The first few layers of the visual cortex are highly malleable. Wear a set of glasses that flip the world upside down (or angle the field of view by 10 degrees) and the system will adapt within a couple of days - the user will see the world as normal.
But also - when the user stops wearing the glasses the system quickly adapts back.
With all this fluidity, I suspect that a gamer's heightened sense of perception will dissipate if they stop playing games. At a guess this would probably take about 6 weeks.
Part of this is also psychology. We're wired to dislike being wrong, especially in public - it indicates to others that we aren't fit for reproduction. Most people would rather dig their heels in than admit they're wrong (viz: any government official).
You first have to pop the person out of heuristic mode and into systemic mode. The easiest way to do this is to phrase the information as a question. Best is constructing the question in a "leading" way to encourage them to choose your side of an issue..
So for example:
"Would you support the ban on Child Pornography if it resulted in more children being molested?"
(CP being the most emotional hot-button issue I can think of.)
(My idea): If people could band together and agree to vote out the incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close, so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
Someone added: Vote them out AND remove their lifetime, taxpayer-funded, free health care. See how fast the health care system gets fixed.
Someone added:You can start by letting your house and senate rep know how you feel about this issue / patriot act and encourage others you know to do the same.
If enough people let their representivies know how they feel obviously those officials who want to be reelected will tend to take notice. We have seen what happens when wikipedia and google go "dark", congressional switchboards melt and the 180's start to pile up.
I added: Fax is considered the best way to contact a congressperson, especially if it is on corporate letterhead.
Suggestion #2:
Tor, I2dP and the likes. Let's build a new common internet over the internet. Full strong anonymity and integrity. Transform what an eavesdropper would see in a huge cypherpunk clusterfuck.
Taking back what's ours through technology and educated practices.
Let's go back to the 90' where the internet was a place for knowledgeable and cooperative people.
Someone Added: Let's go full scale by deploying small wireless routers across the globe creating a real mesh network as internet was designed to be!
Suggestion #3:
A first step might be understanding the extent towards which the government actually disagrees with the people. Are we talking about a situation where the government is enacting unpopular policies that people oppose? Or are we talking about a situation where people support the policies? Because the solutions to those two situations are very different.
In many cases involving "national security", I think the situation is closer to the second one. "Tough on X" policies are quite popular, and politicians often pander to people by enacting them. The USA Patriot Act, for example, was hugely popular when it was passed. And in general, politicians get voted out of office more often for being not "tough" on crime and terrorism and whatever else, than for being too over-the-top in pursuing those policies.
Suggestion #4:
What I feel is needed is a true 3rd party, not 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th parties, such as Green, Tea Party, Libertarian; we need an agreeable third party that can compete against the two majors without a lot of interference from small parties. We need a consensus third party.
(My idea): If people could band together and agree to vote out the incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close, so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
Someone added: Vote them out AND remove their lifetime, taxpayer-funded, free health care. See how fast the health care system gets fixed.
Someone added:You can start by letting your house and senate rep know how you feel about this issue / patriot act and encourage others you know to do the same.
If enough people let their representivies know how they feel obviously those officials who want to be reelected will tend to take notice. We have seen what happens when wikipedia and google go "dark", congressional switchboards melt and the 180's start to pile up.
I added: Fax is considered the best way to contact a congressperson, especially if it is on corporate letterhead.
Suggestion #2:
Tor, I2dP and the likes. Let's build a new common internet over the internet. Full strong anonymity and integrity. Transform what an eavesdropper would see in a huge cypherpunk clusterfuck.
Taking back what's ours through technology and educated practices.
Let's go back to the 90' where the internet was a place for knowledgeable and cooperative people.
Someone Added: Let's go full scale by deploying small wireless routers across the globe creating a real mesh network as internet was designed to be!
Suggestion #3:
A first step might be understanding the extent towards which the government actually disagrees with the people. Are we talking about a situation where the government is enacting unpopular policies that people oppose? Or are we talking about a situation where people support the policies? Because the solutions to those two situations are very different.
In many cases involving "national security", I think the situation is closer to the second one. "Tough on X" policies are quite popular, and politicians often pander to people by enacting them. The USA Patriot Act, for example, was hugely popular when it was passed. And in general, politicians get voted out of office more often for being not "tough" on crime and terrorism and whatever else, than for being too over-the-top in pursuing those policies.
Suggestion #4:
What I feel is needed is a true 3rd party, not 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th parties, such as Green, Tea Party, Libertarian; we need an agreeable third party that can compete against the two majors without a lot of interference from small parties. We need a consensus third party.
Take a map image of your state and overlay it with a yEd diagram, click on nodes to bring you to a more detailed (but localized) sub-mapof the local graph.
(If you do this, consider using a dedicated huge, transparent display (such as this one) just for the awesome factor.)
When will your computer understand you? Not for awhile.
Speech recognition is a part of AI, to the extent that the computer understands what you're saying. Sure, programs like SIRI or ELIZA can put words together, but only so long as we can anticipate the form and context of the question. SIRI only knows about the things it has been programmed to do, which is (unfortunately) not nearly the amount we expect an intelligence to do.
AI has languished for about 60 years now, mostly because it is not a science. There is no formal definition of intelligence, and no roadmap for what to study. As a result, the field studies everything-and-the-kitchen-sink and says: "this is AI!".
Contrast with, for example, Complexity: a straightforward definition drives a rich field of study, producing many interesting results.
In this particular misguided example, they are using Markov logic networks, even though the human brain does not make the Markov assumption(*). We have no definition for intelligence, and the model they work on is demonstrably different from the only real-world example we know of. This may be interesting mathematical research, but it isn't about AI.
Not to worry - most AI research isn't really related to AI.
This is why your computer doesn't understand you, and won't for quite some time.
(*) Check out Priming and note that psychologists have measured priming effects three days (!) after the initial stimulus.
It's become clear that the federal government no longer serves the interests of the people.
Does anyone have suggestions for fixing the problem?
Whenever some "government done did wrong again" article comes up, the comments are all non-constructive: blithe unconcern, fatalism, pessimism, and so on.
What constructive actions can be taken, and how can the people be encouraged to support these actions?
My one idea: If people could band together and agree to vote out the incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close, so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
(And no, replies of "you won't accomplish anything because of this reason" are not constructive.)
This is one of the problems with Open Source in general: the engineers are expert in coding, and believe that this is all one needs for a great product.
There are acknowledged experts in usability and presentation (and documentation and testing and installation procedures and marketing) who have spent many years of study and have experience in these things. For some reason, few open source projects have subgroups of these types - the development is always code changes checked into a database.
A good example is the ribbon interface in XBMC. Some other computer product had a "ribbon" of program icons, so having one made from words was thought to be a good idea. Icons are mostly small and square, while words are generally wide, so the result is that only one or two selections are visible at one time. Compare with Tivo's vertical list and you'll see a marked difference - using XBMC is like reading a newspaper through a straw.
(Don't bother telling me how to skin XBMC or the obscure option in some hidden menu that makes the presentation sane. It would have been easier to just make a product that isn't frustrating or time-consuming to correct.)
There's an ocean of expertise in other areas that goes into making a good product. If any coders are bored and wanted to explore a new field of research, usability and presentation skills could be very useful.
((Apropos of nothing, there's room for innovation into different ways of presentation and control. I've seen a lot of good suggestions from fiction, such as the AirWolf cockpit altitude display, the gesture-based input from Earth: Final Conflict ship, the cell phones from Earth: Final Conflict, or the medical display in Star Trek: Into Darkness (at the very beginning, the sick girl).))
I've often wondered if including a programming language in a browser is a good idea.
On the functionality side, I don't really think it adds much required functionality. The only useful functionality seems to be in validating web form data (Don't let the user submit without required fields, make sure no spaces are in the CC number, &c). The vast majority of these could be handled by changes in the HTML specification with fields specific to type, flags, and so on. Video and other media players should be built-in to the browser and be based on standardized formats.
There's a number of useless features that everyone clamors for, such as showing text in a box that changes when you click in it (such as "search" boxes), worthless animation, and clever actions that don't appreciably add to readability or access.
On the negative side, there's the innumerable ways in which the user can be taken advantage of - popups and pop-under, spreading malware, insufficient sandboxing, privacy leakage, tracking, and so on.
By turning the browser into a general-purpose computer, the industry has created yet another attack vector. All for something which is for the most part a static, read-only experience.
Microsoft added ActiveX to their E-mail reader, and it was a disaster. I put Javascript on websites in the same category.
You make a cogent and logical argument that BitCoin is deflationary. On first reading, I also thought that deflation would be a problem.
It turns out that BitCoin is not deflationary, as explained in this link.
This is exactly the sort of post I'm wondering about. You argue that BitCoin won't work - based on an untruth.
No one who has looked deeply into the concept has come up with a viable reason that it won't work. No one here - of all the people named or anonymous - has put forth an argument that has stood the test of logic and fact checking. It's all surmise, hastily-jumped-to conclusions, and argument by "story-telling".
...BTC transactions are not even free; but a Visa c/c pays me for using it. Why would I want to pay in BTC?
This is a good example of the thinking that accompanies BitCoin posts. You think that Visa pays you for using the card. I'm assuming that you mean the "1% back" that you get for making a purchase.
Since you don't see this simple situation clearly, what am I to make of your other unfounded assertions?
...in practice there are several attack vectors...
I was a security researcher In a previous life. You say "...in practice there are several attack vectors" without references or listing any, and I wonder if you are making things up. We'd all like to hear what the "several attack vectors" are for BitCoin - the best I've seen is one computationally unfeasible possibility. Brute force doesn't count. Can you tell us more?
...those early miners will become richer than Bill Gates. Will that be fair? I think not.
You say this... do you know how inflation works? (Meaning: BitCoin purports to replace a system which continuously and unfairly devalues money, with a system which is unfair once. Also, what you characterize as unfair seems more like a reward for hard work). This is a glaring example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Sure, it may have one or two problems... but compared to what alternative?
Don't take this as an insult, but your post is exactly the type of unfounded FUD that I was talking about.
I'm curious about something, maybe the community here can point out an answer.
There's a sizeable audience of slashdot readers that are interested in the technical aspects of digital currency, the economic aspects of using such currency, the legal aspects of such currency, the social effects of using such currency, and it's importance in combating tyrrany (the political aspects of such currency).
It would appear that some techies realized that currency control is a tool to unjustly oppress people, and decided to do something about it. The engineering (ie math) seem to be solid, the economic rationale is logically sound (more so than standard economic mantras such as "a little inflation is good"), and the potential to protect human rights is enormous.
What we have here is a rare example of people recognizing a problem and doing something about it.
Despite this, all early posts are negative. Paraphrasing, "Oh, look, it's the weekly Bitcoin post", "Bitcoins will never rise to the status of a real currency", "it'll never work because you will never be able to pay US taxes in bitcoins", "it's a joke", "it's a scam", and so on.
So far (relatively early) there are about a dozen dismissive articles, all by anonymous coward.
What's with BitCoin? Why all the negative press? I've seen no named commenter put forth a rational argument as to why it won't work - that can stand up to logical scrutiny. All arguments so far have been handily shot down by subsequent responses. (You're welcome to try, though.)
Does the government hire astroturfers to guide discussions on this site for selected topics or something? (I'm not saying that there is - I'm asking if this is a well-known fact and I missed it.)
Why all the unfounded dismissive posts about BitCoin?
Okay, so here we have a group of self-interested parties who suggest banding together so that they can
a) Determine by themselves whether someone is acting illegally, and
b) Take action against them by withholding services
c) Without judicial oversight, and with no discussion of due process whatsoever, including: warnings, appeal, or handling mistakes.
So we now have the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act which allows companies to make virtually anything a federal offense just by putting it in their TOS, they can pick and choose who they do business with at their whim, and are themselves historically immune from prosecution.
Of course, they will only use their power for good.
I think we need to enforce a "customer bill of rights" which states that a company cannot just cut off customers at will. It should be enforced by the government as a condition for being granted a business license. If a service is available and the customer can pay, then the company has an obligation to make the transaction. (Glossing over some details for brevity)
Are you against such a regulation? Under what circumstances can a company refuse to serve a customer? Race? Gender? Marital status? Sexual orientation? Ethnicity? What is the difference between any of these and arbitrary black-listing?
stop acting like you were the only one, im in the same boat but you know what.. i didnt, and you didnt either..
Apropos of nothing, what makes you think you were bullied to the same level as the original poster?
Was he bullied when he was as old as you were, or could he have been younger when bullied?
Is your support group (family, especially brothers) larger than his, or was he essentially alone? Were both his parents holding down jobs and yours weren't?
Are you dismissing a serious issue because it wasn't as serious in your case? We know that kids snap and do bad things when pushed too far. As do all mammals.
Take the smart approach. Rather than blame the victim, perhaps you should consider advocating changes that address the cause of the problem.
... i have zero tolerance for people who self pity themselves to death and blame others for their misery
Firstly, how do they know it was Iranian hackers? The linked article is the NYT reporting US officials as saying that the attacks came from Iran, and that the attacks could not be carried out without the regime's knowledge. Not a direct quote, btw - a paraphrasing of something a government official said, paraphrased by the reporter, and punched up by the editor for more impact.
Yet the register first line reads: "Iranian hackers are launching state-sanctioned attacks on US energy firms and hope to sabotage critical infrastructure by targeting industrial control systems, according to American officials."
There's a difference between attacks originating in Iran and attacks sponsored by the regime. Also, it's difficult at best to determine the origin of an attack - are they sure these attacks weren't proxied *through* Iran?
Secondly, how do they know that the goal is sabotage, when no sabotage has actually occurred? How do they know that this isn't just some bot herders trying to find more spam outlets? Certainly "accruing information on how their systems work" sounds more like a port scan or a vulnerability scan - which would be the first step regardless of the intent.
This is high-octane scare mongering. Be afraid, everyone! Don't use logic, let your emotions guide your opinions!!!
Making a book of "best practices" is a good first step, but incentives are also needed.
For example, suppose the government set penalties for security breaches which result from not following best practices. The penalties would not trigger until an actual breach, but if one *does* happen then the company is fined for breach of trust.
The fines should be structured to encourage businesses to reduce risk, by artificially creating proportional risk.
If someone steals CC numbers because the company kept them in the clear, and kept them beyond the time necessary to complete a transaction, the company is fined $5 each number. If passwords are not encrypted and salted, $1 for each stolen password. If web form data is not sanitized and customer information is stolen, $3 for each record. If the power station control computers are on the net with default passwords - half a mil.
The government could also set up incentives and rewards for white-hat hackers who find vulnerabilities. If 1/10 of the potential fine goes to the white-hat hacker who discovers it, security practices would come into line very quickly. Perhaps with a cap of $50,000: enough for incentive to the hacker and the company, but not enough to affect the business.
(... tempered by common sense. The company can argue that a different action is just as secure as "best practice" - but this should be done in court as response to a data breach investigation. Also, security breaches which are the result of something not covered by "best practices" are exempt.)
Government can tweak and tune things for the betterment of society, but it has to be structured in the manner of game theory. People have to want to follow procedures.
Much of the brain's visual processing can change dynamically with changes in environment.
For example, a common experiment in college psych courses is to give a student glasses that flip the world upside-down. It takes a few days for the student's brain to adapt to the new inputs, and then they see the world normally (and revert after a few days w/o the glasses). Patients with macular degeneration can wear glasses that stretch-map the visual input around areas of missing vision (in the manner of a cylindrical mirror). After some time, they report seeing the world normally - their visual system has adapted and remapped the input.
I wonder if the effect simply measures the amount of reading the subject does; in other terms, perhaps it's just measuring the amount of fine-focus eye training? What does the test show for people who play a lot of arcade games (shooters, especially ones that throw a lot of targets at you)? Or people who use a lot of visual perception in their daily lives?
The article stated that the authors "tested for other possible explanations". Also, the correlation was at most 71%, note that flipping a coin is expected to correlate to around 50%. Their data seems to be awfully well clustered and the slope seems to be due to the outliers. The first study used 12 subjects, and the second only 53.
I'm unconvinced. It could be promising, but I would like to see correlations from more data.
Surely it's not Kessler syndrome until you have debris from one collision causing a further collision? In each of the incidents described above, an existing piece of debris not originating in a collision was the cause of the incident.
Surely it's not the Kessler syndrome until someone makes the run in less than 12 parsecs... or am I missing something?
No more criminals stealing service revolvers from cops and shooting them with their own weapons.
Still shady dealers selling weapons without "smart" tech, or with overrideable tech.
Interestingly, up here in NH there was an incident where a cop was shot at a traffic stop.
A passerby stopped to help the cop, the assailant pointed his gun at the passerby's son, so the passerby pulled the cop's own gun and shot the assailant. (link)
Speaking as a student of statistics, I wonder how many times a cop has been shot with their own gun, as opposed to (this one) incident where the assailant was shot using the cop's gun.
And a related observation: the congresscritters are hot to allow a system to disable guns, which has no statistical imperative, yet won't force phone manufacturers to allow owners to disable stolen cellphones, which is itself the root cause of much crime.
It's much more likely that your child will have a bad reaction to the vaccine than to actually get the disease. And if everyone *else* gets vaccinated, there's no need for any specific child to take that risk. That's the dilemma facing parents nowadays - from their individual viewpoint, there's a higher risk from the vaccination than there is from the disease.
Taking polio (about 30 years ago) as an example, the chance of getting polio from the vaccine was about 1 in 750,000. Polio became largely non-existent in the US during the later years of the vaccination program, so individually it's easy to see why parents might not want to take the risk.
And yet if everyone makes the best choice for their personal welfare, polio runs rampant in the country with 35,000 cases per year.
This is a variant of the Prisoner's dilemma, where if everyone does what's in their immediate best interest then everyone suffers needlessly.
We must accept the fact that sometimes we forced to take risks, and sometimes those risks will go badly. The risks are structured such that by taking the forced risk we are lowering everyone's total risk, and in the case of diseases, lowering it to a point where eventually no one will have to take the risk in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
The first few layers of the visual cortex are highly malleable. Wear a set of glasses that flip the world upside down (or angle the field of view by 10 degrees) and the system will adapt within a couple of days - the user will see the world as normal.
But also - when the user stops wearing the glasses the system quickly adapts back.
With all this fluidity, I suspect that a gamer's heightened sense of perception will dissipate if they stop playing games. At a guess this would probably take about 6 weeks.
Part of this is also psychology. We're wired to dislike being wrong, especially in public - it indicates to others that we aren't fit for reproduction. Most people would rather dig their heels in than admit they're wrong (viz: any government official).
You first have to pop the person out of heuristic mode and into systemic mode. The easiest way to do this is to phrase the information as a question. Best is constructing the question in a "leading" way to encourage them to choose your side of an issue..
So for example:
"Would you support the ban on Child Pornography if it resulted in more children being molested?"
(CP being the most emotional hot-button issue I can think of.)
(For more info, "The Psychology of Selling" has a lot of down-to-Earth information on convincing people.)
From a previous post, here's the collected list of suggested actions
people can take to help fix the government.
Have more ideas? Please post below.
Links worthy of attention:
http://anticorruptionact.org/
http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html
http://action.fairelectionsnow.org/fairelections
http://represent.us/
http://www.protectourdemocracy.com/
http://www.wolf-pac.com/
https://www.unpac.org/
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/
Suggestion #1:
(My idea): If people could band together and agree to vote out the
incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these
incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better
serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean
giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a
lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close,
so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
Someone added: Vote them out AND remove their lifetime,
taxpayer-funded, free health care. See how fast the health care system
gets fixed.
Someone added:You can start by letting your house and senate rep know
how you feel about this issue / patriot act and encourage others you
know to do the same.
If enough people let their representivies know how they feel obviously
those officials who want to be reelected will tend to take notice. We have
seen what happens when wikipedia and google go "dark", congressional
switchboards melt and the 180's start to pile up.
I added: Fax is considered the best way to contact a congressperson,
especially if it is on corporate letterhead.
Suggestion #2:
Tor, I2dP and the likes. Let's build a new common internet over the
internet. Full strong anonymity and integrity. Transform what an
eavesdropper would see in a huge cypherpunk clusterfuck.
Taking back what's ours through technology and educated practices.
Let's go back to the 90' where the internet was a place for
knowledgeable and cooperative people.
Someone Added: Let's go full scale by deploying small wireless routers
across the globe creating a real mesh network as internet was designed
to be!
Suggestion #3:
A first step might be understanding the extent towards which the
government actually disagrees with the people. Are we talking about a
situation where the government is enacting unpopular policies that
people oppose? Or are we talking about a situation where people
support the policies? Because the solutions to those two situations
are very different.
In many cases involving "national security", I think the situation is
closer to the second one. "Tough on X" policies are quite popular, and
politicians often pander to people by enacting them. The USA Patriot
Act, for example, was hugely popular when it was passed. And in
general, politicians get voted out of office more often for being not
"tough" on crime and terrorism and whatever else, than for being too
over-the-top in pursuing those policies.
Suggestion #4:
What I feel is needed is a true 3rd party, not 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th
parties, such as Green, Tea Party, Libertarian; we need an agreeable
third party that can compete against the two majors without a lot of
interference from small parties. We need a consensus third party.
Suggestion #5:
Replace the voting system. Plurality voting will
From a previous post, here's the collected list of suggested actions
people can take to help change the situation.
Have more ideas? Please post below.
Links worthy of attention:
http://anticorruptionact.org/
http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html
http://action.fairelectionsnow.org/fairelections
http://represent.us/
http://www.protectourdemocracy.com/
http://www.wolf-pac.com/
https://www.unpac.org/
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/
Suggestion #1:
(My idea): If people could band together and agree to vote out the
incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these
incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better
serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean
giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a
lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close,
so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
Someone added: Vote them out AND remove their lifetime,
taxpayer-funded, free health care. See how fast the health care system
gets fixed.
Someone added:You can start by letting your house and senate rep know
how you feel about this issue / patriot act and encourage others you
know to do the same.
If enough people let their representivies know how they feel obviously
those officials who want to be reelected will tend to take notice. We have
seen what happens when wikipedia and google go "dark", congressional
switchboards melt and the 180's start to pile up.
I added: Fax is considered the best way to contact a congressperson,
especially if it is on corporate letterhead.
Suggestion #2:
Tor, I2dP and the likes. Let's build a new common internet over the
internet. Full strong anonymity and integrity. Transform what an
eavesdropper would see in a huge cypherpunk clusterfuck.
Taking back what's ours through technology and educated practices.
Let's go back to the 90' where the internet was a place for
knowledgeable and cooperative people.
Someone Added: Let's go full scale by deploying small wireless routers
across the globe creating a real mesh network as internet was designed
to be!
Suggestion #3:
A first step might be understanding the extent towards which the
government actually disagrees with the people. Are we talking about a
situation where the government is enacting unpopular policies that
people oppose? Or are we talking about a situation where people
support the policies? Because the solutions to those two situations
are very different.
In many cases involving "national security", I think the situation is
closer to the second one. "Tough on X" policies are quite popular, and
politicians often pander to people by enacting them. The USA Patriot
Act, for example, was hugely popular when it was passed. And in
general, politicians get voted out of office more often for being not
"tough" on crime and terrorism and whatever else, than for being too
over-the-top in pursuing those policies.
Suggestion #4:
What I feel is needed is a true 3rd party, not 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th
parties, such as Green, Tea Party, Libertarian; we need an agreeable
third party that can compete against the two majors without a lot of
interference from small parties. We need a consensus third party.
Suggestion #5:
Replace the voting system. Plurality voting will
How about a graph editor, such as yEd?
Take a map image of your state and overlay it with a yEd diagram, click on nodes to bring you to a more detailed (but localized) sub-mapof the local graph.
(If you do this, consider using a dedicated huge, transparent display (such as this one) just for the awesome factor.)
When will your computer understand you? Not for awhile.
Speech recognition is a part of AI, to the extent that the computer understands what you're saying. Sure, programs like SIRI or ELIZA can put words together, but only so long as we can anticipate the form and context of the question. SIRI only knows about the things it has been programmed to do, which is (unfortunately) not nearly the amount we expect an intelligence to do.
AI has languished for about 60 years now, mostly because it is not a science. There is no formal definition of intelligence, and no roadmap for what to study. As a result, the field studies everything-and-the-kitchen-sink and says: "this is AI!".
Contrast with, for example, Complexity: a straightforward definition drives a rich field of study, producing many interesting results.
In this particular misguided example, they are using Markov logic networks, even though the human brain does not make the Markov assumption(*). We have no definition for intelligence, and the model they work on is demonstrably different from the only real-world example we know of. This may be interesting mathematical research, but it isn't about AI.
Not to worry - most AI research isn't really related to AI.
This is why your computer doesn't understand you, and won't for quite some time.
(*) Check out Priming and note that psychologists have measured priming effects three days (!) after the initial stimulus.
I just googled "Krapina, Croatia", there really is such a place, and now I want to go there to visit.
Another "todo" for my bucket list!
Wow - good eyes! I'll remember that. (Thanks)
That's a fair point. I'll try to be more attentive in future posts. (Thanks)
It's become clear that the federal government no longer serves the interests of the people.
Does anyone have suggestions for fixing the problem?
Whenever some "government done did wrong again" article comes up, the comments are all non-constructive: blithe unconcern, fatalism, pessimism, and so on.
What constructive actions can be taken, and how can the people be encouraged to support these actions?
My one idea: If people could band together and agree to vote out the incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close, so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
(And no, replies of "you won't accomplish anything because of this reason" are not constructive.)
This is one of the problems with Open Source in general: the engineers are expert in coding, and believe that this is all one needs for a great product.
There are acknowledged experts in usability and presentation (and documentation and testing and installation procedures and marketing) who have spent many years of study and have experience in these things. For some reason, few open source projects have subgroups of these types - the development is always code changes checked into a database.
A good example is the ribbon interface in XBMC. Some other computer product had a "ribbon" of program icons, so having one made from words was thought to be a good idea. Icons are mostly small and square, while words are generally wide, so the result is that only one or two selections are visible at one time. Compare with Tivo's vertical list and you'll see a marked difference - using XBMC is like reading a newspaper through a straw.
(Don't bother telling me how to skin XBMC or the obscure option in some hidden menu that makes the presentation sane. It would have been easier to just make a product that isn't frustrating or time-consuming to correct.)
There's an ocean of expertise in other areas that goes into making a good product. If any coders are bored and wanted to explore a new field of research, usability and presentation skills could be very useful.
((Apropos of nothing, there's room for innovation into different ways of presentation and control. I've seen a lot of good suggestions from fiction, such as the AirWolf cockpit altitude display, the gesture-based input from Earth: Final Conflict ship, the cell phones from Earth: Final Conflict, or the medical display in Star Trek: Into Darkness (at the very beginning, the sick girl).))
I've often wondered if including a programming language in a browser is a good idea.
On the functionality side, I don't really think it adds much required functionality. The only useful functionality seems to be in validating web form data (Don't let the user submit without required fields, make sure no spaces are in the CC number, &c). The vast majority of these could be handled by changes in the HTML specification with fields specific to type, flags, and so on. Video and other media players should be built-in to the browser and be based on standardized formats.
There's a number of useless features that everyone clamors for, such as showing text in a box that changes when you click in it (such as "search" boxes), worthless animation, and clever actions that don't appreciably add to readability or access.
On the negative side, there's the innumerable ways in which the user can be taken advantage of - popups and pop-under, spreading malware, insufficient sandboxing, privacy leakage, tracking, and so on.
By turning the browser into a general-purpose computer, the industry has created yet another attack vector. All for something which is for the most part a static, read-only experience.
Microsoft added ActiveX to their E-mail reader, and it was a disaster. I put Javascript on websites in the same category.
You make a cogent and logical argument that BitCoin is deflationary. On first reading, I also thought that deflation would be a problem.
It turns out that BitCoin is not deflationary, as explained in this link.
This is exactly the sort of post I'm wondering about. You argue that BitCoin won't work - based on an untruth.
No one who has looked deeply into the concept has come up with a viable reason that it won't work. No one here - of all the people named or anonymous - has put forth an argument that has stood the test of logic and fact checking. It's all surmise, hastily-jumped-to conclusions, and argument by "story-telling".
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses
Don't bother to read that site - not that there's any evidence that you did - because there are no real attack vectors there.
Unless you think "denial of service" is a valid there's nothing on the linked site that constitutes a real attack.
Yet another example of the "unsupported allegation" type of post... but I applaud your attempt to make it sound legitimate by supplying a link.
Try again.
...BTC transactions are not even free; but a Visa c/c pays me for using it. Why would I want to pay in BTC?
This is a good example of the thinking that accompanies BitCoin posts. You think that Visa pays you for using the card. I'm assuming that you mean the "1% back" that you get for making a purchase.
Since you don't see this simple situation clearly, what am I to make of your other unfounded assertions?
...in practice there are several attack vectors...
I was a security researcher In a previous life. You say "...in practice there are several attack vectors" without references or listing any, and I wonder if you are making things up. We'd all like to hear what the "several attack vectors" are for BitCoin - the best I've seen is one computationally unfeasible possibility. Brute force doesn't count. Can you tell us more?
...those early miners will become richer than Bill Gates. Will that be fair? I think not.
You say this... do you know how inflation works? (Meaning: BitCoin purports to replace a system which continuously and unfairly devalues money, with a system which is unfair once. Also, what you characterize as unfair seems more like a reward for hard work). This is a glaring example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Sure, it may have one or two problems... but compared to what alternative?
Don't take this as an insult, but your post is exactly the type of unfounded FUD that I was talking about.
I'm curious about something, maybe the community here can point out an answer.
There's a sizeable audience of slashdot readers that are interested in the technical aspects of digital currency, the economic aspects of using such currency, the legal aspects of such currency, the social effects of using such currency, and it's importance in combating tyrrany (the political aspects of such currency).
It would appear that some techies realized that currency control is a tool to unjustly oppress people, and decided to do something about it. The engineering (ie math) seem to be solid, the economic rationale is logically sound (more so than standard economic mantras such as "a little inflation is good"), and the potential to protect human rights is enormous.
What we have here is a rare example of people recognizing a problem and doing something about it.
Despite this, all early posts are negative. Paraphrasing, "Oh, look, it's the weekly Bitcoin post", "Bitcoins will never rise to the status of a real currency", "it'll never work because you will never be able to pay US taxes in bitcoins", "it's a joke", "it's a scam", and so on.
So far (relatively early) there are about a dozen dismissive articles, all by anonymous coward.
What's with BitCoin? Why all the negative press? I've seen no named commenter put forth a rational argument as to why it won't work - that can stand up to logical scrutiny. All arguments so far have been handily shot down by subsequent responses. (You're welcome to try, though.)
Does the government hire astroturfers to guide discussions on this site for selected topics or something? (I'm not saying that there is - I'm asking if this is a well-known fact and I missed it.)
Why all the unfounded dismissive posts about BitCoin?
Okay, so here we have a group of self-interested parties who suggest banding together so that they can
a) Determine by themselves whether someone is acting illegally, and
b) Take action against them by withholding services
c) Without judicial oversight, and with no discussion of due process whatsoever, including: warnings, appeal, or handling mistakes.
So we now have the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act which allows companies to make virtually anything a federal offense just by putting it in their TOS, they can pick and choose who they do business with at their whim, and are themselves historically immune from prosecution.
Of course, they will only use their power for good.
I think we need to enforce a "customer bill of rights" which states that a company cannot just cut off customers at will. It should be enforced by the government as a condition for being granted a business license. If a service is available and the customer can pay, then the company has an obligation to make the transaction. (Glossing over some details for brevity)
Are you against such a regulation? Under what circumstances can a company refuse to serve a customer? Race? Gender? Marital status? Sexual orientation? Ethnicity? What is the difference between any of these and arbitrary black-listing?
stop acting like you were the only one, im in the same boat but you know what.. i didnt, and you didnt either..
Apropos of nothing, what makes you think you were bullied to the same level as the original poster?
Was he bullied when he was as old as you were, or could he have been younger when bullied?
Is your support group (family, especially brothers) larger than his, or was he essentially alone? Were both his parents holding down jobs and yours weren't?
Are you dismissing a serious issue because it wasn't as serious in your case? We know that kids snap and do bad things when pushed too far. As do all mammals.
Take the smart approach. Rather than blame the victim, perhaps you should consider advocating changes that address the cause of the problem.
... i have zero tolerance for people who self pity themselves to death and blame others for their misery
Keep evolving, you'll reach "human" eventually...
Okay, some questions.
Firstly, how do they know it was Iranian hackers? The linked article is the NYT reporting US officials as saying that the attacks came from Iran, and that the attacks could not be carried out without the regime's knowledge. Not a direct quote, btw - a paraphrasing of something a government official said, paraphrased by the reporter, and punched up by the editor for more impact.
Yet the register first line reads: "Iranian hackers are launching state-sanctioned attacks on US energy firms and hope to sabotage critical infrastructure by targeting industrial control systems, according to American officials."
There's a difference between attacks originating in Iran and attacks sponsored by the regime. Also, it's difficult at best to determine the origin of an attack - are they sure these attacks weren't proxied *through* Iran?
Secondly, how do they know that the goal is sabotage, when no sabotage has actually occurred? How do they know that this isn't just some bot herders trying to find more spam outlets? Certainly "accruing information on how their systems work" sounds more like a port scan or a vulnerability scan - which would be the first step regardless of the intent.
This is high-octane scare mongering. Be afraid, everyone! Don't use logic, let your emotions guide your opinions!!!
Making a book of "best practices" is a good first step, but incentives are also needed.
For example, suppose the government set penalties for security breaches which result from not following best practices. The penalties would not trigger until an actual breach, but if one *does* happen then the company is fined for breach of trust.
The fines should be structured to encourage businesses to reduce risk, by artificially creating proportional risk.
If someone steals CC numbers because the company kept them in the clear, and kept them beyond the time necessary to complete a transaction, the company is fined $5 each number. If passwords are not encrypted and salted, $1 for each stolen password. If web form data is not sanitized and customer information is stolen, $3 for each record. If the power station control computers are on the net with default passwords - half a mil.
The government could also set up incentives and rewards for white-hat hackers who find vulnerabilities. If 1/10 of the potential fine goes to the white-hat hacker who discovers it, security practices would come into line very quickly. Perhaps with a cap of $50,000: enough for incentive to the hacker and the company, but not enough to affect the business.
(... tempered by common sense. The company can argue that a different action is just as secure as "best practice" - but this should be done in court as response to a data breach investigation. Also, security breaches which are the result of something not covered by "best practices" are exempt.)
Government can tweak and tune things for the betterment of society, but it has to be structured in the manner of game theory. People have to want to follow procedures.
Much of the brain's visual processing can change dynamically with changes in environment.
For example, a common experiment in college psych courses is to give a student glasses that flip the world upside-down. It takes a few days for the student's brain to adapt to the new inputs, and then they see the world normally (and revert after a few days w/o the glasses). Patients with macular degeneration can wear glasses that stretch-map the visual input around areas of missing vision (in the manner of a cylindrical mirror). After some time, they report seeing the world normally - their visual system has adapted and remapped the input.
I wonder if the effect simply measures the amount of reading the subject does; in other terms, perhaps it's just measuring the amount of fine-focus eye training? What does the test show for people who play a lot of arcade games (shooters, especially ones that throw a lot of targets at you)? Or people who use a lot of visual perception in their daily lives?
The article stated that the authors "tested for other possible explanations". Also, the correlation was at most 71%, note that flipping a coin is expected to correlate to around 50%. Their data seems to be awfully well clustered and the slope seems to be due to the outliers. The first study used 12 subjects, and the second only 53.
I'm unconvinced. It could be promising, but I would like to see correlations from more data.
Surely it's not Kessler syndrome until you have debris from one collision causing a further collision? In each of the incidents described above, an existing piece of debris not originating in a collision was the cause of the incident.
Surely it's not the Kessler syndrome until someone makes the run in less than 12 parsecs... or am I missing something?
No more criminals stealing service revolvers from cops and shooting them with their own weapons.
Still shady dealers selling weapons without "smart" tech, or with overrideable tech.
Interestingly, up here in NH there was an incident where a cop was shot at a traffic stop.
A passerby stopped to help the cop, the assailant pointed his gun at the passerby's son, so the passerby pulled the cop's own gun and shot the assailant. (link)
Speaking as a student of statistics, I wonder how many times a cop has been shot with their own gun, as opposed to (this one) incident where the assailant was shot using the cop's gun.
And a related observation: the congresscritters are hot to allow a system to disable guns, which has no statistical imperative, yet won't force phone manufacturers to allow owners to disable stolen cellphones, which is itself the root cause of much crime.
...Remember that during the next election cycle.
Are you suggesting that we vote out the incumbents?
But but... my party! I can't let those other guys into office because they'd be worse!!!
The system is broken, I know that. But I consider myself morally responsible, so I have to vote for the lessor of two evils!
Do you get your children vaccinated?
It's much more likely that your child will have a bad reaction to the vaccine than to actually get the disease. And if everyone *else* gets vaccinated, there's no need for any specific child to take that risk. That's the dilemma facing parents nowadays - from their individual viewpoint, there's a higher risk from the vaccination than there is from the disease.
Taking polio (about 30 years ago) as an example, the chance of getting polio from the vaccine was about 1 in 750,000. Polio became largely non-existent in the US during the later years of the vaccination program, so individually it's easy to see why parents might not want to take the risk.
And yet if everyone makes the best choice for their personal welfare, polio runs rampant in the country with 35,000 cases per year.
This is a variant of the Prisoner's dilemma, where if everyone does what's in their immediate best interest then everyone suffers needlessly.
We must accept the fact that sometimes we forced to take risks, and sometimes those risks will go badly. The risks are structured such that by taking the forced risk we are lowering everyone's total risk, and in the case of diseases, lowering it to a point where eventually no one will have to take the risk in the future.