"Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Career?"
I thought this was going to be a question about " marketers get the babes" vs "bankers have more meaningful relationships".
Turns out you REALLY mean to write "Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Location?" Which, of course, is totally unrelated to computers, technology or anything resembling "News for Nerds".
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"I can defend Bob and Joe trading MP3s, but if they do it via Sally's open share (and grab some of her files too), that's a totally different thing."
First off, where did "grab some of her files too" come from? That's just gratuitous and you know it.
Secondly, there's nothing wrong with Bob and Joe using Sally's HD per se. It's really the "unknown to Sally" part that you object to. So I guess to appease that factor, we'd have to have some kind of explicit process Sally has to go through in order to share that drive. Guess what? That process already exists. Now granted, Sally may not realize what she (or the software she installed) did. But it's not entirely clear-cut to me that Bob and Joe are in the wrong.
Consider an alternate universe: A lot of people use ShareSniffer and a lot of people share out their hard drives for the express purpose of letting people store MP3's there. (this isn't ridiculous, it's pretty much how Napster or FreeNet works) Now imagine Sally accidentally shares her drive out and finds it filling with MP3's. ShareSniffer has no way of knowing that Sally didn't mean to share the drive out. Are Bob and Joe in the wrong? Or is Sally to blame for not understanding her technology?
*MY* objection to ShareSniffer is: What if I WANT to share my files...but not to ShareSniffer users? To be good netizens (not their purpose, I know) they should really have invented their own protocol. --
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"...I have never seen a shop where upgrades were constant or even frequent. I've worked in about 20 shops now, and in each, major software upgrades had to be a) justified to upper management, b) undergo extensive testing, c) be completely documented and d) have a backout plan."
These two sentences are only marginally related. Yes, upgrades require a lot of prep work. That's why their frequency is so damn annoying. As for the frequency itself: You've never, ever heard an IT person say "maybe you need to upgrade" in response to a problem request? You've never seen a user ask for a feature that can't be supplied by the current version? You've never found incompatibilities between new software and your non-upgraded "legacy" software? You are a lucky, lucky troll^H^H^H^H^H man. --
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Good job embedding the "The monopoly line has been bullshit from the start" quote. And the "jealousy" keyword was genius.
For those that don't know what I'm talking about, see my (current) sig. --
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Does no one here have respect for language?
on
Uplifting Dolphins
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· Score: 5
I'm no Luddite, I'd love to be able to talk to dolphins and/or apes...but you can't teach language to apes and dolphins. Language isn't just a matter of brute processing power of the brain. It requires innate wiring created to handle it. Consider cases of otherwise intelligent people who because of stroke, disease, injury, genetic impairment, etc are unable to process language. Conversely, think of disorders where the subject is able to converse on quite a sophisticated level but has an IQ of around 50.
If apes or dolphins had anything approaching a human-level ability at language, we'd observe them spontaneously using it. Check out "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker for more info on this topic. --
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Last time OV was mentioned on/. (the last beta, presumably) I download the same encoder and xmms plugin for playback. I encoded a couple of CDs and tried it out. Here's what I found:
First, the sample encoder is MUCH easier to use than what I've already been using (GRip). I don't know if that's because my current method is so terrible or because the new one is so great.
Second, the resulting files were about 10% smaller. Others may say "so what, hard drives are cheap", but:
1) I only have 4.5 GB and don't have the extra cash to buy larger.
2) Larger hard drives make a 10% savings even MORE worthwhile. Consider: If I saved 10% of a 4 GB drive, that's 40 MB--room for maybe 10 additional songs or about one CD. But if I saved 10% of a 400 GB drive, that's an extra 4 GB--enough for 100 CD's.
Third, the sound quality was "equivalent". That is, I couldn't tell the difference, BUT I'm not an expert and my sound equipment is FAR from top of the line (just some computer speakers plugged into an AWE32). --
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"Also, consider the fact that not every individual is fit for the stubborn teacher-role."
For humans, "teaching" language is not a necessity. Consider: EVERY child brought up (in non-pathological conditions, c.f. "Genie") learns language. It doesn't matter what kind of teacher the child's parent is, the child WILL acquire language. Whereas with chimps, it takes skilled trainers many years to get a chimp to use even 50-100 signs.
If you've ever raised children, the above is very clear to you. I have a two-year old who is learning words faster than I can keep up. In fact, he's learning language faster than HE can keep up. He knows and says more words than he can fit into his limited ability to articulate syllables. Thus, "bay bay" can be "basement" or "baby". And just in the last month or two he's started making two (and sometimes three) word "sentences" ("Fix light", "Evan basement", "Read book", etc). I will admit to having explicitly taught him a few individual words ("drill", "toothbrush", etc) but the rest of the vocabular and ALL of the grammar he's done on his own.
The question isn't: "do apes/chimps find language useful"--there are obvious uses for language for ANY animal. The question is: "are apes/chimps CAPABLE of learning language" (as opposed to mimicked signing).
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Except for one item: "...if [intelligence] were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it."
Actually, a few days ago I argued a similar position, but I'm not so sure I was right. Let me try the opposite stance here and see what happens.
Every species exploits at least one ecological "niche". For instance, trees use sunlight. But the existence of trees creates a new niche--tree bark. So there evolved insects to eat the tree bark. This creates a new niche: tree-bark eating insects. So we get woodpeckers. Then there are bird droppings on the ground so we get dung-beetles. Etc.
Once there is a significant amount of relatively intelligent life (lions, elephants, etc) there is a new niche based on out-thinking. We are able to eat buffaloes, etc because we are able to outthink them. We've also outthought grass (aka grains) by planting it in large patches, removing competition (weeds) and then harvesting in big truck loads.
Now we get to the crux of my point: Is there any more room in our niche? At the beginning (several million years ago) there may have been more than one semi-intelligent mostly-ape. But since part of our nature seems to be warfare, they've been wiped out. Then our numbers exploded to the point where our niche is almost OVER-populated--there's no selection pressure for other animals to take advantage because there's little or no surplus "out-thinking" for them to take advantage OF. Thus, no other intelligent animals. --
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"...teach the American Sign Language to chimpanzees -- and succeeded. Not only did the chimps communicate with them over food and life in general, they also taught the sign language to their children. And more precise than you might imagine: Instructions like "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV" are not at all uncommon."
When did this research take place? I just finished (re-)reading "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker and he had a pretty scathing review of "ape language" research (although clearly he only covered stuff up to the publication date of the book). To pick an example at random, there was one team that was teaching sign language to chimps. The team members were supposed to write down every time the chimp made a sign. The only deaf, ASL-"native" team member wrote down FAR fewer signs. He eventually complained or quit or wrote a book or something. He said the other team members were recording that the chimp was signing "banana" when he pointed at a banana and signing "TV" when pointing at a TV. He also mentioned that the apes didn't direct the signs at people the way we do with language. That kind of indicates it wasn't so much directed communication as trained behavior.
As for the precise examples: I seriously doubt it. Even Koko (whose trainer, Penny Marshall verges on the religious [i.e. "willing to lie"] regarding her ape's abilities) only signs things like "water bird" and "glasses Koko".
As an aside, I see the title of the book is "Next of Kin". Presumably this is supposed to be evocative of some kind of reasoning like this: "Apes are the closest relatives of humans, therefore they can probably talk good, too". Fallacy alert! What if a disease had wiped out all the apes 1000 years ago, leaving, say, lemurs as our closest living relatives? Would lemurs then be expected to be able to talk? Or what if we discovered a group of Neanderthals living in the mountains (Yeti, Sasquatch, etc)? Could we then drop apes from our experiments because as more distant relatives they clearly won't be able to talk? "Closest living relative" has no biological implications--it's simply a historical accident. --
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"I know from our internal discussion lists and channels, that all of us are constantly reading the site, but as for a detailed breakdown, I'd have no idea where to start."
"...I don't usually read comments attached to stories."
No comment necessary, I think. --
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"Personally I'm resolving this by re-reading every Penny Arcade."
I will freely admit that senses of humor are individualistic. But there are still some fundamental laws of nature that must be maintained. For instance, I doubt that "Red Dwarf" and "Family Circus" have much overlap.
So how can it be that someone who reads Penny Arcade ALSO likes User Friendly (IMO, one of the least funny comics in the known universe and the publishing of which is one of the many signs that that Linux Journal has stopped being a technical journal and started being a VB Developers Journal clone)? --
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"...CPUs, RAM, DVDs, TCP/IP...don't exist in nature."
Don't they? Brains, memory, language all fullfill the same function. "Robots in nature" ARE fantastic at communication...we're doing it right now. --
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"Have you ever really watched a load of ants try to move a leaf ? If you watch closely, you will see them pushing the leaf every which way and from every direction. A simple hypotheses is that any movement problem is easier to solve some ways than others and eventually the ants with the right idea 'outvote' the ones with the wrong idea."
And in the end, what did they accomplish? They moved a leaf. Big deal.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three ways to run a "many agent" system:
1) Like ants as you describe. The problem is that if the only workable strategy requires going over a "hump" in parameter space, this won't work. Think of it like evolution. In order to reach a goal, every mutation has to make sense on the way there. Evolution can't do something now to "lay the groundwork" for something later. Same with ants--if they need to perform some non-obvious preparation step it just won't happen. Adding intelligence could help with the foresight issue, but intelligence isn't enough to solve this problem because there's no way to coordinate plans so everyone knows WHAT preparation needs to be done.
2) Hardwired strategies. But we all know how inflexible those are.
3) Communication with at least one intelligent agent in the group. Now an over-arching plan with foresight can be created which will then be executed with the rest of the group essentially being extensions of the intelligent member's body. With humans, this is exactly what happens. I say "put your end down and hold it while I lift mine". Or you think of something and say "turn it over backwards".
What I should have said in my previous post was "communication-free robots that perform difficult, non-obvious tasks don't exist in nature". --
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Okay, less glibly, consider how you and two friends would move a sofa if there were some compelling reason not to communicate. One of you goes to one end of the sofa, the other two might abort a move to that end, one gets the other end, and whoever didn't make it to an end of the sofa opens doors and whatnot. It's really not neccesary to say "I'll get this end" except to be social.
But this only works as long as we both have the same plan in mind. It's obvious that both ends of the sofa have to be lifted and that the door needs to be opened. But what happens when we get to the door and the sofa needs to be turned? I start turning it on it's back so you follow suit, great. Still doesn't fit. I have the idea standing it on end, so I put my end down. Thinking I want to rest, so do you. Now I have to come over to your end to lift it up--but I can't, the sofa is in the way. I lift my end up instead--and you lift yours. OK, we'll just move the sofa back in the room and turn around, that way I (the only one with the right plan in mind) will be on the right side of the doorway. We do that. Now I need to lift my end up to stand it on end, but you need to put yours down--how do I make you do that?
With robots, I suppose the second actor could match the first actors actions against some kind of internal list of strategies to see which one it is employing. Then it could take the role labelled "helper". The trouble is, flexibility requires more scripts which entails more possibility for misunderstanding on the part of the second actor. It would take forever to get anything done. Simply put, acting in concert requires an overarching plan. If that plan is non-obvious, communication is required.
And here's the ultimate argument against communication-free robots: They don't exist in nature. If evolution could have gotten by without building the incredibly complexity of the human language system by some means as described above, it surely would have. Ants communicate via pheromone trails. Bees communicate with dancing. If they could have done without these systems, why don't they?
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"Essentially, the idea was that robots could use much the same logic they use to navigate an arbitrary set of obstacles to co-operate to acheive a task without needing to communicate anything."
Ummmm...could you expand on that? I don't see how "logic used to navigate obstacles" is communication. --
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There I am, standing around outside. *clunk* An interplanetary space probe lands next to me. *sssss...chink!* It pops open. Out "spews" (your word, not mine) a horde of tiny beetle-sized creatures. Creepy.
In any case, they aren't necessarily all that great for "exploring new habitats". Think about it: they are too small to move anything or contain any internal testing equipment. You probably can't put a lens on the thing that's big enough to show you more than about 5 grains of sand. It might be OK as a low-cost first wave to determine average temperature, etc--but you really need a rover-style device to actually EXPLORE.
However your "collaboration" comment gives me an idea. Shoot a bunch of these guys at the planet, say 1 million of them. In parallel, they determine the 100 most promising areas of the planet to concentrate on. The split into 100 teams of 10,000 each and home in on the centers of those areas. Only about 1 in 10 will make it and those 1000 join together (panda-monium!) to make a much larger unit capable of doing more extensive work. --
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Electromagnetic induction power transmission will probably interfere with radio communications (between units, from control to units and in the surrounding area). But you've got the right idea. Why not use solar? This only works in the sunlight (duh), but if we are talking about exploring other planets (as another poster mentioned) that's not such a big deal.
Of course, if you want to implant these somewhere (a body, a mine, etc) that won't work so well. OTOH, neither with broadcast power, especially underground. --
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For people reading this story on the front page and loathe to follow a link, "the beastie" is the BSD Daemon. --
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"...the kernel can effectively take on modern kernel implementations, such as BeOS and QNX, and Plan 9's kernel."
Maybe they are too busy taking on operating systems that people actually use to worry about conforming to an academic's idea of how software should be architected..
That sounds like I'm advocating market share over correctness, but I'm not. I'm saying that "correctness" is in the eye of the beholder. And the beholders who agree with you and Tannenbaum haven't made much headway in the Real World whereas Linus has. --
http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/1 346238&mode=thread
I doubt you'll find many followers, though. "Free" has a well-defined meaning that is different than "free"--established over many years and with much discussion and explanation. "fREe" however is an unknown. But go ahead and start your foundation and see what happens. --
http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/1 346238&mode=thread
"Creationism in my mind at least stays fixed...Evolution seems unstable and follows the latest scientific fads..."
You know why that is? Because creationism doesn't make falsifiable and/or testable claims. I mean, honestly, if your theory is "God said 'so mote it be' and here we are" just what kind of evidence COULD force a change? Fossils? "God put 'em there." Genome? "God did it."
Evolution hasn't changed it's broad structure in 150 years. The details have been modified as theories have been proven wrong.
It's like that joke: The University accountant is complaining about the high cost of running some fo the departments. The mathematics professor pipes up and says "all WE really need is chalk and erasers for doing proofs." The philosophy (or in this case, theology) professor says "all WE need is chalk". --
http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/1 346238&mode=thread
Damn! You rock! These links are pure gold. I was going to say "that oughta shut 'im up"...then I realized that if he was rational, we wouldn't be having this conversation. --
http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/1 346238&mode=thread
The FSF doesn't say what software is free, it says what software is Free. Similarly, the Brown Dog Foundation doesn't say what dogs are brown, it says what dogs are Brown (or maybe what Dog are Brown). free != Free => brown != Brown --
http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/1 346238&mode=thread
Slashdot Mirror
"Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Career?"
I thought this was going to be a question about " marketers get the babes" vs "bankers have more meaningful relationships".
Turns out you REALLY mean to write "Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Location?" Which, of course, is totally unrelated to computers, technology or anything resembling "News for Nerds".
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"I can defend Bob and Joe trading MP3s, but if they do it via Sally's open share (and grab some of her files too), that's a totally different thing."
First off, where did "grab some of her files too" come from? That's just gratuitous and you know it.
Secondly, there's nothing wrong with Bob and Joe using Sally's HD per se. It's really the "unknown to Sally" part that you object to. So I guess to appease that factor, we'd have to have some kind of explicit process Sally has to go through in order to share that drive. Guess what? That process already exists. Now granted, Sally may not realize what she (or the software she installed) did. But it's not entirely clear-cut to me that Bob and Joe are in the wrong.
Consider an alternate universe: A lot of people use ShareSniffer and a lot of people share out their hard drives for the express purpose of letting people store MP3's there. (this isn't ridiculous, it's pretty much how Napster or FreeNet works) Now imagine Sally accidentally shares her drive out and finds it filling with MP3's. ShareSniffer has no way of knowing that Sally didn't mean to share the drive out. Are Bob and Joe in the wrong? Or is Sally to blame for not understanding her technology?
*MY* objection to ShareSniffer is: What if I WANT to share my files...but not to ShareSniffer users? To be good netizens (not their purpose, I know) they should really have invented their own protocol.
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"...I have never seen a shop where upgrades were constant or even frequent. I've worked in about 20 shops now, and in each, major software upgrades had to be a) justified to upper management, b) undergo extensive testing, c) be completely documented and d) have a backout plan."
These two sentences are only marginally related. Yes, upgrades require a lot of prep work. That's why their frequency is so damn annoying. As for the frequency itself: You've never, ever heard an IT person say "maybe you need to upgrade" in response to a problem request? You've never seen a user ask for a feature that can't be supplied by the current version? You've never found incompatibilities between new software and your non-upgraded "legacy" software? You are a lucky, lucky troll^H^H^H^H^H man.
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Good job embedding the "The monopoly line has been bullshit from the start" quote. And the "jealousy" keyword was genius.
For those that don't know what I'm talking about, see my (current) sig.
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I'm no Luddite, I'd love to be able to talk to dolphins and/or apes...but you can't teach language to apes and dolphins. Language isn't just a matter of brute processing power of the brain. It requires innate wiring created to handle it. Consider cases of otherwise intelligent people who because of stroke, disease, injury, genetic impairment, etc are unable to process language. Conversely, think of disorders where the subject is able to converse on quite a sophisticated level but has an IQ of around 50.
If apes or dolphins had anything approaching a human-level ability at language, we'd observe them spontaneously using it. Check out "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker for more info on this topic.
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Last time OV was mentioned on /. (the last beta, presumably) I download the same encoder and xmms plugin for playback. I encoded a couple of CDs and tried it out. Here's what I found:
First, the sample encoder is MUCH easier to use than what I've already been using (GRip). I don't know if that's because my current method is so terrible or because the new one is so great.
Second, the resulting files were about 10% smaller. Others may say "so what, hard drives are cheap", but:
1) I only have 4.5 GB and don't have the extra cash to buy larger.
2) Larger hard drives make a 10% savings even MORE worthwhile. Consider: If I saved 10% of a 4 GB drive, that's 40 MB--room for maybe 10 additional songs or about one CD. But if I saved 10% of a 400 GB drive, that's an extra 4 GB--enough for 100 CD's.
Third, the sound quality was "equivalent". That is, I couldn't tell the difference, BUT I'm not an expert and my sound equipment is FAR from top of the line (just some computer speakers plugged into an AWE32).
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"Also, consider the fact that not every individual is fit for the stubborn teacher-role."
For humans, "teaching" language is not a necessity. Consider: EVERY child brought up (in non-pathological conditions, c.f. "Genie") learns language. It doesn't matter what kind of teacher the child's parent is, the child WILL acquire language. Whereas with chimps, it takes skilled trainers many years to get a chimp to use even 50-100 signs.
If you've ever raised children, the above is very clear to you. I have a two-year old who is learning words faster than I can keep up. In fact, he's learning language faster than HE can keep up. He knows and says more words than he can fit into his limited ability to articulate syllables. Thus, "bay bay" can be "basement" or "baby". And just in the last month or two he's started making two (and sometimes three) word "sentences" ("Fix light", "Evan basement", "Read book", etc). I will admit to having explicitly taught him a few individual words ("drill", "toothbrush", etc) but the rest of the vocabular and ALL of the grammar he's done on his own.
The question isn't: "do apes/chimps find language useful"--there are obvious uses for language for ANY animal. The question is: "are apes/chimps CAPABLE of learning language" (as opposed to mimicked signing).
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Except for one item: "...if [intelligence] were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it."
Actually, a few days ago I argued a similar position, but I'm not so sure I was right. Let me try the opposite stance here and see what happens.
Every species exploits at least one ecological "niche". For instance, trees use sunlight. But the existence of trees creates a new niche--tree bark. So there evolved insects to eat the tree bark. This creates a new niche: tree-bark eating insects. So we get woodpeckers. Then there are bird droppings on the ground so we get dung-beetles. Etc.
Once there is a significant amount of relatively intelligent life (lions, elephants, etc) there is a new niche based on out-thinking. We are able to eat buffaloes, etc because we are able to outthink them. We've also outthought grass (aka grains) by planting it in large patches, removing competition (weeds) and then harvesting in big truck loads.
Now we get to the crux of my point: Is there any more room in our niche? At the beginning (several million years ago) there may have been more than one semi-intelligent mostly-ape. But since part of our nature seems to be warfare, they've been wiped out. Then our numbers exploded to the point where our niche is almost OVER-populated--there's no selection pressure for other animals to take advantage because there's little or no surplus "out-thinking" for them to take advantage OF. Thus, no other intelligent animals.
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"...teach the American Sign Language to chimpanzees -- and succeeded. Not only did the chimps communicate with them over food and life in general, they also taught the sign language to their children. And more precise than you might imagine: Instructions like "Tickle me, then bring me one of those bananas. Oh, and I would like to watch some TV" are not at all uncommon."
When did this research take place? I just finished (re-)reading "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker and he had a pretty scathing review of "ape language" research (although clearly he only covered stuff up to the publication date of the book). To pick an example at random, there was one team that was teaching sign language to chimps. The team members were supposed to write down every time the chimp made a sign. The only deaf, ASL-"native" team member wrote down FAR fewer signs. He eventually complained or quit or wrote a book or something. He said the other team members were recording that the chimp was signing "banana" when he pointed at a banana and signing "TV" when pointing at a TV. He also mentioned that the apes didn't direct the signs at people the way we do with language. That kind of indicates it wasn't so much directed communication as trained behavior.
As for the precise examples: I seriously doubt it. Even Koko (whose trainer, Penny Marshall verges on the religious [i.e. "willing to lie"] regarding her ape's abilities) only signs things like "water bird" and "glasses Koko".
As an aside, I see the title of the book is "Next of Kin". Presumably this is supposed to be evocative of some kind of reasoning like this: "Apes are the closest relatives of humans, therefore they can probably talk good, too". Fallacy alert! What if a disease had wiped out all the apes 1000 years ago, leaving, say, lemurs as our closest living relatives? Would lemurs then be expected to be able to talk? Or what if we discovered a group of Neanderthals living in the mountains (Yeti, Sasquatch, etc)? Could we then drop apes from our experiments because as more distant relatives they clearly won't be able to talk? "Closest living relative" has no biological implications--it's simply a historical accident.
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"I know from our internal discussion lists and channels, that all of us are constantly reading the site, but as for a detailed breakdown, I'd have no idea where to start."
"...I don't usually read comments attached to stories."
No comment necessary, I think.
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"Personally I'm resolving this by re-reading every Penny Arcade."
I will freely admit that senses of humor are individualistic. But there are still some fundamental laws of nature that must be maintained. For instance, I doubt that "Red Dwarf" and "Family Circus" have much overlap.
So how can it be that someone who reads Penny Arcade ALSO likes User Friendly (IMO, one of the least funny comics in the known universe and the publishing of which is one of the many signs that that Linux Journal has stopped being a technical journal and started being a VB Developers Journal clone)?
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Man, N2H2 stinks.
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"...CPUs, RAM, DVDs, TCP/IP...don't exist in nature."
Don't they? Brains, memory, language all fullfill the same function. "Robots in nature" ARE fantastic at communication...we're doing it right now.
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No disassemble Number Five!
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"Have you ever really watched a load of ants try to move a leaf ? If you watch closely, you will see them pushing the leaf every which way and from every direction. A simple hypotheses is that any movement problem is easier to solve some ways than others and eventually the ants with the right idea 'outvote' the ones with the wrong idea."
And in the end, what did they accomplish? They moved a leaf. Big deal.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three ways to run a "many agent" system:
1) Like ants as you describe. The problem is that if the only workable strategy requires going over a "hump" in parameter space, this won't work. Think of it like evolution. In order to reach a goal, every mutation has to make sense on the way there. Evolution can't do something now to "lay the groundwork" for something later. Same with ants--if they need to perform some non-obvious preparation step it just won't happen. Adding intelligence could help with the foresight issue, but intelligence isn't enough to solve this problem because there's no way to coordinate plans so everyone knows WHAT preparation needs to be done.
2) Hardwired strategies. But we all know how inflexible those are.
3) Communication with at least one intelligent agent in the group. Now an over-arching plan with foresight can be created which will then be executed with the rest of the group essentially being extensions of the intelligent member's body. With humans, this is exactly what happens. I say "put your end down and hold it while I lift mine". Or you think of something and say "turn it over backwards".
What I should have said in my previous post was "communication-free robots that perform difficult, non-obvious tasks don't exist in nature".
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Okay, less glibly, consider how you and two friends would move a sofa if there were some compelling reason not to communicate. One of you goes to one end of the sofa, the other two might abort a move to that end, one gets the other end, and whoever didn't make it to an end of the sofa opens doors and whatnot. It's really not neccesary to say "I'll get this end" except to be social.
But this only works as long as we both have the same plan in mind. It's obvious that both ends of the sofa have to be lifted and that the door needs to be opened. But what happens when we get to the door and the sofa needs to be turned? I start turning it on it's back so you follow suit, great. Still doesn't fit. I have the idea standing it on end, so I put my end down. Thinking I want to rest, so do you. Now I have to come over to your end to lift it up--but I can't, the sofa is in the way. I lift my end up instead--and you lift yours. OK, we'll just move the sofa back in the room and turn around, that way I (the only one with the right plan in mind) will be on the right side of the doorway. We do that. Now I need to lift my end up to stand it on end, but you need to put yours down--how do I make you do that?
With robots, I suppose the second actor could match the first actors actions against some kind of internal list of strategies to see which one it is employing. Then it could take the role labelled "helper". The trouble is, flexibility requires more scripts which entails more possibility for misunderstanding on the part of the second actor. It would take forever to get anything done. Simply put, acting in concert requires an overarching plan. If that plan is non-obvious, communication is required.
And here's the ultimate argument against communication-free robots: They don't exist in nature. If evolution could have gotten by without building the incredibly complexity of the human language system by some means as described above, it surely would have. Ants communicate via pheromone trails. Bees communicate with dancing. If they could have done without these systems, why don't they?
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
"Essentially, the idea was that robots could use much the same logic they use to navigate an arbitrary set of obstacles to co-operate to acheive a task without needing to communicate anything."
Ummmm...could you expand on that? I don't see how "logic used to navigate obstacles" is communication.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
...to be on the receiving end of THAT scheme.
There I am, standing around outside. *clunk* An interplanetary space probe lands next to me. *sssss...chink!* It pops open. Out "spews" (your word, not mine) a horde of tiny beetle-sized creatures. Creepy.
In any case, they aren't necessarily all that great for "exploring new habitats". Think about it: they are too small to move anything or contain any internal testing equipment. You probably can't put a lens on the thing that's big enough to show you more than about 5 grains of sand. It might be OK as a low-cost first wave to determine average temperature, etc--but you really need a rover-style device to actually EXPLORE.
However your "collaboration" comment gives me an idea. Shoot a bunch of these guys at the planet, say 1 million of them. In parallel, they determine the 100 most promising areas of the planet to concentrate on. The split into 100 teams of 10,000 each and home in on the centers of those areas. Only about 1 in 10 will make it and those 1000 join together (panda-monium!) to make a much larger unit capable of doing more extensive work.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Electromagnetic induction power transmission will probably interfere with radio communications (between units, from control to units and in the surrounding area). But you've got the right idea. Why not use solar? This only works in the sunlight (duh), but if we are talking about exploring other planets (as another poster mentioned) that's not such a big deal.
Of course, if you want to implant these somewhere (a body, a mine, etc) that won't work so well. OTOH, neither with broadcast power, especially underground.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
For people reading this story on the front page and loathe to follow a link, "the beastie" is the BSD Daemon.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
"...the kernel can effectively take on modern kernel implementations, such as BeOS and QNX, and Plan 9's kernel."
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Maybe they are too busy taking on operating systems that people actually use to worry about conforming to an academic's idea of how software should be architected..
That sounds like I'm advocating market share over correctness, but I'm not. I'm saying that "correctness" is in the eye of the beholder. And the beholders who agree with you and Tannenbaum haven't made much headway in the Real World whereas Linus has.
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http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/
I doubt you'll find many followers, though. "Free" has a well-defined meaning that is different than "free"--established over many years and with much discussion and explanation. "fREe" however is an unknown. But go ahead and start your foundation and see what happens.1 346238&mode=thread
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http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/
"Creationism in my mind at least stays fixed...Evolution seems unstable and follows the latest scientific fads..."
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You know why that is? Because creationism doesn't make falsifiable and/or testable claims. I mean, honestly, if your theory is "God said 'so mote it be' and here we are" just what kind of evidence COULD force a change? Fossils? "God put 'em there." Genome? "God did it."
Evolution hasn't changed it's broad structure in 150 years. The details have been modified as theories have been proven wrong.
It's like that joke: The University accountant is complaining about the high cost of running some fo the departments. The mathematics professor pipes up and says "all WE really need is chalk and erasers for doing proofs." The philosophy (or in this case, theology) professor says "all WE need is chalk".
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http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/
Damn! You rock! These links are pure gold. I was going to say "that oughta shut 'im up"...then I realized that if he was rational, we wouldn't be having this conversation.1 346238&mode=thread
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http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/
The FSF doesn't say what software is free, it says what software is Free. Similarly, the Brown Dog Foundation doesn't say what dogs are brown, it says what dogs are Brown (or maybe what Dog are Brown). free != Free => brown != Brown1 346238&mode=thread
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http://www.geekizoid.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/03/