Because they're nice. Very nice. Because the USA and Russia should commit to a great humanitarian project: The Joint Space Defence Command. It's primary purpose is to detect and neutralize any ballistic missile attacks regardless of origin and destination.
So a super Star Wars program - high enery lasers, kinetic, ECM, and anything else that works. Now how about this for a protocol: on launch detection:completely neutralize launch -> respond:high altitude nuke over aggresor nation. With the result being the complete disruption of most of their electrical grid (excepting hardened or off electronics) so most of their power grid is down for quite a while.
And because they want nuclear technology now not in 35 years when everyone has it so there's a bit of leverage in reaching an agreement with fuel accounting firmly in place (for as long as you can). So address the root of the problem, a space defence would solve politically the problems associated with nuclear proliferation. The fact of the matter is that proliferation is going to happen eventually - maybe sooner or later than you'd expect. Once MAD risk is mitigated then the consequence of more open usage of nuclear materials wouldn't set off the alarms it does today.
Still put radiation detectors everywhere inside your borders though.
Nuclear is the way to go for everything, no matter where you go you can mine uranium as it is a naturally occuring element. You'd be lucky to find fossil fuels anywhere. And until anti-matter becomes practical nuclear power is what is going to make spaceships go. So nuclear systems research would be an awesome investment.
They're going to get nuclear technology anyway so the West should step-in with some initiative. Sell them the hardware for power plants and then in a very monitored way sell them the fuel as well. If we give them what they need (and they truly do as potable water is expected to be a major source of conflict in the 21st century) and monitor the fuel usage then, I think, there would be less of a risk of repurposing the fuel to weapons. While at the same time providing infrastructure that these countries need as they enter their industrial ages. When we went through our industrialization we wasted amazing quantities of fossil fuels, now as they catch-up these developing countries can go straight to nuclear avoiding our first-run mistakes.
Why don't they use fossil fuels to power their desalination plants? Probably because in the future that oil will be worth more selling as lubricants and plastics as supplies run low than the cost of nuclear fuel.
If Microsoft attempted to assert their patents against a complete sector of activity could it be construed as anti-competitive and a basis for new anti-trust proceedings?
Novell could be Microsoft's "gateway" into the open source world. They are compatible in that they are both for-profit corporations and therefore share the traits of monetary goals and risk-based aversion. They think more alike. Microsoft and Novell can make contracts that gives Microsoft the needed sense of security that the circumstances of their relationship would not change overnight. Novell gains credibility as Microsoft gives them a vote of confidence in the business world and Microsoft gets to build a business web within open-source and also gains real-world experience with *nix based contracts developing in-house expertise as they go along.
As speculative as is goes;).
Now we have wall sized wallpapers we just need a wall display system for them. I can't wait:) Downloading wallpapers for my walls is going to be awesome:)
Its just the abstract entity that lives in the fortune's random number generator trying to get through to you in it's own special way;)
But seriously, the human mind is a correlational machine. Think of a number, say, 711. Now look for it - you'll find it everywhere, twice a day on your clock, on a receipt, going to the corner-store, part of a license plate, and everywhere. It's not that you're looking for it it is that you notice when you see it and that therefore strengthen the action of subconsciously looking for it. As people mature, they tend to fill in the "connectedness" within their minds and are more able to start from one set of concepts and translate to another in a meaningful (if eccentric) way. This may shed some understanding on why teenagers seem to have such clear pictures in their beliefs - they haven't linked it all up yet.
Well instead of bitching why don't you post some constructive examples of what you believe in.
It's my firm personal opinion that the American political system is out of tune. Hell, Bush may be the best thing to happen. I think that his policies and actions have weakened America. Thus providing a stimulus to vote his ass out and fix shit. In terms of promoting terror the current administration has real terrorists outflanked. Constant fear mongering emanates from the White House instilling in average Americans the opinion that something must be done now. It's sick when you have a reactionary administration that seems to care more about polls and spin instead of providing the vision to lead their country.
So all-in-all let Bush do what he wants, I think history will judge him harshly.
I think that WGA and now OGA are the first step down the slippery slope towards subscription based software. Valve's Steam already requires activation of products over the Internet and automatically updates the software as well and it has been very successful in frustrating copyright infringers. If Word was patched automatically everytime a new bug was discovered like Steam then OGA all-in-all wouldn't be that bad. Why (W|O)GA causes uproar is that you may experience a denial-of-service on your own software. If you're a pirate then too bad - go get OpenOffice, once ODF emerges you won't care about Microsoft Office anyway. But if you're a business then the "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." principle kicks in - and sheeple buy what everyone else is using which at the moment is Microsoft Office. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft Office is really nice and all but once Open Document Format get's added then there is no problem of lock-in anymore - you'll buy your last version of Word to export your information into ODF and never look back.
This just pushes the measurements of a persons vocal output down to the muscle level instead of sound levels. There is nothing artificially intelligent about this - they've limited their translation to 100-200 words and those are probably straight-literal translations. So basically all that's new and unique about this device is that it reads muscle impulses. No advance in the state of intelligent translation at all. And that's probably because there is no fundamental understanding of thought. Yet.
Human activity and especially software in particular seem to follow a cycle of exploration and compaction phases. I remember when a disk defragmenter was an extra piece of software you bought (Blitzdisk on the Amiga). As time goes by, what used to be peripheral functions become part of the core operating system. This is a good thing. I expect a web browser, media player, word processors (even Notepad counts), and so on to be available immediately upon a fresh install. Microsoft is legitimately trying to improve their Windows product. They are improving their customer experience by folding new functions into the operating system such as anti-malware (or other nasties), and security (firewalls and such). This represents the compaction phase of the cycle preparing the way for the next exploration phase.
It's nice to see Microsoft bringing quality to new markets;). Seriously, Microsoft has to hedge it's bets - Windows and Office may not be cash cows forever. Twenty years from now Microsoft might be like IBM is today - important, influencial and profitable but not the young vigorous company it used to be. Microsoft should go for providing the best standards-based tools and environments it can. I believe that Microsoft place in the future is guaranteed and that at some point in the future they will be selling window managers for X alongside APIs that make everything easy to create and use (C#, XNA, Self configuring and healing networks, etc.). Microsoft's vast cash stores and pool of seventy odd thousand employees represents a major force in computing so don't be surprised when ten years from now you can download GPU updates if you were smart enough to buy a top-notch Microsoft console;).
Straight from the horses mouth:
"Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so." - John Stuart Mill
(Slasdot's fortune's take on the article;) )
I do hold to the distinction that selection pressures can be "natural" or "artificial". You can get eaten by a bear - natural selection or you can be hit by a car - artificial selection. Both just cull and individual from reproduction. Why I keep them separate is that naturally we evolved for one environment but in just one-hundred short years we have built an environment that maps for a whole different set of artificial selection pressures. The natural pressures evolved alongside us while we constructed our artificial pressures.
M'Kay?;):)
FTA...Prior to modern agriculture, it was very important for the body to keep extra resources, but in today's environment, those genes have been linked to obesity.... Natural evolution. Now we are evolving against artificial pressures from our technologies.
The "evolutionist" didn't even point out that natural evolution for humans is over. It ended when Fire was state-of-the-art. But I'll go out on a limb and say that there will be distinct species of human in 200 years. Not through natural evolution but through genetic engineering. Even if we didn't alter the selection pressures on humans for 100,000 years there would still be enough genetic drift that we wouldn't recognize our decendants. But I guess we'd instinctively look both ways before crossing the street by then....
Trollin' trollin' trollin' keep those Morlocks trollin'...
Knowing RSA is crackable with any method should spur the adoption of new technologies such as quantum encryption (being field tested right now) which is impossible (physically and logically) to crack. Change or die, it's one of the cardinal rules of Nature.
Where future genetic-based computers such as this are really going to shine is in the solving of non-polynomial problems. A solution to the travelling salesman problem alone could save millions a year in fuel for transportation companies.
This is what mainstream open-source was clamoring for Microsoft to do... Now Microsoft is standardizing a wide variety of code and documents. So good. Ten years from now when a terabyte database seems kind of small but the information in it is marked up in the as standard a form as ASCII is today then processing huge amounts of information will be as easy as it gets. Once information is standardized then it opens the doors to a wide variety of companies to manipulate the information - in effect providing a "service" to the owner of the database. Open-source, closed, doesn't matter when you have standardized tubes connecting modules and information. A network-centric service economy is probably where we'll go but as Niels Bohr said "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
nVidia and ATI are missing out on a pool of talented free labour in their Un*x markets. Seriously they have to pay people to write Windows drivers when they could have Linux people do it for free and fold the best parts back into their Windows drivers. Idiots.;)
There is still the problem of brittleness which this verb based approach WILL suffer from. Each verb represents a concept and unless you allow concepts to overlap (probably using fuzzy logic) you will end up with situations where the mapping of the user input does not match the preprogrammed verbs properly. Basically he's programming points on a line where the computer knows what to do instead of creating a smooth continuum where the computer can compute the probability of what you meant. Then as the number of verbs grow the complexity of the system increases exponentially so you need some sort of culling algorithm (maybe as simple as a list of synonyms) to reduce the choices to something that more closely fits the preprogrammed responses.
People smarter than you and I have been working on open-ended AI for a long time and there's still no solution yet so I wouldn't get my hopes up too high for this program.
Slashdot Mirror
Because they're nice. Very nice. Because the USA and Russia should commit to a great humanitarian project: The Joint Space Defence Command. It's primary purpose is to detect and neutralize any ballistic missile attacks regardless of origin and destination.
So a super Star Wars program - high enery lasers, kinetic, ECM, and anything else that works. Now how about this for a protocol: on launch detection:completely neutralize launch -> respond:high altitude nuke over aggresor nation. With the result being the complete disruption of most of their electrical grid (excepting hardened or off electronics) so most of their power grid is down for quite a while.
And because they want nuclear technology now not in 35 years when everyone has it so there's a bit of leverage in reaching an agreement with fuel accounting firmly in place (for as long as you can). So address the root of the problem, a space defence would solve politically the problems associated with nuclear proliferation. The fact of the matter is that proliferation is going to happen eventually - maybe sooner or later than you'd expect. Once MAD risk is mitigated then the consequence of more open usage of nuclear materials wouldn't set off the alarms it does today.
Still put radiation detectors everywhere inside your borders though.
Nuclear is the way to go for everything, no matter where you go you can mine uranium as it is a naturally occuring element. You'd be lucky to find fossil fuels anywhere. And until anti-matter becomes practical nuclear power is what is going to make spaceships go. So nuclear systems research would be an awesome investment.
But what do I know, I'm just posting on Slashdot.
They're going to get nuclear technology anyway so the West should step-in with some initiative. Sell them the hardware for power plants and then in a very monitored way sell them the fuel as well. If we give them what they need (and they truly do as potable water is expected to be a major source of conflict in the 21st century) and monitor the fuel usage then, I think, there would be less of a risk of repurposing the fuel to weapons. While at the same time providing infrastructure that these countries need as they enter their industrial ages. When we went through our industrialization we wasted amazing quantities of fossil fuels, now as they catch-up these developing countries can go straight to nuclear avoiding our first-run mistakes.
Why don't they use fossil fuels to power their desalination plants? Probably because in the future that oil will be worth more selling as lubricants and plastics as supplies run low than the cost of nuclear fuel.
If Microsoft attempted to assert their patents against a complete sector of activity could it be construed as anti-competitive and a basis for new anti-trust proceedings?
I would hope so.
Novell could be Microsoft's "gateway" into the open source world. They are compatible in that they are both for-profit corporations and therefore share the traits of monetary goals and risk-based aversion. They think more alike. Microsoft and Novell can make contracts that gives Microsoft the needed sense of security that the circumstances of their relationship would not change overnight. Novell gains credibility as Microsoft gives them a vote of confidence in the business world and Microsoft gets to build a business web within open-source and also gains real-world experience with *nix based contracts developing in-house expertise as they go along. ;).
As speculative as is goes
I was thinking as it as more of a screen/monitor that just happens to be wall sized! Throw video on it too and go back to wallpaper when your done!
Now we have wall sized wallpapers we just need a wall display system for them. I can't wait :) Downloading wallpapers for my walls is going to be awesome :)
Its just the abstract entity that lives in the fortune's random number generator trying to get through to you in it's own special way ;)
But seriously, the human mind is a correlational machine. Think of a number, say, 711. Now look for it - you'll find it everywhere, twice a day on your clock, on a receipt, going to the corner-store, part of a license plate, and everywhere. It's not that you're looking for it it is that you notice when you see it and that therefore strengthen the action of subconsciously looking for it. As people mature, they tend to fill in the "connectedness" within their minds and are more able to start from one set of concepts and translate to another in a meaningful (if eccentric) way. This may shed some understanding on why teenagers seem to have such clear pictures in their beliefs - they haven't linked it all up yet.
Well instead of bitching why don't you post some constructive examples of what you believe in.
It's my firm personal opinion that the American political system is out of tune. Hell, Bush may be the best thing to happen. I think that his policies and actions have weakened America. Thus providing a stimulus to vote his ass out and fix shit. In terms of promoting terror the current administration has real terrorists outflanked. Constant fear mongering emanates from the White House instilling in average Americans the opinion that something must be done now. It's sick when you have a reactionary administration that seems to care more about polls and spin instead of providing the vision to lead their country.
So all-in-all let Bush do what he wants, I think history will judge him harshly.
If he encourages the use of the blink tag I vote we brand him a heretic and burn him at the stake.
I'm not kidding.
I think that WGA and now OGA are the first step down the slippery slope towards subscription based software. Valve's Steam already requires activation of products over the Internet and automatically updates the software as well and it has been very successful in frustrating copyright infringers. If Word was patched automatically everytime a new bug was discovered like Steam then OGA all-in-all wouldn't be that bad. Why (W|O)GA causes uproar is that you may experience a denial-of-service on your own software. If you're a pirate then too bad - go get OpenOffice, once ODF emerges you won't care about Microsoft Office anyway. But if you're a business then the "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." principle kicks in - and sheeple buy what everyone else is using which at the moment is Microsoft Office. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft Office is really nice and all but once Open Document Format get's added then there is no problem of lock-in anymore - you'll buy your last version of Word to export your information into ODF and never look back.
This just pushes the measurements of a persons vocal output down to the muscle level instead of sound levels. There is nothing artificially intelligent about this - they've limited their translation to 100-200 words and those are probably straight-literal translations. So basically all that's new and unique about this device is that it reads muscle impulses. No advance in the state of intelligent translation at all. And that's probably because there is no fundamental understanding of thought. Yet.
Human activity and especially software in particular seem to follow a cycle of exploration and compaction phases. I remember when a disk defragmenter was an extra piece of software you bought (Blitzdisk on the Amiga). As time goes by, what used to be peripheral functions become part of the core operating system. This is a good thing. I expect a web browser, media player, word processors (even Notepad counts), and so on to be available immediately upon a fresh install. Microsoft is legitimately trying to improve their Windows product. They are improving their customer experience by folding new functions into the operating system such as anti-malware (or other nasties), and security (firewalls and such). This represents the compaction phase of the cycle preparing the way for the next exploration phase.
It's nice to see Microsoft bringing quality to new markets ;). Seriously, Microsoft has to hedge it's bets - Windows and Office may not be cash cows forever. Twenty years from now Microsoft might be like IBM is today - important, influencial and profitable but not the young vigorous company it used to be. Microsoft should go for providing the best standards-based tools and environments it can. I believe that Microsoft place in the future is guaranteed and that at some point in the future they will be selling window managers for X alongside APIs that make everything easy to create and use (C#, XNA, Self configuring and healing networks, etc.). Microsoft's vast cash stores and pool of seventy odd thousand employees represents a major force in computing so don't be surprised when ten years from now you can download GPU updates if you were smart enough to buy a top-notch Microsoft console ;).
Straight from the horses mouth: ;) )
"Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so." - John Stuart Mill
(Slasdot's fortune's take on the article
I do hold to the distinction that selection pressures can be "natural" or "artificial". You can get eaten by a bear - natural selection or you can be hit by a car - artificial selection. Both just cull and individual from reproduction. Why I keep them separate is that naturally we evolved for one environment but in just one-hundred short years we have built an environment that maps for a whole different set of artificial selection pressures. The natural pressures evolved alongside us while we constructed our artificial pressures. ;) :)
M'Kay?
FTA...Prior to modern agriculture, it was very important for the body to keep extra resources, but in today's environment, those genes have been linked to obesity....
Natural evolution. Now we are evolving against artificial pressures from our technologies.
The "evolutionist" didn't even point out that natural evolution for humans is over. It ended when Fire was state-of-the-art. But I'll go out on a limb and say that there will be distinct species of human in 200 years. Not through natural evolution but through genetic engineering. Even if we didn't alter the selection pressures on humans for 100,000 years there would still be enough genetic drift that we wouldn't recognize our decendants. But I guess we'd instinctively look both ways before crossing the street by then....
Trollin' trollin' trollin' keep those Morlocks trollin'...
Knowing RSA is crackable with any method should spur the adoption of new technologies such as quantum encryption (being field tested right now) which is impossible (physically and logically) to crack. Change or die, it's one of the cardinal rules of Nature.
Where future genetic-based computers such as this are really going to shine is in the solving of non-polynomial problems. A solution to the travelling salesman problem alone could save millions a year in fuel for transportation companies.
:)
Its a classic already.
This is what mainstream open-source was clamoring for Microsoft to do... Now Microsoft is standardizing a wide variety of code and documents. So good. Ten years from now when a terabyte database seems kind of small but the information in it is marked up in the as standard a form as ASCII is today then processing huge amounts of information will be as easy as it gets. Once information is standardized then it opens the doors to a wide variety of companies to manipulate the information - in effect providing a "service" to the owner of the database. Open-source, closed, doesn't matter when you have standardized tubes connecting modules and information. A network-centric service economy is probably where we'll go but as Niels Bohr said "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
nVidia and ATI are missing out on a pool of talented free labour in their Un*x markets. Seriously they have to pay people to write Windows drivers when they could have Linux people do it for free and fold the best parts back into their Windows drivers. Idiots. ;)
There is still the problem of brittleness which this verb based approach WILL suffer from. Each verb represents a concept and unless you allow concepts to overlap (probably using fuzzy logic) you will end up with situations where the mapping of the user input does not match the preprogrammed verbs properly. Basically he's programming points on a line where the computer knows what to do instead of creating a smooth continuum where the computer can compute the probability of what you meant. Then as the number of verbs grow the complexity of the system increases exponentially so you need some sort of culling algorithm (maybe as simple as a list of synonyms) to reduce the choices to something that more closely fits the preprogrammed responses.
People smarter than you and I have been working on open-ended AI for a long time and there's still no solution yet so I wouldn't get my hopes up too high for this program.
Canadians
I suck.
Anyone could get us Canadaians to observe the election. And we would be happy to do so.