Really? Considering that the US shot down a satellite over two decades ago, from a missile fired from an F15 of all things, I don't think the USA had a whole lot to prove. In fact, I think the military people are smart enough to not give any inkling of just what they are capable of (like the amazing fact the F-117A stealth fighter was kept secret for so long, until its unveiling during Desert Storm).
What irked me the most was China's whiny statements about the test, which was extremely benign in every regard, while China themselves produced a huge band of debris in a very useful polar orbit for no legitimate reason whatsoever.
I say this because thus far, we've discovered nothing whatsoever that is non-reproducible about the brain's structure and function
You got to the fallacy of your argument quite quickly - in the second sentence. We don't fully know how the brain works, thus there are likely entire mechanisms we haven't discovered yet. Are those unknowns reproducible? Who knows - simply to know of something does not mean you can create it at will. What we know about the brain so far has no bearing on what we find in the future and whether that will be reproducible.
The other fallacy is that we are held up by our current computing power. That's been a running excuse now for decades, and it's hogwash. I'm sure you know what it means to be Turing Complete - essentially any Turing Machine can emulate any other Turing Machine given enough execution time and storage. There are creatures with extremely simple brains. Put two and two together, and why can't we simulate a worm's brain?
This is from almost a decade ago - 1999: "C. elegans has one of the least complex nervous systems of any life form on the planet," says Lockery, a University of Oregon biologist who has studied the worm for twenty years. "Its brain has only 302 neurons, or brain cells; that's compared to about a hundred billion neurons in a human's brain. It is the only animal for which we have a complete map of the brain. It is likely to become the first animal for which we can gain a fairly complete understanding of how the brain controls behavior."
So we have a full map of this animal's brain of 302 neurons for a decade. Well, where are the Flash and Java worm simulations floating all over the net, showing a little virtual worm moving around based on the stimuli of our mouse?
Can these compounds be used as fuel with little or no processing? I can envision a probe burrowing and rolling and sliding around the moon's surface, enjoying an unlimited supply of power by sucking in some fuel whenever it needs it. The extremely cold temperatures don't sound as daunting when unlimited energy is available.
Obviously the current searches are not semantic, so the key is searching for the right thing. At first glance, your query sounds simple enough. However, the problem is that there simply may not be any webpages dedicated to providing the exact information you asked for. In this case, are there webpages that are kept up-to-date with information specific to the next shuttle launch? What you really need to search for is not the "next" shuttle launch, whose definition is always changing, but "shuttle launch schedule", or even simply "shuttle schedule".
Should it be easier to search than that? Sure, that would be nice. My biggest concern is that since the semantic engine is trying to infer meaning to your query (specifically, display pages that don't explicitly match your query - in this case, not when the next shuttle launch is, but simply the current shuttle launch schedule), it would be open to even more abuse through spamming and PageRank type abuse.
Who gets to set article tags that everyone sees? Slashdot's FAQ on tags does not explain how individual user's tags end up being assigned to the article for everyone. The system can't be based on frequency, because almost every article has a long tag that was obviously a one-of (like this article's "slashdottagsmakemesmile"). Do the Slashdot editors get to choose them? Do subscribers get more weight? Or is someone manipulating the system, and assigning tags through many accounts to reach whatever threshold is required to make the tag stick?
That's a good idea. The optical drive is the real portability killer. It's large, power-hungry, and the most fragile piece of hardware in the kit. If you could use something else besides DVDs, you could go with a Micro PC (like the Sony Vaio UX380N), combined with a bluetooth keyboard if you want to do a lot of typing. If you needed DVD you could still use a machine like the Sony with an external DVD drive.
Those devices probably aren't particularly rugged, but they are so small you could put them in a practically indestructible case and still be smaller and lighter than a laptop.
The energy expended in the construction and maintenance of the tunnels, coupled with the continuous energy required to keep pumping air out, might offset any efficiency saved from reducing drag.
He pulled this off using insider knowledge. He worked previously in the back office, which oversaw all trading. The bank then moved him into trading, which according to statements I've read from other bankers, was practically a violation of policy.
Since he knew the flow of information through all parts of the bank, he was able to cover his tracks and employ creative accounting. He knew what types of accounts and trades would not raise flags, so he would flow money though those routes.
This type of security risk can exist in practically any business. If you're a developer or IT person, and suddenly find yourself working within the infrastructure you design and maintain, then guess what? You can most likely bend the system around some rules. The same type of rule applies for relatives and spouses. Most businesses will not let an employer be managed or supervised by a relative or spouse for the same reason. They can cover each other's tracks, and have more complete knowledge of the system.
RFID tags transmit incredibly weak signals. The only power available to them is what the tiny antenna can convert from RF transmitted by the reader. A simple battery-operated transmitter operating at the same output frequency(ies) as the tags can easily interfere with the RFID tags transmission making it impossible for the reader to decode its signal.
Also, reading the tags is really easy (and cheap). I bought a reader for $50 that uses a simple serial interface. I connected it to a PIC microcontroller, wrote some relatively simple software for it, and output IrDA via an IR LED so I can display the data on a Pocket PC.
In the event your question is serious, she's a 19 year-old from the Netherlands who made some webcam videos of herself singing various top 40 songs, like Beyonce's Irreplaceable. She became extremely popular on YouTube (rather deservedly so - as an amateur she had a great deal of raw talent). Her popularity spread off of YouTube, leading to appearances on various TV shows her in the US (like the Oprah Winfrey show), she has recorded with various professionals, and has opened concerts for Justin Timberlake and Timberland.
She is the rare artist that is (relatively) well-known internationally solely through the internet and word of mouth. Her success is the epitome of what the 2008 RPM Challenge is about - the creation, distribution and success of music completely free of the recording industry.
Her success did not cost her any money, require any risk, or necessitate contracts with record labels.
The RIAA and producers aren't about making music - they make celebrities. They broker fame to those who are bound to them by contract, allowing the producers and industry to profit from the success of musicians. They control what songs radio stations can play, determine what music makes it into movies and onto television, and even what gets heard while you're riding the elevator. They wield the ability to present the masses with specific songs of their choosing.
TV shows like American Idol reveal the fact that a substantial number of people can sing really, really well. They can find hundreds of talented people easily, so you can imagine how many more are out there that either don't try out, are not within the age range they are seeking, or are simply not shown on TV. If you figure one out of every 3000 people can sing really well, then that's 100,000 really good singers in the USA alone. The job of the recording industry is to pick out a handful that fits whatever mold they are currently using, and will agree to whatever contract they put in front of them.
Of course it is possible to record music without the industry. However no-one will know about your music (unless you happen to rise about the noise of the internet, like Esmee Denters did on YouTube with her home-made webcam videos).
In case anyone wondered, the Wiimote can track up to 4 infrared sources. The Wiimote's on-board hardware does all the heavy lifting as far as processing the image and determining actual coordinates (and sizes) of infrared sources. If a project only requires tracking four objects then the Wiimote makes a fantastic piece of hardware for experimental and hobbyist use.
So in this demo, all the manipulation is done by tracking four coordinates grouped into two pairs.
I think I know where the Japanese got their inspiration. Anyone see that MacGyver episode where he was stuck on the Mir space station with a ream of paper to work with?
One of the more likely scenarios would be to have two blobs of matter that consist entirely of entangled pairs. You would transport, via standard means, one blob of matter to one location, and could then modify it by making changes to the first blob (or vice versa I presume).
For us, initially the cost of the hardware and media was too much compared to the good old VCR. Later, our DVR pretty much made it pointless. Most recently, the ability to watch TV shows off the internet on-demand, or to obtain them via BitTorrent, has almost supplanted the DVR completely.
The embryos would then be destroyed within 14 days.
I have a hunch that some lab tech would end up with a private Island of Doctor Moreau in their garage, via a few test tubes that were somehow misplaced at the lab.
Quite right. The logical thing for him to have done was kept the protest simmering down low so the Pope wouldn't be scared off. Then, while the Pope was giving his speech, he could have stood up and made a big scene, and refuse to leave when confronted by security. Then he would have to be physically removed, which would likely result in a good tasering. While being tased he could have made some pathetic, whiny statement like "Don't tase me bro!" to increase public sympathy. Of course it would all be caught on video, which would quickly propagate all over the net. Thus he could have played the victim, while the Pope could only stand there impotently surrounded by his mean bodyguards.
Well, I guess there is one big flaw with that. The venue wasn't going to be here in the United States, so the whole tasering thing wouldn't have happened in the first place.
Oh, and Marcello Cini doesn't have a future as a politician - you have to be far more subtle and clever than that.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? Considering that the US shot down a satellite over two decades ago, from a missile fired from an F15 of all things, I don't think the USA had a whole lot to prove. In fact, I think the military people are smart enough to not give any inkling of just what they are capable of (like the amazing fact the F-117A stealth fighter was kept secret for so long, until its unveiling during Desert Storm).
What irked me the most was China's whiny statements about the test, which was extremely benign in every regard, while China themselves produced a huge band of debris in a very useful polar orbit for no legitimate reason whatsoever.
I say this because thus far, we've discovered nothing whatsoever that is non-reproducible about the brain's structure and function
You got to the fallacy of your argument quite quickly - in the second sentence. We don't fully know how the brain works, thus there are likely entire mechanisms we haven't discovered yet. Are those unknowns reproducible? Who knows - simply to know of something does not mean you can create it at will. What we know about the brain so far has no bearing on what we find in the future and whether that will be reproducible.
The other fallacy is that we are held up by our current computing power. That's been a running excuse now for decades, and it's hogwash. I'm sure you know what it means to be Turing Complete - essentially any Turing Machine can emulate any other Turing Machine given enough execution time and storage. There are creatures with extremely simple brains. Put two and two together, and why can't we simulate a worm's brain?
This is from almost a decade ago - 1999:
"C. elegans has one of the least complex nervous systems of any life form on the planet," says Lockery, a University of Oregon biologist who has studied the worm for twenty years. "Its brain has only 302 neurons, or brain cells; that's compared to about a hundred billion neurons in a human's brain. It is the only animal for which we have a complete map of the brain. It is likely to become the first animal for which we can gain a fairly complete understanding of how the brain controls behavior."
So we have a full map of this animal's brain of 302 neurons for a decade. Well, where are the Flash and Java worm simulations floating all over the net, showing a little virtual worm moving around based on the stimuli of our mouse?
Can these compounds be used as fuel with little or no processing? I can envision a probe burrowing and rolling and sliding around the moon's surface, enjoying an unlimited supply of power by sucking in some fuel whenever it needs it. The extremely cold temperatures don't sound as daunting when unlimited energy is available.
Obviously the current searches are not semantic, so the key is searching for the right thing. At first glance, your query sounds simple enough. However, the problem is that there simply may not be any webpages dedicated to providing the exact information you asked for. In this case, are there webpages that are kept up-to-date with information specific to the next shuttle launch? What you really need to search for is not the "next" shuttle launch, whose definition is always changing, but "shuttle launch schedule", or even simply "shuttle schedule".
Should it be easier to search than that? Sure, that would be nice. My biggest concern is that since the semantic engine is trying to infer meaning to your query (specifically, display pages that don't explicitly match your query - in this case, not when the next shuttle launch is, but simply the current shuttle launch schedule), it would be open to even more abuse through spamming and PageRank type abuse.
Dan East
Who gets to set article tags that everyone sees? Slashdot's FAQ on tags does not explain how individual user's tags end up being assigned to the article for everyone. The system can't be based on frequency, because almost every article has a long tag that was obviously a one-of (like this article's "slashdottagsmakemesmile"). Do the Slashdot editors get to choose them? Do subscribers get more weight? Or is someone manipulating the system, and assigning tags through many accounts to reach whatever threshold is required to make the tag stick?
That's a good idea. The optical drive is the real portability killer. It's large, power-hungry, and the most fragile piece of hardware in the kit. If you could use something else besides DVDs, you could go with a Micro PC (like the Sony Vaio UX380N), combined with a bluetooth keyboard if you want to do a lot of typing. If you needed DVD you could still use a machine like the Sony with an external DVD drive.
Those devices probably aren't particularly rugged, but they are so small you could put them in a practically indestructible case and still be smaller and lighter than a laptop.
Dan East
The energy expended in the construction and maintenance of the tunnels, coupled with the continuous energy required to keep pumping air out, might offset any efficiency saved from reducing drag.
Dan East
He pulled this off using insider knowledge. He worked previously in the back office, which oversaw all trading. The bank then moved him into trading, which according to statements I've read from other bankers, was practically a violation of policy.
Since he knew the flow of information through all parts of the bank, he was able to cover his tracks and employ creative accounting. He knew what types of accounts and trades would not raise flags, so he would flow money though those routes.
This type of security risk can exist in practically any business. If you're a developer or IT person, and suddenly find yourself working within the infrastructure you design and maintain, then guess what? You can most likely bend the system around some rules. The same type of rule applies for relatives and spouses. Most businesses will not let an employer be managed or supervised by a relative or spouse for the same reason. They can cover each other's tracks, and have more complete knowledge of the system.
Dan East
The fact that you annotated the typo in the text you quoted as "sic" proved the first two points of your post.
Dan East
RFID tags transmit incredibly weak signals. The only power available to them is what the tiny antenna can convert from RF transmitted by the reader. A simple battery-operated transmitter operating at the same output frequency(ies) as the tags can easily interfere with the RFID tags transmission making it impossible for the reader to decode its signal.
Also, reading the tags is really easy (and cheap). I bought a reader for $50 that uses a simple serial interface. I connected it to a PIC microcontroller, wrote some relatively simple software for it, and output IrDA via an IR LED so I can display the data on a Pocket PC.
Dan East
In the event your question is serious, she's a 19 year-old from the Netherlands who made some webcam videos of herself singing various top 40 songs, like Beyonce's Irreplaceable. She became extremely popular on YouTube (rather deservedly so - as an amateur she had a great deal of raw talent). Her popularity spread off of YouTube, leading to appearances on various TV shows her in the US (like the Oprah Winfrey show), she has recorded with various professionals, and has opened concerts for Justin Timberlake and Timberland.
She is the rare artist that is (relatively) well-known internationally solely through the internet and word of mouth. Her success is the epitome of what the 2008 RPM Challenge is about - the creation, distribution and success of music completely free of the recording industry.
Her success did not cost her any money, require any risk, or necessitate contracts with record labels.
Dan East
The RIAA and producers aren't about making music - they make celebrities. They broker fame to those who are bound to them by contract, allowing the producers and industry to profit from the success of musicians. They control what songs radio stations can play, determine what music makes it into movies and onto television, and even what gets heard while you're riding the elevator. They wield the ability to present the masses with specific songs of their choosing.
TV shows like American Idol reveal the fact that a substantial number of people can sing really, really well. They can find hundreds of talented people easily, so you can imagine how many more are out there that either don't try out, are not within the age range they are seeking, or are simply not shown on TV. If you figure one out of every 3000 people can sing really well, then that's 100,000 really good singers in the USA alone. The job of the recording industry is to pick out a handful that fits whatever mold they are currently using, and will agree to whatever contract they put in front of them.
Of course it is possible to record music without the industry. However no-one will know about your music (unless you happen to rise about the noise of the internet, like Esmee Denters did on YouTube with her home-made webcam videos).
Dan East
Sterilizing prisoners, people they decided were mentally ill, etc.
I guess I'm the only one here that has the balls to admit it was probably effective to at least some degree.
Dan East
So the noun iPhone is now being used to refer to any cellphone, pda or other hybrid mobile device? Steve Jobs has already won.
Dan East
In case anyone wondered, the Wiimote can track up to 4 infrared sources. The Wiimote's on-board hardware does all the heavy lifting as far as processing the image and determining actual coordinates (and sizes) of infrared sources. If a project only requires tracking four objects then the Wiimote makes a fantastic piece of hardware for experimental and hobbyist use.
So in this demo, all the manipulation is done by tracking four coordinates grouped into two pairs.
Dan East
I'm missing something, either personally or in my browser.
The former. This is art for geeks.
Dan East
I think I know where the Japanese got their inspiration. Anyone see that MacGyver episode where he was stuck on the Mir space station with a ream of paper to work with?
Dan East
I'm afraid the SETI people will be quite disappointed when the first extraterrestrial communication they receive is from a copyright lawyer.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/multimedia/phone_crater.html
Dan East
One of the more likely scenarios would be to have two blobs of matter that consist entirely of entangled pairs. You would transport, via standard means, one blob of matter to one location, and could then modify it by making changes to the first blob (or vice versa I presume).
Dan East
For us, initially the cost of the hardware and media was too much compared to the good old VCR.
Later, our DVR pretty much made it pointless.
Most recently, the ability to watch TV shows off the internet on-demand, or to obtain them via BitTorrent, has almost supplanted the DVR completely.
Dan East
The embryos would then be destroyed within 14 days.
I have a hunch that some lab tech would end up with a private Island of Doctor Moreau in their garage, via a few test tubes that were somehow misplaced at the lab.
Dan East
So this is a ruggadized Pocket PC (like they use in the automotive section of Wal-Mart) with custom voice recognition software.
Dan East
Quite right. The logical thing for him to have done was kept the protest simmering down low so the Pope wouldn't be scared off. Then, while the Pope was giving his speech, he could have stood up and made a big scene, and refuse to leave when confronted by security. Then he would have to be physically removed, which would likely result in a good tasering. While being tased he could have made some pathetic, whiny statement like "Don't tase me bro!" to increase public sympathy. Of course it would all be caught on video, which would quickly propagate all over the net. Thus he could have played the victim, while the Pope could only stand there impotently surrounded by his mean bodyguards.
Well, I guess there is one big flaw with that. The venue wasn't going to be here in the United States, so the whole tasering thing wouldn't have happened in the first place.
Oh, and Marcello Cini doesn't have a future as a politician - you have to be far more subtle and clever than that.
Dan East
Great. Now restaurants will stop letting people take their left-over steak home, for fear of having their custom cow breed cloned.
Dan East
Will it cost half as much?
Dan East