. It is known that electrical impulses fire at certain frequencies during various levels of alertness and relaxation, and that the brain behaves differently at each of these frequencies. The controversy surrounding hypnosis concerns the attempt to objectively quantify its effects and generalize the results. Since hypnosis is tied to behavior, and everyone's behavior is different, it is difficult to obtain objective results.
What is unscientific is to assume that hypnosis cannot be valid simply because it touches upon controversial and subjective elements and is presented by some in an unscientific way. While stage hypnotists practice theatrics and not science, making false claims about the capabilities of hypnosis, there are still valid elements to hypnosis that can be empirically observed and replicated. It is important to keep this in mind and not throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.
So in the time between reading the parent post and writing my response, it looks like lots of people already beat me to it. Since I can't delete my posts, I'll just scurry off to the corner for a while...
The article writers have made a mistake in addition. 60% of the population is below 20, and 40% is under 15, that makes 100% of the population under 21.
Maybe this was an intentional mistake for the sake of a joke, but in the event that it's not...
Since those people aged 15 and under are also under the age of 20, to say that 60% of the population is below 20 and 40% of the population is below 15 means you're talking about overlapping groups, so to add them and get 100% is wrong because you're counting those under 15 twice.
So 60% of the population is under 20, and 40% of the population is over 20. It all works out.
Once again, if you were being sarcastic or facetious, then never mind.
Wil Wheaton has always struck me as a whining sap. The whole "I just don't know who I really am, please read about me not knowing who I am!" thing just reeks of "I can't deal without daily affirmations in my inbox!"
Oh, give the guy a break. Everybody's got crap to deal with, and for him, one of those things is trying to break out of the Wesley mold. I think he's done that pretty well, what with the books he's written and his blog. As for whether or not he's a geek, I maintain that "geek" is a state of mind more than anything else.
I really think the writers could have had a lot more fun with Wesley's character if they'd had a clue how to write a realistic teenager. For one thing, his father had been killed because of a command decision made by the man who's captain of the starship where he now lives. He'd probably be holding a grudge about that, and Picard would be plagued by the guilt of what he'd done. Wesley would be a constant reminder of the family he'd broken, and Picard's own feelings for Beverly would only compound the guilt by making him constantly wonder if he intentionally let Jack Crusher die.
I occasionally wonder how I'd have written various characters, including Wesley, if I took some time to try to get inside their heads. TNG didn't feature the greatest character development on television by a long shot. I sorta pictured Wesley sneaking off when they'd visit starbases and come back with all sorts of smuggled Romulan comics and Klingon death metal that he bought from some Ferengi merchant. That would have been fun. I think if Wesley had it to do over again, he'd have been a badass.
Last episode? The episode you're describing was the season finale for season 3, right at the height of the shadow war story arc. There were two complete seasons after that...
IIRC, on one run of the show on Channel 4 in the UK, Babylon 5 was originally only aired up to season 3, and they couldn't get the rights for seasons 4 and 5. So it's not beyond the realm of possibility for some people to think that S3 was the last season of the show.
A B5 synopses page contains a summary of the next-to-last S3 episode, and at the bottom there's a bit of explanation of what happened with Channel 4.
Giving them Earth DNA just gives them clues that we are here (which is of course the point) but more importantly tells them everything they need to know to make some bug spray especially for us.
That is, assuming there are other alien life forms whose biological structure uses DNA. If not, it would be the equivalent of finding thousands of pages of assembly code for a processor you've never heard of and operates in a way that's completely different from anything you've ever seen, and trying to figure out what the code does. And if DNA is unique to this planet, how do they know it's our building block for life? For all the aliens would know, DNA could be our form of communication.
And how would we represent the data? A visual image is only useful if the alien life in question perceives visible light the way we do. Same goes for audio transmissions. We take our senses for granted, but contact with alien life will require us to grapple with these fundamental issues of reality and perception in a way we've never done before.
Then again, they may look just like us except for ridges on their foreheads and noses. And somewhere, Rick Berman will be there, saying, "I told you so!"
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David Hyde Pierce != Niles Crane
I mean, yes, he did play the character of Niles, but I think that's as far as it goes. DHP hasn't really been seen in many roles that allow him a great deal of flexibility, so I have to suppose that there's depth to his acting ability beyond the "'pinstripe' conviction" for which Niles was notorious.
I mean, hell... look at Wil Wheaton. You can't exactly judge the guy based on Wesley Crusher. I say, give the guy a chance.
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At my school, we used a non-tech acronym that still managed to get the point across. Particularly dim users would be automatically inaugurated into the Drew University Mountain Bike Aerial Stunt Society.
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Sweet merciful crap! If it wasn't for these games, nobody would have wanted to grow up to be a game designer and create some of the games we see today. Some of those kids' parents need to just slap those brats across the face!
:)
I like how these kids are quoted talking about GTA3 when they can't be older than 12. Apparently someone has to explain the finer points of the ratings system to these parents. As another poster pointed out, though, they're probably the editors' kids and therefore get all the games they could ever want.
And the kids also seemed to be having tremendous difficulty with Tetris. So I think we've figured out the source of the problem. They're apparently morons
But hey, they'll get over it, most likely. Thinking back, I was probably as critical of older-generation games as these kids. With any luck they'll acquire a more appreciative taste of gaming history.
---
The downside? You're now competing with the rest of the world.
And what jobs are left for Americans when middle-class white collar jobs are mostly offshored to cheaper countries? How do you propose that ordinary Americans make a living when the only job that pulls in an income is "owner and CEO of large multinational corporation"?
We're going to end up with an ultra-privileged upper class, and the bulk of the American population below the poverty line. Thus far, I have seen not a single viable argument that convinces me that this isn't happening. Proponents of offshoring claim that it will create jobs in the US, but they fail to provide a convincing argument that the resulting jobs will be plentiful enough or pay enough to be a realistic replacement. In fact, they fail to even mention what those jobs will even be.
It's great monetarily for the ones running the companies. Never mind the fact that the thousands of people now out of work still have families to feed while the CEOs bask in their rising stock prices.
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