Here's an idea for those "other" search engines wanting to keep their viewers longer per page: hide all the relevant links way down on the page, so one has to spend more time finding them. Great Nielsen ratings! I however suspect that that would not be patentable, there's prior art to it.
Socialised health care delivers better value for money because of the enormous purchasing power of the government. The NHS can purchase millions of shots in one go. That allows you to hammer the drug companies on price and share the proceeds with the population.
In theory.
Socialised health care is not evil communism, it is a practical solution to the health care of your nation. I don't see anybody complaining about the socialised road, garabage collection, fire, police and military.
I suppose it depends on how the government goes about this in practice.
Example: I live in South Africa, where employees of private security firms (which patrol your neighbourhood, monitor your alarm system, and usually offer an "armed response" service) outnumber police officers about 4:1. Yes, the police are financed with our taxes. And yes, should you wish to obtain the services of a private security firm, that is a premium for your own pocket, just like any other commercial transaction.
I also hear from friends living in the UK that the healthcare system is sometimes so overburdened that the waiting lists for doctor's appointments run ahead a week or two. Is that true? I suppose it depends on region. I can't imagine that I won't be able to see a doctor for two weeks for a flu that might keep me in bed for perhaps 3 days - although in my case I usually just see the doctor to get a medical certificate for my employer and throw away the prescription.
Well, in some countries the conservation effort went so well that you had an overpopulation of elephants in a given area. This causes habitat destruction, as you can imagine with such large animals, pushing over even century-old trees to browse the leaves or eat the roots, which put other species under pressure. One way to deal with this was to cull the numbers (shooting whole herds). This was of course not very PC or well received with the greens, as you might imagine. One might also try to relocate a surplus to areas where their numbers have been decimated, provided of course that the reason why the numbers went down in the first place (ivory poaching) has been eradicated and will not reoccur. Of course, these being social and highly intelligent animals, taking them out of their herd is very stressful and a lot of animals die during relocation, and survivors struggle to adapt and be accepted into new herds. Darting and relocating whole herds might be possible, but it is hard enough as it is to find funding to relocate single animals..... Attempts have also been made to develop a birth control pill, with little success, and with elephants living in matriarchal herds, the ability to produce young also has an influence on the social fabric of the herd.
If one would like to keep one's operation small (many reasons, e.g. to be able to pay sufficient attention to enough detail) diversifying your offerings to the market (support, various versions, etc.) are not going to help.
It is human nature to create tools that help us overcome a shortcoming. Not strong enough? Attach a chunk of rock/metal to a handle, an behold! the hammer.
Computers (and incidentally AI) is just that - a tool. What good is it to make something that is "just like humans" (or indistinguishable from them, to paraphrase Turing)? Rather make something that is better than humans at one particular skill, e.g. remembering facts, or making objective decisions, or operate in dangerous situations.
No, I replaced mine with non-polarized sunglasses, which was cheap enough in my case.
Either that, or remove all the plexiglass/toughened glass in your line of sight. (Yeah, I know, not necessarily a good idea to go without visor...)
Problem is that stressed areas in glass or clear plastics modify the polarization of the light passing through it, while the unstressed areas leave the polarization as-is. Now the sunglasses filter out most polarizations, leaving only some light waves (in the pattern one sees) to travel through to your eye. Nice for engineering, but not for driving. Some Wikipedia pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelasticity.
Me too. Although in my case I often do the more poetic riding into the sunset....:-)
BTW, have you ever tried using polarized sunglasses? All plexiglass parts in your line of sight (visor, windscreen) cause quite a psychedelic effect on the scene you see. Funny for a minute or so, and NOT recommended in traffic.
I guess "rights" for sentient robots would look quite differently from what we would like to apply to ourselves. As an example: since the sentience is computation-based, it would be enough to "backup" the "brain" to ensure the AI's continued existence. All the hardware was manufactured before and can easily be manufactured again.
However, I think that robots/AI are tools that primarily should fill the gap where humans are lacking. (I.e. a computer is able to do mathematical operations much faster than a human, although having far inferior processing capability. Likewise, AI should be constructed, for instance, to perform tasks not encumbered by human emotions, uncertainty or moral ambiguity.) Having an AI that exactly mimics a human (as per Turing), in other words including fears, doubts and other perceived frailties, is in my opinion quite useless.
Slashdot Mirror
... nor have plans to "become" one, let me be the first to say:
You should welcome your light-bearing overlords.
(Hmmmm, isn't that something like "luciferian" in Latin??)
My mom not only gave me life - now she's held responsible for my death too?
Here's an idea for those "other" search engines wanting to keep their viewers longer per page: hide all the relevant links way down on the page, so one has to spend more time finding them. Great Nielsen ratings! I however suspect that that would not be patentable, there's prior art to it.
Apologies, Jim.
In theory.
I suppose it depends on how the government goes about this in practice.
Example: I live in South Africa, where employees of private security firms (which patrol your neighbourhood, monitor your alarm system, and usually offer an "armed response" service) outnumber police officers about 4:1. Yes, the police are financed with our taxes. And yes, should you wish to obtain the services of a private security firm, that is a premium for your own pocket, just like any other commercial transaction.
I also hear from friends living in the UK that the healthcare system is sometimes so overburdened that the waiting lists for doctor's appointments run ahead a week or two. Is that true? I suppose it depends on region. I can't imagine that I won't be able to see a doctor for two weeks for a flu that might keep me in bed for perhaps 3 days - although in my case I usually just see the doctor to get a medical certificate for my employer and throw away the prescription.
Well, in some countries the conservation effort went so well that you had an overpopulation of elephants in a given area. This causes habitat destruction, as you can imagine with such large animals, pushing over even century-old trees to browse the leaves or eat the roots, which put other species under pressure. One way to deal with this was to cull the numbers (shooting whole herds). This was of course not very PC or well received with the greens, as you might imagine. One might also try to relocate a surplus to areas where their numbers have been decimated, provided of course that the reason why the numbers went down in the first place (ivory poaching) has been eradicated and will not reoccur. Of course, these being social and highly intelligent animals, taking them out of their herd is very stressful and a lot of animals die during relocation, and survivors struggle to adapt and be accepted into new herds. Darting and relocating whole herds might be possible, but it is hard enough as it is to find funding to relocate single animals..... Attempts have also been made to develop a birth control pill, with little success, and with elephants living in matriarchal herds, the ability to produce young also has an influence on the social fabric of the herd.
Can't imagine anyone having Ballmer for a mascot......
So, Mooijs_law = ! Moores_law?
If one would like to keep one's operation small (many reasons, e.g. to be able to pay sufficient attention to enough detail) diversifying your offerings to the market (support, various versions, etc.) are not going to help.
That's almost like equipping an android (or in lieu of that, a geek) with cameras to figure out how "real" men "attract and keep females".
Cool - now I won't need that cellphone on my ear the whole day to "power" my brain....
Good grief. This should have been published under "Funny". Oh wait. Not PC !!! Nevermind.
No Blank Wall Of Defeat jokes? Oh, wrong OS.....
Didn't know selling pizzas is as dangerous as being a marine....
BTW, and probably OT, did some Pin Shooting over the weekend - my second time before a table. Great fun!
You forgot the Moronic President from your list. Not that any one country has a monopoly on that, so I didn't bother to provide a link....
Will this do?
Computers (and incidentally AI) is just that - a tool. What good is it to make something that is "just like humans" (or indistinguishable from them, to paraphrase Turing)? Rather make something that is better than humans at one particular skill, e.g. remembering facts, or making objective decisions, or operate in dangerous situations.
(And heck, I'm not even from America....)
- We don't sell razors, we sell shaves (but you still have to do it yourself)
- We don't sell cars, we sell transportation (sans chauffeur)
- We don't sell pens, we sell literature
- We don't sell lead balloons, we sell flights
Oh, did I forget the "Profit!!" ?.... patents file you!
No, I replaced mine with non-polarized sunglasses, which was cheap enough in my case.
Either that, or remove all the plexiglass/toughened glass in your line of sight. (Yeah, I know, not necessarily a good idea to go without visor...)
Problem is that stressed areas in glass or clear plastics modify the polarization of the light passing through it, while the unstressed areas leave the polarization as-is. Now the sunglasses filter out most polarizations, leaving only some light waves (in the pattern one sees) to travel through to your eye. Nice for engineering, but not for driving. Some Wikipedia pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelasticity.
Me too. Although in my case I often do the more poetic riding into the sunset.... :-)
BTW, have you ever tried using polarized sunglasses? All plexiglass parts in your line of sight (visor, windscreen) cause quite a psychedelic effect on the scene you see. Funny for a minute or so, and NOT recommended in traffic.
That's just plain crazy!
I guess "rights" for sentient robots would look quite differently from what we would like to apply to ourselves. As an example: since the sentience is computation-based, it would be enough to "backup" the "brain" to ensure the AI's continued existence. All the hardware was manufactured before and can easily be manufactured again.
However, I think that robots/AI are tools that primarily should fill the gap where humans are lacking. (I.e. a computer is able to do mathematical operations much faster than a human, although having far inferior processing capability. Likewise, AI should be constructed, for instance, to perform tasks not encumbered by human emotions, uncertainty or moral ambiguity.) Having an AI that exactly mimics a human (as per Turing), in other words including fears, doubts and other perceived frailties, is in my opinion quite useless.
No such luck. The first few consignments all go to the black helicopter compound. Maybe if there are a few leftovers, they can try that on an F-16.