No, but the fact that he kept secrets from the agency that could have been used to blackmail him means he's a security risk and therefore not of suitable character to work in the CIA. When you work for the CIA or any other government agency that keeps the nation's secrets, you can't keep such secrets from the agency.
Not in the CIA. In a position where you carry sensitive information, an affair is a liability for two reasons: (1) the person with whom you're having the affair may be a spy and be working you for information. (2) the existence of the affair can be used to blackmail you.
Having an affair can therefore cause a person to lose his or her security clearance. It's even worse when it's the head or senior official in the agency because everybody looks to that person as an example. If the DCI's affair is tolerated, everybody else would assume that they could have affairs with impunity and expose the agency to many potential leaks and blackmail situations.
So in that regard, avoiding affairs and ANY OTHER situation that can potentially compromise security IS job performance.
Don't imagine Petreus did resigned on his own. His affair was discovered in the course of investigation of a possible security leak. The FBI was investigating and discovered evidence of the affair. Petreus, whatever you may think of him, resigned under pressure if he was not outright fired by President Obama for the security compromising situation.
There is no artificial computer based on silicon that even comes close to the adaptability or complexity of the brain
That I'll grant you.
- not even considering the clock speed.
I thought we were talking about computing capacity. You can't consider computing capacity without considering the speed of operations.
That means precisely nothing when you're talking about a system that doesn't need a reboot every 47 days or grinds to a halt when it runs out of random access memory or shuts itself down when it gets too hot.
It means something. It just means that a brain's operating system has significant advantages for managing an animal's systems. But you aren't considering downtime, for example. Your brain requires a partial shutdown approximately every 8 of every 24 hours, is not capable of continuous attention AT ALL, is subject to huge perceptual errors and has many other disadvantages when compared to a silicon-based computer and can barely to arithmetic or follow a simple algorithm or repetitive task.
The brain has other far more efficient protection mechanisms, far more efficient memory management, and a far superior kernel - any of which, if we could replicate it to anywhere near the quality that evolution has done, would revolutionise technology in a way not seen since the invention of the wheel.
If you consider forgetting most everything and interpolating what little it does remember with fantasies made up on the spot, I suppose it can be considered not too bad at memory. And protection mechanisms? WHAT protection mechanisms?
All speculation on the brain possibly having quantum properties is complete nonsense based on equivocation and quasi-religious hoo-hah.
That may be so, but Einstein thought this was possible. Not one given to equivocation or quasi-religious hoo-hah. There are plenty of macroscopically detectable effects of quantum phenomena.
Einstein was a physicist, not a neurobiologist. He knew less than most modern scientists about how brains work.
What the hell for? They can buy a thermal imager for $1200. You could probably modify a cell phone's camera to make a cheap-ass IR camera for a lot less. You might need no more than a filter to block visible light.
Who exactly stands to gain from divide and conquer against the US and it's allies? I don't see how I personally gain or lose from the Cablegate scandal in particular but I do see why certain information should never be leaked and that diplomatic information, intelligence sources, war plans and operations should never be leaked. I don't see anything in the Cablegate leak that protects human rights or protects civilians and if anything it may have put innocent civilians at risk.
So once again who gains and why would Julian Assange choose to leak that in particular? What is the value of the leak to the general public?
Probably none. It's seems to be more about Assange's ego and his animus toward the USA than anything else. And it gives other people who dislike secrecy something to crow about.
I don't see why it's necessarily a wrong estimate. 16 bits represents 2^16 possible states and a large number of possible connnections. What if I doubled that? Would you be happy then? What if I multipled it by SIXTEEN, so it had 256 transistors, 2^256 possible states and hundreds of possible connections? IT STILL WOULD BE LESS PHYSICALLY CAPABLE THAN A MODERN MICROPROCESSOR because the microprocessor is still 16 million times faster. How many transistors would it take to make you happy and how do you justify it? The trouble we keep running into is somebody always wants to say that no matter how many transistors we throw at the problem of doing the *computational* job of a brain cell, somebody always says it should be drastically if not infinitely more without presenting any plausible alternative means of estimating a brain's computing capacity.
So put up or shut up already. Either the brain is a computer or it's not. If it's a computer it has some amount of boundable computing capacity. Or it's a big pile of useless bio-slush.
Wow. If I were the judge that would really torque me. I would set the rate at 10 bucks wait for them to defy me and then start throwing officers in jail.
It's clumsily worded. It's an age-old problem in power amplifiers that are used in situations where power varies, such as radio receivers and transmitters that need to work at multiple power levels. But I don't understand why they identify smartphones as a place where this has a great potential to improve battery life. It's really more applicable to non-smart cellphones where the audio amp and transmitter PA are bigger proportions of the total battery draw.
Cellphone power is often dominated by processor and display power.
That's a rather simplistic analysis. The problem is that we don't even know how the brain fully works. If, for instance, neurons make use of quantum properties (a very real possibility), then classical computers may be hard-pressed to replicate even a mouse brain.
I have only one thing to say about that: Pfffffbbbbbt! The brain is an electrochemical machine that works on a macroscopic scale. It can't distinguish and act upon the quantum state of a a particle any more than a hedgehog can sing opera.
All speculation on the brain possibly having quantum properties is complete nonsense based on equivocation and quasi-religious hoo-hah.
We don't know whether quantum computers are more powerful than classical computers. Many believe that they are, but we have not found proof of this. They could be anywhere from equal to exponentially faster, and you know what exponentially faster means with numbers like what you've been pulling.
Your entire post is based on the premise that a neuron and a transistor are even comparable. That's one hell of an assumption.
If you're going to discuss the computing power of a human brain, you are by definition comparing neurons to switches. It's one electrical machine to another electrical machine. Whatever the right number is that approximates the function of a neuron with a number of transistors, there IS a number. I could have the number wrong. But I'm not wrong in principle.
That ignores some basic problems.
1. A neuron isn't really analog. A synapse either fires or it doesn't.
2. Claiming that an analog system's operation can't be adequately simulated by a digital system is wrong. The analog system is only different from the digital system if the digital system doesn't simulate it down to the noise level.
3. What's the noise level of a synapse anyway?
Looking at physical complexity:
A human brain has about 86 billion neurons. An Intel Core-i7 process has 731 million transistors. A neuron is more complex than a transistor. Let's say it does a job, for the sake or argument, that would take about 16 transistors. So say the Core-i7 has the equivalent of about 45 million neuron-equivalents. That's a factor of about 1900 in physical complexity.
But the brain manages to pull off a clock cycle about 200 Hz, based on the neuron's firing rate. Maybe 1000 Hz at most. The clock rate of the CPU is 3.2 GHz. It is 16 million times faster than your brain.. Since the computer can execute programs of arbitrary complexity, it can simulate your brain's operation -- if properly programmed, with a much smaller hardware set running much faster. In raw computational capacity, it apparently has 16 million / 2000 = 8000 times the computational capacity of your brain. So even if its' simulation were quite computationally inefficient, it should still be able to do the job of a number of brains, if programmed to do so.
In short, exceeding the capacity of a human brain isn't a hardware problem any more. It hasn't been for years. It's a programming exercise, albeit a particularly challenging one.
It's only available as an option for displaced voters and they'll identify those by location (e.g. the Jersey shore.). Obama has about an 11% advantage in New Jersey, so I think his NJ electors are safe. The House and Senate seats look pretty safe too. I guess it could affect some local races.
Yes, but they are Swiss. They make perfect watches, have an insane amount of automatic rifles in homes while not thinking twice about not committing crimes with those rifles while eating their famed chocolate, and are otherwise generally badass. Take that, New Jersey! Still think it could work there?
Of course they don't commit crimes with the rifles. They already have all the criminals' money.
I read the article (yes, I know fop-aux) but how can they "overstate" mileage? They submit the car to the EPA and the EPA tells them the numbers. There is no testing at the car manufacturers site. The EPA farms this out, but that is still the rule of law by the EPA. Were they not listing the numbers provided by the EPA? Then fine Hyundai's ass into oblivion. If they marked on the window stickers what the EPA told them, even if Hyundai knew the numbers were wrong, then there is no issues in my mind and people should sue the hell out of the EPA.
That's not correct. For most cars, the manufacturer's self-declare "EPA Mileage." The EPA spot-checks some models each year.
Slashdot Mirror
Bill was a spy?
No, but the fact that he kept secrets from the agency that could have been used to blackmail him means he's a security risk and therefore not of suitable character to work in the CIA. When you work for the CIA or any other government agency that keeps the nation's secrets, you can't keep such secrets from the agency.
Noble? I don't think so. The evidence indicates that the FBI discovered his affair. It had to be part of their official report. He was forced out.
CIA has its own ethics. Security of the agency's information is their top priority.
The FBI discovered the affair.
Not in the CIA. In a position where you carry sensitive information, an affair is a liability for two reasons: (1) the person with whom you're having the affair may be a spy and be working you for information. (2) the existence of the affair can be used to blackmail you.
Having an affair can therefore cause a person to lose his or her security clearance. It's even worse when it's the head or senior official in the agency because everybody looks to that person as an example. If the DCI's affair is tolerated, everybody else would assume that they could have affairs with impunity and expose the agency to many potential leaks and blackmail situations.
So in that regard, avoiding affairs and ANY OTHER situation that can potentially compromise security IS job performance.
Don't imagine Petreus did resigned on his own. His affair was discovered in the course of investigation of a possible security leak. The FBI was investigating and discovered evidence of the affair. Petreus, whatever you may think of him, resigned under pressure if he was not outright fired by President Obama for the security compromising situation.
There is no artificial computer based on silicon that even comes close to the adaptability or complexity of the brain
That I'll grant you.
- not even considering the clock speed.
I thought we were talking about computing capacity. You can't consider computing capacity without considering the speed of operations.
That means precisely nothing when you're talking about a system that doesn't need a reboot every 47 days or grinds to a halt when it runs out of random access memory or shuts itself down when it gets too hot.
It means something. It just means that a brain's operating system has significant advantages for managing an animal's systems. But you aren't considering downtime, for example. Your brain requires a partial shutdown approximately every 8 of every 24 hours, is not capable of continuous attention AT ALL, is subject to huge perceptual errors and has many other disadvantages when compared to a silicon-based computer and can barely to arithmetic or follow a simple algorithm or repetitive task.
The brain has other far more efficient protection mechanisms, far more efficient memory management, and a far superior kernel - any of which, if we could replicate it to anywhere near the quality that evolution has done, would revolutionise technology in a way not seen since the invention of the wheel.
If you consider forgetting most everything and interpolating what little it does remember with fantasies made up on the spot, I suppose it can be considered not too bad at memory. And protection mechanisms? WHAT protection mechanisms?
All speculation on the brain possibly having quantum properties is complete nonsense based on equivocation and quasi-religious hoo-hah.
That may be so, but Einstein thought this was possible. Not one given to equivocation or quasi-religious hoo-hah. There are plenty of macroscopically detectable effects of quantum phenomena.
Einstein was a physicist, not a neurobiologist. He knew less than most modern scientists about how brains work.
Seriously, we need some damn editing around here.
If the thesis in question is "i won't be punished", then argument by punishment is not fallacious at all.
A good government is one that fears the people, not the other way around.
So you're staying Apple ought not to be worried about what the courts rule when it's involved in a battle in the courts... that it started? WTFIWWY?
This requires a warrant (Kyllo v. United States)
Thieves get warrants? Who knew?
What the hell for? They can buy a thermal imager for $1200. You could probably modify a cell phone's camera to make a cheap-ass IR camera for a lot less. You might need no more than a filter to block visible light.
Who exactly stands to gain from divide and conquer against the US and it's allies? I don't see how I personally gain or lose from the Cablegate scandal in particular but I do see why certain information should never be leaked and that diplomatic information, intelligence sources, war plans and operations should never be leaked. I don't see anything in the Cablegate leak that protects human rights or protects civilians and if anything it may have put innocent civilians at risk.
So once again who gains and why would Julian Assange choose to leak that in particular? What is the value of the leak to the general public?
Probably none. It's seems to be more about Assange's ego and his animus toward the USA than anything else. And it gives other people who dislike secrecy something to crow about.
It's applicable to transmitting and receiving.
I don't see why it's necessarily a wrong estimate. 16 bits represents 2^16 possible states and a large number of possible connnections. What if I doubled that? Would you be happy then? What if I multipled it by SIXTEEN, so it had 256 transistors, 2^256 possible states and hundreds of possible connections? IT STILL WOULD BE LESS PHYSICALLY CAPABLE THAN A MODERN MICROPROCESSOR because the microprocessor is still 16 million times faster. How many transistors would it take to make you happy and how do you justify it? The trouble we keep running into is somebody always wants to say that no matter how many transistors we throw at the problem of doing the *computational* job of a brain cell, somebody always says it should be drastically if not infinitely more without presenting any plausible alternative means of estimating a brain's computing capacity.
So put up or shut up already. Either the brain is a computer or it's not. If it's a computer it has some amount of boundable computing capacity. Or it's a big pile of useless bio-slush.
With even cheaper equipment, cops can detect your grow lights from IR emissions.
Wow. If I were the judge that would really torque me. I would set the rate at 10 bucks wait for them to defy me and then start throwing officers in jail.
Place a picture of one person on a couch in front of the kinect .
It's clumsily worded. It's an age-old problem in power amplifiers that are used in situations where power varies, such as radio receivers and transmitters that need to work at multiple power levels. But I don't understand why they identify smartphones as a place where this has a great potential to improve battery life. It's really more applicable to non-smart cellphones where the audio amp and transmitter PA are bigger proportions of the total battery draw.
Cellphone power is often dominated by processor and display power.
That's a rather simplistic analysis. The problem is that we don't even know how the brain fully works. If, for instance, neurons make use of quantum properties (a very real possibility), then classical computers may be hard-pressed to replicate even a mouse brain.
I have only one thing to say about that: Pfffffbbbbbt! The brain is an electrochemical machine that works on a macroscopic scale. It can't distinguish and act upon the quantum state of a a particle any more than a hedgehog can sing opera.
All speculation on the brain possibly having quantum properties is complete nonsense based on equivocation and quasi-religious hoo-hah.
We don't know whether quantum computers are more powerful than classical computers. Many believe that they are, but we have not found proof of this. They could be anywhere from equal to exponentially faster, and you know what exponentially faster means with numbers like what you've been pulling.
Your entire post is based on the premise that a neuron and a transistor are even comparable. That's one hell of an assumption.
If you're going to discuss the computing power of a human brain, you are by definition comparing neurons to switches. It's one electrical machine to another electrical machine. Whatever the right number is that approximates the function of a neuron with a number of transistors, there IS a number. I could have the number wrong. But I'm not wrong in principle.
That ignores some basic problems.
1. A neuron isn't really analog. A synapse either fires or it doesn't. 2. Claiming that an analog system's operation can't be adequately simulated by a digital system is wrong. The analog system is only different from the digital system if the digital system doesn't simulate it down to the noise level. 3. What's the noise level of a synapse anyway?
Google's cars say different.
Looking at physical complexity:
A human brain has about 86 billion neurons. An Intel Core-i7 process has 731 million transistors. A neuron is more complex than a transistor. Let's say it does a job, for the sake or argument, that would take about 16 transistors. So say the Core-i7 has the equivalent of about 45 million neuron-equivalents. That's a factor of about 1900 in physical complexity.
But the brain manages to pull off a clock cycle about 200 Hz, based on the neuron's firing rate. Maybe 1000 Hz at most. The clock rate of the CPU is 3.2 GHz. It is 16 million times faster than your brain.. Since the computer can execute programs of arbitrary complexity, it can simulate your brain's operation -- if properly programmed, with a much smaller hardware set running much faster. In raw computational capacity, it apparently has 16 million / 2000 = 8000 times the computational capacity of your brain. So even if its' simulation were quite computationally inefficient, it should still be able to do the job of a number of brains, if programmed to do so.
In short, exceeding the capacity of a human brain isn't a hardware problem any more. It hasn't been for years. It's a programming exercise, albeit a particularly challenging one.
It's only available as an option for displaced voters and they'll identify those by location (e.g. the Jersey shore.). Obama has about an 11% advantage in New Jersey, so I think his NJ electors are safe. The House and Senate seats look pretty safe too. I guess it could affect some local races.
Yes, but they are Swiss. They make perfect watches, have an insane amount of automatic rifles in homes while not thinking twice about not committing crimes with those rifles while eating their famed chocolate, and are otherwise generally badass. Take that, New Jersey! Still think it could work there?
Of course they don't commit crimes with the rifles. They already have all the criminals' money.
I read the article (yes, I know fop-aux) but how can they "overstate" mileage? They submit the car to the EPA and the EPA tells them the numbers. There is no testing at the car manufacturers site. The EPA farms this out, but that is still the rule of law by the EPA. Were they not listing the numbers provided by the EPA? Then fine Hyundai's ass into oblivion. If they marked on the window stickers what the EPA told them, even if Hyundai knew the numbers were wrong, then there is no issues in my mind and people should sue the hell out of the EPA.
That's not correct. For most cars, the manufacturer's self-declare "EPA Mileage." The EPA spot-checks some models each year.