Is it just me, or are all of the internet portals (MSN, AOL, Yahoo) building their own little digital life empires?
I'm surprised it took you this long to notice. The only way you become a mega-corporation is by diversifying across your product lines. The search engines have been in a unique position to do this in the technology world.
How long till Google follows suit, or will the even?
You mean they're not? Between the search engine, Froogle, Google Blogs, GMail, Google Groups, Google News, and other features, I'd have thought they'd be on the top of the list for "digital empires".
Typical. Jokes about Pornography get modded up, while trolls come around and mod down REAL INFORMATION to practically nothing.
Am I the only one who finds this idiocy disgusting? I don't even mind having my post modded down, but to mod up something so tasteless as porn in it's place? Bah.
Well... technically speaking, orbit is also "free-fall"
Err... that's actually my point.
but you don't hear any complaints about calling it "Zero G".
You do and you don't. "Zero-G" (as in Zero G-Forces) is ok, "microgravity" is ok, "weightlessness" is ok, and "free-fall" is ok. "Zero Gravity" is NOT an ok term, because it refers to an object experiencing zero interaction with gravitational fields.
1) Anti-gravity, aka gravity shielding, aka Zero Gravity, is the theoretical process whereby the effects of gravity are nullified.
2) Actually, you don't eliminate the gravity in this case. You are simply falling just as fast as your plane, thus are capable of changing your trajectory by *stealing energy from the plane*. Both you and the plane are still feeling the effects of Earth's gravity. And placing you somewhere in the middle of space is still "free-fall" or "microgravity". It's not "Zero Gravity".
There is always "c) Zero G-Forces" which describes the situation of feeling near zero G-Forces applied.
Seriously, this is really Zero-G (short for Zero G-Forces), but NOT Zero Gravity.
This is correct. "Zero G" is an acceptable substitute for "Zero G-Forces". However, "Zero Gravity" still has a different meaning, and is NOT an acceptable substitute for "free-fall", "microgravity", or "weightlessness".
That should read "Free-Fall Flights for the Rest of Us". Zero Gravity has a very different meaning, and hasn't been an acceptable substitute for "free-fall" in 20+ years.
Case in point: when I first saw the headline, I thought that some nut was offering rides on an antigravity space ship.
Of course, one should question a company who's name is "Zero G" and offers "Zero Gravity flights". If they really do such a thing, they should know better than I that the term is actually "free-fall".
In case anyone's interested, skydiving is a cheaper way of obtaining a similar experience. The primary difference with skydiving is the lack of walls.
That's already handled by text to speech programs. They handle this issue by making a contextual "guess" of which word to use. This is especially important as most english speakers fail to properly enunciate their words. i.e. affect and effect are pronounced slightly different, but most people incorrectly pronounce them with a short 'a'. i.e. 'u-ffect' instead of 'a-ffect' and 'ee-ffect'.
Fair enough. We can assume that the phonetic representation is similar to unicode (i.e. up to 65,000 unique phoneme), so that would double the storage. If we then assume we need data about each phoneme. Now english has about 45 phonemes, which is actually above average for a language. If we assume that the computer stores about 4-8 times that many (different samples used as ranges for interpolation), you still don't have that many samples. A few megs at most.
Phonetics. It's quite uncommon to store the complete sound of the word. Not only would it be redundant, but it would be of no practical value to the computer.
According to this link, the average length of an English word is 6 characters. At one byte per character (two if you use Unicode), we find that a database of 40,000 words would be anywhere from (40,000*6) = 240,000 bytes = 235 kb to 470 kb in size. That's NOT much memory at all.
I don't think you understand. Natural Language Interfaces already exist for SQL databases. Their biggest limitation is that they need quite a bit of meta data about your data structure in order to properly parse the queries. But once the meta data has been added, the computer should be capable of answering most questions about your data.
It's not really useful for development work, but it can come in handy for allowing data requests from executives..
It's not that hard. Have you ever seen those automatic coffee machines? i.e. Put a few quarters in, then punch a bunch of "options" buttons. A cup drops down, and fills with coffee, cream, sugar, and any other options offered by the machine.
The same could be done with tea. Just keep a reservoir of hot water, a stack of tea bags, cubes of sugar, and refrigerated lemons. When you order tea, the machine would inject the bag into the hot water stream, then drop the sugar and lemon into the tea.
Let me think for a moment... Hell yeah! If we had low power speech processors, the possibilities would be endless. For one, we'd finally have a Star Trek(TM) interface for our homes!
"Computer, lights!" "Computer, make coffee!" "Computer, Earl Grey, hot!"
As silly as it may sound, such an interface would be far more efficient than mashing buttons.
In addition, blind people could be significantly helped by this. Many of them already use speech recognition and synthesis to assist in computer usage. Imagine if their computers could suddenly understand them a thousand times better? They could talk to their computers a bit more naturally, thus saving their vocal chords from undue stress.
Other applications (off the top of my head) are:
- Voice notes on embedded devices (store only text!) - Helpful Kiosks that can give you directions - A new use for natural language database queries (i.e. Ask the computer what last quarter's net sales were.) - Voice controlled robots ("You missed a corner, vacuum cleaner") - Data search by voice ("Find me a channel that plays Star Trek")
I've done far worse than kill you. I've hurt you & I intend go on hurting you. I will leave you as you left me, as you left her, marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet...... buried alive. buried alive. buried alive.
that's not possible, just translating to another set of instructions takes some of the cpu's resources
According to TFA, this is a pre-compiler/translator, not an emulator. i.e. The entire program is recompiled for another platform using only the binary data as the source. This is theoretically possible and has been attempted many times, but such compilers often trip over levels of indirection that programmers add.
For example, a programmer might place the video address in a variable, then reference that for screen paints. Such a trick would be impossible to detect at compile time, and would only be properly handled by a true emulator.
Like many hyped up concepts, I don't think this product is really all they're making it out to be. At the same time, however, I don't think it's vapor. Instead, it's probably something in between that performs as advertised, but mitigating factors (300MHz CPU?) result in it not being everything everyone expected.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me, or are all of the internet portals (MSN, AOL, Yahoo) building their own little digital life empires?
I'm surprised it took you this long to notice. The only way you become a mega-corporation is by diversifying across your product lines. The search engines have been in a unique position to do this in the technology world.
How long till Google follows suit, or will the even?
You mean they're not? Between the search engine, Froogle, Google Blogs, GMail, Google Groups, Google News, and other features, I'd have thought they'd be on the top of the list for "digital empires".
Typical. Jokes about Pornography get modded up, while trolls come around and mod down REAL INFORMATION to practically nothing.
Am I the only one who finds this idiocy disgusting? I don't even mind having my post modded down, but to mod up something so tasteless as porn in it's place? Bah.
Well... technically speaking, orbit is also "free-fall"
Err... that's actually my point.
but you don't hear any complaints about calling it "Zero G".
You do and you don't. "Zero-G" (as in Zero G-Forces) is ok, "microgravity" is ok, "weightlessness" is ok, and "free-fall" is ok. "Zero Gravity" is NOT an ok term, because it refers to an object experiencing zero interaction with gravitational fields.
Goddamn, who rated this informative?
1) Anti-gravity, aka gravity shielding, aka Zero Gravity, is the theoretical process whereby the effects of gravity are nullified.
2) Actually, you don't eliminate the gravity in this case. You are simply falling just as fast as your plane, thus are capable of changing your trajectory by *stealing energy from the plane*. Both you and the plane are still feeling the effects of Earth's gravity. And placing you somewhere in the middle of space is still "free-fall" or "microgravity". It's not "Zero Gravity".
There is always "c) Zero G-Forces" which describes the situation of feeling near zero G-Forces applied.
Seriously, this is really Zero-G (short for Zero G-Forces), but NOT Zero Gravity.
This is correct. "Zero G" is an acceptable substitute for "Zero G-Forces". However, "Zero Gravity" still has a different meaning, and is NOT an acceptable substitute for "free-fall", "microgravity", or "weightlessness".
As usual, Wikipedia has a bit more info.
I would say the primary difference with skydiving is the wind... which you would not experience if you were inside a box/plane.
As I said. The primary difference is walls/no walls. Not that difficult to extrapolate from that.
That should read "Free-Fall Flights for the Rest of Us". Zero Gravity has a very different meaning, and hasn't been an acceptable substitute for "free-fall" in 20+ years.
Case in point: when I first saw the headline, I thought that some nut was offering rides on an antigravity space ship.
Of course, one should question a company who's name is "Zero G" and offers "Zero Gravity flights". If they really do such a thing, they should know better than I that the term is actually "free-fall".
In case anyone's interested, skydiving is a cheaper way of obtaining a similar experience. The primary difference with skydiving is the lack of walls.
That's already handled by text to speech programs. They handle this issue by making a contextual "guess" of which word to use. This is especially important as most english speakers fail to properly enunciate their words. i.e. affect and effect are pronounced slightly different, but most people incorrectly pronounce them with a short 'a'. i.e. 'u-ffect' instead of 'a-ffect' and 'ee-ffect'.
Fair enough. We can assume that the phonetic representation is similar to unicode (i.e. up to 65,000 unique phoneme), so that would double the storage. If we then assume we need data about each phoneme. Now english has about 45 phonemes, which is actually above average for a language. If we assume that the computer stores about 4-8 times that many (different samples used as ranges for interpolation), you still don't have that many samples. A few megs at most.
Phonetics. It's quite uncommon to store the complete sound of the word. Not only would it be redundant, but it would be of no practical value to the computer.
According to this link, the average length of an English word is 6 characters. At one byte per character (two if you use Unicode), we find that a database of 40,000 words would be anywhere from (40,000*6) = 240,000 bytes = 235 kb to 470 kb in size. That's NOT much memory at all.
I don't think you understand. Natural Language Interfaces already exist for SQL databases. Their biggest limitation is that they need quite a bit of meta data about your data structure in order to properly parse the queries. But once the meta data has been added, the computer should be capable of answering most questions about your data.
It's not really useful for development work, but it can come in handy for allowing data requests from executives..
Ah hah! Found one!
It's not that hard. Have you ever seen those automatic coffee machines? i.e. Put a few quarters in, then punch a bunch of "options" buttons. A cup drops down, and fills with coffee, cream, sugar, and any other options offered by the machine.
;-)
The same could be done with tea. Just keep a reservoir of hot water, a stack of tea bags, cubes of sugar, and refrigerated lemons. When you order tea, the machine would inject the bag into the hot water stream, then drop the sugar and lemon into the tea.
Voila, Earl Grey, hot!
Ooo! That's a good one. Even if it sounded like Babelfish, it would still be better than keying words into those handheld translators.
Good use of $1 million?
Let me think for a moment... Hell yeah! If we had low power speech processors, the possibilities would be endless. For one, we'd finally have a Star Trek(TM) interface for our homes!
"Computer, lights!"
"Computer, make coffee!"
"Computer, Earl Grey, hot!"
As silly as it may sound, such an interface would be far more efficient than mashing buttons.
In addition, blind people could be significantly helped by this. Many of them already use speech recognition and synthesis to assist in computer usage. Imagine if their computers could suddenly understand them a thousand times better? They could talk to their computers a bit more naturally, thus saving their vocal chords from undue stress.
Other applications (off the top of my head) are:
- Voice notes on embedded devices (store only text!)
- Helpful Kiosks that can give you directions
- A new use for natural language database queries (i.e. Ask the computer what last quarter's net sales were.)
- Voice controlled robots ("You missed a corner, vacuum cleaner")
- Data search by voice ("Find me a channel that plays Star Trek")
Any other cool ideas out there?
Perhaps, I no longer need to try admiral.
I've done far worse than kill you. I've hurt you & I intend go on hurting you. I will leave you as you left me, as you left her, marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet...... buried alive. buried alive. buried alive.
And here Khan thought he left my probe as I left him!
;-)
Buried alive,
Buried alive,
Buried aliiiivvveee...
KHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!
(So I'm feeling a bit cheeky today. So sue me. No, I'm not worth anything.)
Can we get interviews with Bush & Kerry? I'd love to know what they think about Jib Jab's "This Land is My Land". ;-)
1. The features amount to much, much, much more than just space.
2. Sorry for trying to be helpful.
3. Signing people up for crap is rude. None the less, GMail will helpfully filter the Spam using its handy, dandy, trainable, spam trap.
My question is, will it boot up Apple's OSX Server?
Or can it run NetBSD? Can we get a Beowulf cluster of them? Does it run Linux!?! (Oh... wait...)
*rolls eyes*
BTW, I've got more GMail invites if anyone wants them. Just email me.
that's not possible, just translating to another set of instructions takes some of the cpu's resources
According to TFA, this is a pre-compiler/translator, not an emulator. i.e. The entire program is recompiled for another platform using only the binary data as the source. This is theoretically possible and has been attempted many times, but such compilers often trip over levels of indirection that programmers add.
For example, a programmer might place the video address in a variable, then reference that for screen paints. Such a trick would be impossible to detect at compile time, and would only be properly handled by a true emulator.
Like many hyped up concepts, I don't think this product is really all they're making it out to be. At the same time, however, I don't think it's vapor. Instead, it's probably something in between that performs as advertised, but mitigating factors (300MHz CPU?) result in it not being everything everyone expected.
That's a pretty good test. I got 100%, but only after very careful examination of some of them. In one case, the timestamp was all that tipped me off.
Do you mean the Uniform Commercial Code?