"Earth moving equipment? What earth moving equipment? Oh, we're just digging a couple of swimming pools. Nothing to see here..."
Another fascinating idea I've seen is building a dam across the straits of Gibraltar, and powering most of Europe from turbines driven by the inflow of water to the Mediterranean.
It's interesting to see where the translator made its mistakes. I notice that the acronym "IM" was taken as the German word "im". Interesting also that it came out capitalized.
I wonder how this new algorithm would work with languages where the word order isn't that important.
Well, because it would be rather churlish to steamroller them after they gave up their nuclear program and made restitution for the Lockerbie bombings.
You can't say "Bill Gates rapes little boys and girls"
Well, to be precise.. You can say it, and he can try to recover damages from you in court. To recover damages though, he'll have to be able to show damages, like someone not doing business with him because they believed your allegations, or the bill from his shrink for therapy he had to get because of the emotional trauma of you hurting his feelings.
Somebody slandered me a couple of years ago, and I talked to a litigator who specializes in this kind of case. I was advised that it really wasn't worth my time to pursue it, since I wouldn't be able to show that anyone had believed him (ergo, no money damages.) I could have obtained a court order to quit slandering me, but it really wasn't worth the cost.
I thought MS designed all the capabilities and released the 'specs' but Apple beat them to the implementation.
No, not really. Spotlight is vastly different from MS's idea, which was essentially to make all apps keep their docuements in a DBMS which would be the file system. Check out the docs on writing spotlight importers, and compare it to the NTFS plan.
I forget which stand-up comic said this first: "The reason that more people protest fur than leather is because it's safer to harass rich old ladies than motorcycle gangs."
Likewise, it's a whole lot easier to sure Bittorrent users, than to take on the mob.
Picture this: personal, point-to-point air travel, with the aircraft doing peer-to-peer negotiation for collision avoidance, and steering themselves to their destinations by GPS. From a robotics standpoint, this is a much easier problem to solve than navigating on a road, since it doesn't require visual interpretation, and the collision hazard is so much smaller.
It could be a win over cars economically, once you consider the cost of road building and the fact that every major city has a couple of traffic fatalities nearly every day.
Wikipedia says the Zuiderzee Works cost $710 million in 2004 dollars. A trillion and a half would be the entire GNP of the Netherlands for a bit more than three years.
No, not really. You can't build a reservoir with enough capacity to deal with a breach that leads to the ocean.
What you could do though, is flood the Sahara, which would drop the world sea level by a few feet. It would basically create a second mediterranean ocean. All you need to do is convince Libya that it's a good idea.
you screamed with a sound of utter panic in your voice.
Sure, Freddie: if that's what you want to believe, then you go right ahead.
Now, since it's so important to your fragile ego to convince yourself of your intelligence, so let me give you a little hint: I know quite a few truly brilliant people, and one thing that they have in common is that they never brag.
So, if you want people to believe that you're smarter than the average of your ilk, you might want to back off on the posturing. (Just a suggestion, since I really don't expect you to be capable of self-improvement.)
BTW, do you think you proved anything at all by quoting me out of context?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, MS has a dozen or so of these reports, and IBM only has one... Clearly, MS has studied the matter more throughly. ;-)
-jcr
We could do it secretly and see if they noticed.
Heh..
"Earth moving equipment? What earth moving equipment? Oh, we're just digging a couple of swimming pools. Nothing to see here..."
Another fascinating idea I've seen is building a dam across the straits of Gibraltar, and powering most of Europe from turbines driven by the inflow of water to the Mediterranean.
-jcr
Your statement assumes that because these functions are performed by governments, that other means to provide them aren't possible.
-jcr
A computer will fully master language, when it has equal intelligence to those speaking the language.
There is just that little hitch of getting a computer to have any intelligence in the first place...
-jcr
It's interesting to see where the translator made its mistakes. I notice that the acronym "IM" was taken as the German word "im". Interesting also that it came out capitalized.
I wonder how this new algorithm would work with languages where the word order isn't that important.
-jcr
Well, thanks for that message from the Trial Lawyers' Association. Do you have any figures to back it up, or were you just being snotty out of habit?
-jcr
The question here is, do you want to know who wrote the code in question, or do you want to know if it's correct?
-jcr
Why would anyone want to use this? Why not just run FireFox?
-jcr
Why bother getting Libya's okay?
Well, because it would be rather churlish to steamroller them after they gave up their nuclear program and made restitution for the Lockerbie bombings.
-jcr
I have a long history of not believing something just because it makes me feel good.
This statement does not gybe with your faith in the Nanny State.
-jcr
I wonder just how many people have become millionares in the Medical Malpractice Lottery?
-jcr
You can't say "Bill Gates rapes little boys and girls"
Well, to be precise.. You can say it, and he can try to recover damages from you in court. To recover damages though, he'll have to be able to show damages, like someone not doing business with him because they believed your allegations, or the bill from his shrink for therapy he had to get because of the emotional trauma of you hurting his feelings.
Somebody slandered me a couple of years ago, and I talked to a litigator who specializes in this kind of case. I was advised that it really wasn't worth my time to pursue it, since I wouldn't be able to show that anyone had believed him (ergo, no money damages.) I could have obtained a court order to quit slandering me, but it really wasn't worth the cost.
-jcr
Motorola used to be an all Mac shop.
Yeah, back before the Joe Guglielmo disaster, when they weren't circling the drain...
-jcr
I thought MS designed all the capabilities and released the 'specs' but Apple beat them to the implementation.
No, not really. Spotlight is vastly different from MS's idea, which was essentially to make all apps keep their docuements in a DBMS which would be the file system. Check out the docs on writing spotlight importers, and compare it to the NTFS plan.
-jcr
Those of us who remember BFS were waiting for something like Spotlight since Apple hired Dominic Giampaolo.
FWIW, spotlight was a work in progress before he joined Apple.
-jcr
I forget which stand-up comic said this first: "The reason that more people protest fur than leather is because it's safer to harass rich old ladies than motorcycle gangs."
Likewise, it's a whole lot easier to sure Bittorrent users, than to take on the mob.
-jcr
Picture this: personal, point-to-point air travel, with the aircraft doing peer-to-peer negotiation for collision avoidance, and steering themselves to their destinations by GPS. From a robotics standpoint, this is a much easier problem to solve than navigating on a road, since it doesn't require visual interpretation, and the collision hazard is so much smaller.
It could be a win over cars economically, once you consider the cost of road building and the fact that every major city has a couple of traffic fatalities nearly every day.
-jcr
Wikipedia says the Zuiderzee Works cost $710 million in 2004 dollars. A trillion and a half would be the entire GNP of the Netherlands for a bit more than three years.
-jcr
It's a brilliant plan.
No, not really. You can't build a reservoir with enough capacity to deal with a breach that leads to the ocean.
What you could do though, is flood the Sahara, which would drop the world sea level by a few feet. It would basically create a second mediterranean ocean. All you need to do is convince Libya that it's a good idea.
-jcr
Woah.. Did you notice the dateline on that article?
9/11/01.
Spooky.
-jcr
Also, no more building houses below see level, put them somewhere else.
Umm.. About 80% of New Orleans is below sea level, apparently.
-jcr
The Dutch don't get hurricanes.
Not hurricanes, but North Atlantic storms can still be pretty intense. There was a catastrophic failure of the dykes back in the early 1900's, IIRC.
-jcr
you screamed with a sound of utter panic in your voice.
Sure, Freddie: if that's what you want to believe, then you go right ahead.
Now, since it's so important to your fragile ego to convince yourself of your intelligence, so let me give you a little hint: I know quite a few truly brilliant people, and one thing that they have in common is that they never brag.
So, if you want people to believe that you're smarter than the average of your ilk, you might want to back off on the posturing. (Just a suggestion, since I really don't expect you to be capable of self-improvement.)
BTW, do you think you proved anything at all by quoting me out of context?
-jcr
if they still have too mush water, they open the Bonnet Carré Spillway, which can let up to 40% of the water straight into Lake Pontchartrain.
Hmm.. I wonder how much higher and wider the levees around Lake Ponchartrain will be after this?
-jcr
Also, if you live on a dead-flat prarie, at an elevation of 1500 feet above sea level, you can still get hit by a twister.
-jcr