after all, it doesn't necessarily matter if a TV show is being viewed by a lot of people, what matters is if the ads being shown in it key into the demographic enough that the show is profitable.
This opens up interesting possibilities for indie TV show development. That alone might make this whole and distasteful notion of targted marketing tolerable.
We're several years away from being able to do spectrographic studies of rocky planets orbiting other stars (or rocky moons), but once we reach that point, it will probably be only time until we detect free oxygen and/or other molecules that disappear rapidly in the absence of life.
This is exactly what we need, and that would be a far more meaningful obsrvation. Finding organic molecules in a protoplanetary nebula is neither unexpected nor particularly relavent to the question of extraterrestrial life.
Of course, large amounts of atmospheric free oxygen would be a near conclusive sign of life. Any other kind of unstable molecule will be far more problematic as scientists try to device models where they could exist in the absence of life, and that's a complicate trial and error process, and the results will always be controversial until we can get there to make first hand (robotic hand, certainly) observations. I suspect that may never happen.
We're getting there, slowly. I hope to live long enough to see this question answered.
I don't believe this factors into the Drake equation at all. I mean, it's great that the instruments are getting sensitive enough to detect these chemicals around other stars, but their presence in galactic molecular clouds have been known for a long time already. And as yet there is no reason to believe that the presence of these chemicals in space has anything whatsoever to do with their presence on a planet's surface, nor does it imply that life can exist in space. It only shows that chemistry happens, and if carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen are present in the same place, then organic chemistry happens, even if at exceedingly low densities. But classifying it as organic chemistry doesn't mean it's associated with organisms in any way.
The debate between ID and anti-ID zealots doesn't really interest me all that much, but every time the "flying spaghetti monster" argument gets invoked, I get really hungry for pasta.
Is that with the sacred red sauce, or the heretical alfredo?
The problem with trying to program a soul is the soul (or mind, or conscious state) is a metaphysical thing, or at least a thing that is not physically defined. It doesn't have an algorithm, so programming and logic gates would be useless. Unless the scientists can come up with a physical composition of a soul, I think this is an impossible goal.
The soul can be completely and trivially implimented with a null device. It places no real barrier on the notion of artificial self awareness.
If you disagree, I'd love to know how you can discriminate between a soul filled being and an "empty shell" in the real world. Supernatural evaluation after death aren't in the problem's domain, as it's not verifiable.
Q. Are you aware? A. Yes. Q. Are you aware that you are aware? A. Yes. Q. Are you aware that you are aware that you are aware? A. Yes. Q. Are you aware that you are aware that you are aware...?
The only reasonable correct answer to this is to become bored and assert "yes" as the default answer. And I don't mean that to be flippant or humorous. I believe self awareness does involve exactly this kind of recursive internal examination. It serves as a feedback loop that allows concurrent modifications to an actively operating system. This avoids the crash due to infinite regress issue implicit in the above post, allowing a self aware object to remain aware of other things besides this infinite series of questions. Isn't that how a self aware human deals with this situation, when after a few iterations the distinctions between one question and the next loses all distinction? The result is that the person is aware of having answered the question before, and actively engages boredom.
I see no reason why an AI system couldn't operate analagously.
Let's put it all together, shall we? Not only will the electronic cereal package be advertising to you, but it will also be tracking your cereal preferences, and as you look at the box, it will be looking at you and everything else in the room, and listening in on your conversations, which will be sent over the box's internet link to a goverment data center where the recording will be studied and retained for 20 years.
Marketing people have proven themselves to be remarkably effective at minipulating our behavior even with the very limited access they've had to us in the past. Once their access becomes universal and incessant, we'll all be reduced to mindless consumer drones. Of course, the government will want their slice of mind control access in return for granting patented monopolistic intellectual property right to efficient hybridized psychocontrol methods to the advertising megacorporations. All in the name of anti-terrorism security, naturally
Although the idea seems nice on the surface, how much more energy goes into refining the metal for the additional engine? How much weight is added? How much cost is added? Although many of these schemes seem beneficial, when evaluated over the lifespan of the product it may be a net zero or net loss from the existing technology. If people would stop buying new cars every two years, we would be better off than everyone buying the newest, latest greatest enviro-trendmobile constantly.
Compared to what, your feet? Or compared to a bicycle, or compared to a conventional, pure internal combustion car? And what are the environmental consequences of allowing the exhaust heat to simply go unutilized? Producing gasoline has life cycle costs as well -- are you remembering to subtract those out? What is the environmental impact per mile travelled times the number of miles travelled? The most environmentally effective solution is to reduce the need for high miles travelled, and that would have serious consequences to the established infrastructure of American culture, somewhat less so in Europe, and I have no idea about Asia or other areas. It would be nice if we could address these issues at the source by population control, individual consumption patters, etc, but that's not very reasonable for now. Lacking such drastic measures, it's ill considered to object to manufacturing hybrid engines because metal must be mined when the same things are done to produce gasoline engines and such frivilous items as jewelry and lawn furniture. Unless it's live in a cave or nothing, progress in alternative engines has a better probability of preserving the environment that sticking with technology that's known to be very detrimental.
I'm amazed at the strength of resistence to change many people have, especially on such a technically aware forum as Slashdot. Upgrading human values is probably to most important environmentally friendly changes we can make. Good luck on that one.
Re:How to test a server (heavy duty massive access
on
Miss Digital World 2005
·
· Score: 4, Funny
[My english is better than most other people's german, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
I thought you might want to know that both English and German should be capitalized. You're very welcome.
I thought the general notion was that information "wants" to be free. Wikipedia is free information. It may not be the best, most reliable, highest quality information, but it's free. Certified quality and reliability has to be paid for, as somebody else has to invest in the certification.
Nobody is forcing you to believe in the absolute truth of the information on Wikipedia. Nobody is taking anything from you on false premises with Wikipedia. So why the controversy? You got what you paid for with Wikipedia. How can you gripe that you didn't get more?
Also, it's unfair to characterize Diebold as a terrorist. The product they're selling is insecure, possibly in violation of various state/federal voting regulations, etc. but they haven't killed anyone yet.
While I certainly wouldn't lump Diebold in with terrorists, I'm not so sure they're innocent from causing deaths. If George W Bush won the election because of errors (whether accidental or intentional) in Diebold's voting machines, as indicated by the MIT analysis of statistical anomolies in some precincts like in Florida, and it was only because of W's re-election that we have an unnecessary imperialistic war in Iraq, then we have complicity if not outright conspiracy in the deaths of thousands of US soldiers and dozens of thousands of deaths among the Iraqis.
In about 5 minutes, the DNA is determined and compared against a database of known Un-Americans. At this time, a laser barcode reader down the line scans each head and if an enemy of the state is found, they are quickly escorted off either by trained guards or another piece of machinery for re-classification.
That's terribly inefficient, since you already have a laser trained on their head. If the person is known to be Un-American, just up the power. Seeing the head of one terrorist instantly vaporized will make the other four terrorists behind him think twice, which is about all the time they'll have until the laser points at them.
Sure, maybe the system wil make the occassional mistake, unheading an innocent grandmother or child, but you can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs, right?
And how fast you're going. If the proposal was to use cell phones to track speeders, the public reaction would be much different. If that's a concern, the time to object is now, or it will soon come to pass (corry, the pun was irrestible).
In reality, it's made the problem more widespread because we demand more energy than ever before, and it hasn't solved anything because we haven't really found a new source of energy with which to replace fossil fuels. Made me think twice about buying that hybrid car, too
Why does that make hybrid cars bad (yes, I drive one)? Hybrid cars are environmentally friendly because they use smaller, more efficient gasoline engines and revover energy from the brakes that would otherwise be completely lost as heat. Conventional braking systems are a guarantee of energy wasted. Just because a hybrid car doesn't make the environment better with every mile it goes, doesn't mean it isn't better than a guzzling SUV. If you have to drive, it's a relative benefit. And it's an interim solution, not the final answer. As is developing hydrogen a infrastructure, even if that hydrogen is for now based on a petroleum source. Eventually we'll have to move to a totally renewable energy economy. Otherwise, as the population increases and the per capita demand for energy, the world will inevitably go energy bankrupt. That's just simple unavoidable, math.
Of course, if producing and disposing of hybrid car's batteries are more environmentally damaging in the long run than a car's lifetime of burning more fossil fuel, that's a different consideration. It's not an easy calculation, but the upheaval of the world suddenly running dry at the pump is a more frightening prospect.
Maybe, but maybe not. I've seen it attributed to Yogi, and also to others, such as Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut (Wikiquote). As Yogi himself admitted, he didn't say half the things he said. So ya never know.
I am appalled that US software is being used to suppress individual rights overseas, when there's obviously so much more that needs to be done to suppress individual rights here at home.
OK, now do the RIAA/MPAA/whatever-AA really lose that much money due to fileswapping, piracy, video-taping, etc., that it is even financially worth all this bad PR? Or are they just run by a bunch of outright bastards who like being thought of as professional killjoys?
What bad PR? Most of the public has no idea this controversy even exists. A handful of tech savvy people might know, but the average person on the street has no clue.
Same headline as usual I see. Everything "may" kill the leading product, but the chances of it happening are slim to none. The reason they're the leading product is the average person trusts them, the average person has no idea what star office is and won't care. If they're lucky they'll get 10% market share, if they arn't they'll llive for a few years and then die hopelessly.
Yup. The dominance of MS Office isn't because of its technical superiority -- not by a long shot. Therefore a technically superior product won't replace it. It's dominance is because it's economically expedient, especially with its economies of scale. People looking for all sorts of jobs put MS Office on their resume. Who's going to put Star Office on their resume, and why? Heck, usually MS Office is just referred to as "Office," as it is assumed to be the default standard.
That's the challenge that a competitor to Office has to deal with. Not a technical one, but a psychological one on a massive scale. And unfortunately, that's nearly impossible.
What this tells me is that today's computer technology still has trouble, in many cubic feet of space, and with practically unlimited electrical power, to find realtime solutions for a problem that even severely IQ handicapped humans handle routinely while balancing a McMeal on their knees and keeping up a cell phone conversation. I would wager that, with a fair amount of training and suitable controls, even a dog could handle the task. So...
The AI systems are competing against 500 million years of evolutionary development. The computer systems being used are serial processors optimized for problems of a very different nature. Just trying to explicitely state the problems of what an autonomous vehicle is supposed to do in sufficient detail is daunting, let alone trying to solve those problems.
A human spends years as an infant trying to sort out how the world works, and decades after that puzzling out the details. And despite all the experience we have with out own thinking and observing others, we still don't know what intelligence is about or how it works.
1) Cheap, reliable, frequent trips to geosnychronous orbit. 2) First generation platform at one of the Lagrange points [wikipedia.org]. 3) Lunar observatory on the dark side. 4) Another Hubble-like telescope at L3. 5) Space elevators, aynone?
Items 1 and 2 are good goals, but 3 is mistaken. There is no dark side of the moon except in your CD collection. The far side get's just as much light as the side you see. But it is an excellent place to put a large radio telescope, where it will be naturally shieled from terrestrial noise. Item 4 is more or less OK, but an advanced interferometry telescope would be a better goal. The notion of a space elevator is and will remain a fictional device for some time to come. Basic materials research into high strength cable is one thing, but the Indian Rope Trick notion isn't going to "fly". For example, it's not just the wind and rain from tropical storms you have to worry about, but the lightning. Problems with a space elevator are legion, and they're not just technical.
I'd like to replace the last item with a goal of developing autonomous robots, at first designed for specialized tasks, and eventually movng to more general purpose devices. This could be a center of excellence that NASA could really leverage for their own purposes and for others.
But for the handbag, why not simply make a material that is opaque from the outside and transparent from the inside, which lets light in but not out...?
No, bad idea. All those trapped photons would build up, and when the handbag was opened they would burst out like a photon torpedo, incinerating the woman. Oh the humanity!
IANAL, but I thought you certainly could tax illegal activity. Isn't that what they got Al Capone for, tax evasion on the income from his illegal activities?
Slashdot Mirror
"I am as constant as the Northern Star." Always though Caesar was a little unstable and went round and round in circles....
"Constant in the darkness. Where's that at? If you want me, I'll be in the bar."
after all, it doesn't necessarily matter if a TV show is being viewed by a lot of people, what matters is if the ads being shown in it key into the demographic enough that the show is profitable.
This opens up interesting possibilities for indie TV show development. That alone might make this whole and distasteful notion of targted marketing tolerable.
We're several years away from being able to do spectrographic studies of rocky planets orbiting other stars (or rocky moons), but once we reach that point, it will probably be only time until we detect free oxygen and/or other molecules that disappear rapidly in the absence of life.
This is exactly what we need, and that would be a far more meaningful obsrvation. Finding organic molecules in a protoplanetary nebula is neither unexpected nor particularly relavent to the question of extraterrestrial life.
Of course, large amounts of atmospheric free oxygen would be a near conclusive sign of life. Any other kind of unstable molecule will be far more problematic as scientists try to device models where they could exist in the absence of life, and that's a complicate trial and error process, and the results will always be controversial until we can get there to make first hand (robotic hand, certainly) observations. I suspect that may never happen.
We're getting there, slowly. I hope to live long enough to see this question answered.
I don't believe this factors into the Drake equation at all. I mean, it's great that the instruments are getting sensitive enough to detect these chemicals around other stars, but their presence in galactic molecular clouds have been known for a long time already. And as yet there is no reason to believe that the presence of these chemicals in space has anything whatsoever to do with their presence on a planet's surface, nor does it imply that life can exist in space. It only shows that chemistry happens, and if carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen are present in the same place, then organic chemistry happens, even if at exceedingly low densities. But classifying it as organic chemistry doesn't mean it's associated with organisms in any way.
The debate between ID and anti-ID zealots doesn't really interest me all that much, but every time the "flying spaghetti monster" argument gets invoked, I get really hungry for pasta.
Is that with the sacred red sauce, or the heretical alfredo?
The problem with trying to program a soul is the soul (or mind, or conscious state) is a metaphysical thing, or at least a thing that is not physically defined. It doesn't have an algorithm, so programming and logic gates would be useless. Unless the scientists can come up with a physical composition of a soul, I think this is an impossible goal.
The soul can be completely and trivially implimented with a null device. It places no real barrier on the notion of artificial self awareness.
If you disagree, I'd love to know how you can discriminate between a soul filled being and an "empty shell" in the real world. Supernatural evaluation after death aren't in the problem's domain, as it's not verifiable.
Q. Are you aware?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you aware that you are aware?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you aware that you are aware that you are aware?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you aware that you are aware that you are aware...?
The only reasonable correct answer to this is to become bored and assert "yes" as the default answer. And I don't mean that to be flippant or humorous. I believe self awareness does involve exactly this kind of recursive internal examination. It serves as a feedback loop that allows concurrent modifications to an actively operating system. This avoids the crash due to infinite regress issue implicit in the above post, allowing a self aware object to remain aware of other things besides this infinite series of questions. Isn't that how a self aware human deals with this situation, when after a few iterations the distinctions between one question and the next loses all distinction? The result is that the person is aware of having answered the question before, and actively engages boredom.
I see no reason why an AI system couldn't operate analagously.
Let's put it all together, shall we? Not only will the electronic cereal package be advertising to you, but it will also be tracking your cereal preferences, and as you look at the box, it will be looking at you and everything else in the room, and listening in on your conversations, which will be sent over the box's internet link to a goverment data center where the recording will be studied and retained for 20 years.
Marketing people have proven themselves to be remarkably effective at minipulating our behavior even with the very limited access they've had to us in the past. Once their access becomes universal and incessant, we'll all be reduced to mindless consumer drones. Of course, the government will want their slice of mind control access in return for granting patented monopolistic intellectual property right to efficient hybridized psychocontrol methods to the advertising megacorporations. All in the name of anti-terrorism security, naturally
Just shoot me now.
Although the idea seems nice on the surface, how much more energy goes into refining the metal for the additional engine? How much weight is added? How much cost is added? Although many of these schemes seem beneficial, when evaluated over the lifespan of the product it may be a net zero or net loss from the existing technology. If people would stop buying new cars every two years, we would be better off than everyone buying the newest, latest greatest enviro-trendmobile constantly.
Compared to what, your feet? Or compared to a bicycle, or compared to a conventional, pure internal combustion car? And what are the environmental consequences of allowing the exhaust heat to simply go unutilized? Producing gasoline has life cycle costs as well -- are you remembering to subtract those out? What is the environmental impact per mile travelled times the number of miles travelled? The most environmentally effective solution is to reduce the need for high miles travelled, and that would have serious consequences to the established infrastructure of American culture, somewhat less so in Europe, and I have no idea about Asia or other areas. It would be nice if we could address these issues at the source by population control, individual consumption patters, etc, but that's not very reasonable for now. Lacking such drastic measures, it's ill considered to object to manufacturing hybrid engines because metal must be mined when the same things are done to produce gasoline engines and such frivilous items as jewelry and lawn furniture. Unless it's live in a cave or nothing, progress in alternative engines has a better probability of preserving the environment that sticking with technology that's known to be very detrimental.
I'm amazed at the strength of resistence to change many people have, especially on such a technically aware forum as Slashdot. Upgrading human values is probably to most important environmentally friendly changes we can make. Good luck on that one.
[My english is better than most other people's german, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
I thought you might want to know that both English and German should be capitalized. You're very welcome.
I thought the general notion was that information "wants" to be free. Wikipedia is free information. It may not be the best, most reliable, highest quality information, but it's free. Certified quality and reliability has to be paid for, as somebody else has to invest in the certification.
Nobody is forcing you to believe in the absolute truth of the information on Wikipedia. Nobody is taking anything from you on false premises with Wikipedia. So why the controversy? You got what you paid for with Wikipedia. How can you gripe that you didn't get more?
Also, it's unfair to characterize Diebold as a terrorist. The product they're selling is insecure, possibly in violation of various state/federal voting regulations, etc. but they haven't killed anyone yet.
While I certainly wouldn't lump Diebold in with terrorists, I'm not so sure they're innocent from causing deaths. If George W Bush won the election because of errors (whether accidental or intentional) in Diebold's voting machines, as indicated by the MIT analysis of statistical anomolies in some precincts like in Florida, and it was only because of W's re-election that we have an unnecessary imperialistic war in Iraq, then we have complicity if not outright conspiracy in the deaths of thousands of US soldiers and dozens of thousands of deaths among the Iraqis.
No blood on their hands? It sure isn't red ink.
In about 5 minutes, the DNA is determined and compared against a database of known Un-Americans. At this time, a laser barcode reader down the line scans each head and if an enemy of the state is found, they are quickly escorted off either by trained guards or another piece of machinery for re-classification.
That's terribly inefficient, since you already have a laser trained on their head. If the person is known to be Un-American, just up the power. Seeing the head of one terrorist instantly vaporized will make the other four terrorists behind him think twice, which is about all the time they'll have until the laser points at them.
Sure, maybe the system wil make the occassional mistake, unheading an innocent grandmother or child, but you can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs, right?
And how fast you're going. If the proposal was to use cell phones to track speeders, the public reaction would be much different. If that's a concern, the time to object is now, or it will soon come to pass (corry, the pun was irrestible).
In reality, it's made the problem more widespread because we demand more energy than ever before, and it hasn't solved anything because we haven't really found a new source of energy with which to replace fossil fuels. Made me think twice about buying that hybrid car, too
Why does that make hybrid cars bad (yes, I drive one)? Hybrid cars are environmentally friendly because they use smaller, more efficient gasoline engines and revover energy from the brakes that would otherwise be completely lost as heat. Conventional braking systems are a guarantee of energy wasted. Just because a hybrid car doesn't make the environment better with every mile it goes, doesn't mean it isn't better than a guzzling SUV. If you have to drive, it's a relative benefit. And it's an interim solution, not the final answer. As is developing hydrogen a infrastructure, even if that hydrogen is for now based on a petroleum source. Eventually we'll have to move to a totally renewable energy economy. Otherwise, as the population increases and the per capita demand for energy, the world will inevitably go energy bankrupt. That's just simple unavoidable, math.
Of course, if producing and disposing of hybrid car's batteries are more environmentally damaging in the long run than a car's lifetime of burning more fossil fuel, that's a different consideration. It's not an easy calculation, but the upheaval of the world suddenly running dry at the pump is a more frightening prospect.
Well, I'm sure we'll do better when we send human explorers to the planet.
Maybe, but maybe not. I've seen it attributed to Yogi, and also to others, such as Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut (Wikiquote). As Yogi himself admitted, he didn't say half the things he said. So ya never know.
I am appalled that US software is being used to suppress individual rights overseas, when there's obviously so much more that needs to be done to suppress individual rights here at home.
OK, now do the RIAA/MPAA/whatever-AA really lose that much money due to fileswapping, piracy, video-taping, etc., that it is even financially worth all this bad PR? Or are they just run by a bunch of outright bastards who like being thought of as professional killjoys?
What bad PR? Most of the public has no idea this controversy even exists. A handful of tech savvy people might know, but the average person on the street has no clue.
Same headline as usual I see. Everything "may" kill the leading product, but the chances of it happening are slim to none. The reason they're the leading product is the average person trusts them, the average person has no idea what star office is and won't care. If they're lucky they'll get 10% market share, if they arn't they'll llive for a few years and then die hopelessly.
Yup. The dominance of MS Office isn't because of its technical superiority -- not by a long shot. Therefore a technically superior product won't replace it. It's dominance is because it's economically expedient, especially with its economies of scale. People looking for all sorts of jobs put MS Office on their resume. Who's going to put Star Office on their resume, and why? Heck, usually MS Office is just referred to as "Office," as it is assumed to be the default standard.
That's the challenge that a competitor to Office has to deal with. Not a technical one, but a psychological one on a massive scale. And unfortunately, that's nearly impossible.
What this tells me is that today's computer technology still has trouble, in many cubic feet of space, and with practically unlimited electrical power, to find realtime solutions for a problem that even severely IQ handicapped humans handle routinely while balancing a McMeal on their knees and keeping up a cell phone conversation. I would wager that, with a fair amount of training and suitable controls, even a dog could handle the task. So...
The AI systems are competing against 500 million years of evolutionary development. The computer systems being used are serial processors optimized for problems of a very different nature. Just trying to explicitely state the problems of what an autonomous vehicle is supposed to do in sufficient detail is daunting, let alone trying to solve those problems.
A human spends years as an infant trying to sort out how the world works, and decades after that puzzling out the details. And despite all the experience we have with out own thinking and observing others, we still don't know what intelligence is about or how it works.
Yes, it is a very hard problem
1) Cheap, reliable, frequent trips to geosnychronous orbit.
2) First generation platform at one of the Lagrange points [wikipedia.org].
3) Lunar observatory on the dark side.
4) Another Hubble-like telescope at L3.
5) Space elevators, aynone?
Items 1 and 2 are good goals, but 3 is mistaken. There is no dark side of the moon except in your CD collection. The far side get's just as much light as the side you see. But it is an excellent place to put a large radio telescope, where it will be naturally shieled from terrestrial noise. Item 4 is more or less OK, but an advanced interferometry telescope would be a better goal. The notion of a space elevator is and will remain a fictional device for some time to come. Basic materials research into high strength cable is one thing, but the Indian Rope Trick notion isn't going to "fly". For example, it's not just the wind and rain from tropical storms you have to worry about, but the lightning. Problems with a space elevator are legion, and they're not just technical.
I'd like to replace the last item with a goal of developing autonomous robots, at first designed for specialized tasks, and eventually movng to more general purpose devices. This could be a center of excellence that NASA could really leverage for their own purposes and for others.
But for the handbag, why not simply make a material that is opaque from the outside and transparent from the inside, which lets light in but not out...?
No, bad idea. All those trapped photons would build up, and when the handbag was opened they would burst out like a photon torpedo, incinerating the woman. Oh the humanity!
Sure, therapy for them, but all these crappy blogs depresses the hell out of me!
IANAL, but I thought you certainly could tax illegal activity. Isn't that what they got Al Capone for, tax evasion on the income from his illegal activities?