from an engineering stand point alone. In the photos the entire saucer section is only held up by the neck piece down to the engineering section. Building this thing would be a feat all on its own.
FTFA:
"We got Ken Ball (former head of engineering at Disney’s MAPO) involved to figure out how to engineer and support it. (Ultimately we realized we would need to add some supports on the outer edge of the “disc” section due to the extremely high wind conditions in Vegas. For this we created a high tech “scaffolding structure” that gave the ship more of the appearance of being in an open-air dry dock. I have not yet located that sketch, but I’ll try to find it.)"
There's a rumor that the American Physical Society is banned from hosting their conferences in Vegas because physicists don't gamble, don't have champagne parties with hookers, and drink considerably less then the average Vegas-goer. I'd assume that these points also applied to anyone getting excited about a Star Trek themed hotel.
In 2005, chess program The Baron played two Chess960 games against Chess960 World Champion Peter Svidler; Svidler won 1½–½. The chess program Shredder, developed by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen of Germany, played two games against Zoltán Almási from Hungary; Shredder won 2–0.
Seems Fischer chess isn't going to save you from computer dominance.
So, a cloud business should have their servers in Russia or China or somewhere that will tell the US Government to "fuck off"?
Kinda of sad how the same reason hosting is those countries is preferred for criminal and shady dealings is now a reason for legitimate businesses to keep servers their too.
I totally believed this was a legitimate story until I got to the last paragraph:
The official word from the FBI is that the system will be launched "in the summer." Fulgham expressed confidence that Sentinel will not only work as advertised, but even come in a few million dollars under its $451 million budget. But if there are any last-minute glitches, Fulgham won't be around to fix them. Let's hope he's not needed.
I was willing to accept that the government managed to produce a functional, apparently well received and highly usable system. But a government project that came in under budget? That's pushing credibility a bit too far.
If the next one they do results in a death, then it drops to 83%... a fairly big change for adding a single case.
I think they're aware of that, and they'll make a special effort to not kill the next patient.
But if they don't kill the next one, their survival rate only goes up to 89%. So they gain 1 percentage point if they succeed, but lose 5 if they fail? With those lopsided odds, it seems the logical choice is not to risk it.
'conservative' means different things to different people, but checking the dictionary gives this definition: "disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."
I think most people agree science is a driving force for change, whether through application of new knowledge or development of new technology. So, at least based on the definition above, science directly opposes conservative goals. It's not surprising for people to distrust something that actively threatens their ideology.
I've heard this too. A family member of mine has said that we're free to allow her organs to be used for whatever once she's dead. But she won't put 'organ donor' on her ID because she wants medical decisions that affect her to be made based entirely on her medical state, not what may or may not happen to her organs.
Does this challenge the notion that ISOC is a 'trusted, independent source of Internet leadership?'
Why would you think it does? Anyone who's qualified for any sort of leadership position is going to have past experience with some company or group. When you hire someone, you don't magically become a shill of that person's past employer.
I don't think it's that simple. Of course you could write the program to include answers made of letters rotated 180 degrees. But how often does an answer like that happen? I'm not a big crossword person, but i'd guess it's pretty rare. Maybe 1 out of 10,000 - if even that much? So while you might get that one clue right, meanwhile you've expanded the set of possible answers to include numerous elements with an extremely low chance of ever being correct. In addition to the added expense of considering them, you may inadvertently get wrong answers from including those options.
Whether those issues would be addressed by making that search a fall back option depends on how the program works. For that particular clue, the program may have come up with another answer, in which case the fall back routine would never have been called. Or the fallback might produce false answers that are worse than not having an answer for a given clue.
I guess the point is, you can add custom routines to account for every possibility you're smart enough to think up. And for common tricks, it's probably worth doing. But for what are essentially one off edge cases, whether those extra routines will actually help isn't clear. They may make things worse.
Yeah, it's probably a lot more biased than it needs to be.
But as for hating patent trolIs, are there many people who actually like them? Obviously some lawyers because it keeps them employed, but other than that? And is there anyone who tries to make a case that they are somehow beneficial to society? (serious questions BTW. I've never heard any argument in support of this practice)
We all know children love emoticons, if this patent stands than children might not be able to use 1 click emoticons anymore.
Please think of the children and revoke this patent. (how come the 'think of the children' argument never uses it's powers for good?)
While I certainly believe that electronics can have an effect on other electronics, I in no way believe that a PED is capable of disrupting any mission-critical system on a modern commercial airliner. This comes from the background of a computer scientist, electrical engineer, and a pilot. The notion that a small portable device could do anything more than interfere with radio communications in a plane is nonsense.
Ok, a) radio communications are important. Missing a transmission because of interference causes a problem to pilot who didn't get it, and also for every other aircraft on the frequency since valuable radio time is wasted repeating the transmission. b) I assume you're aware that some navigation signals are radio waves. If you're going to concede it can interfere with radio, how are nav system immune? or do you not consider navigation to be "mission critical"?
First, there is absolutely no way a phone or similar device can disable autopilot unless it is somehow connected to the avionics systems. The autopilot activation doesn't base anything on radio communications, and all of the aircraft electronics are in fact heavily RF shielded. To trip up an autopilot, a PED would have to somehow disturb the gyroscopes controlling the instrumentation that feeds data to the AP. As these are primarily controlled by independent vacuum systems and physical gyroscopes behind the dials, that seems rather unlikely.
Depends on the autopilot and what's tracking. If it's following a heading from the gyros, I agree it seems unlikely a PED could somehow mess with the vacuum system. But an AP set to follow a nav signal can't track a signal that isn't coming through. What does it do then?
Do you really think my Kindle is going to kill your fuel pump? Or the hydraulic system? Or the Cabin Pressure Control System? Or the heating pack? Or the FADEC in the engines all the way out on the wing? Or the landing gear?
No, and neither does the FAA. They specifically state that the concern is interference to communication and navigation systems.
Here are links to the 10 patents discussed in the case. I made it partway through one of them before I decided to go have a beer instead. Maybe someone else has more patience.
6,907,566 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage 7,100,111 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage 7,373,599 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage 7,668,861 System and method to determine the validity of an interaction on a network 7,269,590 Method and system for customizing views of information associated with a social network user 7,599,935 Control for enabling a user to preview display of selected content based on another user's authorization level 7,454,509 Online playback system with community bias 5,983,227 Dynamic page generator 7,747,648 World modeling using a relationship network with communication channels to entities 7,406,501 System and method for instant messaging using an e-mail protocol
You're missing the point of the study. They aren't trying to show how often people get their phones back. Although they do report it, it's a secondary result. The real result they are trying to show how is often the data in the phone is accessed, which was nearly always.
That's a greater concern for many businesses and individuals. But as you note, there are flaws in the study. They're spinning it like people immediately start digging through all the data in the phone with the implication that it's malicious. In 25 of the 48 found phones*, they were contacted by the finder. Clearly the finder had to access the phone to get the contact info to find the owner. So the broadly defined "access" may be well intentioned in many (even most) cases.
* BTW: 25 out of 48 is more than half (not less as the summary claims).
A group of us were out on Saturday night, and while walking along the seaside (at Redcliffe, QLD, Australia) found a Blackberry on a park bench.
There was no password, no contacts labelled in anything that looked like a home number, and all names had expletives in them.
Rather than try to find who the owner was (battery nearly dead) we dropped it off at the nearest Police station.
Random thought: It could have been the business phone of an escort. You wouldn't expect to find a home number. And a lot of times the contacts are used to store the phone numbers of creeps they don't want to hear from again, hence the expletives.
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from an engineering stand point alone. In the photos the entire saucer section is only held up by the neck piece down to the engineering section. Building this thing would be a feat all on its own.
FTFA: "We got Ken Ball (former head of engineering at Disney’s MAPO) involved to figure out how to engineer and support it. (Ultimately we realized we would need to add some supports on the outer edge of the “disc” section due to the extremely high wind conditions in Vegas. For this we created a high tech “scaffolding structure” that gave the ship more of the appearance of being in an open-air dry dock. I have not yet located that sketch, but I’ll try to find it.)"
There's a rumor that the American Physical Society is banned from hosting their conferences in Vegas because physicists don't gamble, don't have champagne parties with hookers, and drink considerably less then the average Vegas-goer. I'd assume that these points also applied to anyone getting excited about a Star Trek themed hotel.
You don't know many physicists, do you?
Or Fischer chess.
From that page:
In 2005, chess program The Baron played two Chess960 games against Chess960 World Champion Peter Svidler; Svidler won 1½–½. The chess program Shredder, developed by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen of Germany, played two games against Zoltán Almási from Hungary; Shredder won 2–0.
Seems Fischer chess isn't going to save you from computer dominance.
Neither TFS nor TFA link to the website in question, so here's it:
http://shahamat-english.com/
Unfortunately, it seems that the English version doesn't have a Q&A section, so you can't troll them unless you know Pashto. Too bad.
If you really want to ask them a question, that site lists an gmail address and a phone number...
they liked airplanes
No. You're confusing the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The Taliban wasn't involved in 9/11 and they even condemned the attack.
So, a cloud business should have their servers in Russia or China or somewhere that will tell the US Government to "fuck off"?
Kinda of sad how the same reason hosting is those countries is preferred for criminal and shady dealings is now a reason for legitimate businesses to keep servers their too.
I totally believed this was a legitimate story until I got to the last paragraph:
The official word from the FBI is that the system will be launched "in the summer." Fulgham expressed confidence that Sentinel will not only work as advertised, but even come in a few million dollars under its $451 million budget. But if there are any last-minute glitches, Fulgham won't be around to fix them. Let's hope he's not needed.
I was willing to accept that the government managed to produce a functional, apparently well received and highly usable system. But a government project that came in under budget? That's pushing credibility a bit too far.
Maybe it's best not to use a company's own network to steal from said company? (yeah, yeah, copying isn't stealing...)
If the next one they do results in a death, then it drops to 83%... a fairly big change for adding a single case.
I think they're aware of that, and they'll make a special effort to not kill the next patient.
But if they don't kill the next one, their survival rate only goes up to 89%. So they gain 1 percentage point if they succeed, but lose 5 if they fail? With those lopsided odds, it seems the logical choice is not to risk it.
that read it as "Expensive" at first?
Nope, i read it that way too
'conservative' means different things to different people, but checking the dictionary gives this definition: "disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."
I think most people agree science is a driving force for change, whether through application of new knowledge or development of new technology. So, at least based on the definition above, science directly opposes conservative goals. It's not surprising for people to distrust something that actively threatens their ideology.
I've heard this too. A family member of mine has said that we're free to allow her organs to be used for whatever once she's dead. But she won't put 'organ donor' on her ID because she wants medical decisions that affect her to be made based entirely on her medical state, not what may or may not happen to her organs.
(By 'due process', I just mean proper procedures, not trial. Bad choice of words.)
At least in the US, that appears to be the new official definition of 'due process'.
You should patent your idea as "method to derive entertainment from the current state of the patent system".
That's about on a par with saying 'Hey, Hitler wasn't all bad. After all, he did kill Hitler!'
No. Actually it's nothing like that.
As a general rule, when you use Hitler in a comparison, that comparison is probably flawed.
Does this challenge the notion that ISOC is a 'trusted, independent source of Internet leadership?'
Why would you think it does? Anyone who's qualified for any sort of leadership position is going to have past experience with some company or group. When you hire someone, you don't magically become a shill of that person's past employer.
I don't think it's that simple. Of course you could write the program to include answers made of letters rotated 180 degrees. But how often does an answer like that happen? I'm not a big crossword person, but i'd guess it's pretty rare. Maybe 1 out of 10,000 - if even that much? So while you might get that one clue right, meanwhile you've expanded the set of possible answers to include numerous elements with an extremely low chance of ever being correct. In addition to the added expense of considering them, you may inadvertently get wrong answers from including those options.
Whether those issues would be addressed by making that search a fall back option depends on how the program works. For that particular clue, the program may have come up with another answer, in which case the fall back routine would never have been called. Or the fallback might produce false answers that are worse than not having an answer for a given clue.
I guess the point is, you can add custom routines to account for every possibility you're smart enough to think up. And for common tricks, it's probably worth doing. But for what are essentially one off edge cases, whether those extra routines will actually help isn't clear. They may make things worse.
Have ask what 'You don't say (so)!' think It is a pus to think such Christ alive!
Obviously.
You're preaching to the choir here buddy.
I sense that someone REALLY hates patent trolls.
Yeah, it's probably a lot more biased than it needs to be.
But as for hating patent trolIs, are there many people who actually like them? Obviously some lawyers because it keeps them employed, but other than that? And is there anyone who tries to make a case that they are somehow beneficial to society? (serious questions BTW. I've never heard any argument in support of this practice)
Dear judges and patent people,
We all know children love emoticons, if this patent stands than children might not be able to use 1 click emoticons anymore. Please think of the children and revoke this patent. (how come the 'think of the children' argument never uses it's powers for good?)
While I certainly believe that electronics can have an effect on other electronics, I in no way believe that a PED is capable of disrupting any mission-critical system on a modern commercial airliner. This comes from the background of a computer scientist, electrical engineer, and a pilot. The notion that a small portable device could do anything more than interfere with radio communications in a plane is nonsense.
Ok, a) radio communications are important. Missing a transmission because of interference causes a problem to pilot who didn't get it, and also for every other aircraft on the frequency since valuable radio time is wasted repeating the transmission. b) I assume you're aware that some navigation signals are radio waves. If you're going to concede it can interfere with radio, how are nav system immune? or do you not consider navigation to be "mission critical"?
First, there is absolutely no way a phone or similar device can disable autopilot unless it is somehow connected to the avionics systems. The autopilot activation doesn't base anything on radio communications, and all of the aircraft electronics are in fact heavily RF shielded. To trip up an autopilot, a PED would have to somehow disturb the gyroscopes controlling the instrumentation that feeds data to the AP. As these are primarily controlled by independent vacuum systems and physical gyroscopes behind the dials, that seems rather unlikely.
Depends on the autopilot and what's tracking. If it's following a heading from the gyros, I agree it seems unlikely a PED could somehow mess with the vacuum system. But an AP set to follow a nav signal can't track a signal that isn't coming through. What does it do then?
Do you really think my Kindle is going to kill your fuel pump? Or the hydraulic system? Or the Cabin Pressure Control System? Or the heating pack? Or the FADEC in the engines all the way out on the wing? Or the landing gear?
No, and neither does the FAA. They specifically state that the concern is interference to communication and navigation systems.
That sounds quite plausible. But I'm curious, how did you come about this information?
A friend of a friend is/was an escort and mentioned it offhand one day. I thought it was interesting enough to remember.
Here are links to the 10 patents discussed in the case. I made it partway through one of them before I decided to go have a beer instead. Maybe someone else has more patience.
6,907,566 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage
7,100,111 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage
7,373,599 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage
7,668,861 System and method to determine the validity of an interaction on a network
7,269,590 Method and system for customizing views of information associated with a social network user
7,599,935 Control for enabling a user to preview display of selected content based on another user's authorization level
7,454,509 Online playback system with community bias
5,983,227 Dynamic page generator
7,747,648 World modeling using a relationship network with communication channels to entities
7,406,501 System and method for instant messaging using an e-mail protocol
You're missing the point of the study. They aren't trying to show how often people get their phones back. Although they do report it, it's a secondary result. The real result they are trying to show how is often the data in the phone is accessed, which was nearly always.
That's a greater concern for many businesses and individuals. But as you note, there are flaws in the study. They're spinning it like people immediately start digging through all the data in the phone with the implication that it's malicious. In 25 of the 48 found phones*, they were contacted by the finder. Clearly the finder had to access the phone to get the contact info to find the owner. So the broadly defined "access" may be well intentioned in many (even most) cases.
* BTW: 25 out of 48 is more than half (not less as the summary claims).
A group of us were out on Saturday night, and while walking along the seaside (at Redcliffe, QLD, Australia) found a Blackberry on a park bench. There was no password, no contacts labelled in anything that looked like a home number, and all names had expletives in them. Rather than try to find who the owner was (battery nearly dead) we dropped it off at the nearest Police station.
Random thought: It could have been the business phone of an escort. You wouldn't expect to find a home number. And a lot of times the contacts are used to store the phone numbers of creeps they don't want to hear from again, hence the expletives.