Sure, make it tall enough for the top to be in a geosynchronous orbit.
But wouldn't all the elevations below that be in faster orbits? Even if it had the tensile strength to survive, wouldn't it "stand" with one heck of a gimp in it?
Actualy, the media are already doing a recount under Florida's extraordinary liberal "Sunshine Laws".
There's a big blustery effort including multiple news publishers and a conservative "research" group, and they're inching along at about 450 ballots a day.
However, The Miami Herald is going it solo, and using their brains. They have already done a whole county using an optical scanner, which not only helps with speed, but also reduces subjectivity.
Guess what? That single county turned up 130 more votes for Gore. Stay tuned for more. At least until the Republicans get Scalia to order it stopped and the ballots destroyed.
> And in the Netcraft survey, what server OS was the most popular in the longest uptimes? Yes, BSD.
Mebe so, but since the article was asking what had been left out of the history of Linux for this year, there did not seem to be much reason to consider BSD uptimes.
I must have sent several dozen messages since I first heard about it, and they average about two notification addresses each, and I've only noticed one mention that "so-and-so does not wish to receive spamcop messages".
I think it was thoughtful of Julian to provide that kind of support for his "customers" on both ends of the deal. Overall, Spamcop leaves the impression of a very high standard of professionalism.
I'm sure there are lots of ISPs that just put autoresponders on their abuse mailboxes, and ignore everything that comes in. We certainly can't rely on that kind in the war against spam.
Sadly, we probably won't really get the issue solved until the volume of complaints reach the same order of magnitude as the volume of the spam. Automated services like Spamcop should help get us there sooner.
Someday I'm going to look at Mozilla's mail client code and see what it would take to put a "spam" button on the toolbar for one-click spambusting. Maybe provide a configuration menu that would let you choose between forwarding it to spamcop (or similar services), sending it to your own script, spellchecking it and replying with a bill for your services, or simply adding keywords from the address and/or subject line to your mail filters.
> Considering their history, they will have to show us the code.
I'm not one to read the articles either, but in this case I made a special exception, and yes, there is a download link.
You may also find this note at the bottom of the main site interesting:
Security-enhanced Linux is being released under the conditions of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The release includes documentation and source code for both the system and some system utilities that were modified to make use of the new features. Participation with comments, constructive criticism, and/or improvements is welcome.
> An additional way to prevent SPAM is to directly get the spam accounts closed. The basic way is by extracting from the email header and a few pings/fingers which computer the SPAM actually came... It tends to take about 10 mins per account...
I would like to put in a plug for a free automated service that someone mentioned here a couple of weeks ago. Just forward the message to spamcop@spamcop.net, wait for the automated reply, visit the Web link mentioned in the reply, and click the "send" button. They do all the parsing and lookup for you.
I have found it fairly effective. In particular, Spamcop got me removed from an annoying commercial list which I had fruitlessly sent in multiple complaints about all through the past year. Now you can bust a spammer almost as easily as he can send out his spam, and since it's so convenient you can often get it done within seconds of receiving the message, instead of letting the tedious parsing stack up for a week while the trail grows cold.
[On the other hand, I've been getting a lot of.tw spam that has not subsided since I started using Spamcop. I rather suspect that the "abuse" handlers at some ISPs are actively involved in the spamming.]
For more information, visit spamcop.net, and read the instructions carefully. Notice that you have the option of "joining", but you can use the e-mail based service for free.
I am not associated with Spamcop; just a happy user.
Ah, there's some now! I hope the spamcop server isn't/.ed when I send in my fresh spam. And I would like to thank them for the service they are providing the public.
Yes. In additon to their other mentions of Netcraft surveys, they failed to remark on the Netcraft report from a few months back which reported that Linux was running 30% of all the Web servers they detected, after applying an algorithm intended to filter out ghost sites.
That put Linux in the #1 position, edging out Microsoft's line by around 1-1/2%.
This is a landmark event, and I regret that Netcraft has not seen fit to report the usage trends in server OS regularly.
> Question: Seeing the words 'biologically valid' conjures up an image of scientists pursuing pure science rather than concentrating on the applications of it. Is the goal of NN today more theoretical (we want to get something to behave more like a smart being) than practical (we want something that will specifically put names to faces/discriminate balloons from weapons/identify handwriting like an expert).
Both.
Cognitive scientists are using NN technology as a 'biologically valid' model for cognition. (Though only a fool would remain unaware of the enormous gap between our NN toys and the real thing, and of the enormous simplification that goes into our toys.)
Others just look at NN as a technology to be exploited without reference to biology.
> I suspect that this field has narrowed in the last decade (but I may be wrong), and so I fear that it may be getting wayyy esoteric.
Wayyyyy. Like any other branch of science, especially CS, this field is rapidly "narrowing" in the sense of getting deeper, but also "broadening" in the sense of developing more branches and more connections to other fields. (E.g., lots of parallels have been shown between NN and physics, and between NN and statistics.)
> As a practical engineer who needs solutions today, should I devote more energies to this or less? What is happening elsewhere in the field?
It's no longer possible even for NN researchers to stay on top of everything that's going on in the field, so don't even think about investing that much time in it.
Beyond that, what's your field of application in engineering? Do your journals ever cover relevant NN technology? If not, you might be able to start a SIG, so that the effort of keeping an ear to the ground and filtering out the uninteresting material could be spread among the members, rather than going it solo.
> As described to me, neural nets are _huge_ (every datapoint is in) underconstrained matricies with an infinite number of equally valid solutions.
Your criticisms are cogent, but in practice NNs can be excellent problem solvers.
For example, I suppose it is possible to solve the pole balancing problem with statistical methods, but I have never seen it done. With neural networks the problem and its more demanding variants have become so trivial that people are losing interest in it as a benchmark. (This is mostly as a result of advances in the art & science of NNs over the last 5 years or so.)
> The article was rather light on details, but this doesn't look like much of a breakthrough.
All the more so, since the notion of combining NN experts is already quite old. Haykin mentions it in the 1994 edition of his textbook.
Notice that that's 10% of the way back to the invention of electronic computers, and about 43% of the way back to when the backpropagation algorithm rescued neural networks from obscurity.
> Microsoft could operate for about two years using only cash on hand. That's excluding earnings and equity, and they have a lot of each.
Still,
that's only about twice as long as some of the dotcoms listed on the deathwatch site; and
as Animats said at the top of this thread -
It's worth pointing out that, while sometimes the company outlives its cash, the stockholders almost never do. There are a number of ways a cash-short company can stave off bankruptcy, but from a stockholder perspective, they all suck.
Contrary to what the unwashed masses believe, MS is (and long has been) more about money than about software, and in particular has been very much about stocks. In that light, it might be educative to see MS given the same analysis as the dotcoms, which we all know are seriously ill.
> Given the reasonable success of these systems I wonder when people are going to start exploiting this sort of system comercially.
Given the existence of spyware, I would guess that they already are. We just don't know it yet.
Speaking of which, I once saw a Web page where a guy talked about a demo Java app he had written, which would harvest "spare" cycles from client machines where it was running.
> It seems the link for the "close calls" is forbidden?!? Anyone care to repost what it says somewhere?
I can get to it intermittently.
Spoiler alert...
Spoiler alert...
Spoiler alert...
It basically says that they got some funny clusters of spikes in their data, and couldn't explain them... until they noticed that the spikes' dates correlated with downtime for the 'scope.
I don't understand the concept of a "close call". A "close call" would mean that an ET was out there and they almost detected it, or that they detected something and it was almost an ET.
A broken telescope is hardly a "close call", at least in this context.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, make it tall enough for the top to be in a geosynchronous orbit.
But wouldn't all the elevations below that be in faster orbits? Even if it had the tensile strength to survive, wouldn't it "stand" with one heck of a gimp in it?
--
> I didn't like it much.
Me neither. I didn't even bother watching all the episodes.
Way too overhyped, IMO.
--
> In other words, new music sucks because the RIAA learned that you don't need good music to make a profit.
Half the commercials on my cable channels are Time-Warner's advertisements for the other cable channels.
When you have huge corporations controlling both the production and distribution of content, don't expect high standards for the content.
--
--
> Maybe he got more votes, maybe he didn't.
Actualy, the media are already doing a recount under Florida's extraordinary liberal "Sunshine Laws".
There's a big blustery effort including multiple news publishers and a conservative "research" group, and they're inching along at about 450 ballots a day.
However, The Miami Herald is going it solo, and using their brains. They have already done a whole county using an optical scanner, which not only helps with speed, but also reduces subjectivity.
Guess what? That single county turned up 130 more votes for Gore. Stay tuned for more. At least until the Republicans get Scalia to order it stopped and the ballots destroyed.
--
> And in the Netcraft survey, what server OS was the most popular in the longest uptimes? Yes, BSD.
Mebe so, but since the article was asking what had been left out of the history of Linux for this year, there did not seem to be much reason to consider BSD uptimes.
--
I must have sent several dozen messages since I first heard about it, and they average about two notification addresses each, and I've only noticed one mention that "so-and-so does not wish to receive spamcop messages".
I think it was thoughtful of Julian to provide that kind of support for his "customers" on both ends of the deal. Overall, Spamcop leaves the impression of a very high standard of professionalism.
I'm sure there are lots of ISPs that just put autoresponders on their abuse mailboxes, and ignore everything that comes in. We certainly can't rely on that kind in the war against spam.
Sadly, we probably won't really get the issue solved until the volume of complaints reach the same order of magnitude as the volume of the spam. Automated services like Spamcop should help get us there sooner.
Someday I'm going to look at Mozilla's mail client code and see what it would take to put a "spam" button on the toolbar for one-click spambusting. Maybe provide a configuration menu that would let you choose between forwarding it to spamcop (or similar services), sending it to your own script, spellchecking it and replying with a bill for your services, or simply adding keywords from the address and/or subject line to your mail filters.
--
You're right. Maybe we should impeach Linus and replace him with someone like Bill Gates, who says -
--
Just think, soon you'll be hearing "Hi, I'm Bob and I run NSALinux."
Wonder when they're going to have their IPO.
--
I'm not one to read the articles either, but in this case I made a special exception, and yes, there is a download link.
You may also find this note at the bottom of the main site interesting:
--
> An additional way to prevent SPAM is to directly get the spam accounts closed. The basic way is by extracting from the email header and a few pings/fingers which computer the SPAM actually came... It tends to take about 10 mins per account...
.tw spam that has not subsided since I started using Spamcop. I rather suspect that the "abuse" handlers at some ISPs are actively involved in the spamming.]
/.ed when I send in my fresh spam. And I would like to thank them for the service they are providing the public.
I would like to put in a plug for a free automated service that someone mentioned here a couple of weeks ago. Just forward the message to spamcop@spamcop.net, wait for the automated reply, visit the Web link mentioned in the reply, and click the "send" button. They do all the parsing and lookup for you.
I have found it fairly effective. In particular, Spamcop got me removed from an annoying commercial list which I had fruitlessly sent in multiple complaints about all through the past year. Now you can bust a spammer almost as easily as he can send out his spam, and since it's so convenient you can often get it done within seconds of receiving the message, instead of letting the tedious parsing stack up for a week while the trail grows cold.
[On the other hand, I've been getting a lot of
For more information, visit spamcop.net, and read the instructions carefully. Notice that you have the option of "joining", but you can use the e-mail based service for free.
I am not associated with Spamcop; just a happy user.
Ah, there's some now! I hope the spamcop server isn't
--
> Anything critical missing?
Yes. In additon to their other mentions of Netcraft surveys, they failed to remark on the Netcraft report from a few months back which reported that Linux was running 30% of all the Web servers they detected, after applying an algorithm intended to filter out ghost sites.
That put Linux in the #1 position, edging out Microsoft's line by around 1-1/2%.
This is a landmark event, and I regret that Netcraft has not seen fit to report the usage trends in server OS regularly.
--
> Question: Seeing the words 'biologically valid' conjures up an image of scientists pursuing pure science rather than concentrating on the applications of it. Is the goal of NN today more theoretical (we want to get something to behave more like a smart being) than practical (we want something that will specifically put names to faces/discriminate balloons from weapons/identify handwriting like an expert).
Both.
Cognitive scientists are using NN technology as a 'biologically valid' model for cognition. (Though only a fool would remain unaware of the enormous gap between our NN toys and the real thing, and of the enormous simplification that goes into our toys.)
Others just look at NN as a technology to be exploited without reference to biology.
> I suspect that this field has narrowed in the last decade (but I may be wrong), and so I fear that it may be getting wayyy esoteric.
Wayyyyy. Like any other branch of science, especially CS, this field is rapidly "narrowing" in the sense of getting deeper, but also "broadening" in the sense of developing more branches and more connections to other fields. (E.g., lots of parallels have been shown between NN and physics, and between NN and statistics.)
> As a practical engineer who needs solutions today, should I devote more energies to this or less? What is happening elsewhere in the field?
It's no longer possible even for NN researchers to stay on top of everything that's going on in the field, so don't even think about investing that much time in it.
Beyond that, what's your field of application in engineering? Do your journals ever cover relevant NN technology? If not, you might be able to start a SIG, so that the effort of keeping an ear to the ground and filtering out the uninteresting material could be spread among the members, rather than going it solo.
--
> As described to me, neural nets are _huge_ (every datapoint is in) underconstrained matricies with an infinite number of equally valid solutions.
Your criticisms are cogent, but in practice NNs can be excellent problem solvers.
For example, I suppose it is possible to solve the pole balancing problem with statistical methods, but I have never seen it done. With neural networks the problem and its more demanding variants have become so trivial that people are losing interest in it as a benchmark. (This is mostly as a result of advances in the art & science of NNs over the last 5 years or so.)
--
> The article was rather light on details, but this doesn't look like much of a breakthrough.
All the more so, since the notion of combining NN experts is already quite old. Haykin mentions it in the 1994 edition of his textbook.
Notice that that's 10% of the way back to the invention of electronic computers, and about 43% of the way back to when the backpropagation algorithm rescued neural networks from obscurity.
--
Still,
- that's only about twice as long as some of the dotcoms listed on the deathwatch site; and
- as Animats said at the top of this thread -
Contrary to what the unwashed masses believe, MS is (and long has been) more about money than about software, and in particular has been very much about stocks. In that light, it might be educative to see MS given the same analysis as the dotcoms, which we all know are seriously ill.--
> It's worth pointing out that, while sometimes the company outlives its cash, the stockholders almost never do.
Whelp, Stockmaster has the chart for MSFT. Could you run up the anticipated date for us?
It's not quite so nearly monotonic as the dot coms you list, but it's still not the kind of thing that cheers stockholders.
--
> Given the reasonable success of these systems I wonder when people are going to start exploiting this sort of system comercially.
Given the existence of spyware, I would guess that they already are. We just don't know it yet.
Speaking of which, I once saw a Web page where a guy talked about a demo Java app he had written, which would harvest "spare" cycles from client machines where it was running.
--
> It seems the link for the "close calls" is forbidden?!? Anyone care to repost what it says somewhere?
I can get to it intermittently.
Spoiler alert...
Spoiler alert...
Spoiler alert...
It basically says that they got some funny clusters of spikes in their data, and couldn't explain them... until they noticed that the spikes' dates correlated with downtime for the 'scope.
--
> This is the o/s that will defeat windows???
Nope. Windows now uses Alien Technology (tm).
--
I don't understand the concept of a "close call". A "close call" would mean that an ET was out there and they almost detected it, or that they detected something and it was almost an ET.
A broken telescope is hardly a "close call", at least in this context.
--
> They haven't detected any Extra Terrestrials yet
We've got some spares, if that's what you're looking for.
--
> here are some new reasons:
-1 Tried to be funny and wasn't
-1 Tried to be serious and was funny
> -1 Opinion I disagree with
Actually, I think that's what most downmods really mean. Or to be fair, only about 1/3 of them. Most moderators actually seem to do a good job.
> +1 Offtopic, but more interesting than what we're talking about
That's the one you really deserved.
> This post has been brought to you by sleep deprivation and need to procrastinate
Finals week. Projects due. Overdue. Homework Avoidance Syndrome.
Me too, at least in spirit.
--
> I'm very worried about this development; this is serious stuff.
Think on the bright side. Now Saddam can sit at home and fantasize about kicking all his neighbors' asses.
--
You can read more about it here.
Snicker.
I didn't say anything.
--