A Turing machine has nothing to do with passing the Turing test, except that one that can pass the Turing test can be considered 'intelligent'.
A machine -- or person, I suppose -- passes the Turing test if a human conversing with it (via teletype, originally) can't tell if it's a machine or a human. (Heck, the Eliza program passes the Turing test for some (less intelligent) subset of humans doing the testing.)
On the other hand, for just a little bit more one could put together a PC with huge hardrives and a good video editing card to capture/replay, and give you a lot more options.
Of course, consumers tend to go for the one button simplicity.
Here's a clue folks, exponential growth only happens in an unexploited market.
And here's two clues in exchange: (1) there are still huge unexploited markets for desktop machines. India, China, etc. Mexico is putting Linux in all the schools for the kids. And so on. (2) Even in the US, the whole market becomes "unexploited" every couple of years or so as new apps and fancier, faster machines become available. New hardware means new OS sales. It's no longer a slam dunk that Windows will be the OS that gets installed on the new hardware -- especially with price margins dropping on the commodity machines to where WIndows represents 20% or more of the price.
The numbers as presented don't show some of the more interesting things that can be learned from them. I took the numbers and worked out the percentage change for each OS, and then the change in each OS as a percentage of the total growth in the number of servers -- i.e, "market share" for the months since the last count. Here they are:
(Sorry about all the underscores, but $nbsp doesn't seem to work, neither does the PRE tag. (Rob, can we have the PRE tag, please?)
The only OS that's actually lost sites is Reliant, but they only account for 0.84% of the change in the installed base. It looks like new server installs are choosing Linux at near twice the rate of all Windows combined, with BSD and Solaris up there too. Mac and Novell show major jumps relative to their previously installed base, but are still minor players in the server field (although Mac is catching up -- wonder how much (if any) of that is the Unix-based Mac OS X?)
What happens if I make a product "public" by adding a license that makes anyone who downloads it an unpaid employee of my company?
I'd expect the IRS (among others) would want to have a long talk with you about why you haven't filed the correct paperwork for all those employees. You really don't want to go there....
The GPL would have higher legal standing by virtue of priority: they based their driver on GPL'd code.
Now, the court might not order the company to yield the IP it has vested in the derivative driver, but it certainly could (and likely would) order the company to cease and desist distribution of the driver based on GPL'd code, and might further order damages (punitive in this case, since it might be hard to prove any actual damages) be paid to the author(s) or FSF. That could well include all profits from sales related to the driver.
The company would then be faced with re-implementing the driver without access to the GPLd code, and further would likely have to do it in a clean-room environment to prove that the new driver was written by programers who'd never seen the original.
That's a bloody big risk for companies to take, and is probably one of the reasons that the GPL has never faced a serious court challenge: it isn't worth the risk.
Of course, certain large cash-rich companies who feel threatened by GPL'd products may feel differently.
Hell, a lot of the Y2K programmers are old COBOL hackers (hmm, is COBOL hacker an oxymoron?) who came out of retirement or middle management to make a killing on some of the contract rates that sort of thing is going for, and will be leaving the workforce when the job's done.
Then there are all the projects on hold until after Y2K.
Nah, if the general population doesn't lynch all programmers because of a Y2K disaster, we'll be set for a while after that.
Gee, around here the McDonalds all pay about 50% above minimum wage. Supply and demand, and all that. (It may still not be enough to live on, but thanks to the Republicans it isn't all taxed away.)
Most of the dialog here and in yesterday's thread was in reaction, and sympathy, to all the geek kids out there being persecuted because of the assumption that Harris and Klebold were also geeks. We're sure as hell not defending those two, who may not even have been geeks as some of us would relate to.
Harris and Klebold were plain evil. They plotted this for about a year -- and who know what else they had been up to that was never pinned on them. (They were convicted of breaking into a car a year or so ago).
That they may or may not have been geeks is irrelevant to the murders (except as oppression may have added a little to the hate they already seemed filled with). But that fact seems to be overlooked by the administrators, teacher, parents and cops who are now making life an even bigger hell for geek kids (who've done nothing wrong) because of this.
That's what all (or most) of this discussion is about.
What do you think the government is? Are they some big magical force waiting to take everything away from you at a given instant?
Well, s/magical/armed/ and you certainly describe some Canadian governments that I used to live under. Let's see, the Ontario government took away the right of doctors to bill patients for treatment given. The Quebec government took away the right of business owners to post signs in their native language, if that happend to be English. The federal government took away a number of rights overnight by imposing the War Measures Act (later lifted). And that's not even mentioning those lovable folks at Revenue Canada (filed your income tax yet? 3 days until April 30th) and the GST.
Correction, the NRA has not lobbied for such laws. Those things have always been legal in this country. Rather, they have lobbied against laws that would make it illegal.
And while black-powder guns (usually muzzle-loaders) are have their own small group of enthusiasts (there's even a special hunting season for muzzle-loaders), I think your 50lb without a permit is exaggerated. Federal regs aside, that'd violate most fireworks ordinances.
But making black powder is a trivial exercise. I haven't looked lately, but when I went to school in Canada, you could (and I occasionally did) get all the ingredients at the corner drug store.
(Sigh. It used to be fascinating to watch folks blame inanimate objects for human failings -- it was usually evidence that they felt they had some of those failings themselves. Now it's just boring.)
Plenty of guns available in Canada -- unless all the folks I knew that owned them when I lived there have turned them in. Can't you still buy them at Canadian Tire stores? (Of course, now you need a "Firearms Acquisition Certificate".)
Mind, when I was in high school (in Ottawa), we only had to worry about bombs in mailboxes, kidnapped diplomats and the Prime Minister invoking the War Measures Act. (Remember the FLQ?) And when I worked in Montreal I only encountered SWAT teams a couple of times, like when they'd surrounded a bank building that a couple of guys with machine guns were holed up in. (A block from where I worked.)
To be politically incorrect, you could compare homicide rates (per capita) in like cultural backgrounds in the US and Canada -- e.g. Anglo Americans vs Anglo Canadians. You'll find little difference.
The above quoted one about taking an inventory test (I assume this means have your locker/clothes searched or something)
If you'd read it a little more carefully you would have seen the word "personality" in there before "inventory".
One (or more) of the standard psychological profiling tests is called the something-or-other personality inventory. Basically attempts to catalog a person's personality traits.
I read in the business section of this morning's paper that a large investment firm (sorry, I forgot the name) is selling off all of its Microsoft stock, about $280 million worth. Apparently it figures that the stock is about peaked out, and there are better places to put the money.
Have you looked into private or charter school for your son? Our daughter is at a Montessori school, and from what I've seen and heard of similar schools, the kids in such schools (elementary) learn the self-confidence they need to cope with the social pressure-cooker of high school.
(I'm also gaining a real appreciation for what I put my parents through when I was a kid...)
Yes, high school can be hell for those who are a couple of sigmas beyond the mean -- the very people from whom ultimately society gets most of its advances. And also some of its most dangerous psychos, if too alienated.
As someone else mentioned above, HIGH SCHOOL IS NOT THE REAL WORLD, DON'T TAKE IT TOO SERIOUSLY. And it's only temporary. After that, the geeks who were outcast by the average majority in high school will go on to thrive in college and beyond.
There's a saying, "the best revenge is living well". There's certainly truth to it.
A point I haven't seen anyone here mention -- probably because many of us already use Linux on our desktops.
But this is a clear signal that IBM considers Linux viable as a desktop OS -- who needs voice recognition on servers? (Yes, the Corel apps are desktop apps too, but IBM carries a bit more clout than Corel.) Is Lotus next?
Slashdot Mirror
A Turing machine has nothing to do with passing the Turing test, except that one that can pass the Turing test can be considered 'intelligent'.
A machine -- or person, I suppose -- passes the Turing test if a human conversing with it (via teletype, originally) can't tell if it's a machine or a human. (Heck, the Eliza program passes the Turing test for some (less intelligent) subset of humans doing the testing.)
runs on a Windows-based
[...]
insert some reference to a BSOD here
With Windows controlling an X-ray machine, the term "Blue Screen of Death" takes on a whole new meaning.
Does this make anybody else nervous?
(Oh, and it won't be "unreasonable search" because you don't have to get on the airplane if you don't want to be scanned.)
On the other hand, for just a little bit more one could put together a PC with huge hardrives and a good video editing card to capture/replay, and give you a lot more options.
Of course, consumers tend to go for the one button simplicity.
Heck, I paid twice that for my first VCR, back when the Beta/VHS wars were going on. (I chose VHS, the outcome was obvious by then.)
Thanks for cleaning that up, and the clue about real non-breaking spaces.
I'll try that next time.
Here's a clue folks, exponential growth only happens in an unexploited market.
And here's two clues in exchange: (1) there are still huge unexploited markets for desktop machines. India, China, etc. Mexico is putting Linux in all the schools for the kids. And so on.
(2) Even in the US, the whole market becomes "unexploited" every couple of years or so as new apps and fancier, faster machines become available. New hardware means new OS sales. It's no longer a slam dunk that Windows will be the OS that gets installed on the new hardware -- especially with price margins dropping on the commodity machines to where WIndows represents 20% or more of the price.
(Sorry about all the underscores, but $nbsp doesn't seem to work, neither does the PRE tag. (Rob, can we have the PRE tag, please?)
The only OS that's actually lost sites is Reliant, but they only account for 0.84% of the change in the installed base. It looks like new server installs are choosing Linux at near twice the rate of all Windows combined, with BSD and Solaris up there too. Mac and Novell show major jumps relative to their previously installed base, but are still minor players in the server field (although Mac is catching up -- wonder how much (if any) of that is the Unix-based Mac OS X?)
Bloody hard to do graphic editing -- as in CAD or GIS, as well stuff like the GIMP -- without using a pointing device.
:-)
Some people actually *use* apps, even if its only to test their code.
As for using your brain rather than your muscles, what's with all the keyboarding? Get (or make) yourself a good CASE tool.
What happens if I make a product "public" by adding a license that makes anyone who downloads it an unpaid employee of my company?
I'd expect the IRS (among others) would want to have a long talk with you about why you haven't filed the correct paperwork for all those employees. You really don't want to go there....
The "fee" for copying GPL'd software is the source code to any modifications you make.
If GPL-derived code is released without source available, the loss to the original author is that he does not have free access to the modifications.
Arguably the court could order the source to be released.
The GPL would have higher legal standing by virtue of priority: they based their driver on GPL'd code.
Now, the court might not order the company to yield the IP it has vested in the derivative driver, but it certainly could (and likely would) order the company to cease and desist distribution of the driver based on GPL'd code, and might further order damages (punitive in this case, since it might be hard to prove any actual damages) be paid to the author(s) or FSF. That could well include all profits from sales related to the driver.
The company would then be faced with re-implementing the driver without access to the GPLd code, and further would likely have to do it in a clean-room environment to prove that the new driver was written by programers who'd never seen the original.
That's a bloody big risk for companies to take, and is probably one of the reasons that the GPL has never faced a serious court challenge: it isn't worth the risk.
Of course, certain large cash-rich companies who feel threatened by GPL'd products may feel differently.
Hell, a lot of the Y2K programmers are old COBOL hackers (hmm, is COBOL hacker an oxymoron?) who came out of retirement or middle management to make a killing on some of the contract rates that sort of thing is going for, and will be leaving the workforce when the job's done.
Then there are all the projects on hold until after Y2K.
Nah, if the general population doesn't lynch all programmers because of a Y2K disaster, we'll be set for a while after that.
Gee, around here the McDonalds all pay about 50% above minimum wage. Supply and demand, and all that. (It may still not be enough to live on, but thanks to the Republicans it isn't all taxed away.)
Most of the dialog here and in yesterday's thread was in reaction, and sympathy, to all the geek kids out there being persecuted because of the assumption that Harris and Klebold were also geeks. We're sure as hell not defending those two, who may not even have been geeks as some of us would relate to.
Harris and Klebold were plain evil. They plotted this for about a year -- and who know what else they had been up to that was never pinned on them. (They were convicted of breaking into a car a year or so ago).
That they may or may not have been geeks is irrelevant to the murders (except as oppression may have added a little to the hate they already seemed filled with). But that fact seems to be overlooked by the administrators, teacher, parents and cops who are now making life an even bigger hell for geek kids (who've done nothing wrong) because of this.
That's what all (or most) of this discussion is about.
What do you think the government is? Are they some big magical force waiting to take everything away from you at a given instant?
Well, s/magical/armed/ and you certainly describe some Canadian governments that I used to live under. Let's see, the Ontario government took away the right of doctors to bill patients for treatment given. The Quebec government took away the right of business owners to post signs in their native language, if that happend to be English. The federal government took away a number of rights overnight by imposing the War Measures Act (later lifted).
And that's not even mentioning those lovable folks at Revenue Canada (filed your income tax yet? 3 days until April 30th) and the GST.
Correction, the NRA has not lobbied for such laws. Those things have always been legal in this country. Rather, they have lobbied against laws that would make it illegal.
And while black-powder guns (usually muzzle-loaders) are have their own small group of enthusiasts (there's even a special hunting season for muzzle-loaders), I think your 50lb without a permit is exaggerated. Federal regs aside, that'd violate most fireworks ordinances.
But making black powder is a trivial exercise. I haven't looked lately, but when I went to school in Canada, you could (and I occasionally did) get all the ingredients at the corner drug store.
(Sigh. It used to be fascinating to watch folks blame inanimate objects for human failings -- it was usually evidence that they felt they had some of those failings themselves. Now it's just boring.)
The facts are simple : no guns = no way to shoot someone.
Yes, and : no gravity = we all float into space.
The guns are there, millions of people own them, and only the tiniest fraction of a percent use them against other people.
So, do you have a magic wand that'll make all guns instantly disappear, or will you forget that nutty fantasy and focus on real-world solutions?
(Oh, and as for "even if it takes 50 years to remove them" -- you're fooling yourself. It will never happen. You can't get there from here.)
Plenty of guns available in Canada -- unless all the folks I knew that owned them when I lived there have turned them in. Can't you still buy them at Canadian Tire stores? (Of course, now you need a "Firearms Acquisition Certificate".)
Mind, when I was in high school (in Ottawa), we only had to worry about bombs in mailboxes, kidnapped diplomats and the Prime Minister invoking the War Measures Act. (Remember the FLQ?)
And when I worked in Montreal I only encountered SWAT teams a couple of times, like when they'd surrounded a bank building that a couple of guys with machine guns were holed up in. (A block from where I worked.)
To be politically incorrect, you could compare homicide rates (per capita) in like cultural backgrounds in the US and Canada -- e.g. Anglo Americans vs Anglo Canadians. You'll find little difference.
The above quoted one about taking an inventory test (I assume this means have your locker/clothes searched or something)
If you'd read it a little more carefully you would have seen the word "personality" in there before "inventory".
One (or more) of the standard psychological profiling tests is called the something-or-other personality inventory. Basically attempts to catalog a person's personality traits.
It may happen sooner than some think.
I read in the business section of this morning's paper that a large investment firm (sorry, I forgot the name) is selling off all of its Microsoft stock, about $280 million worth. Apparently it figures that the stock is about peaked out, and there are better places to put the money.
I've seen links to it from all over.
At least five from different places on BIX.
The message count is still climbing.
"Why." he said "I don't like Mondays"
Actully the person in question -- who took a shotgun to school and blew some kids away -- was a she, not a he.
The incident goes back years - 1970s ?? - and there was even a song by the Boomtown Rats about it.
"And the silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody's gonna go to school today
She's gonna make them stay at home"
(And then there was Julie Brown's rather silly "The Homecoming Queen's Got A Gun", not (AFAIK) based on a real incident.)
I sympathize, I have young, bright kids too.
Have you looked into private or charter school for your son? Our daughter is at a Montessori school, and from what I've seen and heard of similar schools, the kids in such schools (elementary) learn the self-confidence they need to cope with the social pressure-cooker of high school.
(I'm also gaining a real appreciation for what I put my parents through when I was a kid...)
Yes, high school can be hell for those who are a couple of sigmas beyond the mean -- the very people from whom ultimately society gets most of its advances. And also some of its most dangerous psychos, if too alienated.
As someone else mentioned above, HIGH SCHOOL IS NOT THE REAL WORLD, DON'T TAKE IT TOO SERIOUSLY. And it's only temporary. After that, the geeks who were outcast by the average majority in high school will go on to thrive in college and beyond.
There's a saying, "the best revenge is living well". There's certainly truth to it.
A point I haven't seen anyone here mention -- probably because many of us already use Linux on our desktops.
But this is a clear signal that IBM considers Linux viable as a desktop OS -- who needs voice recognition on servers? (Yes, the Corel apps are desktop apps too, but IBM carries a bit more clout than Corel.) Is Lotus next?