A more puzzling fact is that if you search for a movie on Netflix streaming and they don't have it available for streaming, nothing comes up.
To the best of my knowledge, this is only true of the embedded & mobile Netflix streaming software - the sole purpose of which is streaming, so it makes sense. These apps aren't the full Netflix queue management system, they're just about streaming, so when you're searching for something to stream, why bother you with search results that don't do you any good? If you search on the Netflix website while viewing the "Watch Instantly" page, non-streaming titles do appear in the results (as you'd expect).
Your talk of "Virtual DVDs" and limited rentals is just overcomplicating the question, "Why don't the studios allow Netflix to stream everything?". And the answer is the same to every question of the form "Why doesn't Hollywood...": money. The studios think licensing Netflix to stream recent AAA releases (at the rate Netflix wants to pay) will undercut their physical disc sales and reduce profits. In Hollywood, money is everything, and right or wrong, studios won't make a business deal if they think it will lose money. It may very well be the case that the studios don't understand the streaming business and underestimate its revenue potential, but there it is.
Remember, Netflix streaming was originally limited to a certain number of hours per month, and this cap was lifted (although I assume that had more to do with Netflix infrastructure bandwidth capabilities than licensing). You should check out Amazon Prime - for a similar price to Netflix streaming, they offer some items for free, but also allow you to pay to rent or buy digital copies of more recent or popular films not available for streaming on Netflix. This is the model preferred by the studios - where they make money off of each individual digital rental. It's a "safer" revenue stream - guaranteed per-view income - than a riskier "all-you-can-eat" package deal, although obviously favorable terms could theoretically be negotiated for that.
So your question should actually be, "why doesn't Netflix negotiate with the studios to offer a premium add-on to their streaming service, so that users can stream recent releases and a wider selection of AAA titles?" which IMHO is a better and more interesting question, and the answer probably lies in Netflix's confidential market research and business plans.
I deny that Computer Science is "the most important 21st Century skill" on the basis that it's not a skill, it's a field of study. The most important skill of the 21st Century is the same one as all the previous centuries: the ability to use your well-formed intellect to make rational decisions. This is what education is for. Learning a trade is generally necessary to earn a living, and maybe college is a good place to do this, but your options and potential will be more limited if you're not educated.
I studied Math and Computer Science in college (my degree is math). Ultimately, the mathematics courses were a better formation for the type of thinking I needed in my career as a software developer (not a dig on the quality of the CS courses I took - they were quite good).
I assume 10 others are asking the same question as I type this, but wouldn't a video demonstrating the tech published weeks before the patent was filed constitute prior art, rendering the patent non-novel and invalid?
I thought the version was a penis length competition.
At least that's what it looks like since Chrome and Firefox started changing major versions every fucking week or so.
It's not just the version number, everyone knows you have to take the version number times download size divided by the square root of length between releases (in days).
They've largely replaced the X-Ray backscatter machines with millimeter wave scanners, and they are very much still in use in the US. You can see where and how they're in use at TSA Status.
I'm glad they've gotten rid of the potentially harmful ones (although I gather the risk is very low); but my primary complaints have always been the gross violation of privacy, ineffectiveness, and government fraud and waste related to the program.
I've now got everything stored on multiple HDDs instead of questionable optical disks -- which, while not having the same physical appeal, means I'll likely have my music itself (plus all the metadata that the originals never had) for decades to come.
I'm in the process of ripping all my CDs and pressing them onto 78 RPM records, so after the next Carrington event destroys the power grid, I can still listen to "Call Me Maybe" on my spring-motor Victrola.
I've been a commuter cyclist in Chicago and always observed the traffic laws out of a sense of self-preservation. Even still, I was almost killed by inattentive drivers several times. My own wife has suffered for years from pain resulting from complications related to losing a tooth after a driver forced her into a curb while riding.
That being said, Chicago cyclists by and large already have total disregard for all traffic laws, so I don't see enacting laws like this here having any effect whatsoever, except perhaps giving police officers fewer opportunities to issue tickets to cyclists, as if that were a thing that ever happened. Now I'm all for common sense improvements to traffic flow, living like I do in a congested city where cycling is popular, but here are some of the other common sense practices of local cyclists that I observe regularly:
1) running red lights and stop signs at full speed without slowing at all 2) riding the wrong way down one-way streets through moving traffic 3) riding at night without any lights of any kind 4) doing 3) while riding the wrong way in traffic 5) doing 4) during inclement weather (once, I couldn't see the guy until he was 10 feet away) 6) running a red light while making a right turn into a lane of moving traffic without even looking (I see this a lot), often causing the cars that would have hit them to swerve in the path of other vehicles. 7) riding on crowded sidewalks and through crowded crosswalks at high speed 8) trying to pass moving buses on the right as they're approaching a bus stop. This happens all the time. 9) passing a line of cars stopped at a red light on the right, only to pull up in front of the line (not to the side), in the crosswalk, forcing the cars to wait behind the bicyclists once the light has turned green until a break appears in the next lane (or oncoming lane if there's only one lane).
I've also been rear-ended while stopped at a stop sign by an inattentive bicyclist, and seen a cyclist enter an intersection from the sidewalk against the light right into the path of a car (the cyclist survived, but I don't think his bike did). This isn't meant as a tirade against bicycling - I love it myself, and I think it's great that Chicago is devoting resources to make it easier and safer - but it's frustrating when the city takes away traffic lanes from cars on a congested road and converts them to bicycle lanes, complete with pylons and special signaling to accommodate bicycles, only to be completely disregarded by the cyclists (see Dearborn St. downtown). There's no give-and-take here. Riders and drivers can work well together when each is considerate of the other, but it seems like it's mostly a one-way street around here, so to speak.
If there's to be a push for cycling as a major means of transportation on busy roads (which it already is), I think it's worth considering licensing tests for bicyclists (as well as traffic law enforcement).
Although the word sister can also mean "of the same type or origin", and is often used in English to describe similar things, especially if they come from the same place. You often hear of "sister ships" or "sister cities", and although these words have gender in other languages, they don't in English (though it derives from gendered languages). I think it's in this sense that the article refers to the "sun's sister".
it's not the act of recollection that causes the memory to decay.
What's your basis for saying so?
I was just paraphrasing the study.
I was going to dash off a quick rebuttal, but decided to check Wiki first. See Memory consolidation and Decay Theory. Some research indicates that a disruption during retrieval can alter a memory, but it's somewhat controversial. Either way, studies indicate that recollection reinforces memory. Also interesting is Retrieval-induced forgetting (accessing a memory, while reinforcing it, may cause you to forget related information).
I have learned some new things. Damn you, Wikipedia, I have work to do today!
If human consciousness is a phenomenon of a massively complex system of symbolic representation in the brain, then it's only developed gradually over years of absorbing input and forming connections, and developing an AI with true consciousness basically requires simulating a brain down to a low physical level and having it "grow up" over time.
Even if human consciousnes is based on method X, that doesn't mean that consciousness has to be based on method X. Remember, the original Turing machine thought experiment involved paper reels, while modern computers use electronics.
Furthermore, even a copy of the brain doesn't necessarily need to simulate it down to the "physical level". You can probably abstract away a lot of the molecular machinery of the cells; you can likely abstract away less flexible subsystems (like body function regulation); you could perhaps even use techniques of JIT to "compile" more abstract representations from "source code" of a neural network, and update the original network and recompile when learning.
Fair enough, but if consciousness is by nature an emergent phenomenon of underlying system X, creating a similar consciousness would require duplicating that type of underlying system. We only have one data point for what systems yield consciousness, so there's nothing else to imitate as of yet. From the perspective of computability theory, modern computers are no more powerful than a Turing machine. The physical medium of the "paper tape" is irrelevant to the mathematical model.
When trying to "build a brain" you would of course use different materials or methods to model synapses, neurons, etc.; but you'd still be building the same type of system, capable of dynamic symbolic representation and association, whether in software or hardware. It's possible you could make a more efficient system with optimized aspects (think about Hashlife), but mathematically it's the same type of system.
At least until we know exactly how consciousness comes about, and then we can look at whether other types of systems might yield the same result.
They were saying that the act of retrieving memory would erode the memory.
Right - it's not the act of recollection that causes the memory to decay.
Memories are not a sequence of visual images like a film reel; they're associations between "symbols" representing the things you experienced at the time the memory was formed. The more often you think about the memory, the stronger those associations become, and the more permanent this memory - however, the initial impression is not guaranteed to be a perfect record, so details that are incorrectly recorded initially will become reinforced over time as the memory is recalled. Whether a detail is correctly recorded initially depends on how much attention you were paying to that detail and other factors (such as how "intense" the experience was).
So memories do decay, but it's from weak associations, not from more frequent recollection. How does this pertain to consciousness? If human consciousness is a phenomenon of a massively complex system of symbolic representation in the brain, then it's only developed gradually over years of absorbing input and forming connections, and developing an AI with true consciousness basically requires simulating a brain down to a low physical level and having it "grow up" over time. This is both discouraging from the perspective of the technology required, and encouraging in that if we have the technology for neural simulation then the result of artificial consciousness may be reliably achieved.
...the post-election review of the existing ballots by the major news organizations...
Your link discusses a partial review of overvotes in January 2001. We've been discussing a more nearly comprehensive review done much later. Try to keep up.
Thanks for the link - I remember when the study came out but had lost track of the details. The wiki article indicates that Gore would have won only if the most generous standards for determining voter intent (e.g. dimpled chad, slight mark on optical ballots, etc.) were consistently applied in a statewide recount. So yes, there is a scenario in which Gore "might have won", but the wiki article also mentions some important caveats that make it impossible to say with certainty what the "correct" result of counting every ballot would have been.
liar troll
That's a bit excessive, as what he said is technically correct - Gore lost every official recount, and the study you link to indicates he would also have lost every recount effort he was asking for in court.
IF one of the more liberal areas of Florida didn't add negative votes for Gore it might have made a difference too.
The wiki article you link to states
The error was caught and corrected the night of the election. Of the registered voters in the precinct, 22 voted for Bush, 193 for Gore, and 1 for Nader.
Now the complete lack of being able to use GPS outside of the city for T-mobile is downright annoying, but more of a failing of Google maps not to predownload the entire route.
Google Maps supports offline maps. It had been removed in a previous update, but it looks like it's back (I still have the pre-removal version).
Well, for some people, the 1940's might as well have been a million years ago. Plus the Earth has actually traveled pretty far in the last 70 years.
Or maybe the Jedi will discover Red Matter and travel through time and space to help Earth defeat Kahn during the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s. Actually now I want to see that.
Personally, I thought one of the better Star Trek: Voyager episodes was the one with the Klingons fighting Nazis, so there's precedent (of course, that was on the holodeck, but entertaining nonetheless).
Well, since so much time has passed since Return of the Jedi, I believe in Episode VII Han Solo will be fighting the Soviets. Seriously, though, you can't have Star Wars without a villain, and Thrawn was a great one.
More on topic, the Star Wars universe is a rich one with lots of potential, and it seems to me like there should always be a film in the works. I would have no problem if it became like the Bond franchise, with a new movie every few years. Sure, some will be crap, but those don't detract from the quality of the good ones. What if 7, 8, and 9 turn out to be good ones? Will people still say no one should have made any after RotJ?
So you're saying you don't know anyone that doesn't have access to free, unsubsidized iPhones and Galaxies S3, and don't understand why anyone would ever need anything different?
1) Please tell us your cell phone carrier that gives away free unsubsidized smartphones, and your subscription plan. 2) Different people have different wants and needs, and not all people are like you. This shouldn't need explaining.
Exactly, your Grandma won't be assembling them, you'll be asking her "what do you want your phone to do?" and then build her one based on requirements and budget, just like her computer that you built, only with the upside that when she can't figure out how to turn the phone on, she can't call you to bug you about it!
Slashdot Mirror
A more puzzling fact is that if you search for a movie on Netflix streaming and they don't have it available for streaming, nothing comes up.
To the best of my knowledge, this is only true of the embedded & mobile Netflix streaming software - the sole purpose of which is streaming, so it makes sense. These apps aren't the full Netflix queue management system, they're just about streaming, so when you're searching for something to stream, why bother you with search results that don't do you any good? If you search on the Netflix website while viewing the "Watch Instantly" page, non-streaming titles do appear in the results (as you'd expect).
Your talk of "Virtual DVDs" and limited rentals is just overcomplicating the question, "Why don't the studios allow Netflix to stream everything?". And the answer is the same to every question of the form "Why doesn't Hollywood...": money. The studios think licensing Netflix to stream recent AAA releases (at the rate Netflix wants to pay) will undercut their physical disc sales and reduce profits. In Hollywood, money is everything, and right or wrong, studios won't make a business deal if they think it will lose money. It may very well be the case that the studios don't understand the streaming business and underestimate its revenue potential, but there it is.
Remember, Netflix streaming was originally limited to a certain number of hours per month, and this cap was lifted (although I assume that had more to do with Netflix infrastructure bandwidth capabilities than licensing). You should check out Amazon Prime - for a similar price to Netflix streaming, they offer some items for free, but also allow you to pay to rent or buy digital copies of more recent or popular films not available for streaming on Netflix. This is the model preferred by the studios - where they make money off of each individual digital rental. It's a "safer" revenue stream - guaranteed per-view income - than a riskier "all-you-can-eat" package deal, although obviously favorable terms could theoretically be negotiated for that.
So your question should actually be, "why doesn't Netflix negotiate with the studios to offer a premium add-on to their streaming service, so that users can stream recent releases and a wider selection of AAA titles?" which IMHO is a better and more interesting question, and the answer probably lies in Netflix's confidential market research and business plans.
I deny that Computer Science is "the most important 21st Century skill" on the basis that it's not a skill, it's a field of study. The most important skill of the 21st Century is the same one as all the previous centuries: the ability to use your well-formed intellect to make rational decisions. This is what education is for. Learning a trade is generally necessary to earn a living, and maybe college is a good place to do this, but your options and potential will be more limited if you're not educated.
I studied Math and Computer Science in college (my degree is math). Ultimately, the mathematics courses were a better formation for the type of thinking I needed in my career as a software developer (not a dig on the quality of the CS courses I took - they were quite good).
Okay, stupid me, this is why you RTFA first: it specifically discusses this and explains how to submit prior art evidence to the USPTO. /doh
I assume 10 others are asking the same question as I type this, but wouldn't a video demonstrating the tech published weeks before the patent was filed constitute prior art, rendering the patent non-novel and invalid?
I thought the version was a penis length competition.
At least that's what it looks like since Chrome and Firefox started changing major versions every fucking week or so.
It's not just the version number, everyone knows you have to take the version number times download size divided by the square root of length between releases (in days).
They've largely replaced the X-Ray backscatter machines with millimeter wave scanners, and they are very much still in use in the US. You can see where and how they're in use at TSA Status.
I'm glad they've gotten rid of the potentially harmful ones (although I gather the risk is very low); but my primary complaints have always been the gross violation of privacy, ineffectiveness, and government fraud and waste related to the program.
I've now got everything stored on multiple HDDs instead of questionable optical disks -- which, while not having the same physical appeal, means I'll likely have my music itself (plus all the metadata that the originals never had) for decades to come.
I'm in the process of ripping all my CDs and pressing them onto 78 RPM records, so after the next Carrington event destroys the power grid, I can still listen to "Call Me Maybe" on my spring-motor Victrola.
Because it never hurts to be prepared!
I've been a commuter cyclist in Chicago and always observed the traffic laws out of a sense of self-preservation. Even still, I was almost killed by inattentive drivers several times. My own wife has suffered for years from pain resulting from complications related to losing a tooth after a driver forced her into a curb while riding.
That being said, Chicago cyclists by and large already have total disregard for all traffic laws, so I don't see enacting laws like this here having any effect whatsoever, except perhaps giving police officers fewer opportunities to issue tickets to cyclists, as if that were a thing that ever happened. Now I'm all for common sense improvements to traffic flow, living like I do in a congested city where cycling is popular, but here are some of the other common sense practices of local cyclists that I observe regularly:
1) running red lights and stop signs at full speed without slowing at all
2) riding the wrong way down one-way streets through moving traffic
3) riding at night without any lights of any kind
4) doing 3) while riding the wrong way in traffic
5) doing 4) during inclement weather (once, I couldn't see the guy until he was 10 feet away)
6) running a red light while making a right turn into a lane of moving traffic without even looking (I see this a lot), often causing the cars that would have hit them to swerve in the path of other vehicles.
7) riding on crowded sidewalks and through crowded crosswalks at high speed
8) trying to pass moving buses on the right as they're approaching a bus stop. This happens all the time.
9) passing a line of cars stopped at a red light on the right, only to pull up in front of the line (not to the side), in the crosswalk, forcing the cars to wait behind the bicyclists once the light has turned green until a break appears in the next lane (or oncoming lane if there's only one lane).
I've also been rear-ended while stopped at a stop sign by an inattentive bicyclist, and seen a cyclist enter an intersection from the sidewalk against the light right into the path of a car (the cyclist survived, but I don't think his bike did). This isn't meant as a tirade against bicycling - I love it myself, and I think it's great that Chicago is devoting resources to make it easier and safer - but it's frustrating when the city takes away traffic lanes from cars on a congested road and converts them to bicycle lanes, complete with pylons and special signaling to accommodate bicycles, only to be completely disregarded by the cyclists (see Dearborn St. downtown). There's no give-and-take here. Riders and drivers can work well together when each is considerate of the other, but it seems like it's mostly a one-way street around here, so to speak.
If there's to be a push for cycling as a major means of transportation on busy roads (which it already is), I think it's worth considering licensing tests for bicyclists (as well as traffic law enforcement).
Although the word sister can also mean "of the same type or origin", and is often used in English to describe similar things, especially if they come from the same place. You often hear of "sister ships" or "sister cities", and although these words have gender in other languages, they don't in English (though it derives from gendered languages). I think it's in this sense that the article refers to the "sun's sister".
What's your basis for saying so?
I was just paraphrasing the study.
I was going to dash off a quick rebuttal, but decided to check Wiki first. See Memory consolidation and Decay Theory. Some research indicates that a disruption during retrieval can alter a memory, but it's somewhat controversial. Either way, studies indicate that recollection reinforces memory. Also interesting is Retrieval-induced forgetting (accessing a memory, while reinforcing it, may cause you to forget related information).
I have learned some new things. Damn you, Wikipedia, I have work to do today!
Even if human consciousnes is based on method X, that doesn't mean that consciousness has to be based on method X. Remember, the original Turing machine thought experiment involved paper reels, while modern computers use electronics.
Furthermore, even a copy of the brain doesn't necessarily need to simulate it down to the "physical level". You can probably abstract away a lot of the molecular machinery of the cells; you can likely abstract away less flexible subsystems (like body function regulation); you could perhaps even use techniques of JIT to "compile" more abstract representations from "source code" of a neural network, and update the original network and recompile when learning.
Fair enough, but if consciousness is by nature an emergent phenomenon of underlying system X, creating a similar consciousness would require duplicating that type of underlying system. We only have one data point for what systems yield consciousness, so there's nothing else to imitate as of yet. From the perspective of computability theory, modern computers are no more powerful than a Turing machine. The physical medium of the "paper tape" is irrelevant to the mathematical model.
When trying to "build a brain" you would of course use different materials or methods to model synapses, neurons, etc.; but you'd still be building the same type of system, capable of dynamic symbolic representation and association, whether in software or hardware. It's possible you could make a more efficient system with optimized aspects (think about Hashlife), but mathematically it's the same type of system.
At least until we know exactly how consciousness comes about, and then we can look at whether other types of systems might yield the same result.
They were saying that the act of retrieving memory would erode the memory.
Right - it's not the act of recollection that causes the memory to decay.
Memories are not a sequence of visual images like a film reel; they're associations between "symbols" representing the things you experienced at the time the memory was formed. The more often you think about the memory, the stronger those associations become, and the more permanent this memory - however, the initial impression is not guaranteed to be a perfect record, so details that are incorrectly recorded initially will become reinforced over time as the memory is recalled. Whether a detail is correctly recorded initially depends on how much attention you were paying to that detail and other factors (such as how "intense" the experience was).
So memories do decay, but it's from weak associations, not from more frequent recollection. How does this pertain to consciousness? If human consciousness is a phenomenon of a massively complex system of symbolic representation in the brain, then it's only developed gradually over years of absorbing input and forming connections, and developing an AI with true consciousness basically requires simulating a brain down to a low physical level and having it "grow up" over time. This is both discouraging from the perspective of the technology required, and encouraging in that if we have the technology for neural simulation then the result of artificial consciousness may be reliably achieved.
...the post-election review of the existing ballots by the major news organizations...
Your link discusses a partial review of overvotes in January 2001. We've been discussing a more nearly comprehensive review done much later. Try to keep up.
Except for the statewide recount carried out as a partnership with several news agencies after the SCOTUS terminated the official recount efforts. That one came out with Gore on top
Thanks for the link - I remember when the study came out but had lost track of the details. The wiki article indicates that Gore would have won only if the most generous standards for determining voter intent (e.g. dimpled chad, slight mark on optical ballots, etc.) were consistently applied in a statewide recount. So yes, there is a scenario in which Gore "might have won", but the wiki article also mentions some important caveats that make it impossible to say with certainty what the "correct" result of counting every ballot would have been.
liar troll
That's a bit excessive, as what he said is technically correct - Gore lost every official recount, and the study you link to indicates he would also have lost every recount effort he was asking for in court.
IF one of the more liberal areas of Florida didn't add negative votes for Gore it might have made a difference too.
The wiki article you link to states
The error was caught and corrected the night of the election. Of the registered voters in the precinct, 22 voted for Bush, 193 for Gore, and 1 for Nader.
so, no effect on the result or recounts.
Now the complete lack of being able to use GPS outside of the city for T-mobile is downright annoying, but more of a failing of Google maps not to predownload the entire route.
Google Maps supports offline maps. It had been removed in a previous update, but it looks like it's back (I still have the pre-removal version).
To reach that, i would have to talk for 62,5 days. In a month. I usually talk less.
Unless you're constantly talking out of both sides of your mouth...
In this case "fall horizontal" means "fall into a horizontal position". Not "fall horizontally".
I smell a Photoshop Friday theme...
Watching that video on YouTube, it'd be tough to clean up or reconstruct - there's a lot of information missing.
Well, for some people, the 1940's might as well have been a million years ago. Plus the Earth has actually traveled pretty far in the last 70 years.
Or maybe the Jedi will discover Red Matter and travel through time and space to help Earth defeat Kahn during the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s. Actually now I want to see that.
Personally, I thought one of the better Star Trek: Voyager episodes was the one with the Klingons fighting Nazis, so there's precedent (of course, that was on the holodeck, but entertaining nonetheless).
Well, since so much time has passed since Return of the Jedi, I believe in Episode VII Han Solo will be fighting the Soviets. Seriously, though, you can't have Star Wars without a villain, and Thrawn was a great one.
More on topic, the Star Wars universe is a rich one with lots of potential, and it seems to me like there should always be a film in the works. I would have no problem if it became like the Bond franchise, with a new movie every few years. Sure, some will be crap, but those don't detract from the quality of the good ones. What if 7, 8, and 9 turn out to be good ones? Will people still say no one should have made any after RotJ?
I look forward to seeing another Star Wars movie.
With Ara, a dead battery in the middle of a day trip doesn’t set off a frantic search for someone with a charger. Instead, you pop in a spare.
Revolutionary.
French Revolutionary
Industrial Revolutionary
Sliced Bread Revolutionary
Apple Revolutionary
Swappable Batteries
So you're saying you don't know anyone that doesn't have access to free, unsubsidized iPhones and Galaxies S3, and don't understand why anyone would ever need anything different?
1) Please tell us your cell phone carrier that gives away free unsubsidized smartphones, and your subscription plan.
2) Different people have different wants and needs, and not all people are like you. This shouldn't need explaining.
Exactly, your Grandma won't be assembling them, you'll be asking her "what do you want your phone to do?" and then build her one based on requirements and budget, just like her computer that you built, only with the upside that when she can't figure out how to turn the phone on, she can't call you to bug you about it!