What about just getting rid of those damn noisy, smelly dangerous cars that ruin life in city centers? That's guaranteed to be safer than either alternative in this article.
And we already are victim to those who "have no qualms with putting others lives and vehicles at risk." This is the definition of reckless driving (for certain degrees of "risk"). Because they ignore traffic markings and signals right now, the elimination of traffic markings does not affect the risk they pose.
I'd think that removing the signs would increase the risks because of these folks. Atleast with marked signs and signals, if they didn't obey them a cop could give them a ticket. The police are fairly successful at having most of their tickets enforced, but they are successfully challenged every now and then. The main reason we have cameras in cop cars is so the police can cover their butt. With this sort of setup, it would be alot easier for your average traffic ticket to challenge the police unless their was an accident involved.
i don't know my self how they normally stop never ending loops of created objects other than them asking people nicely not to do it.
Don't you remember CS1? I recall how many people in their couldn't write a conditional loop to save their life. I want to know if the script writer was actually looking to do this, or just wanted a few to pop out and didn't know how to properly stop it. Asking people not to do it isn't a solution as alot of people won't know what causes it to begin with. You know this is the scary part about gery goo and nano tech, not that Phds working on it destory the world, but that some one that isn't even aware of loop conditionals would start playing with 'em and well big mess at the least.
"nano particles of water vapor in the atmosphere to kill you" I don't think it's that which kills you...
Shh, I want to see if they'll experiment with breathing non-oxygen atmospheres in an attempt to experimentally extend their life. If anyone attempts this experiment, I'm fairly certain they'll be in the running for a Darwin Award. Come on any one want to try to win an award?
" According to the Chinese delegate to the conference in Greece two weeks ago no sites are blocked." The same delegate would also be glad to tell you of China's wonderful human rights record, how much Chinese occupation has improved Tibet, and how China is democratic.
Hey, maybe when the delegate gets back and finds out that his sites are blocked, then they'll become unblocked. I'm sorry, but such a big thing is made of one event of the Chinese government of course they'll want to sweep it under the rug, and they've been very successful at that domestically. I bet you if it you went over to China and asked 10-20 random Chinese people about your selected Chinese government actions that you don't like, they'll either shrug it off, say it's foreign media trying to discredit the Chinese government, or come up with a list of things that your government has done that you might not agree with. The US government doesn't yet have the power to block wikipedia. Wait awhile. It might get that power though or use selective filtering rather than blocking the entire sites. I think that your average citizen around the globe wouldn't be surprised by what their government does that isn't in their citizens best interests.
OMG! The three-quarteres of the Earth is covered in very deep bodies of liquid nanoparticles! Even worse, the atmosphere now consists almost entirely of nanoparticles! We inhale huge amounts of them with every breath!
WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!
Yeap, usually in around 78 years is the average amount of time it'll take nano particles of water vapor in the atmosphere to kill you. I invite you to experiment breathing other types of atmospheres to see how long you life though.
In the original _Dune_, the young Paul Atreides is threatened by a ``Hunter Killer'', a small, repulsor-driven device directed by remote control which would ``burrow through his flesh'' if it managed to successfully attack him. (He grabs it when it attacks the housekeeper, the ``Shadout Mapes'' who is sent to summon him and smashes its nose against the wall).
And also short ranged. If I recall correctly the spy that was controlling it was out in the hall. I'm surprised someone hasn't strapped a camera onto real bugs and just let the bugs do what they want. We could bio-engineer killer bugs, but that's a really stupid thing to do if we don't have absolute control over them. You might as well find bugs that are already very dangerous and breed them and plant them for your enemies to be attacked with. Humans have had enough bug problems without trying to create more of them.
Finally, to my knowledge, carbon nanotubes have been made only under extremely special circumstances (which also explains why their mass production -- for use, for example, in steels for ship-building -- is still a dream). It's extremely unlikely that the 'ordinary' atmosphere under which Wootz was made would have yielded nanotubes.
Bottomline: Do we need carbon nanotubes to really explain why Damascus swords made with Wootz steel are so special? Use Occam's razor (or, for that matter, the Damascus swords themselves).
I didn't read the article. Here's a thought to consider though: humanity has lost the knowledge of making wootz/Damascus steel so we don't know how they did it. I don't know if carbon nanotubes/wires are actually in there or not. We should be able to test existing samples to find out though. If it turns out that carbon nano tubes are in there in quanity then we might have a hint on how or where to look to for hints on how to mass produce carbon nanotubes. We know there are lots of things that we'd like to do with carbon nanotubes, but we've not figured out how to produce them in vast quantities or cheaply, yet. If that sword making process some how created carbon nanotubes, it might help modern researchers. I'm like you and wouldn't hold my breath in hope that the swords actually contain nanotubes though.
Because we've got a home grown app, we were able to put in alot of specific things (how to submit an assignment, how to send an email to a specific address, how to upload a file, how to download a file and then find it again). It's the way of things. You can't blame the users if they are incompetent. You either have to ensure they are competent, or block them from using the system, and give them an opportunity to learn and demonstrate their competancy
You might as well do it for your computer labs as well. I went to college from 1996-2000. I couldn't believe the number of CS minors didn't know what a zip file was or how to unzip a file, or how to save to a floppy and open it back through explorer rather than the word/excel/notepad open file menu. I didn't learn windows key E until after college, but I knew how to use the file explorer. What really got me was the differences in expectations from professors. Some professors expected 1/3 of the class to not have any computer skills that the professor hasn't taught them. Others thought that you should be able to pickup a 4000 level book and instantly know that subject for their 2000 level class. I work as a gneral computer guy. My boss thinks that I should instantly/magically know how to use/explain anything computer related. Esp. things that I've never heard of before or seen before.
Actually, the summary has nothing to little to do with tech. It has everything to do with evaluating sources, searching for information, and presenting information. This is speech/communication/library skills stuff not tech.
This stuff happens to me seemingly everyday. Don't even get me started on the argument I had with a CIS student over whether USB 2.0 is better than USB 1.1
However, supporting an individual's lawsuit, not because of the principal involved, but because you don't like them and think they're stupid, that's... well, childish. That's putting ego as more important than justice, and in theory, that's what the whole court system is supposed to prevent.
Isn't this just a form of vigilante justice by Cuban? "I don't like 'em, so they're going down."
Didn't you read the part where it stated the guy has billions so is very rich by most standards? Um, I think that most courts worldwide have been rigged for either the rich or powerful to generally beable to win by better lawyers unless equally matched or it's clear that they are in the wrong. I think this guy could make more money by out doing google and youtube rather than sueing them, but let's face it's really hard to compete. MS and Yahoo are trying to compete with Google in the search realm. If it was easy, google wouldn't be number anymore. It's easy for him to sue though.
Star Wars Virgin Takes the Plunge The headline made it sound like a Star Wars-loving virgin who had actually gotten laid was going to tell us what it was like to finally score.
I thought it was that too. I was really disappointed by the article though it was somewhat funny.
The combination of technology and private property looks like the best way to ensure conservation. Make sure the land in question belongs to somebody, so they have an incentive to take care of it
The Tragedy of the Commons defeats this argument. If I'm the private owner, why should I spend my money to preserve it when I could make money be selling the land to a clear-cutter? Yes, there's less rain-forest now, but that cost is paid by society, not by me. I personally get net ahead by abusing my piece of the commons.
Individuals do what is best for themselves individually. Collectives can do what is best for the collective. The only way to protect a commons is through government, because it represents the collective of the people.
You got moded +5 for this reply when your reply doesn't understand the "tragedy of the commons" at all? The tradegy of the commons was about group, town or government owned land being overused by individuals. The tragedy of the commons is "solved" in one manner by making sure the land is individually owned rather than collectively owned.
You then completely abuse the idea idea of of "tragedy of the commons" and mix in an idea that the entire global belongs to "society" and not individuals so your point makes sense in that respect. I have a small note to let you know: in the US and most European derived culturals the land is seen as owned by either individuals or the government/nobles. In the US, I can do almost anything that I want to my individually owned land. I can't go against the EPA and dump toxic waste or kill off any endangered species, but other than that if I owned a few thousand acres it's perfectly legit for me to sell it to a developer and have former farm land become a subdivison or strip mall. I'm one of those that thinks that other than EPA policies the government has no right to tell me how to use MY land. Your agruement hinges on the government managing all land/property as if they own it and we are mearly renting it from the government for a lifetime. That's not how our system works though some agrue taxes make it seem that way.
Everything that's critical (and not so secret) goes as soon as possible on a backup CD/DVD (the more the merrier), on other home/office computers, even on memory sticks or whatever other removable media you might have at hand... and if possible, also some remote (and remotely accessible) location.
Um, if you have a 20-40 GB drive and don't fill it up and only have a CD burner that might be a solution. The best affordable solution for most people is to buy an external USB drive enclosure and a couple of HDs. Last Christamas, my mom gave me that 250GB drive and enclosure was only about $150 from tigerdirect. I used to trust CDs/DVDs for backup purposes, but I've been burned by bad copies of the CD/DVD not working on other machines. It may be slightly more expensive for the HD solution, but you just don't have to worry about it working unless all your backup drives fail, which is unlikely.
Unlike real goods which are never copied? Doh. Anything that can be made can be copied. Anyone with a copied item, bought or stolen, just has a lame bit of crap anyway. The interesting stuff is the original. Sure someone can buy a copy of a Picaso painting but that doesn't decrease the value of the original or the creator of the original.
I once briefly looked to play SL, but it wouldn't work over dailup so I dismissed it. I've kept eye on them because it sounds interesting. I've read copies of books and played warezed games. Um my enjoyment and/or usage of the works was not reduced because I couldn't pay $20 for each book or $50 for a legit copy of game. http://www.baen.com/library/HLMyers.htm "The Creatures of Man" has an interesting short story where commerce is run by a variable apprecation amount that was determined by AIs. I eat the same thing from McDonald's each time I go there and it costs $6.09. Under the apprecation scheme some days that meal could vary from $.10 to $10 depending on how much that I apprecated the meal.
After reading about the premise behind CopyBot was just to give users import/export ability so that they could backup their stuff, I was kinda of stunned that they couldn't do that it some form or fashion esp. since SL seems to cost much more real world money to play around in if you aren't running your own shop there. I'm kinda surprised that a content creator couldn't backup everything that they've created. I'm kinda neutral about SL's DRM since I don't know how it works and haven't played around in that world. I'm kinda curious that the SL doesn't have way to for your content consumers to copy/backup your sold content and if they make copies for friends or what not for each copy to automatically give you the game currency amount that it was worth unless it was a restore from backup. I'm kinda confused though. This CopyBot is supposed to be for Content Creators and not for what I'd term Content Consumers. I'd want a backup tool of some kind for the content consumers, but they shouldn't be able to clone/copy and take ownership of content. It sounds like the CopyBot is a bit flawed to me. Though they did say that in one of those lines that they were able to copy the premissions, but it was a one line comment to remove that premissions copy from the program.
Um, the article doesn't seem to debunk peak oil to me. It seems to not like current models and the politics of the peak oil theory. I had the impression that the article held the basic prinicple of peak oil, but didn't like how the current political folks keep moving the date of the peak oil around. It sounds like they really wanted to actually know rather than be wrong and move the date around a few more times. They wanted a planning tool for actual government use rather than scare tactics.
Let's face it... The supply of women ready to put themselves out on display on the internet pales in comparison to the sheer mass of teen angst that flows out onto myspace/youtube/livjournals etc.:)
Yes, but how will our culture change if it was socially acceptable for younger 20 somethings to post their entire sex life through a combo myspace/youtube site. I think that both the myspace and youtube terms of service say that they don't allow porn. People would release their home made porn out there like crazy if their was an easy/fun way to do it.
Um, Joe Random PHd Professor should only need your name and student ID number, which shouldn't be your SSN. I'd be more ticked off that the university was handing out your SSN to all the professors of the classes that you've taken. I wouldn't trust my major field advisor, I wouldn't trust many general ed. professors that I had to take. They don't need that information. They need your name and a university assigned ID number. Only a few people in admin. really need your SSN and they should be able to look it up by your Student ID number.
I'm not even sure what the point is of this IT upgrade. What exactly do they need this system for? Doctors work fine with paper charts and files -- this is a ridiculous amount of money -- what is the benefit and how do the costs make the benefit still beneficial?
As I said before... duh.
Sidenote: One of my lady's best friends runs a huge network for a hospital chain that is in the process of combining with another hospital. She's told me repeatedly that the biggest costs for her MIS department is integrating all the bureacratic changes that the government requires -- paperwork, forms, etc. While she's a big-government Republican (the new style), she is blown away that 80% of her staff deals with those headaches, which are constantly changing and always need more people to do the job. It disgusts me.
You answered your own question there. If the IT solution worked, then most of your friend's staff wouldn't have paper work problems. I think the idea behind a massive industry wide IT solution could be a good thing. Will it be done right and actually work? I won't hold my breath. Ideally, you could log on and have your entire medical history there. Any doctor or nurse that was assigned to take care of you, would "instantly" have all your case history at hand. Ideally, it would mean any patient could go to any doctor without worry that the doctor's staff wouldn't have any information about you. Ideally, the patient wouldn't even have to fill out a form at check in. They'd just put their medical id number and either signoff or log in and that's it. All the insurance and governmental paper work associated with each patient ought to be attached and have medical staff go through and verify it. The goal is to speed up the filling out of paper and making it easier for different organizations to review not to eliminate paper work. I would think that they'd have digital sigs for each medical person that ever came into contact with the patient and several insurance or government people would easily review paper work as well. That's the plan... I doubt it'll even met my imagination though.;)
Explain to me exactly how a kindergartener is supposed to decide what to be educated in.
Would you like story time, play with paints, learn to draw, play with musical instruments, play games today? Oh, would you like to learn how to read or speak a foreign lanuage today?
Faster, good... Wider, good... But why not parallel with dual-DMA? Right now, it seems you could have 10 cores, but if all the threads running on each core have to contend for 1 bus, it doesn't matter how fast the bus is. I want each core to be able to access its own memory so it is not blocked by the other core's if it is accessing memory. I want one core to be able to access my NIC while the other accesses the hard drive and the other access the video card. All this requires some sort of parallel bus setup. It is my understanding we have not done this sort of architecture yet, but if we keep increasing the number of processor cores, this would seem to be the next step. BUT, I am not a hardware guy. I am a software guy, and expect it all to just work!:)
Um, wait for the 3rd or 4th generation of this before you buy it than. I'd predict that they'll get around to after awhile, but as soon as we'd like. I'm kinda startled that we've got news of quads already. I don't really pay attention to the chip core wars any more. If this keeps up, I'll turn around and they'll be at 8 or 16. Remember they aren't selling this to the/. crowd, Intel and AMD are switching from mhz to cores and aiming at mom and pop or Joe Average Walmart buyer. I guess that I can see reasons for the quad already. You can have the walmarters get on the lower end duo core and brag that they have more than one. Then you have gamers or really high end folks, or early adopters brag that they have four cores. The software advantage won't be there for awhile. Remember this is as much a marketting thing as a tech thing. Intel and AMD aren't rushing into this. I'm wondering how long will it be before we run into "core limits." Will 16, 64, 256 cores be the limit? We'll findout over the next 5-10 years if this is the area Intel and AMD plan on developing.
You have never been mid-thrust in an awesome sexual encounter when the doorbell rings, and some smarmy ass-hole in Sunday best is at the door telling you about their imaginary man in the sky, and how he can save your soul.
And you have? Come on, this is Slashdot. Righty doesn't count.
Is that your only problem? I hate the telephone and cell phone. On any given night 2-4 out of these call: my mom calls, her mom calls, her dad calls, her sister calls, her girl scout leader calls, her bunco group calls, her preacher's wife calls, or her friends call and the resulting converstation lasts anywhere from 30min to 1 and 30 min. Mid thrust? You have time to make it to mid thrust? Good/great sex takes a good 1-1.5 hours playing around in bed first. Any phone call during that time is a major turn off and resets her back to not turned on. Why is it that "adults" think that its o.k. to call family/friends as soon as the kids are asleep anywhere from 8-9 going all the way to 10:30 or 11. Oh if I only had door to door people on Sundays to worry about I wouldn't even blink. Strangers, I can call the cops and get them banned from my property. I can't do that to family and friends that are trying to be social with my wife during our getting it on time.
- inability of current computer vision and AI technology to make sufficiently informed decisions about threats - massive moral issue of allowing an autonomous device to kill humans without specific targeting by a human operator - probable violations of laws of war and humanitarian laws as a result of the above - fact that military-industrial complex can waste money on shit like this when there are people starving on the same planet
I'll take your "issues" in reverse order. Very few in any country "care" about those in any other country except for remote relatives. Few care about people starving in the third world, communist countries, or in our first world countries. For those that do care, put your money were you your mouth is. I don't want my government wasting tax income on noncitizens.
Violation of laws of war or humanitarian issues? I doubt it. The DMZ is a large area where no one of either side esp. civilians should be wondering into. I'd hope that the average SK citizen would have more sense than to drive up to the DMZ and try to find one of these things to play with. Those of us in the US are stupid enough to try it. The machines do give a limited warning and are aimed at the enemny. If anything I could see anti-military people trying to get this things classed as land mines just so land mine removal clauses would apply to them.
I have no moral issues with machines of any flavor killing humans with or without human control. Why? Because you assume that just having a human in the loop makes it automatically moral. Humans are not very moral rational creatures.
Your first point about inability of current computer vision and AI technology to make sufficiently informed decisions about threats seems to be the only valid objection in my book. Have you read John Ringo's Legacy of the Alldenata series? He has a very simple verison of this that just takes a 2 pictures and aims the gun towards any movement. He had cases of thousands of rounds hooked up to them. I could easily see any military using such machines to guard areas where no friendly should be coming from. The problem is that once deployed "anything" coming toward it would be targeted and shot at. Environmental concerns are that any wildlife wondering into range will be targeted and shot at. We can get around computer vision and AI by making these things really stupid and just shooting at anything oncoming and informing higher up that its been shooting at something. You'd need a human patrol to check out if it was just shooting at nothing or if it needed a heavier response. I find tech. problems about this valid. You are trying to bring your moral issues into it and say that entire tech branch shouldn't be exploited. We know the dangers of AI weapons. Humans of all flavors fear AI control of weapons. Having a really stupid weapon that just shoots at anything coming toward it though is within most militaries' moral set. The worst that could happen is that some wild life is killed and it runs through alot of ammo. You don't have to be pouring tons of fire into the wilderness though. Put it on single shot and only check out those that fire 5+ shots within an hour.
Teaching is pleasant ; I'd be more than happy to have someone else grade for me. But it's so damn exhausting that it takes a teacher dedication to do it. I can't count how many times I was offered money to grade some private inter-universities competitions between students (sort of extracurricular events to know who's pissing farther) and flatly turned them down. Nobody in his right mind would grade alone, even for money.
Sound's like we just need a "grading" profression and you can ship off all your homework to be graded by someone else. Let's even ship off all our schools' grading to India or China and have them grade our schools' homework, projects, and tests.
And you want me to show you one competitive market that is bad to the poor? You've never found any, you say? How about health insurance, or healthcare in general. There's a couple of free-markets that have screwed the poor. You really didn't think of those?
From what I've read, health care and health insurance hasn't been a free market in the US since before WWI. We've had various forms of monoply by either the Blue Cross & Shield insurance or by the AMA limited in enrollees into the medical profession that would lower doctor pay if their were increased amount of doctors. It's not that the poor have gotten screwed from a free market, it's that a "free market" hasn't existed for a very long time and all the remaining choices are bad.
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What about just getting rid of those damn noisy, smelly dangerous cars that ruin life in city centers? That's guaranteed to be safer than either alternative in this article.
And bring back smelly horses with carriages.
And we already are victim to those who "have no qualms with putting others lives and vehicles at risk." This is the definition of reckless driving (for certain degrees of "risk"). Because they ignore traffic markings and signals right now, the elimination of traffic markings does not affect the risk they pose.
I'd think that removing the signs would increase the risks because of these folks. Atleast with marked signs and signals, if they didn't obey them a cop could give them a ticket. The police are fairly successful at having most of their tickets enforced, but they are successfully challenged every now and then. The main reason we have cameras in cop cars is so the police can cover their butt. With this sort of setup, it would be alot easier for your average traffic ticket to challenge the police unless their was an accident involved.
i don't know my self how they normally stop never ending loops of created objects other than them asking people nicely not to do it.
Don't you remember CS1? I recall how many people in their couldn't write a conditional loop to save their life. I want to know if the script writer was actually looking to do this, or just wanted a few to pop out and didn't know how to properly stop it. Asking people not to do it isn't a solution as alot of people won't know what causes it to begin with. You know this is the scary part about gery goo and nano tech, not that Phds working on it destory the world, but that some one that isn't even aware of loop conditionals would start playing with 'em and well big mess at the least.
"nano particles of water vapor in the atmosphere to kill you"
I don't think it's that which kills you...
Shh, I want to see if they'll experiment with breathing non-oxygen atmospheres in an attempt to experimentally extend their life. If anyone attempts this experiment, I'm fairly certain they'll be in the running for a Darwin Award. Come on any one want to try to win an award?
" According to the Chinese delegate to the conference in Greece two weeks ago no sites are blocked."
The same delegate would also be glad to tell you of China's wonderful human rights record, how much Chinese occupation has improved Tibet, and how China is democratic.
Hey, maybe when the delegate gets back and finds out that his sites are blocked, then they'll become unblocked. I'm sorry, but such a big thing is made of one event of the Chinese government of course they'll want to sweep it under the rug, and they've been very successful at that domestically. I bet you if it you went over to China and asked 10-20 random Chinese people about your selected Chinese government actions that you don't like, they'll either shrug it off, say it's foreign media trying to discredit the Chinese government, or come up with a list of things that your government has done that you might not agree with. The US government doesn't yet have the power to block wikipedia. Wait awhile. It might get that power though or use selective filtering rather than blocking the entire sites. I think that your average citizen around the globe wouldn't be surprised by what their government does that isn't in their citizens best interests.
OMG! The three-quarteres of the Earth is covered in very deep bodies of liquid nanoparticles! Even worse, the atmosphere now consists almost entirely of nanoparticles! We inhale huge amounts of them with every breath!
WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!
Yeap, usually in around 78 years is the average amount of time it'll take nano particles of water vapor in the atmosphere to kill you. I invite you to experiment breathing other types of atmospheres to see how long you life though.
In the original _Dune_, the young Paul Atreides is threatened by a ``Hunter Killer'', a small, repulsor-driven device directed by remote control which would ``burrow through his flesh'' if it managed to successfully attack him. (He grabs it when it attacks the housekeeper, the ``Shadout Mapes'' who is sent to summon him and smashes its nose against the wall).
And also short ranged. If I recall correctly the spy that was controlling it was out in the hall. I'm surprised someone hasn't strapped a camera onto real bugs and just let the bugs do what they want. We could bio-engineer killer bugs, but that's a really stupid thing to do if we don't have absolute control over them. You might as well find bugs that are already very dangerous and breed them and plant them for your enemies to be attacked with. Humans have had enough bug problems without trying to create more of them.
Finally, to my knowledge, carbon nanotubes have been made only under extremely special circumstances (which also explains why their mass production -- for use, for example, in steels for ship-building -- is still a dream). It's extremely unlikely that the 'ordinary' atmosphere under which Wootz was made would have yielded nanotubes.
Bottomline: Do we need carbon nanotubes to really explain why Damascus swords made with Wootz steel are so special? Use Occam's razor (or, for that matter, the Damascus swords themselves).
I didn't read the article. Here's a thought to consider though: humanity has lost the knowledge of making wootz/Damascus steel so we don't know how they did it. I don't know if carbon nanotubes/wires are actually in there or not. We should be able to test existing samples to find out though. If it turns out that carbon nano tubes are in there in quanity then we might have a hint on how or where to look to for hints on how to mass produce carbon nanotubes. We know there are lots of things that we'd like to do with carbon nanotubes, but we've not figured out how to produce them in vast quantities or cheaply, yet. If that sword making process some how created carbon nanotubes, it might help modern researchers. I'm like you and wouldn't hold my breath in hope that the swords actually contain nanotubes though.
Because we've got a home grown app, we were able to put in alot of specific things (how to submit an assignment, how to send an email to a specific address, how to upload a file, how to download a file and then find it again). It's the way of things. You can't blame the users if they are incompetent. You either have to ensure they are competent, or block them from using the system, and give them an opportunity to learn and demonstrate their competancy
You might as well do it for your computer labs as well. I went to college from 1996-2000. I couldn't believe the number of CS minors didn't know what a zip file was or how to unzip a file, or how to save to a floppy and open it back through explorer rather than the word/excel/notepad open file menu. I didn't learn windows key E until after college, but I knew how to use the file explorer. What really got me was the differences in expectations from professors. Some professors expected 1/3 of the class to not have any computer skills that the professor hasn't taught them. Others thought that you should be able to pickup a 4000 level book and instantly know that subject for their 2000 level class. I work as a gneral computer guy. My boss thinks that I should instantly/magically know how to use/explain anything computer related. Esp. things that I've never heard of before or seen before.
Actually, the summary has nothing to little to do with tech. It has everything to do with evaluating sources, searching for information, and presenting information. This is speech/communication/library skills stuff not tech.
This stuff happens to me seemingly everyday. Don't even get me started on the argument I had with a CIS student over whether USB 2.0 is better than USB 1.1
Which was better?
However, supporting an individual's lawsuit, not because of the principal involved, but because you don't like them and think they're stupid, that's... well, childish. That's putting ego as more important than justice, and in theory, that's what the whole court system is supposed to prevent.
Isn't this just a form of vigilante justice by Cuban? "I don't like 'em, so they're going down."
Didn't you read the part where it stated the guy has billions so is very rich by most standards? Um, I think that most courts worldwide have been rigged for either the rich or powerful to generally beable to win by better lawyers unless equally matched or it's clear that they are in the wrong. I think this guy could make more money by out doing google and youtube rather than sueing them, but let's face it's really hard to compete. MS and Yahoo are trying to compete with Google in the search realm. If it was easy, google wouldn't be number anymore. It's easy for him to sue though.
Star Wars Virgin Takes the Plunge
The headline made it sound like a Star Wars-loving virgin who had actually gotten laid was going to tell us what it was like to finally score.
I thought it was that too. I was really disappointed by the article though it was somewhat funny.
The combination of technology and private property looks like the best way to ensure conservation. Make sure the land in question belongs to somebody, so they have an incentive to take care of it
The Tragedy of the Commons defeats this argument. If I'm the private owner, why should I spend my money to preserve it when I could make money be selling the land to a clear-cutter? Yes, there's less rain-forest now, but that cost is paid by society, not by me. I personally get net ahead by abusing my piece of the commons.
Individuals do what is best for themselves individually. Collectives can do what is best for the collective. The only way to protect a commons is through government, because it represents the collective of the people.
You got moded +5 for this reply when your reply doesn't understand the "tragedy of the commons" at all? The tradegy of the commons was about group, town or government owned land being overused by individuals. The tragedy of the commons is "solved" in one manner by making sure the land is individually owned rather than collectively owned.
You then completely abuse the idea idea of of "tragedy of the commons" and mix in an idea that the entire global belongs to "society" and not individuals so your point makes sense in that respect. I have a small note to let you know: in the US and most European derived culturals the land is seen as owned by either individuals or the government/nobles. In the US, I can do almost anything that I want to my individually owned land. I can't go against the EPA and dump toxic waste or kill off any endangered species, but other than that if I owned a few thousand acres it's perfectly legit for me to sell it to a developer and have former farm land become a subdivison or strip mall. I'm one of those that thinks that other than EPA policies the government has no right to tell me how to use MY land. Your agruement hinges on the government managing all land/property as if they own it and we are mearly renting it from the government for a lifetime. That's not how our system works though some agrue taxes make it seem that way.
Everything that's critical (and not so secret) goes as soon as possible on a backup CD/DVD (the more the merrier), on other home/office computers, even on memory sticks or whatever other removable media you might have at hand... and if possible, also some remote (and remotely accessible) location.
Um, if you have a 20-40 GB drive and don't fill it up and only have a CD burner that might be a solution. The best affordable solution for most people is to buy an external USB drive enclosure and a couple of HDs. Last Christamas, my mom gave me that 250GB drive and enclosure was only about $150 from tigerdirect. I used to trust CDs/DVDs for backup purposes, but I've been burned by bad copies of the CD/DVD not working on other machines. It may be slightly more expensive for the HD solution, but you just don't have to worry about it working unless all your backup drives fail, which is unlikely.
Unlike real goods which are never copied? Doh. Anything that can be made can be copied. Anyone with a copied item, bought or stolen, just has a lame bit of crap anyway. The interesting stuff is the original. Sure someone can buy a copy of a Picaso painting but that doesn't decrease the value of the original or the creator of the original.
I once briefly looked to play SL, but it wouldn't work over dailup so I dismissed it. I've kept eye on them because it sounds interesting. I've read copies of books and played warezed games. Um my enjoyment and/or usage of the works was not reduced because I couldn't pay $20 for each book or $50 for a legit copy of game.
http://www.baen.com/library/HLMyers.htm "The Creatures of Man" has an interesting short story where commerce is run by a variable apprecation amount that was determined by AIs. I eat the same thing from McDonald's each time I go there and it costs $6.09. Under the apprecation scheme some days that meal could vary from $.10 to $10 depending on how much that I apprecated the meal.
After reading about the premise behind CopyBot was just to give users import/export ability so that they could backup their stuff, I was kinda of stunned that they couldn't do that it some form or fashion esp. since SL seems to cost much more real world money to play around in if you aren't running your own shop there. I'm kinda surprised that a content creator couldn't backup everything that they've created. I'm kinda neutral about SL's DRM since I don't know how it works and haven't played around in that world. I'm kinda curious that the SL doesn't have way to for your content consumers to copy/backup your sold content and if they make copies for friends or what not for each copy to automatically give you the game currency amount that it was worth unless it was a restore from backup. I'm kinda confused though. This CopyBot is supposed to be for Content Creators and not for what I'd term Content Consumers. I'd want a backup tool of some kind for the content consumers, but they shouldn't be able to clone/copy and take ownership of content. It sounds like the CopyBot is a bit flawed to me. Though they did say that in one of those lines that they were able to copy the premissions, but it was a one line comment to remove that premissions copy from the program.
Um, the article doesn't seem to debunk peak oil to me. It seems to not like current models and the politics of the peak oil theory. I had the impression that the article held the basic prinicple of peak oil, but didn't like how the current political folks keep moving the date of the peak oil around. It sounds like they really wanted to actually know rather than be wrong and move the date around a few more times. They wanted a planning tool for actual government use rather than scare tactics.
Let's face it... The supply of women ready to put themselves out on display on the internet pales in comparison to the sheer mass of teen angst that flows out onto myspace/youtube/livjournals etc. :)
Yes, but how will our culture change if it was socially acceptable for younger 20 somethings to post their entire sex life through a combo myspace/youtube site. I think that both the myspace and youtube terms of service say that they don't allow porn. People would release their home made porn out there like crazy if their was an easy/fun way to do it.
Um, Joe Random PHd Professor should only need your name and student ID number, which shouldn't be your SSN. I'd be more ticked off that the university was handing out your SSN to all the professors of the classes that you've taken. I wouldn't trust my major field advisor, I wouldn't trust many general ed. professors that I had to take. They don't need that information. They need your name and a university assigned ID number. Only a few people in admin. really need your SSN and they should be able to look it up by your Student ID number.
I'm not even sure what the point is of this IT upgrade. What exactly do they need this system for? Doctors work fine with paper charts and files -- this is a ridiculous amount of money -- what is the benefit and how do the costs make the benefit still beneficial?
;)
As I said before... duh.
Sidenote: One of my lady's best friends runs a huge network for a hospital chain that is in the process of combining with another hospital. She's told me repeatedly that the biggest costs for her MIS department is integrating all the bureacratic changes that the government requires -- paperwork, forms, etc. While she's a big-government Republican (the new style), she is blown away that 80% of her staff deals with those headaches, which are constantly changing and always need more people to do the job. It disgusts me.
You answered your own question there. If the IT solution worked, then most of your friend's staff wouldn't have paper work problems. I think the idea behind a massive industry wide IT solution could be a good thing. Will it be done right and actually work? I won't hold my breath. Ideally, you could log on and have your entire medical history there. Any doctor or nurse that was assigned to take care of you, would "instantly" have all your case history at hand. Ideally, it would mean any patient could go to any doctor without worry that the doctor's staff wouldn't have any information about you. Ideally, the patient wouldn't even have to fill out a form at check in. They'd just put their medical id number and either signoff or log in and that's it. All the insurance and governmental paper work associated with each patient ought to be attached and have medical staff go through and verify it. The goal is to speed up the filling out of paper and making it easier for different organizations to review not to eliminate paper work. I would think that they'd have digital sigs for each medical person that ever came into contact with the patient and several insurance or government people would easily review paper work as well. That's the plan... I doubt it'll even met my imagination though.
Explain to me exactly how a kindergartener is supposed to decide what to be educated in.
Would you like story time, play with paints, learn to draw, play with musical instruments, play games today? Oh, would you like to learn how to read or speak a foreign lanuage today?
Faster, good... Wider, good... But why not parallel with dual-DMA? Right now, it seems you could have 10 cores, but if all the threads running on each core have to contend for 1 bus, it doesn't matter how fast the bus is. I want each core to be able to access its own memory so it is not blocked by the other core's if it is accessing memory. I want one core to be able to access my NIC while the other accesses the hard drive and the other access the video card. All this requires some sort of parallel bus setup. It is my understanding we have not done this sort of architecture yet, but if we keep increasing the number of processor cores, this would seem to be the next step. BUT, I am not a hardware guy. I am a software guy, and expect it all to just work! :)
/. crowd, Intel and AMD are switching from mhz to cores and aiming at mom and pop or Joe Average Walmart buyer. I guess that I can see reasons for the quad already. You can have the walmarters get on the lower end duo core and brag that they have more than one. Then you have gamers or really high end folks, or early adopters brag that they have four cores. The software advantage won't be there for awhile. Remember this is as much a marketting thing as a tech thing. Intel and AMD aren't rushing into this. I'm wondering how long will it be before we run into "core limits." Will 16, 64, 256 cores be the limit? We'll findout over the next 5-10 years if this is the area Intel and AMD plan on developing.
Um, wait for the 3rd or 4th generation of this before you buy it than. I'd predict that they'll get around to after awhile, but as soon as we'd like. I'm kinda startled that we've got news of quads already. I don't really pay attention to the chip core wars any more. If this keeps up, I'll turn around and they'll be at 8 or 16. Remember they aren't selling this to the
You have never been mid-thrust in an awesome sexual encounter when the doorbell rings, and some smarmy ass-hole in Sunday best is at the door telling you about their imaginary man in the sky, and how he can save your soul.
And you have? Come on, this is Slashdot. Righty doesn't count.
Is that your only problem? I hate the telephone and cell phone. On any given night 2-4 out of these call: my mom calls, her mom calls, her dad calls, her sister calls, her girl scout leader calls, her bunco group calls, her preacher's wife calls, or her friends call and the resulting converstation lasts anywhere from 30min to 1 and 30 min. Mid thrust? You have time to make it to mid thrust? Good/great sex takes a good 1-1.5 hours playing around in bed first. Any phone call during that time is a major turn off and resets her back to not turned on. Why is it that "adults" think that its o.k. to call family/friends as soon as the kids are asleep anywhere from 8-9 going all the way to 10:30 or 11. Oh if I only had door to door people on Sundays to worry about I wouldn't even blink. Strangers, I can call the cops and get them banned from my property. I can't do that to family and friends that are trying to be social with my wife during our getting it on time.
- inability of current computer vision and AI technology to make sufficiently informed decisions about threats
- massive moral issue of allowing an autonomous device to kill humans without specific targeting by a human operator
- probable violations of laws of war and humanitarian laws as a result of the above
- fact that military-industrial complex can waste money on shit like this when there are people starving on the same planet
I'll take your "issues" in reverse order. Very few in any country "care" about those in any other country except for remote relatives. Few care about people starving in the third world, communist countries, or in our first world countries. For those that do care, put your money were you your mouth is. I don't want my government wasting tax income on noncitizens.
Violation of laws of war or humanitarian issues? I doubt it. The DMZ is a large area where no one of either side esp. civilians should be wondering into. I'd hope that the average SK citizen would have more sense than to drive up to the DMZ and try to find one of these things to play with. Those of us in the US are stupid enough to try it. The machines do give a limited warning and are aimed at the enemny. If anything I could see anti-military people trying to get this things classed as land mines just so land mine removal clauses would apply to them.
I have no moral issues with machines of any flavor killing humans with or without human control. Why? Because you assume that just having a human in the loop makes it automatically moral. Humans are not very moral rational creatures.
Your first point about inability of current computer vision and AI technology to make sufficiently informed decisions about threats seems to be the only valid objection in my book. Have you read John Ringo's Legacy of the Alldenata series? He has a very simple verison of this that just takes a 2 pictures and aims the gun towards any movement. He had cases of thousands of rounds hooked up to them. I could easily see any military using such machines to guard areas where no friendly should be coming from. The problem is that once deployed "anything" coming toward it would be targeted and shot at. Environmental concerns are that any wildlife wondering into range will be targeted and shot at. We can get around computer vision and AI by making these things really stupid and just shooting at anything oncoming and informing higher up that its been shooting at something. You'd need a human patrol to check out if it was just shooting at nothing or if it needed a heavier response. I find tech. problems about this valid. You are trying to bring your moral issues into it and say that entire tech branch shouldn't be exploited. We know the dangers of AI weapons. Humans of all flavors fear AI control of weapons. Having a really stupid weapon that just shoots at anything coming toward it though is within most militaries' moral set. The worst that could happen is that some wild life is killed and it runs through alot of ammo. You don't have to be pouring tons of fire into the wilderness though. Put it on single shot and only check out those that fire 5+ shots within an hour.
Teaching is pleasant ; I'd be more than happy to have someone else grade for me. But it's so damn exhausting that it takes a teacher dedication to do it. I can't count how many times I was offered money to grade some private inter-universities competitions between students (sort of extracurricular events to know who's pissing farther) and flatly turned them down. Nobody in his right mind would grade alone, even for money.
Sound's like we just need a "grading" profression and you can ship off all your homework to be graded by someone else. Let's even ship off all our schools' grading to India or China and have them grade our schools' homework, projects, and tests.
And you want me to show you one competitive market that is bad to the poor? You've never found any, you say? How about health insurance, or healthcare in general. There's a couple of free-markets that have screwed the poor. You really didn't think of those?
From what I've read, health care and health insurance hasn't been a free market in the US since before WWI. We've had various forms of monoply by either the Blue Cross & Shield insurance or by the AMA limited in enrollees into the medical profession that would lower doctor pay if their were increased amount of doctors. It's not that the poor have gotten screwed from a free market, it's that a "free market" hasn't existed for a very long time and all the remaining choices are bad.