And let me add that some Americans, even after years of post-grad education, can't even count. They say 2 when there are clearly 4 things.
So, these may appear to be stereotypes, but they are serious problems in my country. As for being negative toward America, I was specifically citing examples of people acting against their self interest. By definition, those are going to be negative examples. And being an American, I'm not in a position to make similar claims about populations in other countries.
Companies can also do stupid things that can be like financial obesity. For example, my company has decided we need to have everyone in different buildings. So, we're in a process where nearly every person (and there's 6000 of us at this location) will move to a different cube at the cost of nearly $700 each. Some are moving twice in less than a couple months. In most cases, entire teams are simply moving from one building to another. They will still be grouped together the same way.
The major point I was trying to make is that people routinely act against their best interest typically because they get to enjoy the immediate benefit of a bad decision while the consequences are delayed. Sometimes, though, they're just stubborn.
You have to define "best interest" because people act against their best interest all the time, often out ignorance or short-term thinking.
Two simple cases: Americans tend to finance a tremendous level of their "lifestyles" using high interest rate credit cards. Once those cards maxed out, they're stuck with less lifetyle than their income would normally allow because they have to service the debt.
Few Americans save for retirement - most neglect to contribute to a company provided retirement plan, even if the company matches.
Many Americans are quite overweight (myself included). Some exercise and better food choices would mitigate this problem, but most choose not to.
Many Americans buy a new car every 4 years or less. If they waited and did this only every 8 years, they could retire with the same level of benefits nearly 3 years earlier.
It wouldn't take much of a computer simulation to demonstrate these behaviors. They're all about instant gratification and delayed consequences.
But, why should you and your wife necessarily have the same number?
And you've presented an interesting opportunity for a new kind of device. It could be a home docking-station/wireless base for a cell phone. You plug it in and any incoming calls would automatically be handled through a cordless phone system. You can then put your cordless phones wherever you want them. Maybe it could take multiple phones and would use a different ring per phone. If it were really smart, it would allow the system to work with multiple phones at a time. So, your cellphone rings and you take it on the wireless extension in the bedroom. Your wife's phone rings too and she takes it on the living room's wireless extension. That was your daughter calling your wife, so when your call is done, you patch into her call so you can talk to your daughter too.
Welcome to the world of management. It's all about making decisions when there is no clear-easy way to find the answer (this is a lot like engineering, but it's with people instead of bridges, engines, and microprocessors).
If it's a money-making company, the basic decision will be about which programmer will reliably and consistently make the enough money for the least cost.
How do you figure that out? That's the hiring/project manager's job to figure out. A good hiring manager will consistently hire such people. Ones that don't won't be the hiring manager for long.
How much is "enough"? That's up to the manager's manager.
What if you're the manager and you're _stuck_ with people who don't make enough money or cost too much? That's the other side of it - you either need to figure out how to make them produce more, cost less, or replace them.
It's easy to be accountable for your own work. It's a totally different world when you're accountable for the work of others. And that's why managers tend to get paid more.
In your case above, choosing between two programmers, a manager has to do what they can to try and evaluate them. But frankly, metrics and objective measures will only get you so far. Eventually you have to go with your gut. Managers who do this well who do this well will be rewarded. The ones who don't will have crappy projects and try to find ways to blame others.
I think labels should indicate what's in the product and what's not in the product, but not what might do.
For example I like to eat a brand of packaged foods with the brand name "Tasty Bite". The back has extra labeling with check-boxes for: [ ] Vegetarian [ ] Vegan [ ] No gluten [ ] No MSG Added [ ] No Preservatives [ ] Kosher
While I don't mind nuts of any kind, many products now indicate whether they might have nuts or if nuts are processed in the same facility (apparently some people can have very violent allergic reaction to nuts).
We have pretty decent laws on what foods can have "Organic" on them. If the laws were to define other things like "no added hormones", "no added antibiotics", "GMO-Free", etc, then producers could put the labels on if they qualify - and then let the market decide.
The next level would be to require labeling of those things: "contains GMO-Corn", "growth hormones added", etc.
Maybe that would make some people uncomfortable, but maybe we should all think a little be more about the food we eat and what is done to bring that food to our tables.
You are right, but in other words: most bacterial resistance is caused by a wrong use of medicine. You should use the drug until all bacteria are killed, and not stop when the symptoms are gone.
The problem with this thinking is, within a population of bacteria that are the same type, there are subtle variations. Some of those variations can lead to a complete immunity to a certain antibiotic. So continuing to take the same antibiotic for a longer period of time will still not kill those bacteria that are immune. The reason this isn't usually a big problem is that you knock out enough of the bacteria that your immune system can finish the job.
Of course, misuse of antibiotics IS a problem. With these cattle, they are given the antibiotics whether they need them or not. So, basically the cattle become factories for bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotics. At first the proportion of resistant bacteria is small and the animal is slaughtered before too many bacteria can spread. But eventually, the proportion of the resistant bacteria grows to the point where a new antibiotic is needed.
It really a systems problem. We've created a system that maximizes short-term profits and resistant-bacteria production. But by the time it becomes a problem, the profits are already taken and the bacteria are someone else's problem.
What can WE do? We can try to influence the creation of other kinds of systems and participate in those and refuse to participate in the harmful ones. Demand legislation for proper labeling of your food (GMO, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, etc), only buy from vendors who sell the kinds of foods from the non-harmful system, etc.
As I posted before, I don't buy animal products from the conglomerate stores. The quality is low and they clearly don't care where the meat comes from as long as it's cheap. I'm losing some disposable income, but I'm gaining in peace of mind, and hopefully in the health of myself and the ecosystem I live in too.
There ARE people who will pay more for what they perceive to be better.
I personally prefer meat with no added hormones and antibiotics. In my perception it's better. So when I buy meat, I go to a market that carries such meats. It costs more (ground beef at 1.99/pound at the Kroger/conglomerate and 2.99/pound at the local "New Seasons"), but to me it's worth it. The meat happens to even taste better, but maybe that's in my head.
In any case, I've never had to take meat back to New Seasons because they had put "good" meat on the top of the package and brown nasty meat underneath. If a places like the conglomerate will pay the lowest price possible to get the meat, chances are they won't spend any more than they have to to keep it fresh and healthy.
So, there ARE people who want the better quality. And at least in this area (Oregon), there are more and more non-conglomerate stores opening up that offer organic, hormone free, and antibiotic free options. A nice example of the free market at work.
The dinner bill for the dinner party was 1234.56. Do you expect kids to memorize that by multiplied by.15? How about by.151? Or by.1551? Eventually, you have to say they need to break it down and figure it out rather than doing it by wrote.
Anyone who delves into breaking down simple problems instead of recalling from rote learning is just being lazy. NOT breaking down problems into simpler problems is just being silly. This is a key method in problem solving.
Seriously. Memorizing anything beyond 1x1 to 9x9 for general use is mostly a waste to precious education time that could be spent on something else. Once you have 1x1 to 9x9, you can break down any two numbers and multiply them together.
Now, using that "general method" do multiplication can take a while so having "tricks" that get you there is common in engineering and other problem solving. Instead of calculating out the tip on that dinner, it's easy to see that 10% is 123 (just dump a digit), and 20% is 246 (double and drop a digit). A decent tip is somewhere in the middle there.
Plus, the idea of dividing by 10 and adding half again, while it appears to be a "trick" or gimmick, it actually demonstrates a certain dexterity with the numbers and a deeper understanding of how things fit together.
infastructure is already in place, as a lot of furnaces run on natural gas
The infrastructure is already in place to support the current use. But how much MORE use could that infrastructure withstand before major and costly upgrades? Could the existing system handle a 10% increase? 20%? 30%?
And I know at least here a lot of people are very agitated about a proposed LNG terminal that would be installed off the Oregon coast. And with the recent explosion of an NG line in Washington, people may not be so excited about expanding that infrastructure.
It's probably a good idea in a lot of ways but it's not just as simple using existing infrastructure.
Money put into a Roth IRA is post-tax, so it doesn't save any money on your current taxes. But, when you take it out at retirement, all earnings are totally tax free.
Money put into a traditional IRA is put in pre-tax so it saves money on your current taxes. But, when you take it out at retirement, the all of money is taxed as normal income. The tax benefit is that you save on your taxes when you are ostensibly in a higher tax bracket.
People like Clark Howard clarkhoward.com strongly suggest doing this order: 1) fund your employer IRA up to the point they match 2) fully fund a Roth IRA (aobut a $5k limit now, I think) 3) then consider things like early payoff of your mortgage and maxing out your 401k
Given the same $5k, a Roth IRA is expected to do better at retirement than a 401K or normal IRA.
I definitely understand what you're saying but I'm not in that camp.
I would so LOVE for my car to drive me to work and back. I wouldn't have to drive but I still get where I want to go in a reasonable time. It's just like public transportation, but without all the people and really long transit times.
My guess is we'll start seeing systems where there will be roadways dedicated to AI cars. Where there are smart cars and "smart roads" to help them along. At first, the cars will be AI-hybrids that you can drive when you need to. Then as those dedicated roads become more popular, large cities will eventually be AI-only cars. It will probably be a pretty safe place to be driven around.
f the running human is avoided, but not recognized, your AI car may find itself ensnared in the beginning of a marathon of runners, or perhaps mistakenly in the middle of a playground, or perhaps at the front of a building where people are running from a bomb scare?
Simply not hitting the human is simply not good enough all of the time. When software or AI systems have charge of life critical systems, such as cars, getting it right 90% of the time is not good enough and never will be.
Is your point that it's okay for the AI car to hit people some of the time? If that's the case, then the model needs to account for the situations where it IS okay. But generally, it's probably safe to assume that for most AI drivers, they should not hit people. And if it gets stuck waiting for people, that's probably an acceptable outcome.
There are tons of logic traps like this when designing AI where 90% correct is as bad as 9% correct. Just think of all the things you take for granted that you have to make deductions or logical conclusions about in order to function. Driving an automobile is far more complex than you seem to think it is. Miss one "bridge out" sign and your day is going to become very bad, very quickly.
I'm not saying driving an automobile is an easy task, but remember, "real" intelligence is rarely 100% either. We have thousands of crashes every day in the US with "real" drivers to demonstrate that reality. So, for most AI-drivers, the attainable task becomes, "can we make one that drives better than people?", and not "do we make one that drives perfectly". You'll never achieve perfection. But you may be able to achieve a result that is better than the current state. All else being equal, that's probably a good direction to go.
Remember that I, as a human, am doing a lot more than just driving when I'm driving. And that can be a problem. For example, there might be a pretty girl walking down the side of the road. By design, some of my "processing power" is going to be focused assessing her attractiveness, and that might be enough to cause me not to notice another person stepping out from in front of a car. The AI system is simply going to note that she's a pedestrian and where she might be moving next. It won't be distracted by her beauty.
So, if the AI car simply stops when it thinks it will hit a pedestrian, that's probably a good thing. And if it thinks there are too many and does not start moving again, that's probably okay too. At worst, the rider doesn't get where he wants to go as quickly.
Perfection is great, but it's sometimes better to not throw out the good/better in search of the perfection.
Each of us can almost always look at a scene and determine the difference between a jogger and a purse thief on the run or a businessman late for an appointment.
The desired purpose is what actually dictates the usefulness. For a police-interceptor robot, it would be important to be able to make those fine distinctions.
For an auto-driving robot, it's probably good enough to be able to tell there is a running human and what general locations they're likely to be as the robot passes. It won't need to know WHY they are running as it's not important to the purpose of not hitting them.
Every model should have a specific purpose, and it's effectiveness should be judged against that purpose and not other criteria.
Where I work, more and more of our applications are accessed via a bank of citrix machines or have been transformed into web-apps. These are things like time-sheet tracking, product design, product development, logistics management, etc. The main things that people actually "run" on their desktop are Microsoft Office, IE, and iTunes.
As more and more of our aps are virtualized and run off large farms of computers, I can easily imagine many of our employees being put on terminals.
If a company is not paying dividends there will still be future cash flows, since every company will eventually either start paying dividends or it will be bought out.
Most businesses end in bankruptcy. Once creditors are paid and assets are liquidated, the cash flow to investors is pretty negligible.
Did the spam somehow suddenly increase the value of the company's assets, liabiliies, and income? Look at Enron. The day before the scandal happened the stock value was high. Not much after, it was worth less than a dollar. Did the actual value of the company's assets change in that short period? If the later price is "correct" then why was the price so high for so long? If the former price, then why did it drop so much?
The crash of the Thai Bhat is similar... but without an underlying scandal.
The financial markets, for all their high-paid analysts and smart people, are really fickle, ruled by the whim and fancy of investors and by herd mentality.
The funny thing is that I had no idea what Google check-out was until this article. I saw the link on the main google page with the $10 offer, but I didn't realize they were trying to be a payment service. It wasn't clear anywhere.
Maybe that's why it's not doing well? Not many people know what the heck it's for?
Well, in my own work, I usually find that it's the inflection points that are most interesting. The long stretches in between them are not so much.
If the data and computer models we had 30 year ago suggested global cooling, then I would expect the scientists then to report that.
We now have 30 more years of data, with sensing that is 30 years better and computers that are 30 years better. We probably have a more thorough data set as well, covering more of the globe and measuring in a wider variety of ways.
If the data now suggests the globe is warming, I would expect that scientists to report that. Even if it contradicts what they were saying 30 years ago. Somewhere in there is an inflection point - and that's what's interesting.
The fact that opinion changes when more facts are available - well, that's the scientific method. If the opinion's don't change in the face of changing facts - that's just religion and we have enough of those already.
If you go to the doctor with a problem and tell him to only use tests, procedures, equipment, and knowledge from 30 years ago, there's a very good chance you'll have a different diagnosis and outcome than if you have him use the latest tests, procedures, equipment, and knowledge.
I would personaly choose to use the more modern approach. How about you?
Secondly, let me point out that sometime in the 70's early 80's, can't remember, there were scientist crying about global COOLING!
RIGHT! Those damn scientists. Not so long ago they would say that the sun (and everything else) revolved around the Earth. Now they're saying the Earth goes around the sun? It's outrageous!
Can't they just say how everything is and stop changing things?
Then he should only have to turn over source code made while he was at work. The work he did at home isn't theirs unless they're paying for it. It might not be his either, but he should be compensated for what they're trying to take from him.
If he did 20% at work, then he he should give them the first 20% of the lines of code...
Slashdot Mirror
And let me add that some Americans, even after years of post-grad education, can't even count. They say 2 when there are clearly 4 things.
So, these may appear to be stereotypes, but they are serious problems in my country. As for being negative toward America, I was specifically citing examples of people acting against their self interest. By definition, those are going to be negative examples. And being an American, I'm not in a position to make similar claims about populations in other countries.
Companies can also do stupid things that can be like financial obesity. For example, my company has decided we need to have everyone in different buildings. So, we're in a process where nearly every person (and there's 6000 of us at this location) will move to a different cube at the cost of nearly $700 each. Some are moving twice in less than a couple months. In most cases, entire teams are simply moving from one building to another. They will still be grouped together the same way.
The major point I was trying to make is that people routinely act against their best interest typically because they get to enjoy the immediate benefit of a bad decision while the consequences are delayed. Sometimes, though, they're just stubborn.
Why that particular article? While packed with facts, it's biased pretty heavily against "Net Neutrality".
You have to define "best interest" because people act against their best interest all the time, often out ignorance or short-term thinking.
Two simple cases:
Americans tend to finance a tremendous level of their "lifestyles" using high interest rate credit cards. Once those cards maxed out, they're stuck with less lifetyle than their income would normally allow because they have to service the debt.
Few Americans save for retirement - most neglect to contribute to a company provided retirement plan, even if the company matches.
Many Americans are quite overweight (myself included). Some exercise and better food choices would mitigate this problem, but most choose not to.
Many Americans buy a new car every 4 years or less. If they waited and did this only every 8 years, they could retire with the same level of benefits nearly 3 years earlier.
It wouldn't take much of a computer simulation to demonstrate these behaviors. They're all about instant gratification and delayed consequences.
I'm not sure, but I got 4 or 5 internets in my inbox just today...
It clearly doesn't work for everyone.
But, why should you and your wife necessarily have the same number?
And you've presented an interesting opportunity for a new kind of device. It could be a home docking-station/wireless base for a cell phone. You plug it in and any incoming calls would automatically be handled through a cordless phone system. You can then put your cordless phones wherever you want them. Maybe it could take multiple phones and would use a different ring per phone. If it were really smart, it would allow the system to work with multiple phones at a time. So, your cellphone rings and you take it on the wireless extension in the bedroom. Your wife's phone rings too and she takes it on the living room's wireless extension. That was your daughter calling your wife, so when your call is done, you patch into her call so you can talk to your daughter too.
Does this thing already exist?
Ever try cooking bacon naked? THAT's why we have clothes.
DAMMIT! You just gave away the entire next season!
Wouldn't it be more likely to "boil off" due to the really low pressure?
Welcome to the world of management. It's all about making decisions when there is no clear-easy way to find the answer (this is a lot like engineering, but it's with people instead of bridges, engines, and microprocessors).
If it's a money-making company, the basic decision will be about which programmer will reliably and consistently make the enough money for the least cost.
How do you figure that out? That's the hiring/project manager's job to figure out. A good hiring manager will consistently hire such people. Ones that don't won't be the hiring manager for long.
How much is "enough"? That's up to the manager's manager.
What if you're the manager and you're _stuck_ with people who don't make enough money or cost too much? That's the other side of it - you either need to figure out how to make them produce more, cost less, or replace them.
It's easy to be accountable for your own work. It's a totally different world when you're accountable for the work of others. And that's why managers tend to get paid more.
In your case above, choosing between two programmers, a manager has to do what they can to try and evaluate them. But frankly, metrics and objective measures will only get you so far. Eventually you have to go with your gut. Managers who do this well who do this well will be rewarded. The ones who don't will have crappy projects and try to find ways to blame others.
I think labels should indicate what's in the product and what's not in the product, but not what might do.
For example I like to eat a brand of packaged foods with the brand name "Tasty Bite". The back has extra labeling with check-boxes for:
[ ] Vegetarian
[ ] Vegan
[ ] No gluten
[ ] No MSG Added
[ ] No Preservatives
[ ] Kosher
While I don't mind nuts of any kind, many products now indicate whether they might have nuts or if nuts are processed in the same facility (apparently some people can have very violent allergic reaction to nuts).
We have pretty decent laws on what foods can have "Organic" on them. If the laws were to define other things like "no added hormones", "no added antibiotics", "GMO-Free", etc, then producers could put the labels on if they qualify - and then let the market decide.
The next level would be to require labeling of those things: "contains GMO-Corn", "growth hormones added", etc.
Maybe that would make some people uncomfortable, but maybe we should all think a little be more about the food we eat and what is done to bring that food to our tables.
You are right, but in other words: most bacterial resistance is caused by a wrong use of medicine. You should use the drug until all bacteria are killed, and not stop when the symptoms are gone.
The problem with this thinking is, within a population of bacteria that are the same type, there are subtle variations. Some of those variations can lead to a complete immunity to a certain antibiotic. So continuing to take the same antibiotic for a longer period of time will still not kill those bacteria that are immune. The reason this isn't usually a big problem is that you knock out enough of the bacteria that your immune system can finish the job.
Of course, misuse of antibiotics IS a problem. With these cattle, they are given the antibiotics whether they need them or not. So, basically the cattle become factories for bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotics. At first the proportion of resistant bacteria is small and the animal is slaughtered before too many bacteria can spread. But eventually, the proportion of the resistant bacteria grows to the point where a new antibiotic is needed.
It really a systems problem. We've created a system that maximizes short-term profits and resistant-bacteria production. But by the time it becomes a problem, the profits are already taken and the bacteria are someone else's problem.
What can WE do? We can try to influence the creation of other kinds of systems and participate in those and refuse to participate in the harmful ones. Demand legislation for proper labeling of your food (GMO, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, etc), only buy from vendors who sell the kinds of foods from the non-harmful system, etc.
As I posted before, I don't buy animal products from the conglomerate stores. The quality is low and they clearly don't care where the meat comes from as long as it's cheap. I'm losing some disposable income, but I'm gaining in peace of mind, and hopefully in the health of myself and the ecosystem I live in too.
There ARE people who will pay more for what they perceive to be better.
I personally prefer meat with no added hormones and antibiotics. In my perception it's better. So when I buy meat, I go to a market that carries such meats. It costs more (ground beef at 1.99/pound at the Kroger/conglomerate and 2.99/pound at the local "New Seasons"), but to me it's worth it. The meat happens to even taste better, but maybe that's in my head.
In any case, I've never had to take meat back to New Seasons because they had put "good" meat on the top of the package and brown nasty meat underneath. If a places like the conglomerate will pay the lowest price possible to get the meat, chances are they won't spend any more than they have to to keep it fresh and healthy.
So, there ARE people who want the better quality. And at least in this area (Oregon), there are more and more non-conglomerate stores opening up that offer organic, hormone free, and antibiotic free options. A nice example of the free market at work.
Okay, but where do you end all the memorization?
.15? How about by .151? Or by .1551? Eventually, you have to say they need to break it down and figure it out rather than doing it by wrote.
The dinner bill for the dinner party was 1234.56. Do you expect kids to memorize that by multiplied by
Anyone who delves into breaking down simple problems instead of recalling from rote learning is just being lazy.
NOT breaking down problems into simpler problems is just being silly. This is a key method in problem solving.
Seriously. Memorizing anything beyond 1x1 to 9x9 for general use is mostly a waste to precious education time that could be spent on something else. Once you have 1x1 to 9x9, you can break down any two numbers and multiply them together.
Now, using that "general method" do multiplication can take a while so having "tricks" that get you there is common in engineering and other problem solving. Instead of calculating out the tip on that dinner, it's easy to see that 10% is 123 (just dump a digit), and 20% is 246 (double and drop a digit). A decent tip is somewhere in the middle there.
Plus, the idea of dividing by 10 and adding half again, while it appears to be a "trick" or gimmick, it actually demonstrates a certain dexterity with the numbers and a deeper understanding of how things fit together.
infastructure is already in place, as a lot of furnaces run on natural gas
The infrastructure is already in place to support the current use. But how much MORE use could that infrastructure withstand before major and costly upgrades? Could the existing system handle a 10% increase? 20%? 30%?
And I know at least here a lot of people are very agitated about a proposed LNG terminal that would be installed off the Oregon coast. And with the recent explosion of an NG line in Washington, people may not be so excited about expanding that infrastructure.
It's probably a good idea in a lot of ways but it's not just as simple using existing infrastructure.
Roth IRAs are different than normal IRAs.
Money put into a Roth IRA is post-tax, so it doesn't save any money on your current taxes. But, when you take it out at retirement, all earnings are totally tax free.
Money put into a traditional IRA is put in pre-tax so it saves money on your current taxes. But, when you take it out at retirement, the all of money is taxed as normal income. The tax benefit is that you save on your taxes when you are ostensibly in a higher tax bracket.
People like Clark Howard clarkhoward.com strongly suggest doing this order:
1) fund your employer IRA up to the point they match
2) fully fund a Roth IRA (aobut a $5k limit now, I think)
3) then consider things like early payoff of your mortgage and maxing out your 401k
Given the same $5k, a Roth IRA is expected to do better at retirement than a 401K or normal IRA.
Of course, everyone's situation is different.
I definitely understand what you're saying but I'm not in that camp.
I would so LOVE for my car to drive me to work and back. I wouldn't have to drive but I still get where I want to go in a reasonable time. It's just like public transportation, but without all the people and really long transit times.
My guess is we'll start seeing systems where there will be roadways dedicated to AI cars. Where there are smart cars and "smart roads" to help them along. At first, the cars will be AI-hybrids that you can drive when you need to. Then as those dedicated roads become more popular, large cities will eventually be AI-only cars. It will probably be a pretty safe place to be driven around.
f the running human is avoided, but not recognized, your AI car may find itself ensnared in the beginning of a marathon of runners, or perhaps mistakenly in the middle of a playground, or perhaps at the front of a building where people are running from a bomb scare?
Simply not hitting the human is simply not good enough all of the time. When software or AI systems have charge of life critical systems, such as cars, getting it right 90% of the time is not good enough and never will be.
Is your point that it's okay for the AI car to hit people some of the time? If that's the case, then the model needs to account for the situations where it IS okay. But generally, it's probably safe to assume that for most AI drivers, they should not hit people. And if it gets stuck waiting for people, that's probably an acceptable outcome.
There are tons of logic traps like this when designing AI where 90% correct is as bad as 9% correct. Just think of all the things you take for granted that you have to make deductions or logical conclusions about in order to function. Driving an automobile is far more complex than you seem to think it is. Miss one "bridge out" sign and your day is going to become very bad, very quickly.
I'm not saying driving an automobile is an easy task, but remember, "real" intelligence is rarely 100% either. We have thousands of crashes every day in the US with "real" drivers to demonstrate that reality. So, for most AI-drivers, the attainable task becomes, "can we make one that drives better than people?", and not "do we make one that drives perfectly". You'll never achieve perfection. But you may be able to achieve a result that is better than the current state. All else being equal, that's probably a good direction to go.
Remember that I, as a human, am doing a lot more than just driving when I'm driving. And that can be a problem. For example, there might be a pretty girl walking down the side of the road. By design, some of my "processing power" is going to be focused assessing her attractiveness, and that might be enough to cause me not to notice another person stepping out from in front of a car. The AI system is simply going to note that she's a pedestrian and where she might be moving next. It won't be distracted by her beauty.
So, if the AI car simply stops when it thinks it will hit a pedestrian, that's probably a good thing. And if it thinks there are too many and does not start moving again, that's probably okay too. At worst, the rider doesn't get where he wants to go as quickly.
Perfection is great, but it's sometimes better to not throw out the good/better in search of the perfection.
Each of us can almost always look at a scene and determine the difference between a jogger and a purse thief on the run or a businessman late for an appointment.
The desired purpose is what actually dictates the usefulness. For a police-interceptor robot, it would be important to be able to make those fine distinctions.
For an auto-driving robot, it's probably good enough to be able to tell there is a running human and what general locations they're likely to be as the robot passes. It won't need to know WHY they are running as it's not important to the purpose of not hitting them.
Every model should have a specific purpose, and it's effectiveness should be judged against that purpose and not other criteria.
Where I work, more and more of our applications are accessed via a bank of citrix machines or have been transformed into web-apps. These are things like time-sheet tracking, product design, product development, logistics management, etc. The main things that people actually "run" on their desktop are Microsoft Office, IE, and iTunes.
As more and more of our aps are virtualized and run off large farms of computers, I can easily imagine many of our employees being put on terminals.
If a company is not paying dividends there will still be future cash flows, since every company will eventually either start paying dividends or it will be bought out.
Most businesses end in bankruptcy. Once creditors are paid and assets are liquidated, the cash flow to investors is pretty negligible.
So please explain how "pump and dump" (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/21/2
Did the spam somehow suddenly increase the value of the company's assets, liabiliies, and income?
Look at Enron. The day before the scandal happened the stock value was high. Not much after, it was worth less than a dollar. Did the actual value of the company's assets change in that short period? If the later price is "correct" then why was the price so high for so long? If the former price, then why did it drop so much?
The crash of the Thai Bhat is similar... but without an underlying scandal.
The financial markets, for all their high-paid analysts and smart people, are really fickle, ruled by the whim and fancy of investors and by herd mentality.
The funny thing is that I had no idea what Google check-out was until this article. I saw the link on the main google page with the $10 offer, but I didn't realize they were trying to be a payment service. It wasn't clear anywhere.
Maybe that's why it's not doing well? Not many people know what the heck it's for?
Well, in my own work, I usually find that it's the inflection points that are most interesting. The long stretches in between them are not so much.
If the data and computer models we had 30 year ago suggested global cooling, then I would expect the scientists then to report that.
We now have 30 more years of data, with sensing that is 30 years better and computers that are 30 years better. We probably have a more thorough data set as well, covering more of the globe and measuring in a wider variety of ways.
If the data now suggests the globe is warming, I would expect that scientists to report that. Even if it contradicts what they were saying 30 years ago. Somewhere in there is an inflection point - and that's what's interesting.
The fact that opinion changes when more facts are available - well, that's the scientific method. If the opinion's don't change in the face of changing facts - that's just religion and we have enough of those already.
If you go to the doctor with a problem and tell him to only use tests, procedures, equipment, and knowledge from 30 years ago, there's a very good chance you'll have a different diagnosis and outcome than if you have him use the latest tests, procedures, equipment, and knowledge.
I would personaly choose to use the more modern approach. How about you?
Secondly, let me point out that sometime in the 70's early 80's, can't remember, there were scientist crying about global COOLING!
RIGHT! Those damn scientists. Not so long ago they would say that the sun (and everything else) revolved around the Earth. Now they're saying the Earth goes around the sun? It's outrageous!
Can't they just say how everything is and stop changing things?
Then he should only have to turn over source code made while he was at work. The work he did at home isn't theirs unless they're paying for it. It might not be his either, but he should be compensated for what they're trying to take from him.
If he did 20% at work, then he he should give them the first 20% of the lines of code...