But they'd better not replace SeaLab 2021 or Harvey Birdman.... Best quality programming on TV these days.... (Seriously though, they are good for a laugh more often than I'd expected, and I loved catching 'The D' on SpaceGhost Coast-to-Coast.)
Or, should I say, SIGN UP ME NOW!!! ASL??? MONEY FOR ME!!! WOOT!
(sorry, I've been at work for the last 14 hours, and the rest of the week looks like it'll be worse. Please pardon any excess sarcasm from me until after the new year)
This is kinda scary, but I actually find myself agreeing with an AC. I must be one of the few people in the US who went to a good school before getting to college. I didn't have to go Europe to take french, trig, beginning C programming, and some elementary biology and chemistry before getting to high school. (i.e., around 12-13 years old) I've tried to maintain this throughout high school, and even though I got a little lazy in college, I still pushed pretty hard. And what for? I can honestly say I know at least a little about just about everything, but what good does it do? I probably would have been much happier goofing off and enjoying life, especially since I would still probably be just as qualified for my current monkey-coding job.....
I got the "It's been posted quite frequently to every/. story for way too long now" reference. Give it a rest. The Simpsons is my fav TV show (the only one I watch, in fact), but even I'm getting sick of this.
I think the point was that they were counterfeit cashiers checks, which is why the secret service was involved. It was implied in the article, but nevere flat out said.
Well, the part that makes it tricky is the fact that the words are not just rotated, but distorted. Granted, it is still possible to do, it would just not be trivial. Of course, as with other types of computer intelligence, once it becomes commonplace, AI is redefined to include everything but that.
Sure, computers aren't as smart as people. Wow. Computers are not good at complex pattern recognition. Wow.
For the record, computers can recognize words like this, just not very easily. With a big enough dictionary and a lot of patience, you'd be suprised at what they can do. While still an undergrad I was able to write a rather simple program that would recognize images of the cardinal numerals, even if they were highly mangled, and worked with a grad student in building something that could pick out certain features of a rotated image and by comaring with some sample features, rotate the image correctly.
Yes, they probably are ripping you off, but not through 'double-taxing.' The reason you still have to watch ads is because very few people would pay several hundered dollars a month for something that they currently get for well under a hundred. The cable companies, which in my area is a single monopoly, determine how much profit they want and rather than charging the customers the entire ammount, offset some of it with advertisements.
Then again, there's also the promotional ones, that serve to remind you what's coming on next, or what the movie of the week is , but that's a completely different story.
While the human brain is usually not very good at such linear calculations, hence the popularity of a calculator, its true power lies in it's massively parallel processing.
To tie in an ever popular/. expression, the brain functions very similar to a beowolf cluster. We can design computers (very expensive ones, though) that can simulate many of the simpler activities that humans are capable of (such as complex pattern recognition, primitive conversation skills, and rule-based systems of cause and effect,) but to do all of these at once is still well on the horizion.
Re:Might as well post a joke -
on
Science Askew
·
· Score: 2
I might have been missing the point if I was arguing either side, but I specifically stated that I wasn't doing so. Rather, I was pointing out the flaw in the analogy. The previous poster asked if someone would be upset if another person cloned their car, implying that copyright infringement is a similar thing. I simply stated that a better analogy would be asking if the car manufacturers would "begrudge him a clone of your car." I also clearly stated that I had no intention of arguing whether copyright infringement should be legal or not; it's clearly been beaten into the ground by now, and convincing anyone either way would probably be at least as hard as converting a deeply religious person to a diametrically opposite religion. Besides, copyright law and all it's implications are too complex to really sum up in a format such as this. It would require something at least the size of a small book to go into all the pros and cons of the idea of copyright, how it's currently implemented, and what would happen if it was modified or abolished.
Fisrt off, I'm not even going to bother arguing about the copyright issues, that seems to be heading towards becoming a collorary to Goodwin's Law. All I want to point out is that the analogy with the car cloner wasn't exactly fitting. After all, the people who have been copying cd's or software have never complained about it. It's the manufacturers who have a problem with it, and I do believe the auto companies would be quite upset if people stopped buying cars. (Of course, in such a scenario, all they would need to do would be to 'borrow' the car cloner and see if it works on large piles of cash....)
uh, I don't mean to point out the obvious, but you don't need thrusters to stay in a stable 'orbit' on the surface of the moon. If they built a station on the moon, I really doubt it'd go very far on it's own.
Of course, it'd be easier to leave from L1, as they would have to fight the gravity of the moon to get back into space. I hope that's what you meant...
That's why we don't have those today. I wasn't being entirely serious up there.
Back when I was still in school we had an assignment in an engineering class on making silly inventions work. (i.e., how can you have a cordless extension cord, or what use could there be for a solar-powered flashlight) It was the only group of presentations I can remember that looked more like a comedy sketch...
Technically though, I'm sure one day something like this will be entirely possible. It might not be for another 100 years, but that's the way technology grows.
Well, I've always wanted a cordless extension cord... Say goodbye to annoying power cables; everything that used to plug into the wall, and even some things using batteries (like that laptop with a battery heavier than the case), would just have a wireless reciever that got power from some centrally located power system in the house.
With the money and resources that would be required to move to a new planet in a distant solar system, wouldn't it be far easier and cheaper and quicker to set up a colony on a planet/moon in our own system? They would need some sort of enclosed structure to survive, but could possibly begin terraforming that new world. Given how long it would take to find and inhabit a new earth, we could probably create one here quicker.
As an added bonus, we could send much more people to mars much faster, since in the time it would take to reach even the closest star, let alone one with habitable worlds, we could make many many round-trip voyages to an in-system world. This would certainly help overcrowding here on earth, and also get us started on interplanetary colonization. Once we actually got experience moving to new worlds, each successive one could only get easier, and with people on more than one world, there would most likely be more motivation for development of new technologies to make the trip faster and more efficent, as well as improving communication times.
Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather be on a hostile new world now than a less hostile one in a few million years.
Maybe now those damn geeks will stop tearing the copper pipes out of old buildings to reuse as network cabling. Now its time to toughen security on our fiber!
APL BPL CPL DPL EPL FPL GPL HPL IPL Why not use every letter in the alphabet? It's only fitting, I guess, since there are a million ways to write code, why not have a million ways to license it?
I remember taking programming classes in college, and the #1 rule to writing code was don't write code, i.e., reuse existing code. With all these licensing schemes floating around, that's getting harder and harder, unles you only reuse your own code. Oh well...
(For the record, IPR sounds more like an Apple licenesing idea, what with the iMac, iPod, and tons of iSoftware.)
The government did know something was going on, and it looks like they had a pretty good idea of what (the capitol building was evacuated before the first plane hit.) They didn't tell us, of course, since we're not as important as the government leaches, but they did know.
Actually, if you believe the popular idea, the government actually does get a lot of it's information from sources such as cnn. It makes sense, as the only time they would need their own news-gathering source would be for classified issues. After all, more often than not the media is the first group on the scene for any occurance.
I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but isn't one Jon Katz enough?
Seriously, though, whose side are they on? It reminds me of Adequacy.org, i.e., don't take sides, just piss everyone off. It really sounds funny hearing all these technical terms mixed with such heavy double-speak though.
They did suck with CGI. The "Special" Edition of the classic trilogy was not only worse than the original, but pretty much unwatchable.
When they were released on video, I watched them with a friend who had never seen any of them, but was able to pick out almost every scene that had been destroyed. It was more of an experiment with new toys than an attempt to improve the story, it's unbelievable how horrible the quality of the new scenes is compared to the rest of the films.
If filmmakers were more interested in a good solid story than in pretty pictures I think we'd all be a lot happier, but until that day comes the average movie is just going to keep sacrificing plot for eye-candy.
Slashdot Mirror
But they'd better not replace SeaLab 2021 or Harvey Birdman.... Best quality programming on TV these days....
(Seriously though, they are good for a laugh more often than I'd expected, and I loved catching 'The D' on SpaceGhost Coast-to-Coast.)
Change that to unsolicited snail mail, and AOL does look like a big spammer, but that's a whole other topic.
Sign me up for AOL!!!!
Or, should I say,
SIGN UP ME NOW!!! ASL??? MONEY FOR ME!!! WOOT!
(sorry, I've been at work for the last 14 hours, and the rest of the week looks like it'll be worse. Please pardon any excess sarcasm from me until after the new year)
This is kinda scary, but I actually find myself agreeing with an AC. I must be one of the few people in the US who went to a good school before getting to college.
I didn't have to go Europe to take french, trig, beginning C programming, and some elementary biology and chemistry before getting to high school. (i.e., around 12-13 years old) I've tried to maintain this throughout high school, and even though I got a little lazy in college, I still pushed pretty hard. And what for? I can honestly say I know at least a little about just about everything, but what good does it do? I probably would have been much happier goofing off and enjoying life, especially since I would still probably be just as qualified for my current monkey-coding job.....
So he's predicting that things will pretty much stay the same, with just the usual slow progress.
Pretty wild ideas there, I hope he doesn't try to patent the keyboard and mouse or something.....
I got the "It's been posted quite frequently to every /. story for way too long now" reference.
Give it a rest. The Simpsons is my fav TV show (the only one I watch, in fact), but even I'm getting sick of this.
I think the point was that they were counterfeit cashiers checks, which is why the secret service was involved. It was implied in the article, but nevere flat out said.
Well, the part that makes it tricky is the fact that the words are not just rotated, but distorted. Granted, it is still possible to do, it would just not be trivial.
Of course, as with other types of computer intelligence, once it becomes commonplace, AI is redefined to include everything but that.
Sure, computers aren't as smart as people. Wow.
Computers are not good at complex pattern recognition. Wow.
For the record, computers can recognize words like this, just not very easily. With a big enough dictionary and a lot of patience, you'd be suprised at what they can do. While still an undergrad I was able to write a rather simple program that would recognize images of the cardinal numerals, even if they were highly mangled, and worked with a grad student in building something that could pick out certain features of a rotated image and by comaring with some sample features, rotate the image correctly.
Yes, they probably are ripping you off, but not through 'double-taxing.' The reason you still have to watch ads is because very few people would pay several hundered dollars a month for something that they currently get for well under a hundred.
The cable companies, which in my area is a single monopoly, determine how much profit they want and rather than charging the customers the entire ammount, offset some of it with advertisements.
Then again, there's also the promotional ones, that serve to remind you what's coming on next, or what the movie of the week is , but that's a completely different story.
While the human brain is usually not very good at such linear calculations, hence the popularity of a calculator, its true power lies in it's massively parallel processing.
/. expression, the brain functions very similar to a beowolf cluster. We can design computers (very expensive ones, though) that can simulate many of the simpler activities that humans are capable of (such as complex pattern recognition, primitive conversation skills, and rule-based systems of cause and effect,) but to do all of these at once is still well on the horizion.
To tie in an ever popular
Hardware Engineer: "It's a software problem."
repeat as necessary
And my name is Michael Bolton, and I refuse to change it. I had that name before he ever became famous.
(paraphrased, sorry, I don't remember the exact quote)
I might have been missing the point if I was arguing either side, but I specifically stated that I wasn't doing so. Rather, I was pointing out the flaw in the analogy. The previous poster asked if someone would be upset if another person cloned their car, implying that copyright infringement is a similar thing. I simply stated that a better analogy would be asking if the car manufacturers would "begrudge him a clone of your car."
I also clearly stated that I had no intention of arguing whether copyright infringement should be legal or not; it's clearly been beaten into the ground by now, and convincing anyone either way would probably be at least as hard as converting a deeply religious person to a diametrically opposite religion.
Besides, copyright law and all it's implications are too complex to really sum up in a format such as this. It would require something at least the size of a small book to go into all the pros and cons of the idea of copyright, how it's currently implemented, and what would happen if it was modified or abolished.
Fisrt off, I'm not even going to bother arguing about the copyright issues, that seems to be heading towards becoming a collorary to Goodwin's Law.
All I want to point out is that the analogy with the car cloner wasn't exactly fitting. After all, the people who have been copying cd's or software have never complained about it. It's the manufacturers who have a problem with it, and I do believe the auto companies would be quite upset if people stopped buying cars. (Of course, in such a scenario, all they would need to do would be to 'borrow' the car cloner and see if it works on large piles of cash....)
uh, I don't mean to point out the obvious, but you don't need thrusters to stay in a stable 'orbit' on the surface of the moon. If they built a station on the moon, I really doubt it'd go very far on it's own.
Of course, it'd be easier to leave from L1, as they would have to fight the gravity of the moon to get back into space. I hope that's what you meant...
That's why we don't have those today. I wasn't being entirely serious up there.
Back when I was still in school we had an assignment in an engineering class on making silly inventions work. (i.e., how can you have a cordless extension cord, or what use could there be for a solar-powered flashlight) It was the only group of presentations I can remember that looked more like a comedy sketch...
Technically though, I'm sure one day something like this will be entirely possible. It might not be for another 100 years, but that's the way technology grows.
Well, I've always wanted a cordless extension cord... Say goodbye to annoying power cables; everything that used to plug into the wall, and even some things using batteries (like that laptop with a battery heavier than the case), would just have a wireless reciever that got power from some centrally located power system in the house.
Well, we can always dream, right?
With the money and resources that would be required to move to a new planet in a distant solar system, wouldn't it be far easier and cheaper and quicker to set up a colony on a planet/moon in our own system? They would need some sort of enclosed structure to survive, but could possibly begin terraforming that new world. Given how long it would take to find and inhabit a new earth, we could probably create one here quicker.
As an added bonus, we could send much more people to mars much faster, since in the time it would take to reach even the closest star, let alone one with habitable worlds, we could make many many round-trip voyages to an in-system world. This would certainly help overcrowding here on earth, and also get us started on interplanetary colonization. Once we actually got experience moving to new worlds, each successive one could only get easier, and with people on more than one world, there would most likely be more motivation for development of new technologies to make the trip faster and more efficent, as well as improving communication times.
Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather be on a hostile new world now than a less hostile one in a few million years.
Maybe now those damn geeks will stop tearing the copper pipes out of old buildings to reuse as network cabling. Now its time to toughen security on our fiber!
APL BPL CPL DPL EPL FPL GPL HPL IPL
Why not use every letter in the alphabet? It's only fitting, I guess, since there are a million ways to write code, why not have a million ways to license it?
I remember taking programming classes in college, and the #1 rule to writing code was don't write code, i.e., reuse existing code. With all these licensing schemes floating around, that's getting harder and harder, unles you only reuse your own code. Oh well...
(For the record, IPR sounds more like an Apple licenesing idea, what with the iMac, iPod, and tons of iSoftware.)
At least today's Friday...
The government did know something was going on, and it looks like they had a pretty good idea of what (the capitol building was evacuated before the first plane hit.) They didn't tell us, of course, since we're not as important as the government leaches, but they did know.
Actually, if you believe the popular idea, the government actually does get a lot of it's information from sources such as cnn. It makes sense, as the only time they would need their own news-gathering source would be for classified issues. After all, more often than not the media is the first group on the scene for any occurance.
I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but isn't one Jon Katz enough?
Seriously, though, whose side are they on? It reminds me of Adequacy.org, i.e., don't take sides, just piss everyone off. It really sounds funny hearing all these technical terms mixed with such heavy double-speak though.
They did suck with CGI. The "Special" Edition of the classic trilogy was not only worse than the original, but pretty much unwatchable.
When they were released on video, I watched them with a friend who had never seen any of them, but was able to pick out almost every scene that had been destroyed. It was more of an experiment with new toys than an attempt to improve the story, it's unbelievable how horrible the quality of the new scenes is compared to the rest of the films.
If filmmakers were more interested in a good solid story than in pretty pictures I think we'd all be a lot happier, but until that day comes the average movie is just going to keep sacrificing plot for eye-candy.
[END RANT]