Just like M$ TIVO is a proprietary, closed source solution. We all need to get behind the open source solutions like freevo and mythtv. Free as in beer, free as in speech is still a better solution. Who wants to pay $10 a month to a copmany whose financial future is in doubt anyway.
Did you ever think that they're trying to protect US from YOU?
You work at one place where the creation of biological waepons is certainly possible. I realize that the NIH is in the business of trying to prevent and cure diease, but that is one place where the tools (raw materials, expertise and equipment) are available to create and modify the genome of any of the worst scourges on the planet.
Maybe right-minded individuals won't even consider the possibility of doing something like that, but you have to admit that there are a large number of foreign nationals (here legally, I might add) working there. Have all of them been background checked? Is it possible to monitor the actions of all employees all the time when working with infectious agents?
Since only a small amount of biological material is needed as a seed for weapons production, it's obvious that the invasive searches are necessary and right for the public.
As many other posters have said, if you don't like it, quit!
Ever heard of NFL Flims or the MLB films archive? They shoot in high-res digital video now, in the 16:9 aspect ratio.
Remember all of those NFL archive films narrated by the late, great John Facenda? You know, the ones that start off, "From the snowy, frigid tundra of Lambeau Field..." They're all on film stock - a great medium for transferral to high-res digital.
Of course noone will buy a game on dvd... but they will buy the aggregate highlights of a whole season, of the career of a player.
My wife gave me the Solarbotics Solarspeeder for Christmas. I wanted an AIBO, but, finances being what they are, the ~$20 solar speeder was just fine, plus I had the fun of putting it together.
The speeder doesn't do much of anything, when left on the floor, if the sun hits it it will zoom off after the capacitor charges. However, it was a lot of fun to build... I had never soldered before (though I had seen it done hundreds of times at work).
In building the robot (if you can call it that), I learned alot about BEAM robotics. It makes a lot of sense that higher order intelligence can come from a large number of simple entities. Take a look at an ant colony or a bee hive sometime.
I imagine that someday, nanobots, because of their size will use the simple, self-organizing principles of BEAM robotics to create the intelligence desired.
Seriously, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. How would you like to drive your car with no feedback at all? Holding on to an "air" steering wheel means that you have no feel for what the parts actually doing the work - the tires - are doing. What if there is a steering failure and the tires (or rudder) won't turn? How will you know? By looking at a display? Great, add that to the thousand other control items you have to look at in a cockpit.
We are just now getting to the point where fly/drive/control-by-wire systems are providing the necessary amount of feedback to the user to allow the user to gather the same information that was available in analog systems all along.
I think that this will be a great technology, but only if there is a compatible means of providing feedback to the user. All of the references to this type of technology in SF have always included force feedback as part of the equation.
Robert Heinlein saw it all 50 years ago... Just read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress In that book, the Lunar colonies main processing computer (which, after gaining sentience, was called Mike) became sentient after many modules and auxiliary processors were added.
It brings up an interesting thought... I really know nothing about neural nets or how they are simulated, but couldn't one of these distributed processing systems be used to simulate a neural net? With enough CPU power behind it could the system develop a somewhat sentient persona?
Not too far from Seattle, in Silverdale, WA, is monument park (website here). This shows a lot of other big black monoliths left over from the cold war.
Look,
all of this talk about encryption is nice... but what will reall make a difference here is the really big deal is the fact that you can send e-mail messages that expire!! How many times have you wanted to do that!
Assuming that they aren't archived permanantly, you could send e-mail without fear of having them dug up later by the recipient.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like M$ TIVO is a proprietary, closed source solution. We all need to get behind the open source solutions like freevo and mythtv. Free as in beer, free as in speech is still a better solution. Who wants to pay $10 a month to a copmany whose financial future is in doubt anyway.
Did you ever think that they're trying to protect US from YOU?
You work at one place where the creation of biological waepons is certainly possible. I realize that the NIH is in the business of trying to prevent and cure diease, but that is one place where the tools (raw materials, expertise and equipment) are available to create and modify the genome of any of the worst scourges on the planet.
Maybe right-minded individuals won't even consider the possibility of doing something like that, but you have to admit that there are a large number of foreign nationals (here legally, I might add) working there. Have all of them been background checked? Is it possible to monitor the actions of all employees all the time when working with infectious agents?
Since only a small amount of biological material is needed as a seed for weapons production, it's obvious that the invasive searches are necessary and right for the public.
As many other posters have said, if you don't like it, quit!
Ever heard of NFL Flims or the MLB films archive? They shoot in high-res digital video now, in the 16:9 aspect ratio.
Remember all of those NFL archive films narrated by the late, great John Facenda? You know, the ones that start off, "From the snowy, frigid tundra of Lambeau Field..." They're all on film stock - a great medium for transferral to high-res digital.
Of course noone will buy a game on dvd... but they will buy the aggregate highlights of a whole season, of the career of a player.
My wife gave me the Solarbotics Solarspeeder for Christmas. I wanted an AIBO, but, finances being what they are, the ~$20 solar speeder was just fine, plus I had the fun of putting it together.
The speeder doesn't do much of anything, when left on the floor, if the sun hits it it will zoom off after the capacitor charges. However, it was a lot of fun to build... I had never soldered before (though I had seen it done hundreds of times at work).
In building the robot (if you can call it that), I learned alot about BEAM robotics. It makes a lot of sense that higher order intelligence can come from a large number of simple entities. Take a look at an ant colony or a bee hive sometime.
I imagine that someday, nanobots, because of their size will use the simple, self-organizing principles of BEAM robotics to create the intelligence desired.
ZAP!!! Turbulence sucks!
Seriously, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. How would you like to drive your car with no feedback at all? Holding on to an "air" steering wheel means that you have no feel for what the parts actually doing the work - the tires - are doing. What if there is a steering failure and the tires (or rudder) won't turn? How will you know? By looking at a display? Great, add that to the thousand other control items you have to look at in a cockpit.
We are just now getting to the point where fly/drive/control-by-wire systems are providing the necessary amount of feedback to the user to allow the user to gather the same information that was available in analog systems all along.
I think that this will be a great technology, but only if there is a compatible means of providing feedback to the user. All of the references to this type of technology in SF have always included force feedback as part of the equation.
Robert Heinlein saw it all 50 years ago... Just read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress In that book, the Lunar colonies main processing computer (which, after gaining sentience, was called Mike) became sentient after many modules and auxiliary processors were added. It brings up an interesting thought... I really know nothing about neural nets or how they are simulated, but couldn't one of these distributed processing systems be used to simulate a neural net? With enough CPU power behind it could the system develop a somewhat sentient persona?
Not too far from Seattle, in Silverdale, WA, is monument park (website here). This shows a lot of other big black monoliths left over from the cold war.
Look, all of this talk about encryption is nice... but what will reall make a difference here is the really big deal is the fact that you can send e-mail messages that expire!! How many times have you wanted to do that! Assuming that they aren't archived permanantly, you could send e-mail without fear of having them dug up later by the recipient.