No this isn't research into space, into sexy supercomputing clusters, or other far-flung reaches of technology. This is research into basic elements of human behavior - indeed elements with a very strong environmental impact. Technology cannot solve all of our problems, it cannot solve the human condition. Part of fixing the ills in our society (and those we inflict on our supporting biosphere) is to learn how to subconsciously promote better behavior on the part of everyone. Small changes, done across the board, can make great gains - and much of these benefits "stack" with benefits from new technology.
So don't knock this research until you've looked at the numbers - according to this article in 1997, Americans threw away (for one reason or another) 27% of edible food, that's 96 *billion* pounds, which is ~400 pounds per person, per year! Sure, this occurs at many stages, but each stage can be improved.
I am sure that these tapes will be studied years later by linguists, behaviorists, game theorists, businessmen and efficiency specialists. Besides, with research, we never know what we're going to learn until we try.
"A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent."
If that's the case, why hasn't the EFF sued Larry Wall and his followers long ago?
I think some people have trouble staying focussed for a long period of time. For them, taking lots of breaks at work actually increases their productivity, as long as they follow it up with a little extra work at home/on weekends.
I know I, for one, have trouble on vacations because after the third day I start to feel a strong compulsion to do *something* productive - doesn't have to be work, can be a hobby, etc. In the past when my various jobs didn't keep me busy enough, I always spawned many side projects - I guess I'm just not comfortable just sitting around playing games or "going out" too much.
The big question here seems to be - will (eventually) having a cheap, powerful unmanned military force make the United States much more likely to use it? Or will this (potentially) massive increase in force strength serve as a deterrent?
Unfortunately, I think it will likely be the former.
Can you blame a governing institution for taking what their constituents give them?! We live in a democracy, and our voters have proven they are willing to do little or nothing to prevent the loss of their natural rights.
What did your mother teach you about everyone jumping off a bridge, anyway?
This isn't like jumping off of a bridge. There's a breal, tangible benefit here, and if the situation is assymetric, our country would be best off if it were asymmetric in our favor.
Part of our "evil" plan to control the entire world involves us performing acts of espionage against just about every other country.
Every country does it, because that's how a country survives. If there was no such thing as war and terrorism (whatever the cause) maybe that would not be the case. But as long as other countries threaten our position, our livelihood, and even our very existence (and in the nuclear age, yes they do) we're gonna have to collect information through just about every available means. It may not be "nice" but it is a smart move.
the tremendous success that is evolution on this planet has overshadowed its inherent weaknesses - that it is a greedy, local optimizer which cannot reach a large amount of the possible biological search space due to being stuck in local optima
Untrue. There are EC mechanisms to deal with inferior local optima such as hypermutation, restarts, coevolution, island models, and dynamic population sizes, among others.
The purpose of my statement was not to suggest that EC is hopelessly flawed, but that biological evolution is - there's just too much of the state space it can never reach (without the use of something like a sentient species, which I'm not going to include in my discussion). That means if we copy solutions found by nature, (neural networks, etc) we should be aware that there is likely a much better solution to the problem that biological evolution could not, due to its particular constraints, evolve.
Indeed I am very much aware that many EC algorithms mitigate this problem somewhat, mostly through the use of a central controlling entity (something that we do not presumably have in biological evolution). However, just about all EC optimizers have extreme difficulty dealing with (the very real) case where the global optima (and other, almost as good solutions) are very, very small regions in the state space, around which fitness drops to almost nothing - for instance, try constructing almost any piece of high technology, such as a rocket or a modern gun. Get one thing slightly off, and the entire device doesn't work! No amount of hypermutation is going to let you find these very, very sparsely distributed solutions in any reasonable amount of computer time - there's just not enough useful gradient information.
Everything must be constructed out of self-replicating units (these two factors are why something useful, like, say, a Colt 45, will never emerge without the pre-existence of an intelligence).
I hope you're not making some obtuse case for Intelligent Design. Anyway, the use of "self-replicating" is puzzling since I don't think most EC researchers think of populations as being self-replicating, at least not in the real world biological sense. EC != Biology.
I haven't been accused of being an ID proponent for some time (despite the theoretical possibility of aliens or whatever interfering with our evolution, there's no particular reason to believe they or any other "higher power" has). Perhaps my post did not make it clear, those statements about the limits of evolution "on this planet" were referring to biological evolution. Here's the part which was key to this article:
Biological examples are fascinating and often practical, but the biological approach is almost always "brute force" and/or "sub-optimal but still alive."
We're taking something from a known, working biological system. That's cool. It will probably work well, even. However as we know due to many things like optical illusions, there's so many inputs that the human visual system can't handle properly. Indeed this is the kind of thing I'd expect to see problems with if this system were put to use in practice, especially in a security setting. I'm saying that I hear all the time that "it's arrogant for us to think we can do something that nature could not in 4.5 billion years of evolution." That's bollocks, biological evolution is hopelessly flawed for solving some types of problems, and we can absolutely do better. The only question is whether or not we will.
Anyways, sorry for the confusion. Only some of my statements apply to EC, which, obviously, has less restrictions on it than biological evolution.
Is anyone really surprised by this? As long as there is something to gain, and there are not suitable deterrents, governments tend to do these kinds of things. Indeed the United States would be foolish to sit back as others engage in cyberespionage.
Yet another good reason to keep your computers secure!
You mean the same way the smart people at Microsoft have dealt with viruses, spyware, adware, and so on?
If viruses, spyware, etc, were threatening to destroy Microsoft, you better believe they'd fix it! The article postulates that the ex-coworker issue will be the end of Facebook. If it is truly a life-threatening problem, they will fix it. Otherwise, who knows?
I agree that if one is concerned about a service, they should consider not using it. But for me, not only has Facebook allowed me to keep in touch with friends and family, it's done something greater - it's how I found the love of my life.
My Fiancee and I went to the same high school but were in different grades. Despite being in a musical together, we only talked on perhaps two occasions. One day she wondered what I had been up to (people at my old high school still talked about me after I left due to my NASA work) and sent me a message. Less than a week later, I visited her at her school and discovered someone absolutely amazing.
So, despite all I might disagree with, I owe much of my current happiness to both NASA and Facebook. May they both live long and prosper:)
The people who run Facebook aren't stupid - there's so much money involved here that I am sure they will find a solution to this. As for me, I'd just block my old co-workers when I leave, unless I strongly trust them on a personal level.
While I was an intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, back when I was an undergraduate, I was very gung-ho about biologically inspired computing - I implemented an automatic flowchart positioning system using a genetic algorithm that would "evolve" a correct solution to the problem. While this certainly worked to some extent, the instability and sheer unpredictable nature of using such a stochastic algorithm made it impossible to use in a mission-critical setting. Many biologically inspired algorithms solve problems through methods that cannot be proven correct (unlike, say, the mathematics circuitry in a CPU), but merely empirically observed to "do a good job."
One of the main drawbacks of human engineering is the need for certainty, which often prohibits the use of many high-efficiency stochastic algorithms (especially for things like mesh communication) in conservative industries, like the US defense industry. This is also a significant problem in other areas, however, and many biologically inspired algorithms have properties that we cannot, so far, completely explain - they are treated like "black boxes" with many unknowns for engineering purposes.
I think that in certain circles, the tremendous success that is evolution on this planet has overshadowed its inherent weaknesses - that it is a greedy, local optimizer which cannot reach a large amount of the possible biological search space due to being stuck in local optima, and the added constraint that everything must be constructed out of self-replicating units (these two factors are why something useful, like, say, a Colt 45, will never emerge without the pre-existence of an intelligence). Biological examples are fascinating and often practical, but the biological approach is almost always "brute force" and/or "sub-optimal but still alive."
I think biologically-inspired algorithms will continue to gain prominence, but in my estimation, it is likely that there will be harsh limits imposed on how far guarantees of performance from empirical tests and symbolic analysis will actually hold.
I have a good friend who happens to be a police officer and we've had many talks about this. I think he would agree with most of your analysis (indeed, that many police officers do use tasers when they are not the 100% optimal solution). However, one important thing that you left out is that people can easily get injured if they are taken down by conventional means. Indeed, if there is a physical confrontation, the police, the target, and (likely) innocent bystanders are all in very real danger of taking damage, either intentionally inflicted or accidental, which can lead to severe injury, permanent disability, or even death. Yes tasers are dangerous weapons, but so are batons and fists and handcuffs! Heck, many of the options you described, while perfectly legitimate in some situations, give the suspect/target the initiative, which, depending on their mental state, can be very dangerous for those nearby.
The statistical analysis that needs to be done here is what the cost/benefits of tasering in various situations, in comparison to the other (mostly preferable) techniques you describe. I have seen now so many articles on Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, etc about specific cases where tasering caused a significant problem, but that is only one side of the story.
My drunk cousin told off a police officer, who was stupid enough (and angry enough) to try and tackle him. This was bad because not only was the police officer not big enough to do this successfully, but my cousin used to engage in organized fighting (local "UFC" type matches), and has fairly impressive combat reflexes. That's someone you don't jump from behind while they're intoxicated, late at night, with no warning, unless you wanna go home in a body bag. Luckily for the other officers nearby, they had someone of a reasonable size, and they tasered him five times and handcuffed him, and he was no longer a danger. Sure the real problem here was the idiot policeman tried to tackle the wrong person, but *given* that they had a strong, trained fighter who was now engaged in potentially deadly combat, tasering was pretty much their best option, and you better believe my cousin would rather be tasered than beaten (though they did do that at some point).
I guess my point is that I'm really tired of all these one-sided discussions. There's absolutely no reason to think that tasers should *only* be used instead of a real weapon - by that logic you should only punch someone in the face if you're willing to kill them. Tasers should be used when they are the best tool for the job.
Even if Veropedia is completely above board in this respect, the advertising will produce a perception of editorial slant in favor of the advertisers. This perception can be just as damaging to credibility as an actual slant would be.
My God, this is just an encyclopedia! I use Wikipedia every day, but I'd be a fool to trust information on there for anything important without verifying it somewhere more credible on the subject. For all of its talk of NPOV, the views expressed in a given wikipedia article represent whatever group is willing to spend the most effort on it. At least with "advertiser bias" it should be pretty obvious how to take that into account - indeed I'd prefer a "pro doritos" bias to the anti-expert bias that is so heavily enshrined in the beaurocratic power structures of Wikipedia. Truth is not a democracy, and the sad fact is that for many subjects (especially highly technical ones), it is difficult for a non-expert to gauge what they do not know - and just how badly they are raping these articles by "simplifying" them to the point of inaccuracy.
I've done, maybe 800 edits on Wikipedia, and after seeing this, and the massive effort it took to keep people who took an introductory class in a subject from remaking articles on that subject in the image of their own purposely approximate understanding... I just gave up. I'd love to read articles that someone with a PhD says is accurate, and if there's a monkey to punch to win a free iPod dancing next to it, so be it. The people using Encarta (okay, all seven of them) don't seem to mind that it's ad supported, and neither would I.
I've been here since 1999, I've posted ~100 +4/+5 comments in that time, and many other comments not worth reading... Sure most comments on here are not worth reading, even the highly moderated ones, but sometimes I find comments that, in and of themselves, could be a compelling article. I find them, I share them with friends, I respond to them, and I consider them to be worth wading through all the crap. However article summaries are different, they are oestensibly edited, so I hold them to a higher SNR standard. Perhaps a little foolish, but I do pay for slashdot (most of the time).
Disclaimer: I hate the PS3 (though I love the cell, but not for gaming, because that's too complicated for most game programmers to handle).
I love my XBox 360 and Wii (as long as they both continue to function and don't break).
Since nobody is actually playing games on the system, it makes sense to use them for research projects like this
Yes, because ~4 million people count as "nobody". But seriously, am I the only one that's tired of troll article summaries around here? It's either a flippant comment like that, or some asinine, leading question at the end, like "Could [people who are professionals and therefore have a clue unlike submitter who only skimmed the article in question] finally be getting it right?"
Slashdot is where i go for excellent commentary - I've tried reading comments on sites like digg or reddit, and neither can compete with whatever strange and wonderful force it is that guarantees at least some highly-moderated comments on this site are really worth reading (often moreso than the article, which is probably why no one reads it anyways). But now that we have firehose, etc, I say we should start punishing stories early for this kind of trolling, tag them as such, and maybe even put up some prepublication commentary on it. I've only submitted a few articles, but I know that, despite popular belief, the editors *do* edit what is written, and maybe, just maybe, we can reduce this annoyance.
Of course I know there are many more important problems in the world than the submitter being an ass, but this is one I can do something about - and so can you.
the VIRTUALLY EXACT SAME POST (...snip...) was modded flamebait while this was modded informative.
Mods on slashdot often mod "Funny" posts "Informative" because it gives Karma, unlike Funny, which many people believe *should* give Karma.
I don't think anyone actually believes Vista is slower than an 8 year old mac. Although the 8 year old mac will probably *not* run out of memory in this situation:)
To wit, you can't use GPLed software in non-free software, and to make sure you don't, the license requires you to release any software you combine with GPLed software under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license.
I know it's splitting hairs, but as I understand it, you're perfectly OK to combine GPL and non-GPL software any way you like (at least, the GPL does not prohibit this) - however you are not allowed to then distribute it.
In a world where server-side applications are becoming more and more important, this means you can take GPL software, make your own proprietary, undistributed version, and allow people to use it through your web interface, without them ever seeing (or being able to modify) the source code. I don't have a problem with this, but I wouldn't be surprised if RMS were annoyed...
: No, neither the BBC article nor the MIT article are correct. It does not at all work like a transformer, despite what they are feeding the public, a transformer like that would not have strong enough magnetic coupling and would waste energy. The actual mechanism behind their 'wireless energy transfer' uses two short circuited resonant radio (although it can work with any light) waveguides. The waveguides produce evanescent waves which do not carry energy, but can affect other nearby waveguides allowing the EM radiation to tunnel from one waveguide to the other (from the base station to the wireless receiver) which can then be rectified into DC electricity. See the wiki article on superlenses, evanescent waves, and evanescent wave coupling (I believe) for more specific information and links to better resources. Note that a negative refractive index material could massively boost the range and coupling for such a system. See the articles for the reason for that as well. --Haplo 24.98.124.237 09:12, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
and the reply:
On the contrary, it works exactly like a transformer. Evanescent fields are the electric and magnetic fields of the nearfield region surrounding any material or substance which interacts with electromagnetism. Evanescent waves are non-propagating in that they are "emitted" during 1/4 cycle by an electric current or a charge-separation, and are then re-absorbed during the next 1/4 cycle, only to be emitted again.
Partial reflection can accomplish this, but so can coils or capacitors. If you apply AC to a simple loop inductor, the evanescent wave is the expanding and contracting b-field surrounding the inductor. One simple example of evanescent wave coupling is seen whenever EM energy is transferred between the two plates of a capacitor. Note well that light and radio waves are the same thing. You say that evanescent waves don't apply to transformers? That's exactly the same as saying that Maxwell's Equations apply to transformers but do not apply to the EM fields involved with total internal reflection!
When we say that evanescent waves do not carry energy, we actually mean that the EM energy vector is oscillating, with no overall energy flow. The effect is identical to "imaginary power" in AC circuitry. But evanescent waves can easily be made to carry energy. After all, that's what the 2006 MIT paper is all about. But usually such topics are called "capacitive coupling" or "inductive coupling."
However, the MIT article contains one difference between simple capacitor/coil coupling versus "wireless power transfer." They are using high-Q resonators. This is identical to a tuned-primary, tuned-secondary transformer. In this type of transformer, the coupling between the coils is proportional to the "Q" of the resonant circuits, and with high Q, even an air-core transformer will exhibit tight coupling. Which high enough "Q", the coupling remains significant even when the primary and secondary are separated by fairly large distance. --Wjbeaty 21:16, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I haven't really used my physics degree in a while, so I'm hesitant to comment much on the validity of it, but I would tend to agree with Wjbeaty, that this is just another evanescent coupling mode that works at longer ranges than standard transformers. I doubt that it can be used to transform voltage in the same manner that traditional transformers do, however.
Also check out this paper on their technology. Lots of great details, and there's probably even a new one out by now...
Eh, it's OK, I've had so many +4s and +5s in my time here that I have karma to burn. I knew it wasnt' really that great of a joke when I posted it, but I couldn't resist - indeed at the moment I started typing the post there had been no posts visible.
However that still doesn't change the fact that it was redundant - though there was probably a better use for that mod point. Se la vi...
Slashdot Mirror
No this isn't research into space, into sexy supercomputing clusters, or other far-flung reaches of technology. This is research into basic elements of human behavior - indeed elements with a very strong environmental impact. Technology cannot solve all of our problems, it cannot solve the human condition. Part of fixing the ills in our society (and those we inflict on our supporting biosphere) is to learn how to subconsciously promote better behavior on the part of everyone. Small changes, done across the board, can make great gains - and much of these benefits "stack" with benefits from new technology.
So don't knock this research until you've looked at the numbers - according to this article in 1997, Americans threw away (for one reason or another) 27% of edible food, that's 96 *billion* pounds, which is ~400 pounds per person, per year! Sure, this occurs at many stages, but each stage can be improved.
I am sure that these tapes will be studied years later by linguists, behaviorists, game theorists, businessmen and efficiency specialists. Besides, with research, we never know what we're going to learn until we try.
I think some people have trouble staying focussed for a long period of time. For them, taking lots of breaks at work actually increases their productivity, as long as they follow it up with a little extra work at home/on weekends.
I know I, for one, have trouble on vacations because after the third day I start to feel a strong compulsion to do *something* productive - doesn't have to be work, can be a hobby, etc. In the past when my various jobs didn't keep me busy enough, I always spawned many side projects - I guess I'm just not comfortable just sitting around playing games or "going out" too much.
Actually it might be a better idea to start by creating a definition of "intelligence" that everyone can agree on.
The big question here seems to be - will (eventually) having a cheap, powerful unmanned military force make the United States much more likely to use it? Or will this (potentially) massive increase in force strength serve as a deterrent?
Unfortunately, I think it will likely be the former.
Can you blame a governing institution for taking what their constituents give them?! We live in a democracy, and our voters have proven they are willing to do little or nothing to prevent the loss of their natural rights.
What did your mother teach you about everyone jumping off a bridge, anyway?
This isn't like jumping off of a bridge. There's a breal, tangible benefit here, and if the situation is assymetric, our country would be best off if it were asymmetric in our favor.
Part of our "evil" plan to control the entire world involves us performing acts of espionage against just about every other country.
Every country does it, because that's how a country survives. If there was no such thing as war and terrorism (whatever the cause) maybe that would not be the case. But as long as other countries threaten our position, our livelihood, and even our very existence (and in the nuclear age, yes they do) we're gonna have to collect information through just about every available means. It may not be "nice" but it is a smart move.
The purpose of my statement was not to suggest that EC is hopelessly flawed, but that biological evolution is - there's just too much of the state space it can never reach (without the use of something like a sentient species, which I'm not going to include in my discussion). That means if we copy solutions found by nature, (neural networks, etc) we should be aware that there is likely a much better solution to the problem that biological evolution could not, due to its particular constraints, evolve.
Indeed I am very much aware that many EC algorithms mitigate this problem somewhat, mostly through the use of a central controlling entity (something that we do not presumably have in biological evolution). However, just about all EC optimizers have extreme difficulty dealing with (the very real) case where the global optima (and other, almost as good solutions) are very, very small regions in the state space, around which fitness drops to almost nothing - for instance, try constructing almost any piece of high technology, such as a rocket or a modern gun. Get one thing slightly off, and the entire device doesn't work! No amount of hypermutation is going to let you find these very, very sparsely distributed solutions in any reasonable amount of computer time - there's just not enough useful gradient information. I hope you're not making some obtuse case for Intelligent Design. Anyway, the use of "self-replicating" is puzzling since I don't think most EC researchers think of populations as being self-replicating, at least not in the real world biological sense. EC != Biology.
I haven't been accused of being an ID proponent for some time (despite the theoretical possibility of aliens or whatever interfering with our evolution, there's no particular reason to believe they or any other "higher power" has). Perhaps my post did not make it clear, those statements about the limits of evolution "on this planet" were referring to biological evolution. Here's the part which was key to this article: We're taking something from a known, working biological system. That's cool. It will probably work well, even. However as we know due to many things like optical illusions, there's so many inputs that the human visual system can't handle properly. Indeed this is the kind of thing I'd expect to see problems with if this system were put to use in practice, especially in a security setting. I'm saying that I hear all the time that "it's arrogant for us to think we can do something that nature could not in 4.5 billion years of evolution." That's bollocks, biological evolution is hopelessly flawed for solving some types of problems, and we can absolutely do better. The only question is whether or not we will.
Anyways, sorry for the confusion. Only some of my statements apply to EC, which, obviously, has less restrictions on it than biological evolution.
Is anyone really surprised by this? As long as there is something to gain, and there are not suitable deterrents, governments tend to do these kinds of things. Indeed the United States would be foolish to sit back as others engage in cyberespionage.
Yet another good reason to keep your computers secure!
You mean the same way the smart people at Microsoft have dealt with viruses, spyware, adware, and so on?
If viruses, spyware, etc, were threatening to destroy Microsoft, you better believe they'd fix it! The article postulates that the ex-coworker issue will be the end of Facebook. If it is truly a life-threatening problem, they will fix it. Otherwise, who knows?
I agree that if one is concerned about a service, they should consider not using it. But for me, not only has Facebook allowed me to keep in touch with friends and family, it's done something greater - it's how I found the love of my life.
:)
My Fiancee and I went to the same high school but were in different grades. Despite being in a musical together, we only talked on perhaps two occasions. One day she wondered what I had been up to (people at my old high school still talked about me after I left due to my NASA work) and sent me a message. Less than a week later, I visited her at her school and discovered someone absolutely amazing.
So, despite all I might disagree with, I owe much of my current happiness to both NASA and Facebook. May they both live long and prosper
The people who run Facebook aren't stupid - there's so much money involved here that I am sure they will find a solution to this. As for me, I'd just block my old co-workers when I leave, unless I strongly trust them on a personal level.
While I was an intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, back when I was an undergraduate, I was very gung-ho about biologically inspired computing - I implemented an automatic flowchart positioning system using a genetic algorithm that would "evolve" a correct solution to the problem. While this certainly worked to some extent, the instability and sheer unpredictable nature of using such a stochastic algorithm made it impossible to use in a mission-critical setting. Many biologically inspired algorithms solve problems through methods that cannot be proven correct (unlike, say, the mathematics circuitry in a CPU), but merely empirically observed to "do a good job."
One of the main drawbacks of human engineering is the need for certainty, which often prohibits the use of many high-efficiency stochastic algorithms (especially for things like mesh communication) in conservative industries, like the US defense industry. This is also a significant problem in other areas, however, and many biologically inspired algorithms have properties that we cannot, so far, completely explain - they are treated like "black boxes" with many unknowns for engineering purposes.
I think that in certain circles, the tremendous success that is evolution on this planet has overshadowed its inherent weaknesses - that it is a greedy, local optimizer which cannot reach a large amount of the possible biological search space due to being stuck in local optima, and the added constraint that everything must be constructed out of self-replicating units (these two factors are why something useful, like, say, a Colt 45, will never emerge without the pre-existence of an intelligence). Biological examples are fascinating and often practical, but the biological approach is almost always "brute force" and/or "sub-optimal but still alive."
I think biologically-inspired algorithms will continue to gain prominence, but in my estimation, it is likely that there will be harsh limits imposed on how far guarantees of performance from empirical tests and symbolic analysis will actually hold.
(Blatently pasted from my post a few years ago)
This article is making me seriously reconsider my current strategy of keeping my cell phone in my pants....
I have a good friend who happens to be a police officer and we've had many talks about this. I think he would agree with most of your analysis (indeed, that many police officers do use tasers when they are not the 100% optimal solution). However, one important thing that you left out is that people can easily get injured if they are taken down by conventional means. Indeed, if there is a physical confrontation, the police, the target, and (likely) innocent bystanders are all in very real danger of taking damage, either intentionally inflicted or accidental, which can lead to severe injury, permanent disability, or even death. Yes tasers are dangerous weapons, but so are batons and fists and handcuffs! Heck, many of the options you described, while perfectly legitimate in some situations, give the suspect/target the initiative, which, depending on their mental state, can be very dangerous for those nearby.
The statistical analysis that needs to be done here is what the cost/benefits of tasering in various situations, in comparison to the other (mostly preferable) techniques you describe. I have seen now so many articles on Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, etc about specific cases where tasering caused a significant problem, but that is only one side of the story.
My drunk cousin told off a police officer, who was stupid enough (and angry enough) to try and tackle him. This was bad because not only was the police officer not big enough to do this successfully, but my cousin used to engage in organized fighting (local "UFC" type matches), and has fairly impressive combat reflexes. That's someone you don't jump from behind while they're intoxicated, late at night, with no warning, unless you wanna go home in a body bag. Luckily for the other officers nearby, they had someone of a reasonable size, and they tasered him five times and handcuffed him, and he was no longer a danger. Sure the real problem here was the idiot policeman tried to tackle the wrong person, but *given* that they had a strong, trained fighter who was now engaged in potentially deadly combat, tasering was pretty much their best option, and you better believe my cousin would rather be tasered than beaten (though they did do that at some point).
I guess my point is that I'm really tired of all these one-sided discussions. There's absolutely no reason to think that tasers should *only* be used instead of a real weapon - by that logic you should only punch someone in the face if you're willing to kill them. Tasers should be used when they are the best tool for the job.
Congratulations all you non-voters who have kept these people in power for so long.
Silly me, I thought these people got in power because someone voted for them?
Give me someone worth voting for, and then I'll vote. Otherwise, it's just a waste of my time.
Even if Veropedia is completely above board in this respect, the advertising will produce a perception of editorial slant in favor of the advertisers. This perception can be just as damaging to credibility as an actual slant would be.
My God, this is just an encyclopedia! I use Wikipedia every day, but I'd be a fool to trust information on there for anything important without verifying it somewhere more credible on the subject. For all of its talk of NPOV, the views expressed in a given wikipedia article represent whatever group is willing to spend the most effort on it. At least with "advertiser bias" it should be pretty obvious how to take that into account - indeed I'd prefer a "pro doritos" bias to the anti-expert bias that is so heavily enshrined in the beaurocratic power structures of Wikipedia. Truth is not a democracy, and the sad fact is that for many subjects (especially highly technical ones), it is difficult for a non-expert to gauge what they do not know - and just how badly they are raping these articles by "simplifying" them to the point of inaccuracy.
I've done, maybe 800 edits on Wikipedia, and after seeing this, and the massive effort it took to keep people who took an introductory class in a subject from remaking articles on that subject in the image of their own purposely approximate understanding... I just gave up. I'd love to read articles that someone with a PhD says is accurate, and if there's a monkey to punch to win a free iPod dancing next to it, so be it. The people using Encarta (okay, all seven of them) don't seem to mind that it's ad supported, and neither would I.
You sure you're not new here?
I've been here since 1999, I've posted ~100 +4/+5 comments in that time, and many other comments not worth reading... Sure most comments on here are not worth reading, even the highly moderated ones, but sometimes I find comments that, in and of themselves, could be a compelling article. I find them, I share them with friends, I respond to them, and I consider them to be worth wading through all the crap. However article summaries are different, they are oestensibly edited, so I hold them to a higher SNR standard. Perhaps a little foolish, but I do pay for slashdot (most of the time).
Disclaimer: I hate the PS3 (though I love the cell, but not for gaming, because that's too complicated for most game programmers to handle). I love my XBox 360 and Wii (as long as they both continue to function and don't break).
Since nobody is actually playing games on the system, it makes sense to use them for research projects like this
Yes, because ~4 million people count as "nobody". But seriously, am I the only one that's tired of troll article summaries around here? It's either a flippant comment like that, or some asinine, leading question at the end, like "Could [people who are professionals and therefore have a clue unlike submitter who only skimmed the article in question] finally be getting it right?"
Slashdot is where i go for excellent commentary - I've tried reading comments on sites like digg or reddit, and neither can compete with whatever strange and wonderful force it is that guarantees at least some highly-moderated comments on this site are really worth reading (often moreso than the article, which is probably why no one reads it anyways). But now that we have firehose, etc, I say we should start punishing stories early for this kind of trolling, tag them as such, and maybe even put up some prepublication commentary on it. I've only submitted a few articles, but I know that, despite popular belief, the editors *do* edit what is written, and maybe, just maybe, we can reduce this annoyance.
Of course I know there are many more important problems in the world than the submitter being an ass, but this is one I can do something about - and so can you.
the VIRTUALLY EXACT SAME POST (...snip...) was modded flamebait while this was modded informative.
:)
Mods on slashdot often mod "Funny" posts "Informative" because it gives Karma, unlike Funny, which many people believe *should* give Karma.
I don't think anyone actually believes Vista is slower than an 8 year old mac. Although the 8 year old mac will probably *not* run out of memory in this situation
I know it's splitting hairs, but as I understand it, you're perfectly OK to combine GPL and non-GPL software any way you like (at least, the GPL does not prohibit this) - however you are not allowed to then distribute it.
In a world where server-side applications are becoming more and more important, this means you can take GPL software, make your own proprietary, undistributed version, and allow people to use it through your web interface, without them ever seeing (or being able to modify) the source code. I don't have a problem with this, but I wouldn't be surprised if RMS were annoyed...
We've secretly replaced Bob's Crude Oil with new Folgers Crystals(TM). Will he know the difference?
*car explodes*
Also check out this paper on their technology. Lots of great details, and there's probably even a new one out by now...
Eh, it's OK, I've had so many +4s and +5s in my time here that I have karma to burn. I knew it wasnt' really that great of a joke when I posted it, but I couldn't resist - indeed at the moment I started typing the post there had been no posts visible.
However that still doesn't change the fact that it was redundant - though there was probably a better use for that mod point. Se la vi...