When I (an American) spent a term at the University of Aberdeen back in '86, I was amused that they insisted on expanding "CompSci" as "Computing Science", further evidence that the US and UK are divided by a common language.
I've been half-joking for years about the fact that most computers (and printers, etc) are never truly "off" these days.
"The power button doesn't actually turn it off," I tell users, "It just tells the device to pretend it's off. Open it up and you'll see lights still on inside." Because you often can. "At least we can still pull the plug, so they can't take over the world just yet...." [nudge, wink, smile] Inside I am not smiling. Because I know that computers (and other electronic devices) increasingly have their own internal batteries....
The HP TC1100 was about as close to the iPad as then-current technology allowed. In fact, most of its specs (except for thickness/weight and input device) were on par with the iPad gen1. They had most of the right ideas, but not the hardware, and definitely not the software.
When Microsoft launched the TabletPC initiative, there were quite a few different configurations available, for different uses. As that initiative lost steam, most of that "biodiversity" was lost and we were left with just a bunch of laptops with swivel screens and a few ruggedised slates: the survival of the fittest for that technological environment.
Now the environment has changed, there's been new DNA injected into the laptop/tablet market (from Apple and Google), and we're seeing an outbreak of new species emerging. That's a positive development, not just a sign of doom. I'm more excited about the potential of the tablet market than I have been in years.
What I'm hoping for is that in the process of all this, someone will finally bring out something suitable for serious artistic use. I've been getting by, doing digital illustration on an underpowered old 10" HP slate and more recently a clunky 12" Fujitsu convertible, but what would really get my dollars would be a slate in the 15" range with Wacom stylus support, solid state storage, and the ability to run off-the-shelf Windows (or in my dreams, OS X) software. More briefly: a bigger iPad with a proper stylus, running Photoshop.
But that's just for me (and the many other digital artists like me). What seems like an obvious set of features to me must seem "odd" to someone more accustomed to web-surfing tablets or word-processing laptops, and I'm sure I'd find someone else's ideal a bit odd myself. So far, neither the surviving TabletPC dinosaurs nor the furry first-generation tablets are quite what I'm looking for, and if a "panic" is what it takes to finally get them crossbred into a "hybrid" that can survive (and maybe even thrive) in a new niche, then let the panic ensue!
So your argument seems to be that Watson was almost as good at finding the correct answer (otherwise his fast reaction time would not have helped him), but won only because he was faster. But in most jobs, being a fraction of a second faster/slower is not particularly important. Furthermore, being almost-as-good, but doing so 100% of the time 24/7/365, and requiring only electricity and routine maintenance... would be rather attractive to a lot of employers.
If your algorithm considers "death" to be an optimal solution, you haven't defined the problem correctly.
Instead of framing it as "no suffering", you would define the desired outcome in terms of patient contentment, activity levels, ability to care for themselves, or whatever other metrics medical researchers (I am not one) use to analyze how well a healthcare system is working. Of course I would also want an empathetic human being capable of understanding the ethical and moral implications of the situation to make the actual recommendations to the patient, but diagnostic software is no different from any other kind of software: it does what the programmer tells it to do.
Correlation != causation.... but only up until you demonstrate the causal connection. The fact that money leads to advertising is self-evident, and the fact that advertising influences opinions and behaviors is also very well established.
Also, then notion that a vastly more popular candidate will attract vastly more money overlooks human psychology. Other than big donors buying access, why would most donors bother giving money to a shoo-in? What attracts money to a contest (as demonstrated most recently in Wisconsin) is a deeply and relatively-evenly divided electorate.
Andrew Tanenbaum (of Minix fame) does a good job of tracking state-by-state polling results and what they predict about the Electorial College outcome at http://electoral-vote.com/
I live in a metro area of half a million, and since the demise of Circuit City and CompUSA, when it comes to new-hardware-in-hand-today, the only options are: Best Buy, Office Depot/Max, the Apple Store, Radio Shack, and the electronics sections of the grocery/department stores.
From time to time I drive past the little shop where I bought the printer, modem, and other gear I needed to go with the C64 I got for high school graduation back in '83. Last I looked it was a tattoo studio. The days of the local computer shop are gone. {sigh}
There are all sorts of problems with this idea, of course. Oodles of them. But it isn't entirely without merit. The authorities cannot (at least under current legal doctrine) charge you with a crime you might commit in the future, and I don't think they ever should. But if you're figuring out how to kill someone, and the cops show up at your door saying "we think you're planning to kill someone and you'll be the first person we talk to if someone is killed", that's going to be a rather strong deterrent, and probably prevent that crime. The question is whether it can be done without irreparable harm to personal liberties... and I doubt that.
The headline makes no suggestion of multiregional origin. You misinterpreted it; any shame should be on you for that error.
The out-of-Africa hypothesis implies that our ancestry – back as far as we can meaningfully trace it – was entirely in Africa (back as far as that designation is also meaningful). If it turns out that our primate ancestors instead evolved elsewhere, and relocated there, that is relevant to the question of human origins, because.... it's a part of that origin.
The obvious question is whether insane geniuses are insane because we* are geniuses (i.e. being more intelligent than everyone around us causes more distress than we can handle), or we we are geniuses because we are insane (i.e. our non-standard brains offer us insights that are opaque to those around us). Or is this an example of two independent phenomena with a common cause?
*Don't expect false modesty from an insane genius.:)
He was asking people to consider information they hadn't been aware of before, and reconsider their existing assumptions. That's not "going a bit far". That's Science. Sorry you find the process so "irrational", but that's your failing, not his.
Volcanoes were invented shortly after World War 2, following the demonstration by the crew of the Manhattan Project that it was possible to melt rock. They were so impressive that they were then retroactively added to various historical documents around the world, thru a combination of warp drive and continental drift.
Making an observation that something appears to have happened, but failing to explain the mechanism for is not "making irrational stuff up". It's "presenting an hypothesis", which is part of the scientific method. It's an entirely different thing from imagining something fanciful out of nothing factual because you want it for a work of fiction. It's perfectly rational to say "we can't fathom why or how yet, but let's see if this might be true". For example, Newton didn't have any real explanation for what makes gravity work (nor did anyone else, for centuries), but his formulas describing his observations of orbital mechanics were genuine science being practiced, not "making irrational stuff up".
....or are they simply more cynical about the actual value of strong passwords in the era of large-scale user-database compromises?
I seriously doubt that most young people (i.e. the ones who aren't tech majors) even understand what this means. Young people appear to be more tech-savvy mostly because they have grown up around it and are not intimidated by it; it isn't because they have an innately better understanding of computer science and follow tech news more closely.
In fact, that lack of intimidation is also a better explanation of why they choose weaker passwords: they don't take it as seriously as older people, who both have had more (bad) experiences in life to make them more cautious, and are less comfortable with computers out of unfamiliarity
The Bill of Rights doesn't prohibit (for example) slavery, disenfranchisement of women, or the outlawing of homosexuality. Later Amendments (e.g. 13th, 14th, 19th) corrected some of the oversights we now consider "basic civil/human rights", but not all of them.
My parents made me go outside and play with other kids instead of watching TV all the time (which was the lazy kid's asocial "activity" of that decade). Now, I may be single (after one long-term relationship) and weigh 200lbs in my 40s, but I probably have them to thank for the fact that I'm not a virgin (with no long-term relationship) and weigh 300lbs in my 40s.
Slashdot Mirror
When I (an American) spent a term at the University of Aberdeen back in '86, I was amused that they insisted on expanding "CompSci" as "Computing Science", further evidence that the US and UK are divided by a common language.
I've been half-joking for years about the fact that most computers (and printers, etc) are never truly "off" these days.
"The power button doesn't actually turn it off," I tell users, "It just tells the device to pretend it's off. Open it up and you'll see lights still on inside." Because you often can. "At least we can still pull the plug, so they can't take over the world just yet...." [nudge, wink, smile] Inside I am not smiling. Because I know that computers (and other electronic devices) increasingly have their own internal batteries....
The HP TC1100 was about as close to the iPad as then-current technology allowed. In fact, most of its specs (except for thickness/weight and input device) were on par with the iPad gen1. They had most of the right ideas, but not the hardware, and definitely not the software.
It's the opposite of "stagnation".
When Microsoft launched the TabletPC initiative, there were quite a few different configurations available, for different uses. As that initiative lost steam, most of that "biodiversity" was lost and we were left with just a bunch of laptops with swivel screens and a few ruggedised slates: the survival of the fittest for that technological environment.
Now the environment has changed, there's been new DNA injected into the laptop/tablet market (from Apple and Google), and we're seeing an outbreak of new species emerging. That's a positive development, not just a sign of doom. I'm more excited about the potential of the tablet market than I have been in years.
What I'm hoping for is that in the process of all this, someone will finally bring out something suitable for serious artistic use. I've been getting by, doing digital illustration on an underpowered old 10" HP slate and more recently a clunky 12" Fujitsu convertible, but what would really get my dollars would be a slate in the 15" range with Wacom stylus support, solid state storage, and the ability to run off-the-shelf Windows (or in my dreams, OS X) software. More briefly: a bigger iPad with a proper stylus, running Photoshop.
But that's just for me (and the many other digital artists like me). What seems like an obvious set of features to me must seem "odd" to someone more accustomed to web-surfing tablets or word-processing laptops, and I'm sure I'd find someone else's ideal a bit odd myself. So far, neither the surviving TabletPC dinosaurs nor the furry first-generation tablets are quite what I'm looking for, and if a "panic" is what it takes to finally get them crossbred into a "hybrid" that can survive (and maybe even thrive) in a new niche, then let the panic ensue!
So your argument seems to be that Watson was almost as good at finding the correct answer (otherwise his fast reaction time would not have helped him), but won only because he was faster. But in most jobs, being a fraction of a second faster/slower is not particularly important. Furthermore, being almost-as-good, but doing so 100% of the time 24/7/365, and requiring only electricity and routine maintenance... would be rather attractive to a lot of employers.
If your algorithm considers "death" to be an optimal solution, you haven't defined the problem correctly.
Instead of framing it as "no suffering", you would define the desired outcome in terms of patient contentment, activity levels, ability to care for themselves, or whatever other metrics medical researchers (I am not one) use to analyze how well a healthcare system is working. Of course I would also want an empathetic human being capable of understanding the ethical and moral implications of the situation to make the actual recommendations to the patient, but diagnostic software is no different from any other kind of software: it does what the programmer tells it to do.
Correlation != causation.... but only up until you demonstrate the causal connection. The fact that money leads to advertising is self-evident, and the fact that advertising influences opinions and behaviors is also very well established.
Also, then notion that a vastly more popular candidate will attract vastly more money overlooks human psychology. Other than big donors buying access, why would most donors bother giving money to a shoo-in? What attracts money to a contest (as demonstrated most recently in Wisconsin) is a deeply and relatively-evenly divided electorate.
Andrew Tanenbaum (of Minix fame) does a good job of tracking state-by-state polling results and what they predict about the Electorial College outcome at http://electoral-vote.com/
I live in a metro area of half a million, and since the demise of Circuit City and CompUSA, when it comes to new-hardware-in-hand-today, the only options are: Best Buy, Office Depot/Max, the Apple Store, Radio Shack, and the electronics sections of the grocery/department stores.
From time to time I drive past the little shop where I bought the printer, modem, and other gear I needed to go with the C64 I got for high school graduation back in '83. Last I looked it was a tattoo studio. The days of the local computer shop are gone. {sigh}
Um.... you might want to adjust the brightness/contrast of your display.
There are all sorts of problems with this idea, of course. Oodles of them. But it isn't entirely without merit. The authorities cannot (at least under current legal doctrine) charge you with a crime you might commit in the future, and I don't think they ever should. But if you're figuring out how to kill someone, and the cops show up at your door saying "we think you're planning to kill someone and you'll be the first person we talk to if someone is killed", that's going to be a rather strong deterrent, and probably prevent that crime. The question is whether it can be done without irreparable harm to personal liberties... and I doubt that.
The headline makes no suggestion of multiregional origin. You misinterpreted it; any shame should be on you for that error.
The out-of-Africa hypothesis implies that our ancestry – back as far as we can meaningfully trace it – was entirely in Africa (back as far as that designation is also meaningful). If it turns out that our primate ancestors instead evolved elsewhere, and relocated there, that is relevant to the question of human origins, because.... it's a part of that origin.
Oh, and GTFU.
Wait, so instead of the slogan "We are all Africans", we might have to change it to "We are all Asian-Africans"?
The obvious question is whether insane geniuses are insane because we* are geniuses (i.e. being more intelligent than everyone around us causes more distress than we can handle), or we we are geniuses because we are insane (i.e. our non-standard brains offer us insights that are opaque to those around us). Or is this an example of two independent phenomena with a common cause?
*Don't expect false modesty from an insane genius. :)
He was asking people to consider information they hadn't been aware of before, and reconsider their existing assumptions. That's not "going a bit far". That's Science. Sorry you find the process so "irrational", but that's your failing, not his.
Volcanoes were invented shortly after World War 2, following the demonstration by the crew of the Manhattan Project that it was possible to melt rock. They were so impressive that they were then retroactively added to various historical documents around the world, thru a combination of warp drive and continental drift.
Making an observation that something appears to have happened, but failing to explain the mechanism for is not "making irrational stuff up". It's "presenting an hypothesis", which is part of the scientific method. It's an entirely different thing from imagining something fanciful out of nothing factual because you want it for a work of fiction. It's perfectly rational to say "we can't fathom why or how yet, but let's see if this might be true". For example, Newton didn't have any real explanation for what makes gravity work (nor did anyone else, for centuries), but his formulas describing his observations of orbital mechanics were genuine science being practiced, not "making irrational stuff up".
I seriously doubt that most young people (i.e. the ones who aren't tech majors) even understand what this means. Young people appear to be more tech-savvy mostly because they have grown up around it and are not intimidated by it; it isn't because they have an innately better understanding of computer science and follow tech news more closely.
In fact, that lack of intimidation is also a better explanation of why they choose weaker passwords: they don't take it as seriously as older people, who both have had more (bad) experiences in life to make them more cautious, and are less comfortable with computers out of unfamiliarity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
Er.... "space" is "another place".
The Bill of Rights doesn't prohibit (for example) slavery, disenfranchisement of women, or the outlawing of homosexuality. Later Amendments (e.g. 13th, 14th, 19th) corrected some of the oversights we now consider "basic civil/human rights", but not all of them.
If I miss this, I'll just get in my spaceship and watch it some other time, from space.
Moderation in all things.
My parents made me go outside and play with other kids instead of watching TV all the time (which was the lazy kid's asocial "activity" of that decade). Now, I may be single (after one long-term relationship) and weigh 200lbs in my 40s, but I probably have them to thank for the fact that I'm not a virgin (with no long-term relationship) and weigh 300lbs in my 40s.
So did I. It was also a joke.
Pedants don't have patience.