Interesting. The only arguably legitimate reason that I can think of would be if the Android web client API has some kind of anti-malicious-website functionality built-in, for which Google automatically checks for hostile or compromised websites. In any case, I have a couple of other tests that could prove illuminating, if you are interested in doing them:
1. If you access a new URL in your website from the same Internet connection but another device, does Google's spider scan it? If not, that would help to rule out factors other than Android, such as a link between you and the website, or possibly at the end of your website's hosting provider.
2. If you use SSL to access a new URL in your website, does Google still scan the full URL instead of just the hostname? (I would expect and certainly hope not.)
Is there any promising theories how a neural network could produce consciousness? Is it gradual or does consciousness rise all of a sudden after a certain threshold is exceeded? Like, with x billion neurons and y billion connections you are not conscious but having (x+1) billion neurons you suddenly are conscious. If it is gradual then what does is mean to be less conscious or more conscious? There's many unknowns and I haven't seen any convincing ideas how NN could explain anything related to consciousness.
I have certainly experienced what I would consider to be partially conscious states, so yes, I would say that it is likely gradual and that things can be conscious to different and varying degrees. As to simply counting connections, I would guess that particular types of organization and weighting would also be required. (We aren't quite just a big pile of linear algebra.)
There are people doing actual research in this area. For example, some researchers have tried monitoring brain activity while a patient goes under anesthesia. Some anesthetics cause neuron firing rates across the brain to drop dramatically; everything sort of turns off. For other drugs, firing rates stay similar, but activity ceases to be correlated between normally related regions (sensory and motor, for example). Fascinating stuff, and I look forward to future results in this area.
Worse still, there isn't a clear consensus that the neural net made up of the cells in your brain is actually what is responsible for conscious thought. There's some thought that the neurons are just control systems and the real thinking happens in a biological quantum computer...
Penrose, is that you?
Seriously, there is no evidence for any kind of "quantum consciousness", nor any convincing theory as to why a neural net would be insufficient to produce consciousness. I suspect that the main attraction of this idea is that it is a non-religious excuse for believing consciousness to be magical or special in some way.
I'm not aware of any credible evidence that as a general principle that monitoring workers reduces ability to perform tasks.
"Complex" is the key term. Generally speaking, there is an optimal level of psychological arousal for performing given tasks. For tasks that are simple, rote, and/or well-learned, that level is higher than it is for tasks that are difficult or novel. In the specific case of knowing that you are being observed, it tends to decrease performance on difficult tasks and have varying results on simple tasks. See Social facilitation.
The question here is whether or not the job of train operator qualifies as simple and rote, or difficult. I could easily see it being the former, where the tasks are not difficult, and the challenge is to maintain attention or vigilance. If that is the case, then the awareness of being monitored could well improve performance in itself.
You ivory tower intellectuals must not lose touch with the world of industrial growth and hard currency. It is all very well and good to pursue these high-minded scientific theories, but research grants are expensive. You must justify your existence by providing not only knowledge but concrete and profitable applications as well.
...then why are we reading about it now? Is it really such an important and decisive finding that we can't wait a few months until it at least gains at least that level of credibility?
Certainly; with a high enough dose, the subject would die.
That aside, the finding is interesting. Based on the summary, I thought that it might just be helping the subjects get closer to the ideal level of psychological arousal for what is probably a simple, routine, and possibly slightly boring task. However, the article states that the subjects were given the pills after having been shown the images, not before, in order to control for that possibility.
There is still one alternative explanation that I can see to a direct chemical effect of caffeine. For the subjects given caffeine after doing the first task in the experimental setting, an association was formed between the setting and getting caffeine. When the subjects returned to do a similar task in the experimental setting again, they received a slight boost in psychological arousal in anticipation of receiving the caffeine. (This kind of effect is commonly seen with many drugs, although I don't know if 200mg of caffeine would induce the effect with a single exposure.) The increased arousal during the follow-up task could explain the increased performance. If they wanted to control for it, one way would be to administer the follow-up task in a different environment than the one in which they did the first task, thereby reducing the impact of any associations with the original setting.
The scientific method need not constitute the entirety of a person's belief system for them to decide that, based on its eminently observable practical applications, it is a useful tool.
While I will agree that 65 million years is not long in geological time, any novel life forms trying to develop on Earth have to compete for limited resources with existing organisms that are already well-adapted to their environments. It is probably much less likely for some alternative to cellular life as we know it to develop here in parallel with existing life than it is somewhere that we seed a supply of proteins and amino acids and watch to see what happens.
A bit late, but Ceylon creator Brian Krig answered the following question in an interview posted today:
Finally, going forward, do you think that going forward, Red Hat will start coding more in Ceylon?
The first step for us will be to bring some of our pieces that we have in the JBoss ecosystem that we delivered as pieces of the application server, and repackage them, and make them modular, and make those modules for the Ceylon platform.
At the same time as that, we're taking Ceylon, and we're enabling deployment to Openshift. Once we have then the capabilities that we have in JBoss, also for Ceylon, then it's going to be a lot more interesting - what can we do in Ceylon that we can currently do in JBoss?
People often ask me, does RedHat use Ceylon to build internal projects, and I'm always kind of like, I don't quite understand, we don't have internal projects, we're a product company!
I am curious as to Red Hat's practical motivations for creating this language. Specifically, do they plan on integrating it in their existing business or projects in any way?
I legitimately wonder how many (if any) of the features covered by the patents in question would not have been implemented in Android if not for the work of whoever filed the patent. If the answer is few or none, then patents are subtracting rather than adding value to society in this domain. If the answer is many, then there is at least an argument to be made.
While it is true that some security issues are outside of your awareness and control, following best practices makes it less likely for a single point of failure to provide attackers with access to sensitive data.
Personally, I would never allow sensitive user data to be used in a Dev environment in the first place. You shouldn't need to, and it creates an additional potential target for attackers.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting. The only arguably legitimate reason that I can think of would be if the Android web client API has some kind of anti-malicious-website functionality built-in, for which Google automatically checks for hostile or compromised websites. In any case, I have a couple of other tests that could prove illuminating, if you are interested in doing them:
1. If you access a new URL in your website from the same Internet connection but another device, does Google's spider scan it? If not, that would help to rule out factors other than Android, such as a link between you and the website, or possibly at the end of your website's hosting provider.
2. If you use SSL to access a new URL in your website, does Google still scan the full URL instead of just the hostname? (I would expect and certainly hope not.)
Is there any promising theories how a neural network could produce consciousness? Is it gradual or does consciousness rise all of a sudden after a certain threshold is exceeded? Like, with x billion neurons and y billion connections you are not conscious but having (x+1) billion neurons you suddenly are conscious. If it is gradual then what does is mean to be less conscious or more conscious? There's many unknowns and I haven't seen any convincing ideas how NN could explain anything related to consciousness.
I have certainly experienced what I would consider to be partially conscious states, so yes, I would say that it is likely gradual and that things can be conscious to different and varying degrees. As to simply counting connections, I would guess that particular types of organization and weighting would also be required. (We aren't quite just a big pile of linear algebra.)
There are people doing actual research in this area. For example, some researchers have tried monitoring brain activity while a patient goes under anesthesia. Some anesthetics cause neuron firing rates across the brain to drop dramatically; everything sort of turns off. For other drugs, firing rates stay similar, but activity ceases to be correlated between normally related regions (sensory and motor, for example). Fascinating stuff, and I look forward to future results in this area.
Worse still, there isn't a clear consensus that the neural net made up of the cells in your brain is actually what is responsible for conscious thought. There's some thought that the neurons are just control systems and the real thinking happens in a biological quantum computer...
Penrose, is that you?
Seriously, there is no evidence for any kind of "quantum consciousness", nor any convincing theory as to why a neural net would be insufficient to produce consciousness. I suspect that the main attraction of this idea is that it is a non-religious excuse for believing consciousness to be magical or special in some way.
I'm not aware of any credible evidence that as a general principle that monitoring workers reduces ability to perform tasks.
"Complex" is the key term. Generally speaking, there is an optimal level of psychological arousal for performing given tasks. For tasks that are simple, rote, and/or well-learned, that level is higher than it is for tasks that are difficult or novel. In the specific case of knowing that you are being observed, it tends to decrease performance on difficult tasks and have varying results on simple tasks. See Social facilitation.
The question here is whether or not the job of train operator qualifies as simple and rote, or difficult. I could easily see it being the former, where the tasks are not difficult, and the challenge is to maintain attention or vigilance. If that is the case, then the awareness of being monitored could well improve performance in itself.
More like, "spoorious correlation".
...today would not be its best day. (As much as I wouldn't mind seeing a js alternative gain traction.)
Dr. Stephen T. Colbert has been telling us to think with out gut for even longer.
Imagine how high it would be if they didnt ...
In 2013, the murder rate would have been about 13 lower. Source:
http://www.txexecutions.org/stats.asp
Also, would this allow for the development of an over unity, energy from nothing generation machine.
The answer to that question is always, always no. Except when it's still no, in which case it is no. No.
In conclusion, no.
You ivory tower intellectuals must not lose touch with the world of industrial growth and hard currency. It is all very well and good to pursue these high-minded scientific theories, but research grants are expensive. You must justify your existence by providing not only knowledge but concrete and profitable applications as well.
...then why are we reading about it now? Is it really such an important and decisive finding that we can't wait a few months until it at least gains at least that level of credibility?
Certainly; with a high enough dose, the subject would die.
That aside, the finding is interesting. Based on the summary, I thought that it might just be helping the subjects get closer to the ideal level of psychological arousal for what is probably a simple, routine, and possibly slightly boring task. However, the article states that the subjects were given the pills after having been shown the images, not before, in order to control for that possibility.
There is still one alternative explanation that I can see to a direct chemical effect of caffeine. For the subjects given caffeine after doing the first task in the experimental setting, an association was formed between the setting and getting caffeine. When the subjects returned to do a similar task in the experimental setting again, they received a slight boost in psychological arousal in anticipation of receiving the caffeine. (This kind of effect is commonly seen with many drugs, although I don't know if 200mg of caffeine would induce the effect with a single exposure.) The increased arousal during the follow-up task could explain the increased performance. If they wanted to control for it, one way would be to administer the follow-up task in a different environment than the one in which they did the first task, thereby reducing the impact of any associations with the original setting.
Personally, I don't like Visigoths. Tomorrow, I'll put up a sign: "No spiders or Visigoths allowed." I'm sick and tired of these Visigoths.
The scientific method need not constitute the entirety of a person's belief system for them to decide that, based on its eminently observable practical applications, it is a useful tool.
Yes. One might come to the conclusion that certain other explanations for existence are improbable or unnecessary, as well.
I thought that man was "ish" (aleph-yod-shin) and woman was "isha" (aleph-shin-shin-he).
While I will agree that 65 million years is not long in geological time, any novel life forms trying to develop on Earth have to compete for limited resources with existing organisms that are already well-adapted to their environments. It is probably much less likely for some alternative to cellular life as we know it to develop here in parallel with existing life than it is somewhere that we seed a supply of proteins and amino acids and watch to see what happens.
Curious, has Google said or implied anything about plans for separating the radio drivers form the kernel? If so, could someone point me to it?
A bit late, but Ceylon creator Brian Krig answered the following question in an interview posted today:
Finally, going forward, do you think that going forward, Red Hat will start coding more in Ceylon?
The first step for us will be to bring some of our pieces that we have in the JBoss ecosystem that we delivered as pieces of the application server, and repackage them, and make them modular, and make those modules for the Ceylon platform.
At the same time as that, we're taking Ceylon, and we're enabling deployment to Openshift. Once we have then the capabilities that we have in JBoss, also for Ceylon, then it's going to be a lot more interesting - what can we do in Ceylon that we can currently do in JBoss?
People often ask me, does RedHat use Ceylon to build internal projects, and I'm always kind of like, I don't quite understand, we don't have internal projects, we're a product company!
I am curious as to Red Hat's practical motivations for creating this language. Specifically, do they plan on integrating it in their existing business or projects in any way?
People do not think in types.
Piaget would disagree with you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)
Not sure why parent is modded down, Ur/Web does have relatively little to do with Ceylon.
I legitimately wonder how many (if any) of the features covered by the patents in question would not have been implemented in Android if not for the work of whoever filed the patent. If the answer is few or none, then patents are subtracting rather than adding value to society in this domain. If the answer is many, then there is at least an argument to be made.
While it is true that some security issues are outside of your awareness and control, following best practices makes it less likely for a single point of failure to provide attackers with access to sensitive data.
Personally, I would never allow sensitive user data to be used in a Dev environment in the first place. You shouldn't need to, and it creates an additional potential target for attackers.