"It's all just observation," Yarowsky adds. "Children do the same thing, but they also do it through visual stimulation and feedback. They see a book and hear the word 'book,' and eventually they learn that it's a book. They see a bird with its wings flapping around and learn that is called a bird. It's the same with machines, only they have much better memories. Computers could remember exactly when and where they saw the words bird and book."
Except, no. Humans are basically generalization machines. Babies are able to grasp very quickly that words apply to categories of things -- not just that a *specific* item is a bird or a book, but to learn "I know a bird when I see it", even without necessarily being able to provide a scientific definition. Computers can be built to emulate this ability, but learning word-to-word mappings isn't *nearly* the same as learning abstract concepts and which words apply to them.
Internet to the rescue -- he calculated the distance to the Sun at 804 million stadia based on data from eclipses. Depending on what the value of a stadium is (apparently, we don't know for sure what units he was using), that's pretty accurate.
Absolutely. On the other hand, if you don't go ahead and get the minor in computer science, what do you answer when someone asks "so, you claim to be really interested in computers... why didn't you take more computer science courses at university?"
"I'm interested in computers, not computer science."
And then explain the statement. I know CS professors that have no idea if the system on their desk is from Sun or SGI. And they don't need to -- they work in abstractions and barely need actual software, let alone a physical computer.
I'm not degrading all you CS majors -- pure math is cool and all that, and we definitely *need* that aspect. And having that theoretical background is great for a programmer or designer. However, for many computer-related job, someone who didn't take any CS classes but is a serious geek at heart will be better.
Kinda makes you wonder why we are paying roughly 3.40 (cdn) a gallon, doesn't it?
That's like, $0.34 US, right?
Only kidding. In seriousness, it's probably because taxation helps cover (i.e., make direct) some of the external costs of gasoline use rather than, to put it bluntly, subsidizing the destruction of the environment.
There *are* real costs associated with dumping pollutants into the air, but the simple economy doesn't account for them -- one of the reasons we're basically all going to hell in a high-speed handbasket.
I wouldn't be too sure about that; I just installed Xen on a box this past week, and the testing branch has been remarkably stable.
That's my point.
Have you actually used Xen?
Tried it. Not in production. I imagine that's the case for many people -- but actually, still a relatively small number of bleeding-edge experimenters. For that reason, obviously the numbers here will be higher than in the world in general.
That said, I like to think that the poster's larger point is that virtualization technology and its implementations - in VMWare, Xen, etc. have made patch management easier to manage, especially with all of the work going on in migrating apps and OSes. That, to me, will be the real benefit of such work.
[...]problems with the report including the fact that it refers to problems faced by administrators before 2003: before significant improvements were made to Linux patching tools. 'We didn't have tools like Xen for Linux then,' [...]
Oh, come on. Practically speaking, we don't have Xen for Linux *now*. Sure it's cool and all (which is why it's slipped into this basically unrelated story) but it's not nearly ready for the Linux mainstream and I'd be surprised if more than a handful of people are using it heavily in production.
If it's news for nerds, keep this kind of commentary out of it please.
*Man* do we need a "Haha you're new here" moderation for these kinda comments. This isn't a journalism site -- it's an entertainment and discussion site. I damn well *expect* there to be snide partisan commentary from the editors (a poorly-chosen job title, but oh well -- deal with it).
Metered local calls -- generally the cheapest option in the US if you can get it. In Boston, for example, it's $12.70/month for metered service @ 1 cent per call and 1.6 cents per minute, vs $19.64 for unlimited local calling. Assuming an average of 10 minutes for a call, you can make 40.8 calls/month and still save money (and incoming is still free).
If you're stuck on dialup, then, okay, you don't want that. And maybe if you have a stereotypical teenage daughter.
Bottled watter companies file lawsuit that running tap water is a price fixing scheme! Oxygen tank manufacturers claim air is a price fixing scheme! Recording Industry says making your own music is a price fixing scheme!
Yeah, but I still don't see it happening with 32-bit x86 -- there's just not much point given that x86_64 is not just the way of the future, but increasingly the way of *now*. By the time gcc4 is mainstream, 32-bit x86 will be a niche -- and not the performance-critical niche.
There's no way you can dedicate a CPU to a particular application.. not in any form of pre-emptive OS.
What'd'ya mean "any form of pre-emptive OS"? Just because Microsoft doesn't do it doesn't mean it's not possible. You can certainly do this on Irix, for example. And I haven't looked at the Linux processor set tools, but I assume it's similar.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but most Linux distributions are still i386 right?
Right in some ways, but importantly wrong in others. Red Hat and the Fedora Project, for example, are compiled using the i386 instruction set but optimized for i686. This means that the cmov instruction isn't available -- but apparently, it's not much of a win (and even a loss in some cases) on modern processors. And code which uses SSE or 3DNow or whathaveyou is usually carefully hand-coded and checked for at runtime.
There's not really much advantage of switching away from this scheme, so I don't see it as worth the bother. Instead, x86_64 will eventually kill it all off and we'll move on to that.
My printer in my house is on a printer server box. Configuring printing should be trivial. Privide a printer type and an IP and GO.
Even with the much-maligned-in-this-here-story system-config-printer in Fedora, that is basically all you have to do:
run system-config-printer (or pick from menu)
hit the "new" button
hit "forward" (extraneous help dialog)
type the local printer name, or accept the default (arguably, this step could be removed -- it could just pick something, and let you change it later if you don't like its idea)
select "Networked CUPS (IPP)"
enter the hostname or IP address of the printer, hit forward
select printer type, hit forward
hit finish -- you're done.
There's clearly a few too many clicks required there, and you do have to know what protocol your network print server or network printer speaks, (including options like queue name if it just speaks LPD), but is this really that hard for anyone who understands the concept of "networked printer"?
I haven't used printing on MS Windows for longer than I can remember -- how many clicks does it require in Windows XP to add a networked printer?
Also, I haven't tried it since I live in a very networked environment, but it's my understanding that kudzu automatically detects and configures locally-attached printers without any intervention at all. Eventually, ZeroConf may make this all happen automatically, but as I understand it, that's a software patents issue, not a config tool one.
If you don't mind using polarized glasses- one eye vertical, one eye horizontal, then you only need two.
You don't need glasses. I'm not sure about the actual LCD used in this thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's using the same technology Sharp uses in their laptop. I've seen the Sharp techology demoed and as someone who basically doesn't know anything about all of this, I was totally astounded.
Luckily, Sharp conveniently explains how it works -- they use something called a "parallax barrier", which, as the name implies, basically makes it so you see one screen from one eye and the other from the other. Obviously this works best if you're immediately in front of the screen, but from the demo I saw, it worked from a wider angle than I would have thought.
Your right, but these 2 layers are directly on top of each other.
I don't think that's actually the case. Note the complaint about the "stereoscopic" blur. I think that the monitor *has* a mode where it does basically what you're saying so that it can be used in a less useful way with non-adapted applications -- input from a secondary video input ispresented on a plane apparently behind the primary one.
This particular review is quite short and light on details, and it's *possible* that this is all this particular monitor can do, but similar technology using only two layers exists and *does* work very well, with a field of view big enough for multiple people (although probably not for a big presentation).
Slashdot Mirror
These guys need a serious kick in the ass. I'm buying my son a Nintendo instead of a PS3.
Oooh, that'll do it.
"It's all just observation," Yarowsky adds. "Children do the same thing, but they also do it through visual stimulation and feedback. They see a book and hear the word 'book,' and eventually they learn that it's a book. They see a bird with its wings flapping around and learn that is called a bird. It's the same with machines, only they have much better memories. Computers could remember exactly when and where they saw the words bird and book."
Except, no. Humans are basically generalization machines. Babies are able to grasp very quickly that words apply to categories of things -- not just that a *specific* item is a bird or a book, but to learn "I know a bird when I see it", even without necessarily being able to provide a scientific definition. Computers can be built to emulate this ability, but learning word-to-word mappings isn't *nearly* the same as learning abstract concepts and which words apply to them.
Internet to the rescue -- he calculated the distance to the Sun at 804 million stadia based on data from eclipses. Depending on what the value of a stadium is (apparently, we don't know for sure what units he was using), that's pretty accurate.
Chairface Chippendale got as far as "CHA"....
Absolutely. On the other hand, if you don't go ahead and get the minor in computer science, what do you answer when someone asks "so, you claim to be really interested in computers... why didn't you take more computer science courses at university?"
"I'm interested in computers, not computer science."
And then explain the statement. I know CS professors that have no idea if the system on their desk is from Sun or SGI. And they don't need to -- they work in abstractions and barely need actual software, let alone a physical computer.
I'm not degrading all you CS majors -- pure math is cool and all that, and we definitely *need* that aspect. And having that theoretical background is great for a programmer or designer. However, for many computer-related job, someone who didn't take any CS classes but is a serious geek at heart will be better.
Kinda makes you wonder why we are paying roughly 3.40 (cdn) a gallon, doesn't it?
That's like, $0.34 US, right?
Only kidding. In seriousness, it's probably because taxation helps cover (i.e., make direct) some of the external costs of gasoline use rather than, to put it bluntly, subsidizing the destruction of the environment.
There *are* real costs associated with dumping pollutants into the air, but the simple economy doesn't account for them -- one of the reasons we're basically all going to hell in a high-speed handbasket.
I wouldn't be too sure about that; I just installed Xen on a box this past week, and the testing branch has been remarkably stable.
That's my point.
Have you actually used Xen?
Tried it. Not in production. I imagine that's the case for many people -- but actually, still a relatively small number of bleeding-edge experimenters. For that reason, obviously the numbers here will be higher than in the world in general.
That said, I like to think that the poster's larger point is that virtualization technology and its implementations - in VMWare, Xen, etc. have made patch management easier to manage, especially with all of the work going on in migrating apps and OSes. That, to me, will be the real benefit of such work.
*Will be*, sure.
[...]problems with the report including the fact that it refers to problems faced by administrators before 2003: before significant improvements were made to Linux patching tools. 'We didn't have tools like Xen for Linux then,' [...]
Oh, come on. Practically speaking, we don't have Xen for Linux *now*. Sure it's cool and all (which is why it's slipped into this basically unrelated story) but it's not nearly ready for the Linux mainstream and I'd be surprised if more than a handful of people are using it heavily in production.
DX9? 2 letters and 1 digit that sums up somewhat 90% of what Windows users use and can't do without. Games.
That's pretty vital to most governments and large organizations, too.
Exactly. Unfortuanetly this is an entertainment site with the byline "News for Nerds." However, people who notice this oddity shouldn't be harrased.
I dunno about harrassed, but I'm pretty sure they don't need to be modded up all the time. I'm just sayin'.
So it's an entertainment site that pretends to be a news site.
"News for Nerds" doesn't strike you as being intended with a bit of humor? No? Hmmm. Oh well, then.
If it's news for nerds, keep this kind of commentary out of it please.
*Man* do we need a "Haha you're new here" moderation for these kinda comments. This isn't a journalism site -- it's an entertainment and discussion site. I damn well *expect* there to be snide partisan commentary from the editors (a poorly-chosen job title, but oh well -- deal with it).
*grin*
Hermetically sealed, yes, airtight, no.
Um, you may wanna look up what "hermetically sealed" means.
because here on slashdot, anything stastically alarming is squared to make it even more alarming. its in the end user agreement :)
Wouldn't that be 0.25%, though? Or 0.216%, as the case may be?
Metered local calls -- generally the cheapest option in the US if you can get it. In Boston, for example, it's $12.70/month for metered service @ 1 cent per call and 1.6 cents per minute, vs $19.64 for unlimited local calling. Assuming an average of 10 minutes for a call, you can make 40.8 calls/month and still save money (and incoming is still free).
If you're stuck on dialup, then, okay, you don't want that. And maybe if you have a stereotypical teenage daughter.
No, the *original* name is a joke. Repeating the joke isn't a *new* joke.
Bottled watter companies file lawsuit that running tap water is a price fixing scheme! Oxygen tank manufacturers claim air is a price fixing scheme! Recording Industry says making your own music is a price fixing scheme!
Or weather info resale companies say getting the data direct from the national weather service is unfair...
Yeah, but I still don't see it happening with 32-bit x86 -- there's just not much point given that x86_64 is not just the way of the future, but increasingly the way of *now*. By the time gcc4 is mainstream, 32-bit x86 will be a niche -- and not the performance-critical niche.
There's no way you can dedicate a CPU to a particular application.. not in any form of pre-emptive OS.
What'd'ya mean "any form of pre-emptive OS"? Just because Microsoft doesn't do it doesn't mean it's not possible. You can certainly do this on Irix, for example. And I haven't looked at the Linux processor set tools, but I assume it's similar.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but most Linux distributions are still i386 right?
Right in some ways, but importantly wrong in others. Red Hat and the Fedora Project, for example, are compiled using the i386 instruction set but optimized for i686. This means that the cmov instruction isn't available -- but apparently, it's not much of a win (and even a loss in some cases) on modern processors. And code which uses SSE or 3DNow or whathaveyou is usually carefully hand-coded and checked for at runtime.
There's not really much advantage of switching away from this scheme, so I don't see it as worth the bother. Instead, x86_64 will eventually kill it all off and we'll move on to that.
So, basically the same. *shrug*.
My printer in my house is on a printer server box. Configuring printing should be trivial. Privide a printer type and an IP and GO.
Even with the much-maligned-in-this-here-story system-config-printer in Fedora, that is basically all you have to do:
There's clearly a few too many clicks required there, and you do have to know what protocol your network print server or network printer speaks, (including options like queue name if it just speaks LPD), but is this really that hard for anyone who understands the concept of "networked printer"?
I haven't used printing on MS Windows for longer than I can remember -- how many clicks does it require in Windows XP to add a networked printer?
Also, I haven't tried it since I live in a very networked environment, but it's my understanding that kudzu automatically detects and configures locally-attached printers without any intervention at all. Eventually, ZeroConf may make this all happen automatically, but as I understand it, that's a software patents issue, not a config tool one.
If you don't mind using polarized glasses- one eye vertical, one eye horizontal, then you only need two.
You don't need glasses. I'm not sure about the actual LCD used in this thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's using the same technology Sharp uses in their laptop. I've seen the Sharp techology demoed and as someone who basically doesn't know anything about all of this, I was totally astounded.
Luckily, Sharp conveniently explains how it works -- they use something called a "parallax barrier", which, as the name implies, basically makes it so you see one screen from one eye and the other from the other. Obviously this works best if you're immediately in front of the screen, but from the demo I saw, it worked from a wider angle than I would have thought.
Or you can read all of the past slashdot stories about it....
Your right, but these 2 layers are directly on top of each other.
I don't think that's actually the case. Note the complaint about the "stereoscopic" blur. I think that the monitor *has* a mode where it does basically what you're saying so that it can be used in a less useful way with non-adapted applications -- input from a secondary video input ispresented on a plane apparently behind the primary one.
This particular review is quite short and light on details, and it's *possible* that this is all this particular monitor can do, but similar technology using only two layers exists and *does* work very well, with a field of view big enough for multiple people (although probably not for a big presentation).
Two layers is not deep enough for 3D, you would need hundres of layers. But I doubt the technology described in TFA even attempts this.
You're mistaken. With two eyes, two layers is all you need.