No. FWIW, I'm not yet eligible for American citizenship. People seem to have all manner of fascinating misconceptions about what it takes to get to the U.S. and become a citizen if you do it the legal route.
I won't be eligible to even apply for citizenship until I've lived here for five years. Then, I'll have apply, wait until I can take a U.S. history exam, and prove I know more about U.S. history than the majority of this year's graduating university students. (Think I'm exaggerating? Check the recent surveys on how much U.S. history is known by this year's crop of graduates.)
However, had I been young enough, I would have been eligible for military service. There've been a number of stories during the Iraq war about legal residents who have not lived here long enough to be eligible for citizenship but are still fighting in Iraq. At least one such individual had citizenship granted posthumously. Many others are having citizenship fast-tracked as a reward for their service.
In the meantime, because I'm not yet eligible for citizenship, that means there are many other benefits for which I'm also ineligible, including those that are paid for in part by my taxes. Yet I still must face all the responsibilities.
Now, despite how this sounds, I'm not complaining. The U.S. was generous enough to allow me to live here, and I play by their rules. I'd expect the same in the reverse situation (where someone immigrated to my county of origin). My only complaint is directed at U.S. citizens who are bitter at me because of my immigrant status and because of their inaccurate assumptions about the privileges I enjoy and the lack of burdensome responsibilities.
When I moved to the U.S. (my wife is an American citizen), I would've been required to make myself available for military duty had I been younger (I don't recall what the cutoff age was, but I was 30). Just to make sure this is clear -- I had an interview at the U.S. Consulate in my home country and was asked to confirm my age, and was specifically informed it was for this purpose.
Please take note -- I'm not complaining about this; I was moving to the U.S., so it's their rules. Fair enough. I'm merely correcting the parent poster. (Conveniently posting as AC, I see.)
Re:The quarter is hard enough
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 1
my wallet always seems to fill up with £1 and £2 coins
That's true, and also occurs in other countries with $1 and $2 coins, such as Australia and New Zealand. But most people seem to find that better than those horrible dingy $1 paper notes. My experience is that Americans on vacation in those countries end up wondering why the heck America still uses the $1 note instead of introducing $1 coins.
The only problem is when you travel between Australia and N.Z. and realise that one of them has a small $1 coin and a large $2 coin, but the other country is the other way around. I always used to be able to tell very easily which was which because they're the only gold coins in a sea of silver currency, and you just need to know which size is which. Then I went between the two countries on business a few times and ended up always having to check the denomination as I couldn't remember which was which in whatever country I was now in -- "now, is the small coin the $2 coin in Australia, or is that the New Zealand currency?".
Being that these people are running code on their machine that they have no clue they're actually running...
Exactly. As opposed to Windows Update, which (coincidentally) was vilified just yesterday on these hallowed pages, and will prompt you to allow the update unless you've explicitly turned it off.
The most powerful bomb of which I'm aware was a 50 or 58 MT bomb (depending on the source) on Novaya Zemlya.
"The world's most powerful hydrogen bomb was detonated on the 30th of October 1961 [over Novaya Zemlya]. The bomb had an explosive force of 58 megatons, or almost 6,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The bomb was dropped by an aircraft, and detonated 365 metres (1,200 feet) above the surface. The shock wave produced by this bomb was so powerful, it went thrice around the earth. The mushroom cloud extended almost 60 kilometres into the atmosphere."
As angle_slam says above, you could install Turbo Tax on multiple computers, but only file (and print?) from the first installation. (In fact, strictly speaking, I think you could do this on any installation -- you would disable it on the first installation and enable it on the one you wanted to move it to.)
As you say, if you have a multi-computer household, you can quite easily work on your return on multiple PCs -- you just have to go to the main one to do the final filing. No biggie -- even less hassle than a dongle.
Not to be a wet blanket, but...
on
Spam, Milord
·
· Score: 5, Informative
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer heralded the case as the first criminal prosecution of a spammer under New York's six-month-old identity-theft statute. "Spammers who forge documents and steal the identity of others to create their e-mail traffic will be prosecuted," Spitzer said at a press conference.
Seriously...the Buffalo spammer was almost trying to get caught, at this rate. The reason they got him is not because he's a scumbag spammer; it's because he brazenly engaged in identity theft. That just happened to be a tool that he then used to aid his spamming operation.
The article contains one or two references to the amount of bandwidth consumed by his activities, but so what? If it hadn't been for the identity theft, he'd be vilified on/. -- and free to continue spamming. Sorry, but I don't see this as all that encouraging.
[The team]...changed the "confidence level" before shooting. Instead of looking for a perfect opportunity, the dogs would shoot faster and more often. It worked.
So what they've done is end up with looser play and lower hit rates as opposed to higher accuracy. That's fine for winning a soccer tournament (and please understand -- I'm by no means discounting the incredible coolness of what's going on here), but how would this translate in the real world?
Here's something even more cool to think about...just imagine if you could program the dogs to adapt their style of play over the course of the tournament (learning) and then observe if they "naturally" tended to this style of play in any case.
In most cases, the hardware and its limitations can be simulated. The only reason that most robotic AI projects are embedded in hardware is because it makes good eye candy for the science press, funders, etc. If you have a good simulation of the environment and the platform, you no longer need to build the hardware for AI research to proceed.
Now that makes a great deal of sense. When I was at university, I did all of my VAX work through either a terminal session or, more commonly, an emulator. It would seem to be a very worthwhile grad project to devise a robotic simulator to be used for future research. Naturally, any half-way decent implementation would allow for plug-in modules to simulate different types of robots.
It should also be able to cope with a variety of different scenarios, to focus on what the AI/robotic research in question is aimed at. Are you trying to cope with terrain, such as spider or walking robots? You should be able to simulate grass, soft/wet grass, rocks up to a certain size, hills with specific angles, etc. Pattern recognition? You must be able to simulate the article to be recognized in many complex scenarios -- rotated, in a crowd, light/dark confusion, etc. (I imagine a good gaming terrain engine could provide a good start here.)
There would be lots of possibilities for future students to extend such a simulator by adding new modules, etc., and the AI researchers/students wouldn't waste nearly so much time playing with cogs, but instead could get down to do their real work.
After all, that's the point, right? AI researchers want to work on AI -- even if it isn't as glamorous as, say, walking talking dancing robots. Right? I mean, I know that would be my dream job, to just be able to knuckle down and work on pure AI.
Exactly. I did my Comp. Sci. degree from 1988 to 1990, and, as an aside, did a Psychology 101 course just out of interest. I remember studying human development and intelligence, and one of the comments made in the lectures was that it's very difficult to come up with a decent IQ test when we still can't come up with a decent definition of what intelligence actually is.
Once we can define what it is we're trying to artificialize, maybe we can make more progress in artificializing it.
And, by the way, what does soldering robots together have to do with AI? By all means let the AI researchers work with the electrical engineers to build robots -- the EEs can use their specialized skills to design great robotic infrastructure, and the AI chaps can work on programming the logic to define how they can act intelligently.
Try plugging it into an on-line dictionary, idiot. Diarrhea is the commonly used American spelling; diarrhoea is an acceptable alternative which is usually prevalent in other English-speaking nations.
If there's one thing that irritates me, it's pseudo-intellectual wankers who can't even spell the verbal diarrhoea being poured forth. Sheesh, people...if you're that clever, erudite, and well-read, you should at least be able to find the odd dictionary around the house.
...wouldn't it be rather a good idea to try out a couple of the proposed new workstations in a, you know, pilot programme? For the cost of a couple of boxes, a couple of licenses of the software you're interested in, and the hours to set it all up, you'll be able to set up these PCs in an area where some of your people can try running their visualizations on them and see how it works out.
From the post:
I wonder if you have experience with such a transition - especially regarding the usability of such machines for (scientific) visualization?
Not to take anything away from the posters (many of whom are making comments from obvious experience -- e.g. the comments about the different architectures (big-endian vs. little-endian), but usability is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.
One other point (and please note I am not familiar with much outside of FEA type packages) is the software you're using -- does it have a Linux platform support, or are you contemplating making an application switch as well? If so, be prepared for some resistance from the users who will be used to how things work in their big and complex package, and will not want to learn a different big and complex package.
Re:Real video games now!! comanche here I come
on
Micro-Helicopter Fun
·
· Score: 1
Or even strap on a teeny camera with a bluetooth transmitter and send it...... places......
Oh, please, don't give X10 any more ideas; they're dreadful enough already.
Well, they kind of flitted over it with one sentence:
There's one aspect in which Dr. Koch's backup system can't keep up with tape solutions: storing the backup medium in another location after the backup has been completed.
The article didn't address what to do in this case. Instead, they continued:
As long as this isn't necessary, Dr. Koch's backup system offers some rather unique advantages.
Given that it's hardware-focussed, maybe one can understand this omission, but here in the real world it's still important. So, yes, what does one do if one does need offsite storage? Realistically, I think your suggestion of a big pipe is about the only way. It's hardly feasible to hotswap loads of drives for your offsite storage every morning. (Yes, I know they're using IDE, but think Promise controllers.)
The question then becomes a comparison of the cost of providing for offsite storage in this manner versus the saved cost of replacing your tape library with associated robots, etc.
However, the article also discusses (very briefly) associated costs for specialized backup administrators, delays inherent in recovering from tape backups, etc., so they're not totally unaware of the real-world issue. I suspect they may have chosen to ignore this specific issue because (i) it wasn't an issue in this case study, and (ii) examining it would've been a touch difficult.
And did you follow the plot either? He destroyed himself at the end because there was only one T- chip left after the lab prototype was destroyed -- the chip inside his noggin. No remaining chip, no prototype, no way to reproduce. That's the problem as seen by the poster.
If you click on the link provided, you get the following message:
Dear Customer,
Please key in the password you see displayed to the right in order to obtain the information you requested from our WHOIS database.
In order to protect the privacy of our customers, Go Daddy Software has implemented a process that prevents unscrupulous spammers from running scripts that acquire email addresses from our WHOIS service (which in accordance with ICANN policy must be made available to the public). The password you see is provided in graphic format and cannot be read by a script. Only humans can read it. By taking a moment to key in the password you are doing your part to eliminate SPAM.
You know, it strikes me I'm contributing to the "viewed by" statistic. Do I read this stuff? Hell no! But what I do is diligently open the e-mail so I can get the full header and forward that to abuse@Comcast.com. (Who will then diligently ignore it, I'm sure -- I really loathe Comcast.)
I wonder what percentage of the "viewed" statistic is generated by similar responses? More to the point -- I wonder if there's any way to measure how many are actually read?
I get more spam on my some-months-old Comcast account than I do on my free Yahoo mail account which I've had for, ooh, must be going on five or six years now. And I used to use that all the time as I was travelling to different countries for months at a time on business.
On a related note, can it be considered a DOS if Comcast gets fed up with the huge volume of spam which I diligently forward to abuse@comcast.net with full headers? What if that e-mail address (that's abuse@comcast.net, chaps) somehow gets harvested now? Whoops...
...in Toronto, causing Ontario public health officials to order 197 people into isolation.
And, by the way, it's now been discovered to be a relative of one of the many viruses that cause the common cold. But that kind of got overshadowed by all the war news.
Slashdot Mirror
No. FWIW, I'm not yet eligible for American citizenship. People seem to have all manner of fascinating misconceptions about what it takes to get to the U.S. and become a citizen if you do it the legal route.
I won't be eligible to even apply for citizenship until I've lived here for five years. Then, I'll have apply, wait until I can take a U.S. history exam, and prove I know more about U.S. history than the majority of this year's graduating university students. (Think I'm exaggerating? Check the recent surveys on how much U.S. history is known by this year's crop of graduates.)
However, had I been young enough, I would have been eligible for military service. There've been a number of stories during the Iraq war about legal residents who have not lived here long enough to be eligible for citizenship but are still fighting in Iraq. At least one such individual had citizenship granted posthumously. Many others are having citizenship fast-tracked as a reward for their service.
In the meantime, because I'm not yet eligible for citizenship, that means there are many other benefits for which I'm also ineligible, including those that are paid for in part by my taxes. Yet I still must face all the responsibilities.
Now, despite how this sounds, I'm not complaining. The U.S. was generous enough to allow me to live here, and I play by their rules. I'd expect the same in the reverse situation (where someone immigrated to my county of origin). My only complaint is directed at U.S. citizens who are bitter at me because of my immigrant status and because of their inaccurate assumptions about the privileges I enjoy and the lack of burdensome responsibilities.
When I moved to the U.S. (my wife is an American citizen), I would've been required to make myself available for military duty had I been younger (I don't recall what the cutoff age was, but I was 30). Just to make sure this is clear -- I had an interview at the U.S. Consulate in my home country and was asked to confirm my age, and was specifically informed it was for this purpose.
Please take note -- I'm not complaining about this; I was moving to the U.S., so it's their rules. Fair enough. I'm merely correcting the parent poster. (Conveniently posting as AC, I see.)
my wallet always seems to fill up with £1 and £2 coins
That's true, and also occurs in other countries with $1 and $2 coins, such as Australia and New Zealand. But most people seem to find that better than those horrible dingy $1 paper notes. My experience is that Americans on vacation in those countries end up wondering why the heck America still uses the $1 note instead of introducing $1 coins.
The only problem is when you travel between Australia and N.Z. and realise that one of them has a small $1 coin and a large $2 coin, but the other country is the other way around. I always used to be able to tell very easily which was which because they're the only gold coins in a sea of silver currency, and you just need to know which size is which. Then I went between the two countries on business a few times and ended up always having to check the denomination as I couldn't remember which was which in whatever country I was now in -- "now, is the small coin the $2 coin in Australia, or is that the New Zealand currency?".
Being that these people are running code on their machine that they have no clue they're actually running...
Exactly. As opposed to Windows Update, which (coincidentally) was vilified just yesterday on these hallowed pages, and will prompt you to allow the update unless you've explicitly turned it off.
Oh wait...
The most powerful bomb of which I'm aware was a 50 or 58 MT bomb (depending on the source) on Novaya Zemlya.
"The world's most powerful hydrogen bomb was detonated on the 30th of October 1961 [over Novaya Zemlya]. The bomb had an explosive force of 58 megatons, or almost 6,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The bomb was dropped by an aircraft, and detonated 365 metres (1,200 feet) above the surface. The shock wave produced by this bomb was so powerful, it went thrice around the earth. The mushroom cloud extended almost 60 kilometres into the atmosphere."
Links:
George Washington University
The Bulletin
Bellona Foundation
And just how was the surrounding water ignited in the Fusion reaction? As I say...links please.
As angle_slam says above, you could install Turbo Tax on multiple computers, but only file (and print?) from the first installation. (In fact, strictly speaking, I think you could do this on any installation -- you would disable it on the first installation and enable it on the one you wanted to move it to.)
As you say, if you have a multi-computer household, you can quite easily work on your return on multiple PCs -- you just have to go to the main one to do the final filing. No biggie -- even less hassle than a dongle.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer heralded the case as the first criminal prosecution of a spammer under New York's six-month-old identity-theft statute. "Spammers who forge documents and steal the identity of others to create their e-mail traffic will be prosecuted," Spitzer said at a press conference.
/. -- and free to continue spamming. Sorry, but I don't see this as all that encouraging.
Seriously...the Buffalo spammer was almost trying to get caught, at this rate. The reason they got him is not because he's a scumbag spammer; it's because he brazenly engaged in identity theft. That just happened to be a tool that he then used to aid his spamming operation.
The article contains one or two references to the amount of bandwidth consumed by his activities, but so what? If it hadn't been for the identity theft, he'd be vilified on
[The team]...changed the "confidence level" before shooting. Instead of looking for a perfect opportunity, the dogs would shoot faster and more often. It worked.
So what they've done is end up with looser play and lower hit rates as opposed to higher accuracy. That's fine for winning a soccer tournament (and please understand -- I'm by no means discounting the incredible coolness of what's going on here), but how would this translate in the real world?
Here's something even more cool to think about...just imagine if you could program the dogs to adapt their style of play over the course of the tournament (learning) and then observe if they "naturally" tended to this style of play in any case.
In most cases, the hardware and its limitations can be simulated. The only reason that most robotic AI projects are embedded in hardware is because it makes good eye candy for the science press, funders, etc. If you have a good simulation of the environment and the platform, you no longer need to build the hardware for AI research to proceed.
Now that makes a great deal of sense. When I was at university, I did all of my VAX work through either a terminal session or, more commonly, an emulator. It would seem to be a very worthwhile grad project to devise a robotic simulator to be used for future research. Naturally, any half-way decent implementation would allow for plug-in modules to simulate different types of robots.
It should also be able to cope with a variety of different scenarios, to focus on what the AI/robotic research in question is aimed at. Are you trying to cope with terrain, such as spider or walking robots? You should be able to simulate grass, soft/wet grass, rocks up to a certain size, hills with specific angles, etc. Pattern recognition? You must be able to simulate the article to be recognized in many complex scenarios -- rotated, in a crowd, light/dark confusion, etc. (I imagine a good gaming terrain engine could provide a good start here.)
There would be lots of possibilities for future students to extend such a simulator by adding new modules, etc., and the AI researchers/students wouldn't waste nearly so much time playing with cogs, but instead could get down to do their real work.
After all, that's the point, right? AI researchers want to work on AI -- even if it isn't as glamorous as, say, walking talking dancing robots. Right? I mean, I know that would be my dream job, to just be able to knuckle down and work on pure AI.
> You'll never have real, true intelligence
:-)
Define "real, true intelligence"
Exactly. I did my Comp. Sci. degree from 1988 to 1990, and, as an aside, did a Psychology 101 course just out of interest. I remember studying human development and intelligence, and one of the comments made in the lectures was that it's very difficult to come up with a decent IQ test when we still can't come up with a decent definition of what intelligence actually is.
Once we can define what it is we're trying to artificialize, maybe we can make more progress in artificializing it.
And, by the way, what does soldering robots together have to do with AI? By all means let the AI researchers work with the electrical engineers to build robots -- the EEs can use their specialized skills to design great robotic infrastructure, and the AI chaps can work on programming the logic to define how they can act intelligently.
A reverse lookup at Google states:
Yvonne K Kemeny, (561) 997-9008, 4601 NW Boca Raton Blvd, Boca Raton, FL 33431
Either you've mistyped the number or you're playing some sort of game. Moderators -- stuff like this should be checked out first.
Yeah, I know...I wouldn't even have thought of posting this comment, except as rebellion against the /. editors.
2003-05-12 15:26:10 Man trapped in car after computer fails (articles,news) (rejected)
(Okay, so I'm petty. At least I got it in despite the editors rejecting it.)
Intel disclosed an electrical problem Monday that can cause computers using its flagship Itanium 2 processor to behave erratically or crash.
Hmmm...wonder if BMW is using these chips?
Try plugging it into an on-line dictionary, idiot. Diarrhea is the commonly used American spelling; diarrhoea is an acceptable alternative which is usually prevalent in other English-speaking nations.
"What is it that keeps such an old platform going?"
Electricity, just like the new ones.
Boom-boom! (Thanks to Basil Brush.)
Philisophical...seperation...alagory...
If there's one thing that irritates me, it's pseudo-intellectual wankers who can't even spell the verbal diarrhoea being poured forth. Sheesh, people...if you're that clever, erudite, and well-read, you should at least be able to find the odd dictionary around the house.
...wouldn't it be rather a good idea to try out a couple of the proposed new workstations in a, you know, pilot programme? For the cost of a couple of boxes, a couple of licenses of the software you're interested in, and the hours to set it all up, you'll be able to set up these PCs in an area where some of your people can try running their visualizations on them and see how it works out.
From the post:
I wonder if you have experience with such a transition - especially regarding the usability of such machines for (scientific) visualization?
Not to take anything away from the posters (many of whom are making comments from obvious experience -- e.g. the comments about the different architectures (big-endian vs. little-endian), but usability is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.
One other point (and please note I am not familiar with much outside of FEA type packages) is the software you're using -- does it have a Linux platform support, or are you contemplating making an application switch as well? If so, be prepared for some resistance from the users who will be used to how things work in their big and complex package, and will not want to learn a different big and complex package.
Or even strap on a teeny camera with a bluetooth transmitter and send it...... places......
Oh, please, don't give X10 any more ideas; they're dreadful enough already.
You can enter the following command at a prompt:
NET STATISTICS SERVER | MORE
The first line or two tells you when the server service was started. (Technically, you can also use WORKSTATION.)
Well, they kind of flitted over it with one sentence:
There's one aspect in which Dr. Koch's backup system can't keep up with tape solutions: storing the backup medium in another location after the backup has been completed.
The article didn't address what to do in this case. Instead, they continued:
As long as this isn't necessary, Dr. Koch's backup system offers some rather unique advantages.
Given that it's hardware-focussed, maybe one can understand this omission, but here in the real world it's still important. So, yes, what does one do if one does need offsite storage? Realistically, I think your suggestion of a big pipe is about the only way. It's hardly feasible to hotswap loads of drives for your offsite storage every morning. (Yes, I know they're using IDE, but think Promise controllers.)
The question then becomes a comparison of the cost of providing for offsite storage in this manner versus the saved cost of replacing your tape library with associated robots, etc.
However, the article also discusses (very briefly) associated costs for specialized backup administrators, delays inherent in recovering from tape backups, etc., so they're not totally unaware of the real-world issue. I suspect they may have chosen to ignore this specific issue because (i) it wasn't an issue in this case study, and (ii) examining it would've been a touch difficult.
And did you follow the plot either? He destroyed himself at the end because there was only one T- chip left after the lab prototype was destroyed -- the chip inside his noggin. No remaining chip, no prototype, no way to reproduce. That's the problem as seen by the poster.
Git.
If you click on the link provided, you get the following message:
Dear Customer,
Please key in the password you see displayed to the right in order to obtain the information you requested from our WHOIS database.
In order to protect the privacy of our customers, Go Daddy Software has implemented a process that prevents unscrupulous spammers from running scripts that acquire email addresses from our WHOIS service (which in accordance with ICANN policy must be made available to the public). The password you see is provided in graphic format and cannot be read by a script. Only humans can read it. By taking a moment to key in the password you are doing your part to eliminate SPAM.
You know, it strikes me I'm contributing to the "viewed by" statistic. Do I read this stuff? Hell no! But what I do is diligently open the e-mail so I can get the full header and forward that to abuse@Comcast.com. (Who will then diligently ignore it, I'm sure -- I really loathe Comcast.)
I wonder what percentage of the "viewed" statistic is generated by similar responses? More to the point -- I wonder if there's any way to measure how many are actually read?
I get more spam on my some-months-old Comcast account than I do on my free Yahoo mail account which I've had for, ooh, must be going on five or six years now. And I used to use that all the time as I was travelling to different countries for months at a time on business.
On a related note, can it be considered a DOS if Comcast gets fed up with the huge volume of spam which I diligently forward to abuse@comcast.net with full headers? What if that e-mail address (that's abuse@comcast.net, chaps) somehow gets harvested now? Whoops...
...in Toronto, causing Ontario public health officials to order 197 people into isolation.
And, by the way, it's now been discovered to be a relative of one of the many viruses that cause the common cold. But that kind of got overshadowed by all the war news.
As did the anti-war protest database being kept by the NYPD. But ignore this, it's off topic.