Oh, are they trying to pull a/Videologic/ on us? That must have been a classic... Don't know if they ever admitted it.. Altough when people renamed the d3dtunnel.exe (or what the D3D file was called.) to something else their card suddenly didn't perform very well.
And if you renamed a real game to that name you got nasty graphical errors.
And on anther note, Tom falled from grace a long time ago. Around when he couldn't accept that 3dfx made better cards than nVida. (Nowadays nVida is on top, but they weren't in the beginning.)
Not to mention that hand dryers make your hands sticky, at least I always thinks so. Never use them, I prefer to just wipe my hands on toiletpaper instead.
And even if you're not a hygiene freak it does strike one as stupid to take air from a bathroom, with pretty much the highest concentration of germs and bacteria in your house, heat it up a bit (so the germs are really happy) then blow them on your recently washed hands.
I'd like to see a "Bluetooth port" on my computer int the future. That way my computer would be able to interact direct with laptops, PDA's, watches etc. But I personally would rather have a cable to my modem/monitor/whatever. If for no other reason than that it would be more practical. I really don't move my monitor often, I don't *need* it to be remotely connected.
And then you don't have to worry about someone scrambling or listening in on your communications. Or someone trying to hijack your hardware. (If you build it, someone will try to hack it!)
Having but with a technology like Jini this kind of things could be great. Let's not hook up everything like this, just like you don't use a PCI bus for everything today.
Why not? I mean seriously, how does source get created? In many ways you could say that they are in many ways the same, organised data.
Now you might claim that music is "artistic" and therefore more "valueable" than for instance source code. Why should that be though? I mean there are examples of really good music, but just turn on your hit radio and ou will find that most of todays marketed music is just the equivalent of VB "programmers".
And seriously, if you really do code you know that at least at times it is an art. (Capital A at times.)
I do know that I actually used to agree with you. But perhaps that's just because I'm used to programming, I'm not used to composing. And if you ask the average Joe on the street, which do you would seem as more "magical" writing a song or making a computer do what you want?
But people don't come to a mechanic and ask why their car won't run when they are out of gas.
Computers are still in their infancy when it comes to "mental penetration", I assume that the "what do you mean, out of gas?" question was something that mechanics had to endure for many years before cars where such a commodity that it was "common sense". We are still a couple of generations from that point in computers I recon.
And one more thing. If you are going to "convert" to Linux, BUY a distro. Or buy a beginners book with a CD included. That is the *best* way to get answers right away, and get help and advice on the bumpy road.
Personally I'd recommend "Learning Debian GNU/Linux" from O'Reilly if anyone is heading into that adventure. This is a linux beginners book mainly. But even though I have run Debian for some time I can find some bits of info in it. For instance they have a chapter comparing different Office like programs. It's far better than the GPL one from New Riders Publ. which I wouldn't recommend. Basically because it doesn't go far enough. It leaves you hanging after you have installed.
There are a *lot* of Linux books on the market today. For any distro, even Red Hat which comes with a fairly good manual IMHO. Instead of saying RTFM perhaps we should give the more constructive Read A Book advice. (Naturally, a specific book to read would be preferable.) Then you can read about devices, bootmanagers, filesystems and all that and not have to do it the painful way. (Which I did naturally.;-)
One more mechanic metaphor: If you ask your local linux helper at least you don't get the "Ahh, sounds like the zerobitconverter is acting up. So/dev/zeros are getting 1's. That will be $500 thankyouverymuch.";-)
The idea that intelligence is as simple as mimicking reactions has already been proven to be false. The machine may at first appear to be intelligent, but only if you behave in a way that the machine's creators have anticipated. It is unable to adapt, on it's own. (You can program it to adapt, but that's not the same thing.)
To truly create an AI you must make it self-aware (At least, that's what's believed now.) and that is harder than any behaviourist's algorithm.
If you are interested in topics like this I'd recommend you to pick up Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. There are many other books that approach the idea of sentience from a scientific angle, (I'd call psychology a "soft" science, they are generally not interested in trying to tie their models into the actual construct of the brain, naturally that is the hardest part.) but I'd recommend this one anyways, because it's just so damned good!:-) (It's been reviewed here on/.)
On the topic of robots and life: As I remember to short-story (Nope, didn't read the book, nor have I seen the film.) it's not so much that he wants to be human, he wants to be alive, and to be able to die. (Most people don't want to be too individual neither, particularly not if it's not their choice.)
That's all this AI construct have to say about that!;-)
How do you make a treadmill work when you start walking diagonally? Or perhaps I'm just not getting the idea here fully. But to me it seems like that wouldn't work. Well, you could naturally use some input device to alter direction... But I don't think that was the general idea.
Otherwise I think a "big trackball" would be the easiest to implement. Besides the fact that you would need a rather big ball so that you didn't risk loosing your balance due to the curved surface.
Per definition being a racist has to do with race. Not about belief structures.
You can certainly be a bigot or narrowminded and lot's of other things for critisizing christians, but racist isn't really one of them.
Furthermore I really think it's religious sealots that generally display the most unwillingness when it comes to accepting others ideas. Not atheists or agnostics.
One of the AC comments that was downmoderated was a bit tasteless, but the one about how racism doesn't have to do with religion was IMHO unfairly moderated. Don't use moderation instead of argumentation people!
It's kind of hard to determine if the point you have found is a local maxima or minima when you are working with 3d graphs and irregular definition sets. A "look and solve" solution is only valuable when the problem is easy enough for a high-school kid to solve it, and then you hardly need a computer.
So I don't believe that is a workable solution at all. There are naturally nice algorithms for these types of problems, and they can be used, to some extent, by computers as well.
GA are not generally used to solve easy functions or similar trival problems. Rather they are used when no other solution is apparent. You are naturally not guaranteed that you get the best solution, but as long as you get one that is "good enough" then that is sufficient.
An example of such a situation is where they made a filter circuit (highpass or lowpass, can't remember) with roughly 40 components. This problem is virtually insolvable with general algorithms, but genetic algorithms saved the day. (They did also create some "dead parts" of the circuit, that were removed. Apparently latent genes are found here as well.;-)
True, it's the mathematics and science department. If anyone's interested there exist a CS department in Stockholm, but it's at KTH. (the Royal Institute of Technology)
I wrote in about this to/. before, unfortunately I couldn't find any english links. (This was on Friday, when it actually happened, *ahem*.) The links I found then can be found on www.idg.se that link should take you directly to the article. It's in Swedish though.
Furthermore, he (Linus) was refered to as "Dr." in a Swedish paper, so it might be correct. Assuming that the writer had done his research.;-)
Naturally a lot of people like to read sensational news. (Personally I never buy those types of newspapers, but naturally I read them if I have one nearby.) I don't agree with you that the readers are to be blamed for what the papers print. It's the editor that does the *editing* not Joe Blow, construction worker. Joe Blow may think it's a lot of fun to read sensational news, but that's his problem. And if there were no such news available he wouldn't read it.
I just think it's pathetic when editors are defended because "there is a market". Does that make selling drugs morally right? No? Why not? It's not the dealer's fault that there are a lot of junkies afterall. If no-one could take drugs you wouldn't have any junkies. But there would still be people that would use drugs, if they could. The market would still be there.
And I'm not saying that the editors need to throw all news away because they are new. What they need to do is to stop spinning every story in the way they believe will cause most hysteria. That's what sells papers naturally, and money is God after all.
When I was studying for a year in the states I remember my publishing teacher telling us that when we put "opinions" in the school paper we had to clearly mark it as such. How often do you see an "opinions" section in TV news? They are almost always weaved into the story quite transparently. And then people understandably mistakes them for "facts". Perhaps this is the watchers fault, they are not thinking critically, but isn't that the point with TV? That what is shown is accepted for the truth. I mean, they couldn't broadcast it if it weren't true, could they?
I'm not saying that people that fail to think critically are stupid. It's extremely easy to forget that, I do it myself at times. But the reason we do that is because the headlines are made in order to provoke. Some fail, because they are so obviously provocative that you can't mistake them for anything else. But often you first tend to agree with it, before you start thinking.
Newspaper editors know this. That's why they make articles and headlines like they do. And if we don't blame them for that who should we blame?
There is one thing I prefer with the h2g2 site over Everything site. The h2g2 articles are generally of much higher quality. Many of the things on everything are "only" funny, they are not particularaly useful.
I imagine that what Adams is thinking about here is more of a *real* travellers guide, with a twist. And that would be, IMHO, much more useful. Actually I wanted something like this myself as I was travelling around Europe this summer. Finding the "great places" can be quite hard. And I would gladly provide some info about some of the neat stuff I find when out travelling. It would be like a travellers society or something. Could probably be of much use for backpackers and such if it had a decent price. (And a fairly big database.)
But the system could be rather fragile as well. I mean, if I get commercials on it I'm not going to be very happy. So I recon it needs quite a lot of work to keep it healthy.
Or some sort of "community moderation" as here on Slashdot.
Interesting problem though. Looking forward to seeing their solution. It would be great if we could get some kind of "module" for the Visor as well.:-)
These kind of cases tend to make me feel a bit sick. And not necessarily because of the fact that pedophilia is despicable.
Not too long ago there was a case about an alledged pedophile here in Lund where I study. (He was a researcher at some liberal-arts institute.) Apparently they had found child-pornography on his work computer and thus he was prosecuted. The papers naturally made a big deal out of it and he seemed to be very guilty. (His name was never mentioned, but since he was no longer allowed to work at school it wouldn't be hard for someone to work out who he was.) The papers had some stuff about how he had told someone that the pictures where "research" and then given a different story to the police.
Later on it turns out he had been on leave for about half a year. During this period of time he hadn't been using his computer very much naturally. This did, unexpectedly not appear in very many headlines.
My point is that I find these witchhunts that the media persue again and again to be in some cases worse than the crimes. The current "witch" at least in Sweden are pedophiles, formely they have been BBS-junkies (who were alledgly bombmaking terrorists). Similarities can for instance be seen in Littletown with goths. (I'm not making any claims about goths' sexual preferences or anything of that kind here.)
Why is it that so much of todays media are sensational? Why does todays news have to be more gruesome than yesterdays? And why do so many people put up with it?
And then I read some of the comments here on/. and they were almost worse. From the artcles I saw no real conclusive evidence that the man *hadn't* seen it all as a "roleplay". Now I don't have the IRC logs, so I can't really make a judgement here. The point is, neither does anyone else. (Unless you work for the prosecution or so.)
Another thing that frightens me a bit is that the guy is mentioned with full name, occupation etc. Even if he is found innocent he will be marked as "pedophile" for the rest of his life. So sue the papers you say, but will that make his life better? It's not as if he has a shortage of money.
I'm not condoning his alledged actions. I'm not trying to say that pedophiles are "only misunderstood people ". I am trying to say that with all the new technology we have at our hands today it becomes easy to pump out news at a rapid rate. And for many more people to see the same news than ever before. (Not that I'm telling you something new here.)
Unfortuantely it also seem like many people fail to understand that there are actually people behind those news. And it often seem as if the reporters don't remember that either. So before you start lighting up the tourches and marching off to burn a new witch, make sure it's not some innocent old lady.
Someone makes an overly-pessistic conclusion that would discourage someone to "press the button" and you find them to be idiots? I'd rather say that they used the same means as their opponents to counterbalance people like Teller. I agree with you that this isn't "good science" but perhaps sometimes "bad science" is better than global disaster? (Or more local as in the case of nuking Alaska.) This is also more of a political issue, and then lying is a way of life, sadly.
And when Sagan is on the topic I think most people will agree that he has certainly ended up on positive karma. Or do you think it was because of faked results or poor predictions (Global weather is something we still can't simulate very accurately.) that the thouchdown spot for Sojourner was named after him?
What's sick about making thermo-nuclear weapons? What do you think? No matter which country "won" that war humanity would most likely be better off speaking Russian. And considering the mentality of many politicians I don't doubt that some would be capable of launching even if they knew the situation was hopeless "Just because the other guys shouldn't win!" That may be appropriate behaviour in a sandbox. But hardly so on this scale.
Finally, all nations have done atrocities in name of what they thought to be the truth. Do you think that the Soviet thought of themselves as the bad guys? Don't you think they also had some "save the world" motive? Or perhaps the US government patented that? All countries and societies have done horrible things, but when you are actually *proud* of it it get's really sad.
Wether you hit a civilian target due to poor aiming or poor recon is quite uninteresting for the civilian casualties in question. And on the accuracy of bombs I distinctly recollect that there were several incidents where bombs whent off in a non-military area during the bombings in Bosnia. Don't believe all the news you are fed from CNN etc, some of those reports seemed to be sponsored by NATO. (And some I saw where apparently sponsored by Milosovech, so I'm not saying NATO are the bad guys here.)
However I seem to have wondered OT a bit here, what I was really trying say was that you can't fight a war without civilian casualties. If you believe that you are even more stupid than people that think communism work. Particularly when you throw thermo-nuclear weapons into the mix.
Furthermore I just loathe the (generally) American attitude that communism is the devil and root of all evil. Communism in itself isn't too be blamed more than christianity or democrazy for the bad things that have been done in their respective "names". Nazism is a different issue since it is based on anti-semetism. And for the record I personally use to debunk communists and "new-liberalist" in my surroundings for their naïve thinking, so it's not like I agree with communism.
It does however seem as if we can agree on that Teller is a crazy old man. And that we should all be happy that his kind didn't get all of their ideas through. I just get so tired of all the "you would all be speaking Russian if it weren't for us!" attitudes that are predominant amongst them. Playing on people's fears should be a capital punishment when the entire world is at stake in your little game.
Who said anything at all about their civilian populations, or 'wiping out', for that matter? --- In addition, it was quite possible to fight communism effectively without 'killing children'. For example, the MX missile could find a target to an accuracy of 100 yards. This made it easy to choose specifically military targets.
Yes, it worked real well in both Saudi-arabia and now lately in Bosnia, didn't it? I'm not proposing that you should believe everything that was blamed on NATO bombs, but some reports where apparently accurate. ("Err, sorry China.") And furthermore what do you do when you have a hospital or school on top of a bunker? Bit of a tricky situation woudn't you say? Don't think that will happen? Think again, war is war, if you don't do everything to win, you will lose.
And if you do fight a nuclear war there will be tons of civilian casualties. (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) It's some bloody big bombs you are talking about here, designed to wipe out cities, keep that in mind would you? (And if you feel that nuclear weapons shouldn't be used then I don't see how it can work in defence of Mr. Teller.)
And second, you seem horrified that "cummunism killed a lot of people". Does the fact that indians were killed during the US's early history make democrazy a bad idea? Or perhaps we should kill off all religious people, Christianity did after all torture more people to death than the total number of casualties during WWI and WWII. And that's just one religion.
Finally there is nothing inherently wrong with communism, it's just too optimistic about human nature. The fact that Stalin was a crazy bastard isn't really something you can blame on communism.
Carl Sagan mentions Teller in his book "The demon haunted world" and his view of the guy isn't very positive. From that book I got the feeling that Teller was mainly interested in making it seem as if he was _not_ "Dr. Strangelove" and that was why he thought up all of these little projects.
And not only did he partake in the development of the thermo-nuclear bomb, he was one of the major forces behind it. Using the everpopular "If we don't they will" mentality. Basically I think the world would be better off without any people like that, it's just a sick attitute.
And when you say that "...Another cool project killed by the ignorance of the public when it comes to things nuclear...." I think it should be pointed out that many other leading scientists have a very justified fear of nuclear weapons, irregardless of their uses. It's not only the "ignorant masses". If that was the case then you would have your nice glowing bay in Alaska today. (And hey, you would get a tan on both sides of your body when you lie at the beach there, that would be geat, wouldn't it?)
I trust people that say "It's perfectly safe" about as much as people that claim "This will hurt me more than you".
One of the primary uses as I see it for a "toy" like this would be to "send" www pages to it from my stationary computer. Say that I find a neato page about a review or something, I want to be able to "sync" this to the pad. So that I can read it eating breakfast, outdoors or just on my bed.
Streaming MP3's, surfing, email, ICQ etc would also be nice but a portable, large screen is only that wonderful IMHO.
I recon this would be easier if it was just permanently hooked to a computer. Is there any possibilty of a PCI/ISA card as a base-station? (The ethernet option isn't as good actually for me since I have a LAN connection for my stationary computer.) Would this be cheaper or more expensive than a separate base-station? (I would recon cheaper, but who knows?
It is just something I have long wanted someone to make so that I could get it. What can I say, I'm a geek. (Unfortunatlely not a very rich one, so I hope it won't be too expensive.;-)
But then if we code AI's, or CS people that research this, would be "making art"? As they are in fact, trying to distill out the humanity of man.
I understand that this isn't really what you mean, that you want to look at a painting/whatnot and come to a more profound understanding what it is that makes us human. But if you can make a program that acts like a human, and you read that code. Would that piece of code be art? (Assuming that you could actually interpret the code.)
In my own personal definition of art is that it's something made by a "master of the craft". Some math proofs could be considered "works of art" IMHO, as they approach the problem from an a different, and new, angle to find a solution. (Euler's solving to the Königsberg bridges problem fall in this category IMHO.)
Naturally this is something that not very many people are able to appreciate, because you need to be a bit "enviromentally damaged" by too much math classes;-). But does that make it less "artful"?
And is it less art if the artist does something because he knows that it will affect the person in a certain way? (Escher's "Concave - Convex" comes to mind here.) Or do you need to "just do it" because you think it looks good? When a computer "composes" a symphony does it make it non-art?
Or perhaps the question here is: Is it the product that is important and it's beauty; or the intention of the artist that makes the product art? Or perhaps a combination?
And again, you want to learn about human nature. Look at some code of a real "hardcore" coder (There are stories about this in the jargonfiles that are quite enjoyable.) and then tell me that you don't get a deep insight into his/her mind by looking at how they have solved a problem.
It fit's your criteria for art, is it art? That's up to you to decide I guess. Me I think I'll just say that there's art, and then there is Art.:-)
Tom has fallen out of grace as of lately. (It's his own fault, really.) I used to use his site as my primary for "in depth" info a few years ago. He may be biased in some ways, but as long as you use your own brain to be critical that's not too much of a problem.
He still has some interesting articles and stuff, but I generally go to other sites for the same info. Nowadays there are so many in the genre that there's no point to use one that is a bit too subjective.
And going up against id was just plain stupid. Can we say credibility-suicide?
Perhaps some form of martial arts could be something if he is interested?
I've learned one thing from growing up, though Swedish schools are better, kid's can be cruel regardless of gender/race/nationality. And sadly many of these kids only understand naked force.
I'm not suggesting that you teach your kid to maim others. Anyone who has trained martial arts know that it's very soothing for your personality and is good for many mental activities as well.
Personally I've never been very interested in sports, martial arts is much more about "personal advancement" than most sports. Which appeals to me. If the kid is interested (perhaps he should get a little older.) then Judo or similar is a good one get into. It's really extremely defensive if you (or SO) have problems with "teaching your kid to fight". I'm no expert on the subject though. However I bet many/.'ers are martial artists as well. (And then it can't be all bad, can it?;-)
I have to say that one thing I find a bit anoying in the aticle and many of it's kind is that they seem to miss the most obvious point of all:
I sure as hell won't pay for these songs!
And I don't mean that in the sense that I want to ruin the artists. (Can't say that I care much for many of the Record Labels though;-) I just want something better if I have to pay for it.
If the RIAA start spreading songs over the net you can be sure that they will be more expensive than what they are worth (Most songs already are, and now they can't do the old, "one good song on the CD" trick anymore.) and if I have to pay for it I'd actually like something physical as well. Not just a bunch of data using space on my computer.
In order to make the songs cheap enough to have the same market penetration as mp3's currently do they would have to be ridiculously cheap, and then what's the point? I mean, really the point?
I sure as hell won't pay to get a song and then have to buy an empty CDR to burn it on and print the covers (paying for paper, print, ink) and put it together... People do that now, sure, but the point is that now you don't pay for the *songs*, and I bet many people are ignoring other costs when they burn MP3's on cd (As normal audio), they still see it as "saving money".
And the songs that are the most attractive to purchase this way is those "one hit wonders" or Pop songs that you don't want to buy on CD. And they are generally played to death on the radio anyways. And in this area DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) is on the way. Put a computer with a DAB card and you've got the best MP3'er you can have. (Encode cd quality music on the fly and they send you the artist/title in the package)
I just don't see what the fuss is all about. Not that I mind that they put loads of manhours into creating higher quality codecs, but do they really expect to get all the invested money back?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, are they trying to pull a /Videologic/ on us? That must have been a classic... Don't know if they ever admitted it.. Altough when people renamed the d3dtunnel.exe (or what the D3D file was called.) to something else their card suddenly didn't perform very well.
And if you renamed a real game to that name you got nasty graphical errors.
And on anther note, Tom falled from grace a long time ago. Around when he couldn't accept that 3dfx made better cards than nVida. (Nowadays nVida is on top, but they weren't in the beginning.)
Not to mention that hand dryers make your hands sticky, at least I always thinks so. Never use them, I prefer to just wipe my hands on toiletpaper instead.
And even if you're not a hygiene freak it does strike one as stupid to take air from a bathroom, with pretty much the highest concentration of germs and bacteria in your house, heat it up a bit (so the germs are really happy) then blow them on your recently washed hands.
Great idea? Yeah, right!
I'd like to see a "Bluetooth port" on my computer int the future. That way my computer would be able to interact direct with laptops, PDA's, watches etc. But I personally would rather have a cable to my modem/monitor/whatever. If for no other reason than that it would be more practical. I really don't move my monitor often, I don't *need* it to be remotely connected.
And then you don't have to worry about someone scrambling or listening in on your communications. Or someone trying to hijack your hardware. (If you build it, someone will try to hack it!)
Having but with a technology like Jini this kind of things could be great. Let's not hook up everything like this, just like you don't use a PCI bus for everything today.
Why not? I mean seriously, how does source get created? In many ways you could say that they are in many ways the same, organised data.
Now you might claim that music is "artistic" and therefore more "valueable" than for instance source code. Why should that be though? I mean there are examples of really good music, but just turn on your hit radio and ou will find that most of todays marketed music is just the equivalent of VB "programmers".
And seriously, if you really do code you know that at least at times it is an art. (Capital A at times.)
I do know that I actually used to agree with you. But perhaps that's just because I'm used to programming, I'm not used to composing. And if you ask the average Joe on the street, which do you would seem as more "magical" writing a song or making a computer do what you want?
But people don't come to a mechanic and ask why their car won't run when they are out of gas.
;-)
/dev/zeros are getting 1's. That will be $500 thankyouverymuch." ;-)
Computers are still in their infancy when it comes to "mental penetration", I assume that the "what do you mean, out of gas?" question was something that mechanics had to endure for many years before cars where such a commodity that it was "common sense". We are still a couple of generations from that point in computers I recon.
And one more thing. If you are going to "convert" to Linux, BUY a distro. Or buy a beginners book with a CD included. That is the *best* way to get answers right away, and get help and advice on the bumpy road.
Personally I'd recommend "Learning Debian GNU/Linux" from O'Reilly if anyone is heading into that adventure. This is a linux beginners book mainly. But even though I have run Debian for some time I can find some bits of info in it. For instance they have a chapter comparing different Office like programs. It's far better than the GPL one from New Riders Publ. which I wouldn't recommend. Basically because it doesn't go far enough. It leaves you hanging after you have installed.
There are a *lot* of Linux books on the market today. For any distro, even Red Hat which comes with a fairly good manual IMHO. Instead of saying RTFM perhaps we should give the more constructive Read A Book advice. (Naturally, a specific book to read would be preferable.) Then you can read about devices, bootmanagers, filesystems and all that and not have to do it the painful way. (Which I did naturally.
One more mechanic metaphor: If you ask your local linux helper at least you don't get the "Ahh, sounds like the zerobitconverter is acting up. So
The idea that intelligence is as simple as mimicking reactions has already been proven to be false. The machine may at first appear to be intelligent, but only if you behave in a way that the machine's creators have anticipated. It is unable to adapt, on it's own. (You can program it to adapt, but that's not the same thing.)
:-) (It's been reviewed here on /.)
;-)
To truly create an AI you must make it self-aware (At least, that's what's believed now.) and that is harder than any behaviourist's algorithm.
If you are interested in topics like this I'd recommend you to pick up Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. There are many other books that approach the idea of sentience from a scientific angle, (I'd call psychology a "soft" science, they are generally not interested in trying to tie their models into the actual construct of the brain, naturally that is the hardest part.) but I'd recommend this one anyways, because it's just so damned good!
On the topic of robots and life: As I remember to short-story (Nope, didn't read the book, nor have I seen the film.) it's not so much that he wants to be human, he wants to be alive, and to be able to die. (Most people don't want to be too individual neither, particularly not if it's not their choice.)
That's all this AI construct have to say about that!
How do you make a treadmill work when you start walking diagonally? Or perhaps I'm just not getting the idea here fully. But to me it seems like that wouldn't work. Well, you could naturally use some input device to alter direction... But I don't think that was the general idea.
Otherwise I think a "big trackball" would be the easiest to implement. Besides the fact that you would need a rather big ball so that you didn't risk loosing your balance due to the curved surface.
Per definition being a racist has to do with race. Not about belief structures.
You can certainly be a bigot or narrowminded and lot's of other things for critisizing christians, but racist isn't really one of them.
Furthermore I really think it's religious sealots that generally display the most unwillingness when it comes to accepting others ideas. Not atheists or agnostics.
One of the AC comments that was downmoderated was a bit tasteless, but the one about how racism doesn't have to do with religion was IMHO unfairly moderated. Don't use moderation instead of argumentation people!
>>Forgot the password?
>>lilo: linux init=/bin/sh
>This makes a Linux box unsecure.
I'd say it makes it practical.
A network box needs to be protected through the network.
Similarily any computer is unsecure if I can remove the harddrive and "get into it" that way. (By mounting the drive on another computer.)
Personally I really do fail to see how this should be relevant to this situation.
Check out this site: genetic-programming.com they have quite a lot introductory information and examples etc.
It's kind of hard to determine if the point you have found is a local maxima or minima when you are working with 3d graphs and irregular definition sets. A "look and solve" solution is only valuable when the problem is easy enough for a high-school kid to solve it, and then you hardly need a computer.
;-)
So I don't believe that is a workable solution at all. There are naturally nice algorithms for these types of problems, and they can be used, to some extent, by computers as well.
GA are not generally used to solve easy functions or similar trival problems. Rather they are used when no other solution is apparent. You are naturally not guaranteed that you get the best solution, but as long as you get one that is "good enough" then that is sufficient.
An example of such a situation is where they made a filter circuit (highpass or lowpass, can't remember) with roughly 40 components. This problem is virtually insolvable with general algorithms, but genetic algorithms saved the day. (They did also create some "dead parts" of the circuit, that were removed. Apparently latent genes are found here as well.
True, it's the mathematics and science department. If anyone's interested there exist a CS department in Stockholm, but it's at KTH. (the Royal Institute of Technology)
/. before, unfortunately I couldn't find any english links. (This was on Friday, when it actually happened, *ahem*.) The links I found then can be found on www.idg.se that link should take you directly to the article. It's in Swedish though.
;-)
:-)
I wrote in about this to
Furthermore, he (Linus) was refered to as "Dr." in a Swedish paper, so it might be correct. Assuming that the writer had done his research.
And nice to see you again Hobbex!
Naturally a lot of people like to read sensational news. (Personally I never buy those types of newspapers, but naturally I read them if I have one nearby.) I don't agree with you that the readers are to be blamed for what the papers print. It's the editor that does the *editing* not Joe Blow, construction worker. Joe Blow may think it's a lot of fun to read sensational news, but that's his problem. And if there were no such news available he wouldn't read it.
I just think it's pathetic when editors are defended because "there is a market". Does that make selling drugs morally right? No? Why not? It's not the dealer's fault that there are a lot of junkies afterall. If no-one could take drugs you wouldn't have any junkies. But there would still be people that would use drugs, if they could. The market would still be there.
And I'm not saying that the editors need to throw all news away because they are new. What they need to do is to stop spinning every story in the way they believe will cause most hysteria. That's what sells papers naturally, and money is God after all.
When I was studying for a year in the states I remember my publishing teacher telling us that when we put "opinions" in the school paper we had to clearly mark it as such. How often do you see an "opinions" section in TV news? They are almost always weaved into the story quite transparently. And then people understandably mistakes them for "facts". Perhaps this is the watchers fault, they are not thinking critically, but isn't that the point with TV? That what is shown is accepted for the truth. I mean, they couldn't broadcast it if it weren't true, could they?
I'm not saying that people that fail to think critically are stupid. It's extremely easy to forget that, I do it myself at times. But the reason we do that is because the headlines are made in order to provoke. Some fail, because they are so obviously provocative that you can't mistake them for anything else. But often you first tend to agree with it, before you start thinking.
Newspaper editors know this. That's why they make articles and headlines like they do. And if we don't blame them for that who should we blame?
Oh I forgot: Joe Blow, construction worker.
There is one thing I prefer with the h2g2 site over Everything site. The h2g2 articles are generally of much higher quality. Many of the things on everything are "only" funny, they are not particularaly useful.
:-)
I imagine that what Adams is thinking about here is more of a *real* travellers guide, with a twist. And that would be, IMHO, much more useful. Actually I wanted something like this myself as I was travelling around Europe this summer. Finding the "great places" can be quite hard. And I would gladly provide some info about some of the neat stuff I find when out travelling. It would be like a travellers society or something. Could probably be of much use for backpackers and such if it had a decent price. (And a fairly big database.)
But the system could be rather fragile as well. I mean, if I get commercials on it I'm not going to be very happy. So I recon it needs quite a lot of work to keep it healthy.
Or some sort of "community moderation" as here on Slashdot.
Interesting problem though. Looking forward to seeing their solution. It would be great if we could get some kind of "module" for the Visor as well.
These kind of cases tend to make me feel a bit sick. And not necessarily because of the fact that pedophilia is despicable.
/. and they were almost worse. From the artcles I saw no real conclusive evidence that the man *hadn't* seen it all as a "roleplay". Now I don't have the IRC logs, so I can't really make a judgement here. The point is, neither does anyone else. (Unless you work for the prosecution or so.)
Not too long ago there was a case about an alledged pedophile here in Lund where I study. (He was a researcher at some liberal-arts institute.) Apparently they had found child-pornography on his work computer and thus he was prosecuted. The papers naturally made a big deal out of it and he seemed to be very guilty. (His name was never mentioned, but since he was no longer allowed to work at school it wouldn't be hard for someone to work out who he was.) The papers had some stuff about how he had told someone that the pictures where "research" and then given a different story to the police.
Later on it turns out he had been on leave for about half a year. During this period of time he hadn't been using his computer very much naturally. This did, unexpectedly not appear in very many headlines.
My point is that I find these witchhunts that the media persue again and again to be in some cases worse than the crimes. The current "witch" at least in Sweden are pedophiles, formely they have been BBS-junkies (who were alledgly bombmaking terrorists). Similarities can for instance be seen in Littletown with goths. (I'm not making any claims about goths' sexual preferences or anything of that kind here.)
Why is it that so much of todays media are sensational? Why does todays news have to be more gruesome than yesterdays? And why do so many people put up with it?
And then I read some of the comments here on
Another thing that frightens me a bit is that the guy is mentioned with full name, occupation etc. Even if he is found innocent he will be marked as "pedophile" for the rest of his life. So sue the papers you say, but will that make his life better? It's not as if he has a shortage of money.
I'm not condoning his alledged actions. I'm not trying to say that pedophiles are "only misunderstood people ". I am trying to say that with all the new technology we have at our hands today it becomes easy to pump out news at a rapid rate. And for many more people to see the same news than ever before. (Not that I'm telling you something new here.)
Unfortuantely it also seem like many people fail to understand that there are actually people behind those news. And it often seem as if the reporters don't remember that either. So before you start lighting up the tourches and marching off to burn a new witch, make sure it's not some innocent old lady.
Someone makes an overly-pessistic conclusion that would discourage someone to "press the button" and you find them to be idiots? I'd rather say that they used the same means as their opponents to counterbalance people like Teller. I agree with you that this isn't "good science" but perhaps sometimes "bad science" is better than global disaster? (Or more local as in the case of nuking Alaska.) This is also more of a political issue, and then lying is a way of life, sadly.
And when Sagan is on the topic I think most people will agree that he has certainly ended up on positive karma. Or do you think it was because of faked results or poor predictions (Global weather is something we still can't simulate very accurately.) that the thouchdown spot for Sojourner was named after him?
What's sick about making thermo-nuclear weapons? What do you think? No matter which country "won" that war humanity would most likely be better off speaking Russian. And considering the mentality of many politicians I don't doubt that some would be capable of launching even if they knew the situation was hopeless "Just because the other guys shouldn't win!" That may be appropriate behaviour in a sandbox. But hardly so on this scale.
Finally, all nations have done atrocities in name of what they thought to be the truth. Do you think that the Soviet thought of themselves as the bad guys? Don't you think they also had some "save the world" motive? Or perhaps the US government patented that? All countries and societies have done horrible things, but when you are actually *proud* of it it get's really sad.
Wether you hit a civilian target due to poor aiming or poor recon is quite uninteresting for the civilian casualties in question. And on the accuracy of bombs I distinctly recollect that there were several incidents where bombs whent off in a non-military area during the bombings in Bosnia. Don't believe all the news you are fed from CNN etc, some of those reports seemed to be sponsored by NATO. (And some I saw where apparently sponsored by Milosovech, so I'm not saying NATO are the bad guys here.)
However I seem to have wondered OT a bit here, what I was really trying say was that you can't fight a war without civilian casualties. If you believe that you are even more stupid than people that think communism work. Particularly when you throw thermo-nuclear weapons into the mix.
Furthermore I just loathe the (generally) American attitude that communism is the devil and root of all evil. Communism in itself isn't too be blamed more than christianity or democrazy for the bad things that have been done in their respective "names". Nazism is a different issue since it is based on anti-semetism. And for the record I personally use to debunk communists and "new-liberalist" in my surroundings for their naïve thinking, so it's not like I agree with communism.
It does however seem as if we can agree on that Teller is a crazy old man. And that we should all be happy that his kind didn't get all of their ideas through. I just get so tired of all the "you would all be speaking Russian if it weren't for us!" attitudes that are predominant amongst them. Playing on people's fears should be a capital punishment when the entire world is at stake in your little game.
---
In addition, it was quite possible to fight communism effectively without 'killing children'. For example, the MX missile could find a target to an accuracy of 100 yards. This made it easy to choose specifically military targets.
Yes, it worked real well in both Saudi-arabia and now lately in Bosnia, didn't it? I'm not proposing that you should believe everything that was blamed on NATO bombs, but some reports where apparently accurate. ("Err, sorry China.") And furthermore what do you do when you have a hospital or school on top of a bunker? Bit of a tricky situation woudn't you say? Don't think that will happen? Think again, war is war, if you don't do everything to win, you will lose.
And if you do fight a nuclear war there will be tons of civilian casualties. (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) It's some bloody big bombs you are talking about here, designed to wipe out cities, keep that in mind would you? (And if you feel that nuclear weapons shouldn't be used then I don't see how it can work in defence of Mr. Teller.)
And second, you seem horrified that "cummunism killed a lot of people". Does the fact that indians were killed during the US's early history make democrazy a bad idea? Or perhaps we should kill off all religious people, Christianity did after all torture more people to death than the total number of casualties during WWI and WWII. And that's just one religion.
Finally there is nothing inherently wrong with communism, it's just too optimistic about human nature. The fact that Stalin was a crazy bastard isn't really something you can blame on communism.
Carl Sagan mentions Teller in his book "The demon haunted world" and his view of the guy isn't very positive. From that book I got the feeling that Teller was mainly interested in making it seem as if he was _not_ "Dr. Strangelove" and that was why he thought up all of these little projects.
And not only did he partake in the development of the thermo-nuclear bomb, he was one of the major forces behind it. Using the everpopular "If we don't they will" mentality. Basically I think the world would be better off without any people like that, it's just a sick attitute.
And when you say that "...Another cool project killed by the ignorance of the public when it comes to things nuclear...." I think it should be pointed out that many other leading scientists have a very justified fear of nuclear weapons, irregardless of their uses. It's not only the "ignorant masses". If that was the case then you would have your nice glowing bay in Alaska today. (And hey, you would get a tan on both sides of your body when you lie at the beach there, that would be geat, wouldn't it?)
I trust people that say "It's perfectly safe" about as much as people that claim "This will hurt me more than you".
One of the primary uses as I see it for a "toy" like this would be to "send" www pages to it from my stationary computer. Say that I find a neato page about a review or something, I want to be able to "sync" this to the pad. So that I can read it eating breakfast, outdoors or just on my bed.
;-)
Streaming MP3's, surfing, email, ICQ etc would also be nice but a portable, large screen is only that wonderful IMHO.
I recon this would be easier if it was just permanently hooked to a computer. Is there any possibilty of a PCI/ISA card as a base-station? (The ethernet option isn't as good actually for me since I have a LAN connection for my stationary computer.) Would this be cheaper or more expensive than a separate base-station? (I would recon cheaper, but who knows?
It is just something I have long wanted someone to make so that I could get it. What can I say, I'm a geek. (Unfortunatlely not a very rich one, so I hope it won't be too expensive.
As we like to say:
;-)
England [And the US I guess] is going metric, inch by inch.
But I agree with you. The metric system is much better, come to think of it, the imperical system really is a kludge. And it ain't pretty.
But then if we code AI's, or CS people that research this, would be "making art"? As they are in fact, trying to distill out the humanity of man.
;-). But does that make it less "artful"?
:-)
I understand that this isn't really what you mean, that you want to look at a painting/whatnot and come to a more profound understanding what it is that makes us human. But if you can make a program that acts like a human, and you read that code. Would that piece of code be art? (Assuming that you could actually interpret the code.)
In my own personal definition of art is that it's something made by a "master of the craft". Some math proofs could be considered "works of art" IMHO, as they approach the problem from an a different, and new, angle to find a solution. (Euler's solving to the Königsberg bridges problem fall in this category IMHO.)
Naturally this is something that not very many people are able to appreciate, because you need to be a bit "enviromentally damaged" by too much math classes
And is it less art if the artist does something because he knows that it will affect the person in a certain way? (Escher's "Concave - Convex" comes to mind here.) Or do you need to "just do it" because you think it looks good? When a computer "composes" a symphony does it make it non-art?
Or perhaps the question here is: Is it the product that is important and it's beauty; or the intention of the artist that makes the product art? Or perhaps a combination?
And again, you want to learn about human nature. Look at some code of a real "hardcore" coder (There are stories about this in the jargonfiles that are quite enjoyable.) and then tell me that you don't get a deep insight into his/her mind by looking at how they have solved a problem.
It fit's your criteria for art, is it art? That's up to you to decide I guess. Me I think I'll just say that there's art, and then there is Art.
//Hast, Lund, Sweden
Tom has fallen out of grace as of lately. (It's his own fault, really.) I used to use his site as my primary for "in depth" info a few years ago. He may be biased in some ways, but as long as you use your own brain to be critical that's not too much of a problem.
He still has some interesting articles and stuff, but I generally go to other sites for the same info. Nowadays there are so many in the genre that there's no point to use one that is a bit too subjective.
And going up against id was just plain stupid. Can we say credibility-suicide?
Perhaps some form of martial arts could be something if he is interested?
/.'ers are martial artists as well. (And then it can't be all bad, can it? ;-)
I've learned one thing from growing up, though Swedish schools are better, kid's can be cruel regardless of gender/race/nationality. And sadly many of these kids only understand naked force.
I'm not suggesting that you teach your kid to maim others. Anyone who has trained martial arts know that it's very soothing for your personality and is good for many mental activities as well.
Personally I've never been very interested in sports, martial arts is much more about "personal advancement" than most sports. Which appeals to me. If the kid is interested (perhaps he should get a little older.) then Judo or similar is a good one get into. It's really extremely defensive if you (or SO) have problems with "teaching your kid to fight". I'm no expert on the subject though. However I bet many
//Marcus Hast, Lund, Sweden
I have to say that one thing I find a bit anoying in the aticle and many of it's kind is that they seem to miss the most obvious point of all:
;-) I just want something better if I have to pay for it.
I sure as hell won't pay for these songs!
And I don't mean that in the sense that I want to ruin the artists. (Can't say that I care much for many of the Record Labels though
If the RIAA start spreading songs over the net you can be sure that they will be more expensive than what they are worth (Most songs already are, and now they can't do the old, "one good song on the CD" trick anymore.) and if I have to pay for it I'd actually like something physical as well. Not just a bunch of data using space on my computer.
In order to make the songs cheap enough to have the same market penetration as mp3's currently do they would have to be ridiculously cheap, and then what's the point? I mean, really the point?
I sure as hell won't pay to get a song and then have to buy an empty CDR to burn it on and print the covers (paying for paper, print, ink) and put it together... People do that now, sure, but the point is that now you don't pay for the *songs*, and I bet many people are ignoring other costs when they burn MP3's on cd (As normal audio), they still see it as "saving money".
And the songs that are the most attractive to purchase this way is those "one hit wonders" or Pop songs that you don't want to buy on CD. And they are generally played to death on the radio anyways. And in this area DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) is on the way. Put a computer with a DAB card and you've got the best MP3'er you can have. (Encode cd quality music on the fly and they send you the artist/title in the package)
I just don't see what the fuss is all about. Not that I mind that they put loads of manhours into creating higher quality codecs, but do they really expect to get all the invested money back?