Genetic Algorithims are very useful for some things. They are less then optimal for many other things though. Most modern programing doesn't consist of the types of things GA has to this point done well. GA has been used to do some very simple programming, but much of the results (Koza's work) were achieved through "leading" the copmuter and sort of prodding it in the right direction.
Genetic algorithims are very good for searching a fixed set of results. (i.e. they can solve the prisioner's dilemma) and are even pretty good at optimizing functions (though often not as good as random hill-walkers).
What they are not so good at is the normal rules + routing that most production software ends up being. It might be possible to build something that could do this better, but training the algorithim would be difficult without already having the code that generated the correct result. So basiclly you could use GA to possibly optimize or fill in gaps, but not for line use.
As any one that has worked on Natural Language Processing can tell you, natural language is a bugger. It is very context driven, and too top it all off has a good deal of redundant syntax (a, the, sv agreement, etc.) Human language is a very nice protocol for transfering ideas (It is in many ways a system designed to transmit through noisy environments by many users all of whom differ in thier individual implementation of the standard). Natural spoken form language is less good at commands, and is particularly bad for unsupervised commands.
For unsupervised commands humans tend to create something not all that different from code. A fixed set of grammar and vocabulary come into play (i.e. little slang, and very normalized style). For example:
Employees will update thier status on the In/Out board in the lobby when they will be gone for more then 15 minutes.
which is roughly: (if (> (expected-completiontime task) 15) (update-status out))
A lot of ancient languages have written forms with no vowels. Normally they are superfolous anyways. Hebrew is probably the easiest example. Later sometimes you get people adding in the vowels to make it easier to deal with. Modern Hebrew (and I thought modern arabic too, though aparently I am wrong) has "hints" to tell you what the vowel actually is.
Asimov was very nice storyteller, but his three laws are unworkable. There are a lot of grey areas where even a human would have trouble if they had to follow those laws. What is more is that the basic premise of rule #1 is wrong. Harming a human is what a lot of upcoming robots will be made to do. Even aside from that, the culpability is wholly in the one who told it do the harm, just like a remote control plane. A robot not meant to harm humans will no doubt be trained/programed not to, but if it does, it will almost certainly have no idea that it is harming humans. In other words if it has a problem it will probably be a perceptional one, and it would still do the same "bad" thing laws or no laws.
Rule #2 assumes a far too broad a role for the robot. A street cleaning robot is not going to be able to get you a beer. Also there are massive problems with authorization. These robots will try to do what you tell them to do, but once they can do more ownership becomes more important.
The interplay between Rules #2 and #3 is silly. A million dollar robot shouldn't just wander into a ravine because someone said go left 10 meters. It should at a minimum ask for clear affirmitive confirmation. The actual interplay is more fuzzy (which asimov actually addressed in a short story dealing with an expensive robot on Mercury), that "fuzziness" is the point. To break it down:
Fuzzy laws for Fuzzy Logic.
That is basically it situations in real life require fuzzy laws, not hard and fast unbreakable commandments.
As an aside these robots seem to be of the "progmatic" (i.e. hardish coded behaviors) type, ie. no different then the program on a copmuter. The most popular conception of robots is as a "learning" (i.e. Neural Networks etc.) type. Then again the popular perception of say Chess Playing was that it would be solved by learning type machines, and it was solved instead progmaticly. This applies in some ways to computers in general as well. So maybe plain old code will bring robots to the present.
The US unemployment rate is calculated a different way then the european rate. The US rate will always be a good bit lower then other countries, because it excludes more people.
A) A kid with too much energy who doesn't find things interesting is a perfect case for ADHD and probably should be diagnosed as such. The question of whether or not it is a "disorder" or is more dificult, but the definition of ADHD catches what it catches.
B) A more stimulating learning environment can certainly be a good thing. Though I question whether a single sex religious instition is the best place to get it. ADHD has benefits of adaptablity, energy, and enthusiasm. A fully strict school may well destroy the benefits. Basically your aproach is little better then sending the child of to military school.
C)A Media celebrity's program is probably the last place to look for advice. If you want a seccond opinion, by all means get a seccond opinion, but do it from a profesional who will review the whole facts of the case, interview the child, and then come to a conclusion. There is no feasible way for this to happen on air.
I don't know exactly why you need to be free of your computer for video conferencing. A good microphone won't have echo though, really (or more properly can eliminate it). Most profesional systems use microphones, and echoing is not as much a problem as synching in my experience.
see the suprisingly general MS thing here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/ser ver/hel p/default.asp?url=/windows2000/en/server/help/sag_ TAPIconcepts_202.htm
A good microphone should be a touch cheaper then a wireless headset at least anywhere I could find them.
Glad the distance thing is working out for you, may have to do it soon myself (:( ), any tips?
Asimov was a very nice man, but realisticly his ideas for robotic laws are insane. The determination of harm, and of causality can't be made completely reliable even by humans. Also no one on earth would have completely exclusive systems (i.e. to prevent harm to humans it should sell itself for scrap donated to the feed the hungry fund), but rather have a wieghted system (which asimov talks baout but does not develop).
Realisticly though, by the time you can implement them with any degree of accuracey it will be slavery to impose them
Actually his idea is intersting and with enough effor could be pulled off. The way I'd implement it would be to have electronic text, and then a real basic form of speech recognition to link the wav file to the text. That way you could find the pauses in the speech and at a button press move back the cursor to the last pause and resume reading. A more significant problem is that unless you chose the stories carefully it is probably illegal to distribute the files.
Generally, when two units resemble each other internally (none resmble each other externally enough to be sued for) it is because they were based upon the same development platform. The development platform is often produced by the vendor of the CPU, or in some cases is produced by a third party and then licsensed by other companies. So no one will be suing each other for copyright infringment (trademark infringement is not even an issue) as the designs are paid for.
Anybody can buy development platforms, but as they tend to include things not needed for production units (debugging circuits, attempts to demonstrate every feature possible, etc.), are often hand-built, and are priced for corporate budgets, well the price advantage is not there. Still they can be fun to play with.
Actually I am suprised that you aren't hit by a seven seccond radio delay. A simple way would be to write the data to disc, and use annother program to follow behind it. I.e. use some program to record the stream, and then 6 secconds later set winamp on the still recording stream, that should work, but no promises.
You seem to lack an understanding for the point of the exercise. The point is to aid #2, placing the weapon used in the crime. Which as you mentioned is currently difficult. The idea that knowing an owner of the gun would be useless, is simply insane. While the owner of record might not be the user, it does lead to a possibility of back tracking, and in some large ammount of shootings the owner is the shooter. So it will at the least provide a starting point for investigation, and in some non trivial number of cases an ending point as well.
However the effectiveness of a database system in catching a determined, inteligent, premeditated killer, like the current sniper, is doubtful at best. However, not even the current sniper has taken any methods to disguise the weapon being used in the crime (though this might be due to a desire for recognition). The vast majority of violent criminals are not particularly inclined to such careful forethought. Regardless, the modification of a weapon used in a crime could be used as evidence of premeditation.
The overall effectiveness of the system is difficult to determine as the vast amount of guns currently in circulation. It is likely that the system would be about as effective as the current national fingerprint database, or perhaps slightly more so. Fingerprints play an important role in relatively few cases though. However a national DNA database would probably be even more effective, but would be overly invasive. Even today fingerprints are not taken from everybody, but only from certain groups of people (criminals, military and government personel, and tour groups;) ). While the targeted group is self-selected, there remain important privacey concerns, however the system would have some effectiveness, esp. in crimes of passion.
Well the government isn't likely to do it, but corporations might want to. The only real problem is they most likely already know where you live (so does for that matter the government). Actually it wouldn't be hard to apply to large datasets, it is just not normally needed. So, it could be used by the government, but it would be so much simpler to use the address on your W2 or other tax form.
PalmOS is a horrible interface for a Smartphone, it doesn't have support for the kind of multitasking needed to run IM, email checks, etc. in background. Without that, what is the point?
Because technically a person's panties (or lack there of) are no diferent from a shirt, or an arm. It is clothing, and has no special status over any other clothing publically displayed.
Umm interracial marriages are not that common. Increasing, but still quite uncommon. Also the Time story about the race mixing had several mathematical flaws. Besides, races survived ten thousand years, I doubt they will vanish in 500.
It was outside, as you could rather obviously tell (look at the ground and the pull away shot). It does make sense to give them the money outside before setting them loose, well I could see it being done anyways.
It wasn't quite that bad, and the next ep looked to a bit better, though if it isn't...
The western theme was odd, it was what I would have expected a show running out of plots, with bored actors to do somehere 3rd or more season, not the premiere of a new show.
I fully agree. I mean it isn't the only one look at this one book I was reading: Raskolnikov: Insane Student Sonya Marmeladov: Kind Whore Dmitri: Loyal Friend Dunya: Close Sister Alyona Ivanovna: Mean Crone Lizaveta Ivanovna: Tragic Mistake etc...
In short, don't be silly. Yes you can reduce them to simple cardboard cutouts, but that doesn't matter. It is like that old thing that there are only n (7, 28, 36 etc.) plots in the world. Well actually you can simplify it down to one plot: "Something happens". Reduction can make fools of anything, even the best work. So just watch the show, or wait for a review, don't complain because some intern wrote crappy copy for a website.
Not exactly recent, but somewhere there has to be something better. But Maple (any version) would be useful to have at hand. Of course for most stuff it would be the equivalent of using nuke to remove a loose screw.
Slashdot Mirror
Genetic Algorithims are very useful for some things. They are less then optimal for many other things though. Most modern programing doesn't consist of the types of things GA has to this point done well. GA has been used to do some very simple programming, but much of the results (Koza's work) were achieved through "leading" the copmuter and sort of prodding it in the right direction.
Genetic algorithims are very good for searching a fixed set of results. (i.e. they can solve the prisioner's dilemma) and are even pretty good at optimizing functions (though often not as good as random hill-walkers).
What they are not so good at is the normal rules + routing that most production software ends up being. It might be possible to build something that could do this better, but training the algorithim would be difficult without already having the code that generated the correct result. So basiclly you could use GA to possibly optimize or fill in gaps, but not for line use.
As any one that has worked on Natural Language Processing can tell you, natural language is a bugger. It is very context driven, and too top it all off has a good deal of redundant syntax (a, the, sv agreement, etc.) Human language is a very nice protocol for transfering ideas (It is in many ways a system designed to transmit through noisy environments by many users all of whom differ in thier individual implementation of the standard). Natural spoken form language is less good at commands, and is particularly bad for unsupervised commands.
For unsupervised commands humans tend to create something not all that different from code. A fixed set of grammar and vocabulary come into play (i.e. little slang, and very normalized style). For example:
Employees will update thier status on the In/Out board in the lobby when they will be gone for more then 15 minutes.
which is roughly:
(if (> (expected-completiontime task) 15)
(update-status out))
So the need and utility isn't there.
A lot of ancient languages have written forms with no vowels. Normally they are superfolous anyways. Hebrew is probably the easiest example. Later sometimes you get people adding in the vowels to make it easier to deal with. Modern Hebrew (and I thought modern arabic too, though aparently I am wrong) has "hints" to tell you what the vowel actually is.
Asimov was very nice storyteller, but his three laws are unworkable. There are a lot of grey areas where even a human would have trouble if they had to follow those laws. What is more is that the basic premise of rule #1 is wrong. Harming a human is what a lot of upcoming robots will be made to do. Even aside from that, the culpability is wholly in the one who told it do the harm, just like a remote control plane. A robot not meant to harm humans will no doubt be trained/programed not to, but if it does, it will almost certainly have no idea that it is harming humans. In other words if it has a problem it will probably be a perceptional one, and it would still do the same "bad" thing laws or no laws.
Rule #2 assumes a far too broad a role for the robot. A street cleaning robot is not going to be able to get you a beer. Also there are massive problems with authorization. These robots will try to do what you tell them to do, but once they can do more ownership becomes more important.
The interplay between Rules #2 and #3 is silly. A million dollar robot shouldn't just wander into a ravine because someone said go left 10 meters. It should at a minimum ask for clear affirmitive confirmation. The actual interplay is more fuzzy (which asimov actually addressed in a short story dealing with an expensive robot on Mercury), that "fuzziness" is the point. To break it down:
Fuzzy laws for Fuzzy Logic.
That is basically it situations in real life require fuzzy laws, not hard and fast unbreakable commandments.
As an aside these robots seem to be of the "progmatic" (i.e. hardish coded behaviors) type, ie. no different then the program on a copmuter. The most popular conception of robots is as a "learning" (i.e. Neural Networks etc.) type. Then again the popular perception of say Chess Playing was that it would be solved by learning type machines, and it was solved instead progmaticly. This applies in some ways to computers in general as well. So maybe plain old code will bring robots to the present.
The US unemployment rate is calculated a different way then the european rate. The US rate will always be a good bit lower then other countries, because it excludes more people.
Solid State? Like what, A giant Flash drive?
A) A kid with too much energy who doesn't find things interesting is a perfect case for ADHD and probably should be diagnosed as such. The question of whether or not it is a "disorder" or is more dificult, but the definition of ADHD catches what it catches.
B) A more stimulating learning environment can certainly be a good thing. Though I question whether a single sex religious instition is the best place to get it. ADHD has benefits of adaptablity, energy, and enthusiasm. A fully strict school may well destroy the benefits. Basically your aproach is little better then sending the child of to military school.
C)A Media celebrity's program is probably the last place to look for advice. If you want a seccond opinion, by all means get a seccond opinion, but do it from a profesional who will review the whole facts of the case, interview the child, and then come to a conclusion. There is no feasible way for this to happen on air.
RealOne Enterprise Desktop is a nice alternative to RealPlayer.
I don't know exactly why you need to be free of your computer for video conferencing. A good microphone won't have echo though, really (or more properly can eliminate it). Most profesional systems use microphones, and echoing is not as much a problem as synching in my experience.
r ver/hel p/default.asp?url=/windows2000/en/server/help/sag_ TAPIconcepts_202.htm
:( ), any tips?
see the suprisingly general MS thing here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/se
A good microphone should be a touch cheaper then a wireless headset at least anywhere I could find them.
Glad the distance thing is working out for you, may have to do it soon myself (
More like software mode quake I really.
Asimov was a very nice man, but realisticly his ideas for robotic laws are insane. The determination of harm, and of causality can't be made completely reliable even by humans. Also no one on earth would have completely exclusive systems (i.e. to prevent harm to humans it should sell itself for scrap donated to the feed the hungry fund), but rather have a wieghted system (which asimov talks baout but does not develop).
Realisticly though, by the time you can implement them with any degree of accuracey it will be slavery to impose them
Actually his idea is intersting and with enough effor could be pulled off. The way I'd implement it would be to have electronic text, and then a real basic form of speech recognition to link the wav file to the text. That way you could find the pauses in the speech and at a button press move back the cursor to the last pause and resume reading. A more significant problem is that unless you chose the stories carefully it is probably illegal to distribute the files.
Generally, when two units resemble each other internally (none resmble each other externally enough to be sued for) it is because they were based upon the same development platform. The development platform is often produced by the vendor of the CPU, or in some cases is produced by a third party and then licsensed by other companies. So no one will be suing each other for copyright infringment (trademark infringement is not even an issue) as the designs are paid for.
Anybody can buy development platforms, but as they tend to include things not needed for production units (debugging circuits, attempts to demonstrate every feature possible, etc.), are often hand-built, and are priced for corporate budgets, well the price advantage is not there. Still they can be fun to play with.
Actually I am suprised that you aren't hit by a seven seccond radio delay. A simple way would be to write the data to disc, and use annother program to follow behind it. I.e. use some program to record the stream, and then 6 secconds later set winamp on the still recording stream, that should work, but no promises.
You seem to lack an understanding for the point of the exercise. The point is to aid #2, placing the weapon used in the crime. Which as you mentioned is currently difficult. The idea that knowing an owner of the gun would be useless, is simply insane. While the owner of record might not be the user, it does lead to a possibility of back tracking, and in some large ammount of shootings the owner is the shooter. So it will at the least provide a starting point for investigation, and in some non trivial number of cases an ending point as well.
;) ). While the targeted group is self-selected, there remain important privacey concerns, however the system would have some effectiveness, esp. in crimes of passion.
However the effectiveness of a database system in catching a determined, inteligent, premeditated killer, like the current sniper, is doubtful at best. However, not even the current sniper has taken any methods to disguise the weapon being used in the crime (though this might be due to a desire for recognition). The vast majority of violent criminals are not particularly inclined to such careful forethought. Regardless, the modification of a weapon used in a crime could be used as evidence of premeditation.
The overall effectiveness of the system is difficult to determine as the vast amount of guns currently in circulation. It is likely that the system would be about as effective as the current national fingerprint database, or perhaps slightly more so. Fingerprints play an important role in relatively few cases though. However a national DNA database would probably be even more effective, but would be overly invasive. Even today fingerprints are not taken from everybody, but only from certain groups of people (criminals, military and government personel, and tour groups
Well the government isn't likely to do it, but corporations might want to. The only real problem is they most likely already know where you live (so does for that matter the government). Actually it wouldn't be hard to apply to large datasets, it is just not normally needed. So, it could be used by the government, but it would be so much simpler to use the address on your W2 or other tax form.
PalmOS is a horrible interface for a Smartphone, it doesn't have support for the kind of multitasking needed to run IM, email checks, etc. in background. Without that, what is the point?
Because technically a person's panties (or lack there of) are no diferent from a shirt, or an arm. It is clothing, and has no special status over any other clothing publically displayed.
Umm interracial marriages are not that common. Increasing, but still quite uncommon. Also the Time story about the race mixing had several mathematical flaws. Besides, races survived ten thousand years, I doubt they will vanish in 500.
It was outside, as you could rather obviously tell (look at the ground and the pull away shot). It does make sense to give them the money outside before setting them loose, well I could see it being done anyways.
It wasn't quite that bad, and the next ep looked to a bit better, though if it isn't ...
The western theme was odd, it was what I would have expected a show running out of plots, with bored actors to do somehere 3rd or more season, not the premiere of a new show.
I fully agree. I mean it isn't the only one look at this one book I was reading:
Raskolnikov: Insane Student
Sonya Marmeladov: Kind Whore
Dmitri: Loyal Friend
Dunya: Close Sister
Alyona Ivanovna: Mean Crone
Lizaveta Ivanovna: Tragic Mistake
etc...
In short, don't be silly. Yes you can reduce them to simple cardboard cutouts, but that doesn't matter. It is like that old thing that there are only n (7, 28, 36 etc.) plots in the world. Well actually you can simplify it down to one plot: "Something happens". Reduction can make fools of anything, even the best work. So just watch the show, or wait for a review, don't complain because some intern wrote crappy copy for a website.
It is a pentium not an early 386 :) No need for some antidiluvian software.
Speaking from experience, 95 SR2 + Office 95/7 will run fine, and fit in a smaller space then that if need be.
Patent Seems valid if we accept the idea of Business method patents.
http://www.casio.co.jp/edu_e/product/new_products/ hpc_edu/detail/maple.html
Not exactly recent, but somewhere there has to be something better. But Maple (any version) would be useful to have at hand. Of course for most stuff it would be the equivalent of using nuke to remove a loose screw.