I don't think hardware limitations are the reason we don't have super-intelligent robots running around. It's more of a software issue. Hey, if you can provide working AI robot software, I'll pony up for the hardware and we can split the profits 50-50. Deal?:)
Just have faith that they can be both! I mean, I can't even imagine a world where invisible pink elephants didn't exist. That should be reason enough, right?
The question should be simply "What do you believe?" Because if something can be proven, the issue of belief does not arise. And only idiots believe what what is proven as false.
You're confusing "belief" with "faith". Faith (believing in things which are not proved/provable) and reason (believing in things which are proved) are just two different systems of belief. The question is really asking: do you have faith in anything?
will there be ads for particle accelerators, scanning tunneling microscopes and tokamaks in the margins?
Yes, but it'll be mixed in with ads for V14gr4, male "enhancement", and Nigerian wealth opportunities. When the scientists complain, the humanities faculty will protest that spam is a perfectly valid epistemology, and that the scientists' attempt to impose an orthodoxy of "truth" in advertising is simply a power grab to extend Western, white male hegemony. At which point, the scientists will defect to MIT's library down the street.
Studies that I'm aware of either show that there is a historical correlation between CO2 levels and temperature (no control for other sources that change climate)
Therein lies the problem. How do we show that CO2 levels and industrialization aren't just a confounding factor for time? Say my alarm clock goes off 5 minutes after the Today show starts every morning. Surely the start of the show doesn't cause my alarm to go off, but they're highly correlated because both are caused by the passage of time.
Unless we rerun history controlling for these human activities, which is impossible, we may need a lot more data than we have. Because industrial activity has existed only in a short period of time, it's difficult to separate out which climate changes were caused by the activity, and which were simply natural fluctuations taking place during that time (absent an iron-clad predictive theory for the natural fluctuations).
I would think twice before doing. Seriously, how many people, whether family or friends, wouldn't think of you as a fanatic or total nerd if you went around giving Linux as a christmas gift.
Seriously... this reminds me of people who push their favorite book on everyone as a "gift," and then constantly harass them if they haven't read it yet. Rule of thumb: any gift that requires less effort to give than to receive isn't much of a gift at all.
Cheers, IT
Re:Top Five reasons why the space program should b
on
Apollo 12 at 35
·
· Score: 1
4. Every dollar invested in NASA pays off seven dollars in terms of technological development for the US economy.
Wow, 700% returns! Wouldn't that be even more of an argument for expanding private space exploration? Governments may overlook profitable opportunities like this, but surely greedy capitalists wouldn't pass up a chance to octuple their money.
Just as in programming, or any other field, amateurs create amateurish output. There is a tendency among technical people to devalue the skills of non-technical people (and the other way 'round as well). This is a mistake. People with training in anything are going to produce better product than people without training.
Invest in a professional. You'll be surprised how cheaply (sadly) good graphic artists will work.
There's just something about this attitude that runs completely counter to the scientific/hacker mindset. Most people in programming -- and yes, in art especially -- start out as amateur enthusiasts, and through a combination of self-teaching, mentoring, and lots of practice, they become experts. Sure, for immediate results, it's best to hire someone who already has experience under his/her belt. But for someone who sincerely wants to develop expertise, it's frustrating to hear the old "if you don't know it now, you never will" line. It's just downright anti-intellectual.
It's not theft, it's copyright infringement! At least, that's what we say about music and movies... why should the party line be any different for GPLed code?
It's relatively easy to figure out what to do with a laptop that has a busted display or a too-small hard drive. It's tougher coming up with a quick workaround for the following, all of which I've experienced at one point or another:
Broken or missing part that is no longer made, nearly impossible to find, and/or "unsupported". Many laptop parts and accessories are non-standard and proprietary, e.g. AC adapters and external drives.
Busted motherboard or other vitals. Basically the same as the above, only worse -- unlike a shiny display or gobs of RAM, even a server or dumb terminal needs a working board. Or, even worse...
Problem unknown. The damn thing just doesn't work, and I have no idea why. Mysterious crashes and hardware errors abound.
I had a Dell sub-laptop give up the ghost a year ago, and it was nearly impossible to troubleshoot -- I basically gave up, replaced it, and have been trying to rehabilitate it as a hobby, but even that has been fruitless. Anything I did would result in bizarre hardware errors, even running Knoppix. I finally figured out that files in memory had errors -- and important config files were strewn with random characters (well, even more than usual) -- so I finally chalked it up to either bad RAM or a bad mobo. After all the time and money, it makes more sense just to junk it.
Conclusion: the toughest part about rehabilitating a (non-superficially) damaged laptop is determining if it's just damaged or completely dead.
The definintion of "properly deployed" is the part that gets me. Its vague and allows for too much interpretation.
Does your OS fail? Its not the fault of the OS, it just wasn't "properly deployed".
This is an excellent example of the No True Scotsman logical fallacy, frequently used by Linux zealots and other religious groups.;-) E.g.: "XYZ is a peaceful religion." "But Bob kills people in the name of religion XYZ!" "Ah, but he's not a true adherent of XYZ."
My little Slashdot brain is about to pop! Are we supposed to be for this or against it? On the one hand, education for all is a good thing. But on the other hand, it's India, and they took our jaoerbs!
"Dacek said Wednesday that she fears that critics of the new voting system may try to physically sabotage the machines."
But if the machines really were secure, she wouldn't have to worry about sabotage at all. So the fact that she's afraid of the critics means that she believes the criticism to be true! Oh, the delicious irony.
Be sure to show newbies how to use tabs and find-as-you-type! IE will soon be blocking popups.
Most people have a hard time "getting" tabbed browsing -- what it is, and why it's so amazing -- because the idea of tabs is pretty abstract if you haven't used them before. So relate it to something the average Joe Windows has used: tabs in MS Excel workbooks. I recently switched my (non-techie) sister to Firefox for increased security, and when I tried to show her tabbed browsing, her eyes completely glazed over. Then it hit her -- "it's like having tabs for the different sheets in an Excel workbook!" -- and she instantly thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. (Even the Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn shortcut keys are the same.)
Does that mean that everyone will pretend to read the article, but no one actually will? Come to think of it, maybe Slashdot should change its name to Playboy.
Come on, it's trying to create data that just plain isn't coming from the original source, therefore it's nothing but guess and check logic.
This would be true -- if we were talking about images of purely random white noise. However, most pictures of the real world aren't completely random, because real objects are relatively smooth and continuous. Just like any kind of interpolation, we can improve on chance by making reasonable assumptions about the underlying structure of what we're sampling.
If you want to think about it information theoretically, a lost bit of image doesn't necessarily imply a lost bit of information, because visual images contain quite a bit of redundancy.
In one sense, Google has always been about "Internet keywords" -- accessing information by description rather than name. This simply streamlines the process of going to www.google.com, typing in the search terms, and hitting "I feel lucky" into a single step within the browser.
So why did "Internet keywords" get such a bad rap the first time around? Because, contrary to Google's motto ("Don't be evil"), they were doing it to profit from selling keywords. While they claimed to be delivering information to users, they were really delivering users to advertisers.
Thankfully, Google discovered that there's a sizeable market for honest technology that does what it says. To cite another example, this is also why user-controlled RSS has succeeded where deliverer-controlled "Push" technology failed so spectacularly.
But in those terms, protectionists are like the little boy in the parable, ensuring visible jobs for workers in protected industries at the cost of the invisible benefits that would come from being able to hire the lowest bidder.
Dear lord, what I wouldn't do for some mod points right now. That's the single most insightful thing I've read about the whole outsourcing debate. Well done.
Slashdot Mirror
It would make a good brain for a robot
:)
I don't think hardware limitations are the reason we don't have super-intelligent robots running around. It's more of a software issue. Hey, if you can provide working AI robot software, I'll pony up for the hardware and we can split the profits 50-50. Deal?
Cheers,
IT
'invisible pink elephants' created the universe.
Wait, if they're invisible, how can they be pink?
Just have faith that they can be both! I mean, I can't even imagine a world where invisible pink elephants didn't exist. That should be reason enough, right?
Cheers,
IT
Your CRT monitor according to some studies shows it can cause brain damage and short term memory problems due to the radiation.
Really? I don't remember reading that study.
Cheers,
IT
So will this make it easier to bring Dennis Quaid back from the dead?
Cheers,
IT
The question should be simply "What do you believe?" Because if something can be proven, the issue of belief does not arise. And only idiots believe what what is proven as false.
/provable) and reason (believing in things which are proved) are just two different systems of belief. The question is really asking: do you have faith in anything?
You're confusing "belief" with "faith". Faith (believing in things which are not proved
Cheers,
IT
Kids don't buy games, they warez them.
Counterpoint: kids don't have super-high-end systems, either; they have consoles.
Cheers,
IT
will there be ads for particle accelerators, scanning tunneling microscopes and tokamaks in the margins?
Yes, but it'll be mixed in with ads for V14gr4, male "enhancement", and Nigerian wealth opportunities. When the scientists complain, the humanities faculty will protest that spam is a perfectly valid epistemology, and that the scientists' attempt to impose an orthodoxy of "truth" in advertising is simply a power grab to extend Western, white male hegemony. At which point, the scientists will defect to MIT's library down the street.
Cheers,
IT
Studies that I'm aware of either show that there is a historical correlation between CO2 levels and temperature (no control for other sources that change climate)
Therein lies the problem. How do we show that CO2 levels and industrialization aren't just a confounding factor for time? Say my alarm clock goes off 5 minutes after the Today show starts every morning. Surely the start of the show doesn't cause my alarm to go off, but they're highly correlated because both are caused by the passage of time.
Unless we rerun history controlling for these human activities, which is impossible, we may need a lot more data than we have. Because industrial activity has existed only in a short period of time, it's difficult to separate out which climate changes were caused by the activity, and which were simply natural fluctuations taking place during that time (absent an iron-clad predictive theory for the natural fluctuations).
Cheers,
IT
I would think twice before doing. Seriously, how many people, whether family or friends, wouldn't think of you as a fanatic or total nerd if you went around giving Linux as a christmas gift.
... this reminds me of people who push their favorite book on everyone as a "gift," and then constantly harass them if they haven't read it yet. Rule of thumb: any gift that requires less effort to give than to receive isn't much of a gift at all.
Seriously
Cheers,
IT
4. Every dollar invested in NASA pays off seven dollars in terms of technological development for the US economy.
Wow, 700% returns! Wouldn't that be even more of an argument for expanding private space exploration? Governments may overlook profitable opportunities like this, but surely greedy capitalists wouldn't pass up a chance to octuple their money.
Cheers,
IT
Didn't Slashdot break this story a couple years ago? Oh well, at least we won't be subjected to the indignity of a lame "Lone Coder" spinoff series.
Cheers,
IT
Just as in programming, or any other field, amateurs create amateurish output. There is a tendency among technical people to devalue the skills of non-technical people (and the other way 'round as well). This is a mistake. People with training in anything are going to produce better product than people without training.
Invest in a professional. You'll be surprised how cheaply (sadly) good graphic artists will work.
There's just something about this attitude that runs completely counter to the scientific/hacker mindset. Most people in programming -- and yes, in art especially -- start out as amateur enthusiasts, and through a combination of self-teaching, mentoring, and lots of practice, they become experts. Sure, for immediate results, it's best to hire someone who already has experience under his/her belt. But for someone who sincerely wants to develop expertise, it's frustrating to hear the old "if you don't know it now, you never will" line. It's just downright anti-intellectual.
Cheers,
IT
It's not theft, it's copyright infringement! At least, that's what we say about music and movies ... why should the party line be any different for GPLed code?
Cheers,
IT
I had a Dell sub-laptop give up the ghost a year ago, and it was nearly impossible to troubleshoot -- I basically gave up, replaced it, and have been trying to rehabilitate it as a hobby, but even that has been fruitless. Anything I did would result in bizarre hardware errors, even running Knoppix. I finally figured out that files in memory had errors -- and important config files were strewn with random characters (well, even more than usual) -- so I finally chalked it up to either bad RAM or a bad mobo. After all the time and money, it makes more sense just to junk it.
Conclusion: the toughest part about rehabilitating a (non-superficially) damaged laptop is determining if it's just damaged or completely dead.
Cheers,
IT
The definintion of "properly deployed" is the part that gets me. Its vague and allows for too much interpretation.
;-) E.g.: "XYZ is a peaceful religion." "But Bob kills people in the name of religion XYZ!" "Ah, but he's not a true adherent of XYZ."
Does your OS fail?
Its not the fault of the OS, it just wasn't "properly deployed".
This is an excellent example of the No True Scotsman logical fallacy, frequently used by Linux zealots and other religious groups.
Cheers,
IT
My little Slashdot brain is about to pop! Are we supposed to be for this or against it? On the one hand, education for all is a good thing. But on the other hand, it's India, and they took our jaoerbs!
Cheers,
IT
"Dacek said Wednesday that she fears that critics of the new voting system may try to physically sabotage the machines."
But if the machines really were secure, she wouldn't have to worry about sabotage at all. So the fact that she's afraid of the critics means that she believes the criticism to be true! Oh, the delicious irony.
Cheers,
IT
Does this mean that "she looked 18" is no longer a valid defense?
Cheers,
IT
Be sure to show newbies how to use tabs and find-as-you-type! IE will soon be blocking popups.
Most people have a hard time "getting" tabbed browsing -- what it is, and why it's so amazing -- because the idea of tabs is pretty abstract if you haven't used them before. So relate it to something the average Joe Windows has used: tabs in MS Excel workbooks. I recently switched my (non-techie) sister to Firefox for increased security, and when I tried to show her tabbed browsing, her eyes completely glazed over. Then it hit her -- "it's like having tabs for the different sheets in an Excel workbook!" -- and she instantly thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. (Even the Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn shortcut keys are the same.)
Cheers,
IT
The map was originally going to indicate what state Springfield is in. Unfortunately, the margins were too small to contain it.
Cheers,
IT
look for the person who will benefit. And you will, uh, you know, you'll, uh, you know what I'm trying to say...
"I am the walrus."
Cheers,
IT
Playboy writes
Does that mean that everyone will pretend to read the article, but no one actually will? Come to think of it, maybe Slashdot should change its name to Playboy.
Cheers,
IT
Come on, it's trying to create data that just plain isn't coming from the original source, therefore it's nothing but guess and check logic.
This would be true -- if we were talking about images of purely random white noise. However, most pictures of the real world aren't completely random, because real objects are relatively smooth and continuous. Just like any kind of interpolation, we can improve on chance by making reasonable assumptions about the underlying structure of what we're sampling.
If you want to think about it information theoretically, a lost bit of image doesn't necessarily imply a lost bit of information, because visual images contain quite a bit of redundancy.
Cheers,
IT
Is this the return of Internet Keywords?
In one sense, Google has always been about "Internet keywords" -- accessing information by description rather than name. This simply streamlines the process of going to www.google.com, typing in the search terms, and hitting "I feel lucky" into a single step within the browser.
So why did "Internet keywords" get such a bad rap the first time around? Because, contrary to Google's motto ("Don't be evil"), they were doing it to profit from selling keywords. While they claimed to be delivering information to users, they were really delivering users to advertisers.
Thankfully, Google discovered that there's a sizeable market for honest technology that does what it says. To cite another example, this is also why user-controlled RSS has succeeded where deliverer-controlled "Push" technology failed so spectacularly.
Cheers,
IT
But in those terms, protectionists are like the little boy in the parable, ensuring visible jobs for workers in protected industries at the cost of the invisible benefits that would come from being able to hire the lowest bidder.
Dear lord, what I wouldn't do for some mod points right now. That's the single most insightful thing I've read about the whole outsourcing debate. Well done.
Cheers,
IT