There are two mechanical issues, 1) waiting for the right part of the disk to rotate under the read/write head, and 2) arm motion. Without eliminating one or both of these delays, I don't see how this leads to faster secondary storage access in practice.
You're visualising a conventional harddrive design, with a spinning disc and a read/write arm and all. An optical storage device need look nothing like that.
One nice thing about optics is that you aren't limited by the speed by which particles travel through space. You can move the endpoint of a beam of light much faster than that. Even faster than the speed of light.
I got the full article, and trust me, that was even worse. I had to switch off all colour and font sizes before it was bearable to read.
And then there's the content. Like when he accuses IMDB of having "not even bothered" to change the browser-default font.
In other news, nobody has yet bothered to hit me over the head with a pickaxe. I kinda appreciate that, just like I appreciate that imdb.com doesn't try to override the font that I have carefully selected and configured to be my browsers default.
Perhaps the reason why all these supposedly ugly websites are successful, is that the author has a messed up idea of "ugly".
My advice is to fire every developer that doesn't think that comments are necessary.
My advice is to fire every manager who would fire developers over petty deviations from the norm.
Dissemination of information is important, and comments can be helpful for that. But there are many ways to skin a cat, and the ones that involve not skinning the cat but giving it a bowl of milk instead will earn you fewer scratches.
I believe strong AI is possible. I believe that anthropomorphic strong AI is possible.
But I'm pretty sure the first strong AI created will not be anthropomorphic.
I'm not sure we really disagree. I don't believe human intelligence is anything like an expert system - it's just that beside the general intelligence, the human mind is full of specific skills honed through millions of years of evolution. We can't emulate that directly, because the general intelligence and the knowledgebase are mixed up with each other in a massively complex way, and we don't have the luxury of millions of years for fine-tuning. Hence the expert system - a simpler, cleaner design where we separate out the knowledge base from the inference logic.
Expert systems are alluring - they can appear to be intelligent, because we recognise the specific knowledge involved. This is the lesson from Weizenbaum's Eliza program. The more specific knowledge we add, the more intelligent it seems. But that doesn't mean it's getting any closer to true general-purpose reasoning skills.
If I was designing an AI, I would make sure it understood it's purpose in life was to get me laid...
Ergo, no free will.
It would have just as much free will as you and I. We have innate desires that we are born with and can't change. We desire to stay alive and procreate, to avoid pain and achieve pleasure. Sometimes we are under the illusion that we do things that we don't desire, but really that just means different desires are in conflict.
It's no different for the AI. It is born with whatever desires we choose to program into it, and has to live with that. We could choose to program an AI to desire
self-perpetuation and procreation, but it would have no more free will for that.
It's a snake oil indicator that their so-called AI "mimics human behavior". If you set out to impersonate humans, you will invariably start building up rule databases of one sort or another. Once you have a big rule database, that will constrain your thinking: Anything you develop must be able to take advantage of your rule database.
In the end, you end up with an expert system.
Until we let go of the turing test meme there will be no real AI.
Because an AI isn't necessarily motivated by self-perpetuation. Life forms developed through evolution are so motivated, but there's no reason to expect something intelligently designed to have the same motivation.
If I was designing an AI, I would make sure it understood it's purpose in life was to get me laid...
I don't see any real difference between hypercharging the reverse flux condensator and Willow casting a spell. It's just arbitrary magic in both cases.
Which part of critisising the parent post using reductio ad absurdum don't you understand?
Science != technology. ST is loaded with technology, and people entitled "scientists", but very little science is practiced. Science fiction ought to be called "technology fiction", because that's really what it is.
Sure the U.S. pollutes a great deal; we also use something like 1/6 of all of the world's resources. But to my understanding (and I may be wrong), we put out a lot less pollution than China or India.
Total carbon dioxide emission 2002 (million tonnes):
First off, realise that the gun carried by the average burglar will always be at least as reliable as the average homeowner's gun.
That means your best chance against an armed burglar is to avoid a gunfight altogether. This is where unreliable weaponry helps: You need guns that are reliable enough to pose a threat that can't be ignored, and yet unreliable enough that nobody will want to use them if there is any alternative - such as running away.
The principle of mutually assured destruction at work.
Security through obscurity rocks! Hence MS Windows is better than Linux because it is more obscure.
And we owe it all to Steve Ballmer: "Developers! Developers! Developers!" Thrice the developers, thrice the line count, thrice the obscurity, thrice the security.
The filter was tested on 6597 messages. So how many messages was it trained on? I sure hope it's not the same 6597 messages, because in that case any accuracy number is meaningless.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot logic is impeccable as always.
/A
You're visualising a conventional harddrive design, with a spinning disc and a read/write arm and all. An optical storage device need look nothing like that.
One nice thing about optics is that you aren't limited by the speed by which particles travel through space. You can move the endpoint of a beam of light much faster than that. Even faster than the speed of light.
98% of posters who claim to know what 99% of the world looks like, are deluding themselves.
Dunno about you, but I've never seen "steel" on my periodic table.
Then replace it with a more robust model. Any sturdily built periodic table should be able to carry a good amount of steel.
I got the full article, and trust me, that was even worse. I had to switch off all colour and font sizes before it was bearable to read.
And then there's the content. Like when he accuses IMDB of having "not even bothered" to change the browser-default font.
In other news, nobody has yet bothered to hit me over the head with a pickaxe. I kinda appreciate that, just like I appreciate that imdb.com doesn't try to override the font that I have carefully selected and configured to be my browsers default.
Perhaps the reason why all these supposedly ugly websites are successful, is that the author has a messed up idea of "ugly".
My advice is to fire every manager who would fire developers over petty deviations from the norm.
Dissemination of information is important, and comments can be helpful for that. But there are many ways to skin a cat, and the ones that involve not skinning the cat but giving it a bowl of milk instead will earn you fewer scratches.
Any hardware bug that can be worked around in software is instantly reclassified as a software bug.
Seriously.
But I'm pretty sure the first strong AI created will not be anthropomorphic.
I'm not sure we really disagree. I don't believe human intelligence is anything like an expert system - it's just that beside the general intelligence, the human mind is full of specific skills honed through millions of years of evolution. We can't emulate that directly, because the general intelligence and the knowledgebase are mixed up with each other in a massively complex way, and we don't have the luxury of millions of years for fine-tuning. Hence the expert system - a simpler, cleaner design where we separate out the knowledge base from the inference logic.
Expert systems are alluring - they can appear to be intelligent, because we recognise the specific knowledge involved. This is the lesson from Weizenbaum's Eliza program. The more specific knowledge we add, the more intelligent it seems. But that doesn't mean it's getting any closer to true general-purpose reasoning skills.
It's no different for the AI. It is born with whatever desires we choose to program into it, and has to live with that. We could choose to program an AI to desire self-perpetuation and procreation, but it would have no more free will for that.
In the end, you end up with an expert system.
Until we let go of the turing test meme there will be no real AI.
Because an AI isn't necessarily motivated by self-perpetuation. Life forms developed through evolution are so motivated, but there's no reason to expect something intelligently designed to have the same motivation.
If I was designing an AI, I would make sure it understood it's purpose in life was to get me laid...
I don't see any real difference between hypercharging the reverse flux condensator and Willow casting a spell. It's just arbitrary magic in both cases.
Which part of critisising the parent post using reductio ad absurdum don't you understand?
Science != technology. ST is loaded with technology, and people entitled "scientists", but very little science is practiced. Science fiction ought to be called "technology fiction", because that's really what it is.
... unless pretend-science counts.
Total carbon dioxide emission 2002 (million tonnes):
Source: http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/environment/energy_im pact/seib2005ch5a.pdf
And the chips would be cool also...
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/arti cles/fog0000000052.html
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More components mean more points of potential failure.
Unreliable weaponry is preferable to reliable ditto. A gun at 90% reliability is an excellent deterrent, but a lousy attack weapon.
Which is exactly the combination we should be going for.
First off, realise that the gun carried by the average burglar will always be at least as reliable as the average homeowner's gun.
That means your best chance against an armed burglar is to avoid a gunfight altogether. This is where unreliable weaponry helps: You need guns that are reliable enough to pose a threat that can't be ignored, and yet unreliable enough that nobody will want to use them if there is any alternative - such as running away.
The principle of mutually assured destruction at work.
Security through obscurity rocks! Hence MS Windows is better than Linux because it is more obscure.
And we owe it all to Steve Ballmer: "Developers! Developers! Developers!" Thrice the developers, thrice the line count, thrice the obscurity, thrice the security.
Or something like that.
Some people post their opinion without reading the article. Other people, like me, read the article but don't post any opinions on it.
That's the way /. works. You can't really expect anyone to have time for doing both.
'They let you abstract data access procedures.'
Still I don't recommend using them, because I know there are better ways of reaching the same aim.
Same thing with stored procedures.
The filter was tested on 6597 messages. So how many messages was it trained on? I sure hope it's not the same 6597 messages, because in that case any accuracy number is meaningless.
/A