Yes, there's a lot of redundancy and plasticity, but it has its limits, and there are plenty of single points of failure. I speak from personal experience: a small ischemic stroke in the hippocampus took out my boyfriend's short-term memory, and despite plenty of healthy brain tissue in the neighborhood, his ability to form new memories was permanently shot.
That's kind of the point. The Great Lakes are a huge, easily-tapped resource, and that resource is renewable (in principle), but it's still finite. That's why those of us in the GL basin with our heads on straight don't want to build a pipeline to the southwest (or anywhere else), no matter how much they offer to pay.
Yeah, fortunately legislators from the Great Lakes states got those treaties through the Senate before the Honorable Gentlepersons From The Southwest realized what was at stake. Sorry, Arizona, but when it comes to water issues, I'm with Ontario.
It demonstrates that they have the neurological capacity for language, if not the vocal talent for it. But even though an ape easily has the manual dexterity to paint an image of an object, they evidently don't have the neurological capacity for it.
It seems to me that it would take less time for them to evolve more vocal subtlety and start to take advantage of it (a change with an obvious survival benefit), than it would to develop the forebrain capacity required to translate an object into an artistic abstraction of it.
I'm a little surprised that there isn't more of a protest from Alaskans over this... though I suppose they're used to "mining" and shipping their natural resources elsewhere. Here in Michigan, which sits in the middle of one of the world's great fresh water reservoirs, the export of water is hotly debated, and regulated under the Great Lakes Compact. In part that's because fresh water (in the form of sailable lakes, fishable rivers, swimmable beaches, etc) is a major part of our tourism economy and what's left of our shipping/industrial economy. In part it's because we know that there are parts of the country (and the world) that are getting thirstier, and we don't want to give up what we have here without a fight. (Though there's a certain segment of the population who'd settle for a profit.) This is just an early skirmish in the Water Wars of the 21st century.
Edlin rocked. You could pipe commands into it. You could call it from batch files. It wasn't just a text editor; it was MacGuyverific! 15-20 years ago I had a boss who required all of his support staff to know edlin. The reason: regardless of what version of MS-DOS a machine was running (even the fancy new ones with the full-screen editor), edlin was always available. If you needed to edit autoexec.bat or config.sys, or Windows wouldn't run and you needed to fix win.ini, edlin could be your only option.
It's spelled "EBCDIC" (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code... yes I knew that without looking it up), but you are correct: Hollerith cards usually used EBCDIC. IBM didn't start using that upstart ASCII code until the Personal Computer in the 1980s.
There is evidence that hominids developed language prior to the oldest known cave paintings. When you consider that modern primates have demonstrated a limited ability to learn language, but haven't show any aptitude for representational art, it seems likely that language developed before art in hominids.
I would seriously suggest a typewriter as the next step. There's no temptation whatsoever to go back and fiddle with bits you've already typed (as there is with a line editor that has commands for selecting previously-typed lines). It's just straight-ahead typing. Some of the greatest works of literature were written on one. Then when you're done with the first draft, run the pages through a scanner with OCR, and you have a text file suitable for revisions.
Read past my first sentence for an explanation of why it won't be accepted.
Furthermore, a password or PIN is 100% accurate: type it carefully and it will be accepted. Telling a user to "walk like yourself more carefully" or "type like yourself more carefully" for access to his phone is nonsense, because it isn't something he does consciously.
In addition to having the largest number of prisoners by headcount, the US has a comfortable lead in the largest percentage of its population (715/100K) in prison. Russia and Belarus (core of the former Soviet Union) are the closest competitors (554-585/100K), followed by an assortment of various small "third world" countries, other former Soviet-bloc states, South Africa, and Singapore. Not great company. The first western-European country – the societies that the US is supposedly closest to in culture and values – on the list is Spain at #61, with 144/100K; most of western Europe is under 100/100K. Canada is at 116/100K. Granted, I wouldn't want to live in some of the countries toward the bottom of the list either; something tells me that they're doing something wrong, too. But a country that has more people in prison than it has in New Mexico? Something's clearly wrong there.
If the government bans violent video games, isn't the easy solution just not to play them? There are other games, and other ways to entertain yourself. If it bans demonstrations in front of the capital or city hall, there are hundreds – even thousands – of other streets where you can protest. And if it bans a certain religion, just find another one to follow; there are plenty of them.
Thankfully this kind of thinking is the exception.
25% of federal inmates are in there for drug possession. I bet you a good amount of these people wouldn't rob you at gunpoint.
Not before their incarceration, no. But after surviving lock-up in a Darwinian environment in which "fittest" equates to "most dangerous", then re-entering a society in which convicts are denied the right to a good job, there's a pretty good chance they will. We have a criminal justice system that develops criminals.
2 billion entries does not mean they are all unique individuals.
Of course not. Most of them are clones. That's why there are now "pedophiles" behind every bush and tree. Just ask any TV-news-watching or talk-radio-listening American.
There's no way this feature is going to be 100% accurate, and certainly not in 1.0. Every "recognition" technology ever has an error rate, and this will be no different. If it's intended as a security feature, the developers will have to calibrate it to err on the side of denying access, otherwise they'll open themselves up to criticism (and probably legal suits) over its failure to provide the advertised security. This means that there will be false positives, in which the phone denies its legitimate owner access (wearing new shoes, walking on unusual surface, injured, tired, listening to "Beat It"), and that will get the phone chucked across the room in pretty short order.
If the US military manages to become independent of fossil fuels, allowing the civilian sector to take advantage of the technology they develop, they could effectively work themselves out of a job, since their primary function is to secure parts of the world where fossil fuels are found.
I am an Apple fanboy. I have been for many many years. I believe that Apple makes some of the best hardware and software available today, and one of my biggest regrets about my current job compared to my previous two is that fact that I don't get to use Apple equipment or systems in it (all MS and Lotus and MS and RIM and MS).
But Ron Gilbert's criticisms of Apple are essentially correct.
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Yes, there's a lot of redundancy and plasticity, but it has its limits, and there are plenty of single points of failure. I speak from personal experience: a small ischemic stroke in the hippocampus took out my boyfriend's short-term memory, and despite plenty of healthy brain tissue in the neighborhood, his ability to form new memories was permanently shot.
Saying that deaf people have plastic brains is just plain rude! ;)
That's kind of the point. The Great Lakes are a huge, easily-tapped resource, and that resource is renewable (in principle), but it's still finite. That's why those of us in the GL basin with our heads on straight don't want to build a pipeline to the southwest (or anywhere else), no matter how much they offer to pay.
So buy an old manual. I have one that's older than my parents. They need reinking, but they're built to last.
Yeah, fortunately legislators from the Great Lakes states got those treaties through the Senate before the Honorable Gentlepersons From The Southwest realized what was at stake. Sorry, Arizona, but when it comes to water issues, I'm with Ontario.
Not a problem. They said on Fox News that oil and water don't mix, so there wouldn't be any trouble with one contaminating the other.
It demonstrates that they have the neurological capacity for language, if not the vocal talent for it. But even though an ape easily has the manual dexterity to paint an image of an object, they evidently don't have the neurological capacity for it.
It seems to me that it would take less time for them to evolve more vocal subtlety and start to take advantage of it (a change with an obvious survival benefit), than it would to develop the forebrain capacity required to translate an object into an artistic abstraction of it.
(India is not in the Middle East. At least not the part where the oil is.)
I'm a little surprised that there isn't more of a protest from Alaskans over this... though I suppose they're used to "mining" and shipping their natural resources elsewhere. Here in Michigan, which sits in the middle of one of the world's great fresh water reservoirs, the export of water is hotly debated, and regulated under the Great Lakes Compact. In part that's because fresh water (in the form of sailable lakes, fishable rivers, swimmable beaches, etc) is a major part of our tourism economy and what's left of our shipping/industrial economy. In part it's because we know that there are parts of the country (and the world) that are getting thirstier, and we don't want to give up what we have here without a fight. (Though there's a certain segment of the population who'd settle for a profit.) This is just an early skirmish in the Water Wars of the 21st century.
Edlin rocked. You could pipe commands into it. You could call it from batch files. It wasn't just a text editor; it was MacGuyverific! 15-20 years ago I had a boss who required all of his support staff to know edlin. The reason: regardless of what version of MS-DOS a machine was running (even the fancy new ones with the full-screen editor), edlin was always available. If you needed to edit autoexec.bat or config.sys, or Windows wouldn't run and you needed to fix win.ini, edlin could be your only option.
It's spelled "EBCDIC" (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code... yes I knew that without looking it up), but you are correct: Hollerith cards usually used EBCDIC. IBM didn't start using that upstart ASCII code until the Personal Computer in the 1980s.
There is evidence that hominids developed language prior to the oldest known cave paintings. When you consider that modern primates have demonstrated a limited ability to learn language, but haven't show any aptitude for representational art, it seems likely that language developed before art in hominids.
I would seriously suggest a typewriter as the next step. There's no temptation whatsoever to go back and fiddle with bits you've already typed (as there is with a line editor that has commands for selecting previously-typed lines). It's just straight-ahead typing. Some of the greatest works of literature were written on one. Then when you're done with the first draft, run the pages through a scanner with OCR, and you have a text file suitable for revisions.
And oh yeah: the battery never needs recharging.
Read past my first sentence for an explanation of why it won't be accepted.
Furthermore, a password or PIN is 100% accurate: type it carefully and it will be accepted. Telling a user to "walk like yourself more carefully" or "type like yourself more carefully" for access to his phone is nonsense, because it isn't something he does consciously.
In addition to having the largest number of prisoners by headcount, the US has a comfortable lead in the largest percentage of its population (715/100K) in prison. Russia and Belarus (core of the former Soviet Union) are the closest competitors (554-585/100K), followed by an assortment of various small "third world" countries, other former Soviet-bloc states, South Africa, and Singapore. Not great company. The first western-European country – the societies that the US is supposedly closest to in culture and values – on the list is Spain at #61, with 144/100K; most of western Europe is under 100/100K. Canada is at 116/100K. Granted, I wouldn't want to live in some of the countries toward the bottom of the list either; something tells me that they're doing something wrong, too. But a country that has more people in prison than it has in New Mexico? Something's clearly wrong there.
Stats: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita
If the government bans violent video games, isn't the easy solution just not to play them? There are other games, and other ways to entertain yourself. If it bans demonstrations in front of the capital or city hall, there are hundreds – even thousands – of other streets where you can protest. And if it bans a certain religion, just find another one to follow; there are plenty of them.
Thankfully this kind of thinking is the exception.
Not before their incarceration, no. But after surviving lock-up in a Darwinian environment in which "fittest" equates to "most dangerous", then re-entering a society in which convicts are denied the right to a good job, there's a pretty good chance they will. We have a criminal justice system that develops criminals.
Of course not. Most of them are clones. That's why there are now "pedophiles" behind every bush and tree. Just ask any TV-news-watching or talk-radio-listening American.
There's no way this feature is going to be 100% accurate, and certainly not in 1.0. Every "recognition" technology ever has an error rate, and this will be no different. If it's intended as a security feature, the developers will have to calibrate it to err on the side of denying access, otherwise they'll open themselves up to criticism (and probably legal suits) over its failure to provide the advertised security. This means that there will be false positives, in which the phone denies its legitimate owner access (wearing new shoes, walking on unusual surface, injured, tired, listening to "Beat It"), and that will get the phone chucked across the room in pretty short order.
"Separate beasts" is a bit of a muddled metaphor in this instance.
No, to anyone capable of empathy, this is an example of how Sociopathic Libertarianism doesn't work.
If the US military manages to become independent of fossil fuels, allowing the civilian sector to take advantage of the technology they develop, they could effectively work themselves out of a job, since their primary function is to secure parts of the world where fossil fuels are found.
True. As a Michigander I can confirm that Yoopers* sound more like Canadians than they sound like Trolls.* "Say yah to da UP, eh!"
*Upper Peninsula dwellers, the region of the state closest to rural Ontario
**People who live "below the [Mackinac] Bridge"
How long would it take at warp 6, Ensign Chekov?
I am an Apple fanboy. I have been for many many years. I believe that Apple makes some of the best hardware and software available today, and one of my biggest regrets about my current job compared to my previous two is that fact that I don't get to use Apple equipment or systems in it (all MS and Lotus and MS and RIM and MS).
But Ron Gilbert's criticisms of Apple are essentially correct.