With two exceptions, everyone who voted *for* the bill was not in a hotly contested reelection race. Everyone who voted *against* it was.
This is not democracy in action, it's just people looking out for their own interests.
It saddens me to think that this bill didn't pass or fail on its merits, but was the result of short-term thinking by people who want to benefit themselves and friends, but can't do it at this exact point in time.
If the bill had come up a month from now, it would have passed.
A bunch of that money could be recycled back into reelection campaigns and not be noticed. $100 million would buy a lot of congresscritters, and it's less than 1/10 of 1 percent of the total.
As a suggestion, how about digitizing the songs several times and then using the redundant data to recreate the originals with no hiss or pop.
As I understand it, pop is sometimes caused by buildup and sudden release of static electricity. This means that the pops will be in different places for different digitizations and can therefore be recognized and accounted for. Scratches, on the other hand...
Hiss is stochastic noise and would average out over several recordings.
It should be straightforward to use a correlation coefficient correction to bring all the recordings into "phase", then use a processing algorithm to remove most of the artifacts.
The artifacts that remain can be removed using techniques more suited to single-images; ie - filtering to remove hiss and pop.
This is an insightful comment, but there's actually a lot more going on here.
First of all, AI does not have a good definition of intelligence. We have a *test* for intelligence, but nobody really has a fundamental description of what the concept means.
Next, people typically conflate the terms "intelligence" and "human intelligence". There is a range of behaviours which are individually identified as intelligent, but which do not come close to the level of humans. (Example: My cat, sitting on a windowsill, will notice something interesting outside. She can jump down, run downstairs, through 2 cat doors, and around the house to investigate. That's a level of intelligence that no program currently has, and yet it's not human level.)
Then there's the "fallacy of the representation". Someone will see a problem, solve it in their head, observe their thought process while doing so, and then translate that process into a piece of software. The software solves a problem just like a human would, so they point to it and say "aha! this program is intelligent". In reality, the program is fixed and does one function - the intelligence remains in the person.
And finally, there is the tendency to narrowly over-analyze some small aspect which has little bearing on the subject. Check out how many types of artificial neurons there are - and the in-depth analysis of each. It's all "reproduce such-and-so function using a neural net" and "numerical analysis of output given the input". Nowhere will you see any conclusions which state "this then implements a feature of intelligence".
So far as I can tell, no one in AI has a clearly defined goal, nor any plan on how to get there (or even a plan on how to define the goal). Until that happens, AI will fundamentally be a rudderless ship blown around on a sea of unrelated ideas.
If you've got no electronics experience, DON'T USE a triac!
A triac is an extremely fast electronic switch which is used as follows:
1) You monitor the AC current. Specifically, you notice when the sine wave crosses zero volts (120 times a second). 2) You then turn on the AC power sometime *after* the zero crossing occurs, but before the next crossing, where you turn it off again.
With the right timing, you let only a portion of the AC current through, which results in less power - effectively dimming the light. For instance, if you turn the triac on 50% into the cycle, only half the current gets through. The other half was blocked during the time the triac was off.
Microncontrollers are very fast, and can easily adjust the "turn on" time with great precision, giving the appearance of smooth dimming.
The problem with triacs is that you have to connect to the AC system. This is not very difficult, but there's a ton of extra information you need above and beyond the electronics in order to do it safely.
For instance, you need an opto-isolator to separate the AC wiring from the low voltage microcontroller wiring. This prevents the system from catching fire if there's ever a problem. It also prevents the system from becoming dangerous if there's a problem. You roll over in the morning and hit the switch - only to find out it's now connected directly to the AC lines due to some fault.
Connecting hobbyist (ie - non UL approved) circuits to your AC will also void your insurance if there's a fire (I think that's the case). This is why wall warts are used everywhere: the supply is itself UL approved, and the device is far away at the end of a long wire.
A better solution is to use an X-10 module to control the light. It's got a triac inside it and it's already UL approved, so they've done all the work for you. You can get a TW-523 interface, which is essentially a serial port interface to X-10 and hook *that* up to whatever micro control system you want to build. This has the advantage in being able to control any light in your house, even more than one.
Hooking a motor up to a dimmer switch is also an excellent solution. You will understand the mechanism, can see that it works, and it's effectively insulated from the AC lines.
Lessee here. A pack of cigarettes costs about $5.00 (source).
Smoking 1 pack/day is about $150 per month, or $900 for 6 months. You can buy a 'sorta decent LCD TV for that, if you look around.
One would need discipline to save the money into an account for 6 months, and not spend it in the meantime.
It is my understanding that people who smoke have a tendency (statistically) to be people who do not form rational long-term planning and who tend not to put off pleasure for future greater gain.
Before some psych major posts about how the RAS isn't involved with goals, let me clarify.
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) decides what is "important" to your conscious mind.
As you read this, you can feel the weight of the chair on your legs, feel the clothes on your shoulders, see the wall beyond the monitor, and hear the backgound noise. You can feel your breathing, and if you concentrate you can maybe hear your heart beat.
None of this information makes it to your consious mind because the RAS steps in and says "this isn't important to me". You don't notice the feel of your pants clinging to your leg, but if a bug started crawling up your leg the RAS would go nuts bringing it to the attention of your mind.
The interesting thing about the RAS is that we can tell it what is important. Once we decide on a goal, anything that reasonates with that goal will be allowed through to our conscious minds.
Day by day we are awash in possibilities that we pay no attention to. Once we set a goal and let the RAS know what's important, these possibilities start to come through to the conscious mind and we find that by exploring more and more possibilities, eventually we get to our goal.
People who set and write down goals comment on how "magical" this all appears. Almost as if there is some force in the universe that is coming to their aid. Suddenly, someone mentions that their son is selling his car and it happens to be the exact make, model, and price you were hoping for.
Of course, the possibilities were there *before* you set your goals as well - you just didn't notice them. Some people have suggested that this is how prayer works.
Whatever the underlying reasons, writing down goals seems to work. It's how people people get to be extremely successful in whatever area they choose.
I've been studying this very subject heavily for the past 18 months or so.
We now know a great deal about how the mind works and have applied it to the general subject of "becoming a success". Being successful always involves explicitly setting goals, and this can be done with New Years' resolutions SO LONG AS they are done correctly.
I'm boiling the issues down to a few simple facts, but they are all verified by psychological studies and have their basis in well-known underlying mechanisms. It all comes from your Reticular Activating System, which is a part of your brain that is involved with setting goals (I'm simplifying).
1) Don't make resolutions, set goals. Pick the major areas of your life (personal, work, relationship, church, community) and write down things that you'd like to achieve in the upcoming year.
2) Resolutions need to be written down. No one has explained why writing is needed, but it works. Lots of studies have shown this. (Maybe it's because wirting things activates all areas of your mind at once: you "say" it in your mind while writing it, you see it, you write it, &c).
3) Resolutions must be personal. Use "I" when writing them (as in "I read 15 books by year's end").
4) Resolutions must be positive. If you say "I stop smoking" or "I stop chewing my nails", it won't work. The RAS only deals with positive commands, and not negative ones. To deal with biting your nails, write "I notice every time I bring my fingers to my mouth" or something, and then stop yourself at those times.
5) Resolutions must be in present tense. Write "I earn $80K a year", not "I earn $80K by the end of the year".
6) Where possible, resolutions should be measurable. If you want to lose weight, say "I weigh 175 pounds".
7) Resolutions should be reasonable. Don't say "I earn a million dollars a year", take your salary, add 20% and write "I earn XXX a year".
The more specific and detailed you are, the greater likelyhood that the goal will happen. Want a new car? Write down the make, model, color, options, and everything else you can think of.
Once you have your goals written out, occasionally look at them. Once a week or more will really drive the message home to your subconscious.
People who do this are generally amazed at the results. It's making use of existing well-known mechanisms in your mind, but we've only recently discovered how to make use of them.
What everyone seems to be missing here is a sense of priorities.
There are roughly 10 major issues which are relevent in the upcoming election, and any number of minor ones. The war in Iraq, abortion, health care, personal liberties, and so on.
Of these, which one do you feel is *most important* to get right?
Ron Paul can be seen to be pro- or anti- or avoid- abortion. Some people will not be voting for him on this basis.
Which is more important: his stance on abortion, or ending the war in Iraq? Is his stance on abortion more important than restoring our rights and liberties? Is his stance on abortion more important than ending the war on drugs?
Please be specific in your views. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is this:
I feel that the issue of abortion is more important than the war in Iraq, so I will not be voting for this candidate.
I feel that the issue of abortion is more important than loss of personal liberties, so I will not be voting for this candidate.
You can use this logic for any of the major issues which you personally feel is important. It's a valid position to take - except that I've not heard many people phrase it this completely.
My perception is that most of Ron Paul's positions reasonate with a large number of people, but they disagree with one or two. That's actually a *huge* proportion to agree with, and given his voting history in the senate it's likely that he would in fact be faithful to his positions.
Eight out of 10 with a virtual guarantee that he wouldn't sell out - that's an enormous improvement.
I'm voting for Paul. Fix 8 of the top 10 problems immediately, I can wait 4 years to fix the rest.
Other programs are as good as Jeff's at recognizing things? Show me a program that can be trained on an arbitrary set of images, and then make accurate recognitions from data which has been degraded in various ways. Basically, a CAPTCHA reader which doesn't know beforehand what the letters in the alphabet look like.
Jeff has proposed a theory of how the cerebral cortex works, which is not in itself unusual. There's lots of people who have proposed outlandish solutions to the various problems posed by AI. They're usually labelled crackpots.
Jeff's proposal is different in that he has actual working code based on his theories which do a pretty good job of recognizing things. And he bases his theories on his interpretation of how the cortex actually works - from neuropsychology studies. Not from suppositions founded on math and creative thinking.
In my opinion, Jeff's stuff is correct but incomplete. His software makes a great recognizer, but the human brain contains other parts that his software doesn't address. His software has no provisions for goal seeking, for instance (the reticular activation system), or attaching an "emotion" to a memory as a way of indicating the advisability of repeating it (hippocampus, perhaps).
His system has the capability to predict the future outcome of current actions, but no method of rooting around in the various possible outcomes in order to choose a course of action which is beneficial to the organism's goals. It can't think ahead, or even identify the need to.
His work is also unclear about how the system generates outputs. Having chosen a course of action, speaking a thought perhaps, there is no clear description of how the system "unrecognizes" the goal into its base output components - the speaking or writing motions which would cause the output to be rendered.
His work is alluring in that it seems to reflect current models of brain physiology and function, and even anecdotally with my own inner workings and those of other people.
You shouldn't count him out with such a small wave of the hand. Certainly not without more direct reasoning, comparison, or critique.
One problem with ET estimates which I've never seen addressed is the likelyhood of periodic extinctions.
On Earth, we've seen life evolve to a stable, unintelligent state several times in the past. It seems that life gets to some sort of evolutionary "plateau" and then stays there indefinitely until something comes along to reset everything. This happens about every 60 million years.
This is nothing more than natural selection forcing the evolution of intelligent species. If life on the planet is just animals, then it keeps getting reset until something evolves which is smart enough to notice the problem and do something about it. As a civilization we're starting to notice the effect of asteroid impacts on the planet, and coming up with ways to avoid them.
From this, I suspect that life in the galaxy is actually pretty common, but in the majority of cases it has evolved to some sort of plateau which won't result in intelligence.
How common are mass extinctions in other planets? I don't know of anyone who has studied this. Maybe this should be a separate factor in the Drake equation.
One thought problem that came up in Scientific American a few back runs like this.
How long does a civilization take to go from scratch to space travel? On Earth, we went from prehistory to modern day in about 4,000 years, and there's no apparent technical reason why [interstellar] space travel can't happen. Take 5,000 years as a reasonable estimate.
If we send a colony to another star system, one would expect that in another 5,000 years its infrastructure will be sufficiently advanced so that *they* could colonize the next star.
And so on and so on, with civilization spreading throughout the galaxy.
Given the size of the galaxy, how long does it take to for civilization to be everywhere?
The numbers range from as little as 50 million years to as much as 5 billion years, depending on how long a colonization jump takes. The galaxy is about 14 billion years old, so the system should be saturated with civilizations *at least* 3 times over by now.
It's a captcha, and so I got a different one. But...
The equation I got had an "evaluated at x=4*pi" tacked onto the end. Substituting 4*pi before the partial derivitive results in zero, which can be easily done in one's head.
Do they all have an "evaluated at" tacked on the end?
Phoenix Technologies used to make both BIOS and printer software. The printer software department split off and became a different company, and then I lost track of them...
They made printer software that went into virtually every printer not made by HP at the time. Canon, Ricoh, Lexmark, or whoever would come out with new hardware and license the software from Phoenix. Yep, some of my code is in every Lexmark printer right now.
They had a couple hundred thousand lines of code that did PCL, GL, and Postscript for the consumer market, and it was the most readable and well developed code I have seen. Comments were explanatory, variables were well named, and execution paths were well defined and easy to follow.
They really had their act together for testing as well, with an elaborate and comprehensive regression suite that checked *every* aspect of all of the [printer] languages, and a team of QA people who would go over the results nightly. I'm not making this up - you would come in to work in the morning and there would be maybe 5 E-mails from QA outlining bugs which were either in your code or assigned to you for reasonable reasons.
We did the software for the first Lexmark printer. The first internal release gathered 900 bug reports from QA. When we went to market there were 7 remaining, all of which were deemed inconsequential.
When you are in the commercial market making fixed-program computers (dishwashers, printers, cell phones, VCRs) you don't have security updates and new versions, and a recall is usually out of the question. It's much cheaper to do all of your QA up front and ship a quality product.
In my opinion we've grown sloppy in the programming business. I've been a contractor for the past 30 years and I haven't seen anyone else who comes close to true quality procedures. Even FAA safety certified stuff is usually hokey and obscure. Thank god we've still got human pilots.
Having seen the procedures firsthand I have an appreciation of how easy and valuable it all is. No one else seems to understand that, and so everyone keeps running around putting out fires and slipping deadlines.
If your credit card is stolen, you are only liable for the first $50 of fraudlent charges.
Debit cards give you NO such protection. If your debit card is stolen and used to drain your bank account, you have no recourse but to eat the losses.
Furthermore, since the credit card companies are responsible for managing fraud, they have incentives to use good security practices. Debit card info carriers take the position of "our system is secure, so it must have been your fault".
Many people have been surprised when their bank/ATM cards (which also function as debit cards) are stolen and used fraudulently to drain their account. This is why it's always a good idea to request that your bank issue you an ATM card which cannot be also used as a debit card.
Giving, in essence, everyone a default debit card is a bad idea. Fraud would become endemic.
This is a non-issue which is getting far too much press right now.
I've talked at length to some friends who work at Red Hat, and they're ignoring it.
For one thing, they claim that Microsoft comes out with this sort of statement about once a year... and never follows up on it. (I can't attest to the correctness of this statement.)
But more importantly, RedHat has a patent portfolio of its own, and they know that Microsoft violates some of their patents. RedHat specifically allows any OSS project to use their patents - but reserves the right to demand a license from any proprietary software vendor.
Google "RedHat Patent Promise" for more info.
Then they pointed out that the larger OSS players have entered into a loose consortium with agreements not to enforce each others' patents *and* to come to the aid of anyone who is attacked by a proprietary vendor. They had an acronym for it "OIG" or something (open information group, something like that). The group includes IBM and Novell.
If Microsoft attempted to actually enforce any patents on open source, two things would happen:
1) The offending software would be immediately changed to be non-infringing 2) Microsoft would be forced deal with its own patent infringements.
Microsoft making anything of this would be the legal equivalent of hitting a beehive with a stick.
If anyone goes looking around on her website, check out her music section. The 1st entry, a composition written and performed by her, is really quite beautiful.
The IFE systems I've seen have a mode where you can see various plane/trip statistics, such as current altitude, distance to destination, and an icon of your plane superimposed on a map showing your point of departure and your destination.
One of the items shown is OAT, which means "Outside Air Temperature". This and the several other plane data items leade me to believe that the IFE system is connected to the plane's ARINC bus.
The ARINC bus is a wired network system within the airplane, and is used by the avionics systems to pass information back and forth. The altimeter places altitude on the bus, the autopilot reads altitude and makes corrections. The gas tanks place "amount of fuel left" on the bus, the cockpit computer reads this information and triggers an alert if necessary. And so on and so on for literally hundreds of types of information.
If the IFE is connected to the flight computer ARINC bus directly (likely), then it is possible for the IFE to fail in such a way as to interfere with the flight computer. One simple way would be for the IFE to send zillions of ARINC packets back to the flight computer and slow it down enough to degrade performance.
Of course, the flight computer is level-A, and has a separate ARINC bus for the IFE, and is specifically engineered to defend against such problems from external devices. And these sorts of problems are trivial to simulate during testing, so we know that the avionics computer is robust. (Testing for these sorts of problems is specifically called for in the FAA regs.)
But the point is this: the IFE *is* connected to the avionics system, but that system is hardened and will not crash.
Test *software*, if it is used, is software that exists outside of the avionics software in question. It does not need to be rigorously tested, only "qualified" (FAA term). Qualification means that someone goes over the code in a cursory manner and checks each logical case the software tests for, and verifies correct operation.
For example, a coverage analysis tool would have a qualification test report that shows the system works for an if-statement, a for-loop, a while-loop, and so on. Similarly, the compiler is qualified by showing that it generates correct code for an if-statement, a for-loop, &c.
In practice, there is usually very little external test software that can be used effectively. Exceptions exist, but largely much of the avionics software components don't port to another system for testing very well. (As opposed to testing the *entire unit* by having some sort of simulator computer which generates synthesized inputs, which works very well.) (Fly-by-wire calculation engines being one of the exceptions.)
In the case of ASSERT's and other constructs which continuously check the code inside the unit, they are considered to be part of the avionics software and thus must undergo the same level of criticality testing as the rest of the code.
As an example from projects I have worked on, in a level-A project each separate ASSERT statement was tested for both cases (pass/fail) and verified to be working. In a level-C project the ASSERT macro was analyzed and shown to generate correct code, and then a handful of the simple-clause ASSERT's were rigorously tested, and from this all the rest of the simple ASSERT's were deemed OK. (and complex clause ASSERT's were rewritten to use simple clauses, and the one remaining complex ASSERT was tested rigorously).
Okay, I *am* an avionics programmer. Here's some background.
FAA regulations categorize software in 5 different levels of criticality, depending on how a failure of the software would affect the safety of the plane. Level "A" software is reserved for things like the "low fuel" alarm, which could potentially knock the plane out of the air on failure, to level "C" for things like the cabin pressurization system where the pilots can take emergency actions to compensate, to level "E" for things like the microwave in the kitchen.
(Beware: I gloss over a few details for clarity.)
The higher levels of software criticality have progressively higher levels of standards for testing. In the case of level-A software, each individual line of code must be examined for correctness in the context of the rest of the code. Each line of code must be executed as part of testing and actively shown to be correct, and each line of code must be individually code reviewed by another engineer.
At the higher levels of software, limit testing is required for all function arguments and if-statements. Multiple-clause if statements such as "if A and B but not C" must be tested for all combinations of the subject clauses, and so on.
In addition to this, all avionics software I've worked on makes a distinction between showing erroneous information and showing *no* information (or, working incorrectly versus not working at all). If the digital altimeter goes blank, the pilots will notice and can take corrective action. If the altimeter is reading the wrong information, then that's a critical failure which could cause an accident.
Thus, avionics software innards are heavily checked throughout execution to ensure proper operation, and any failure causes the system to immediately go offline. All function arguments are ASSERT'ed for correct range, all calculations are checked for range and accuracy, &c.
The entertainment system, and in particular a game within the entertainment system, is almost certainly a level-E software component, and so is not required to go through such rigorous testing. The hardware has to be shown to not interfere with the avionics and that's about it.
It sounds like you've got a good business model based on sound premises and with reasonable expectations. Don't worry too much about naysayers unless they happen to be experts and can back up their position with observation and rationale.
Instead of thinking about telepathy from a present perspective, as in "we have/use it now", consider it from an evolutionary standpoint.
Prehistoric humans with even a little telepathy would have enormous survival advantage. You'd be able to tell whether a predator was hiding behind the next rock, or whether it's an animal you're hunting for food. Or nothing, in which case you go off and hunt somewhere else.
In that case, natural selection would at the same time pressure animals, both predators and prey, to evolve to a form where they could block the effect so that their adversary (human or other) would have no idea where they were hiding.
Even if we can't tell where animals are hiding, even a little telepathy between humans could be used in group hunting and teaching offspring, or summoning help in a dire emergency. Even a brief feeling which influences your actions based on information from another human would confer enormous advantage.
Some people have reported that they have gotten "feelings" that some loved one is in trouble, but frankly there is an overwhemingly enormous number of dire incidents throughout human history, each one of which would select for having the telepathic trait. Something as simple as children having the ability to alert their parents that they are in trouble would still confer enormous survival advantage.
From an evolutionary perspective, telepathy is a strong survival trait. Since we don't see it in the gene pool, it's unlikely that it's even possible.
Circumstantial I know, but it's hard to prove that something doesn't exist...
I have actually had this (civillian) type of surgery.
The "flap" is a thin, transparent layer over the cornea which is peeled back to allow the laser to shape the cornea, then it is placed back over the cornea and it heals. Older surgeries used to discard the flap entirely, but a crescent heals faster and with less discomfort.
In my case the flap was discarded, it grew back with no problem. There was discomfort for the first week or so.
I was awake during the entire process. They gave me a mild sedative but I don't really think it was necessary - there was nothing particularly exciting about it. The eye was anesthetized, of course, and this was tested before the procedure began. I was using the eye up to and during the surgery, at which point it was bandaged over.
The actual laser part involved looking at a particular spot while the doc counted up some numbers like he was zeroing in on some chosen value. That's all there was: just look at some spot for about a minuts and it's done. No laser (visibly), no sound, no feeling, no buzzing or cutting or anything like that.
The anesthesia wears off a couple of hours later, and the eye hurts like it has a bad foreign object in it, but it the pain was periodic and not excruciating. It didn't prevent me from working on the computer.
There's nothing particularly exciting or scary about the procedure, and when it's all over you get to see clearly without glasses.
Yes, MythTV can be a bit of a pain to setup, and yes, driver support for some cards is bad.
Having spent about 100 hours trying to get KnoppMyth and MythTV working on my system, my advice to everyone is this: don't!
KnoppMyth has bugs(*), MythTV has bugs(*), the drivers have bugs(*), the hardware has bugs(*), the documentation is contradictory, the right documentation is hard to find, and the people on the mailing lists are generally unresponsive and unhelpful even when they do respond.
I did all the research, looked at all the reports of how people had done it, for months. I bought the best supported TV card (PVR 350), had a reasonably fast system (900 mhz), and used the most up-to-date versions of everything.
My system is currently workable: it only crashes about once a week and it doesn't play DVD's yet (more hours to spend...) but for the pricetag and the number of hours I spent, I would have been far happier paying $200 for a TIVO and $300 for the lifetime subscription.
My recommendation: do NOT build your own PVR. You could be very lucky, or it could turn into the most time consuming, annoying hobby you have.
*) KnoppMyth didn't work with my network card (other Linux distros do, I still don't know what the problem was). This is not a biggie, except that the distro *halted on install*, forcing me to spend hours trying to figure out the problem. A simple "this card doesn't seem to work with this distro" would have been wayyyy too helpful.
*) Some of the MythTV setup pages plot the "next/prev" buttons below the bottom of the screen... where you can't see them. Only happens on some of the pages, but it makes navigating the setup screens a challenge.
*) Newer hauppage PVR cards come with new version tuners (type 42 et. al.). There's a driver that detects the tuner type, and another that takes "tuner type" as an argument. These drivers don't work together - I had to recompile the 2nd driver and force the tuner type in code. There's tons of messageboard entries from people who are having trouble with this. (Do *you* know how to debug driver modules in the kernel? You will...)
*) Getting TV-Out working is relatively easy, only had to spend 4 hours figuring this one out. Requires knowledge of lspci, pasting obscure numbers into obscure X-windows config files. Oh, and there was confusion as to whether the obscure X-window file wanted hex or decimal.
*) The VIA chip on my motherboard will hang the system when run at close to top DMA speed. This is apparently a common problem, as the VIA chip in question is common. Nothing I can do but accept the fact that the system will lock up occasionally, and hope that the people at VIA technology will spend any time looking into this (they don't have to - no one else but PVR people are reporting this problem). The messageboards show a lot of people having this problem as well.
*) Google "IVTV" and you'll find the official page and the wiki. Which one is current, and which one has outdated information that will cause grief and aggravation? The answer is, as always, left as an exercise to the reader.
*) Google "MythTV setup" or "KnoppMyth setup" and the like and you'll find many pages of people telling you how they managed to get their system up and running. Unfortunately, all of these pages refer to out of date versions of the software, and the software has changed so much in the last 3 to 6 months that the information is no longer valid. (Note: The correct information is contained in a messageboard post on one of the Wiki's somewhere. Good luck finding it!)
Slashdot Mirror
With two exceptions, everyone who voted *for* the bill was not in a hotly contested reelection race. Everyone who voted *against* it was.
This is not democracy in action, it's just people looking out for their own interests.
It saddens me to think that this bill didn't pass or fail on its merits, but was the result of short-term thinking by people who want to benefit themselves and friends, but can't do it at this exact point in time.
If the bill had come up a month from now, it would have passed.
A bunch of that money could be recycled back into reelection campaigns and not be noticed. $100 million would buy a lot of congresscritters, and it's less than 1/10 of 1 percent of the total.
As a suggestion, how about digitizing the songs several times and then using the redundant data to recreate the originals with no hiss or pop.
As I understand it, pop is sometimes caused by buildup and sudden release of static electricity. This means that the pops will be in different places for different digitizations and can therefore be recognized and accounted for. Scratches, on the other hand...
Hiss is stochastic noise and would average out over several recordings.
It should be straightforward to use a correlation coefficient correction to bring all the recordings into "phase", then use a processing algorithm to remove most of the artifacts.
The artifacts that remain can be removed using techniques more suited to single-images; ie - filtering to remove hiss and pop.
This is an insightful comment, but there's actually a lot more going on here.
First of all, AI does not have a good definition of intelligence. We have a *test* for intelligence, but nobody really has a fundamental description of what the concept means.
Next, people typically conflate the terms "intelligence" and "human intelligence". There is a range of behaviours which are individually identified as intelligent, but which do not come close to the level of humans. (Example: My cat, sitting on a windowsill, will notice something interesting outside. She can jump down, run downstairs, through 2 cat doors, and around the house to investigate. That's a level of intelligence that no program currently has, and yet it's not human level.)
Then there's the "fallacy of the representation". Someone will see a problem, solve it in their head, observe their thought process while doing so, and then translate that process into a piece of software. The software solves a problem just like a human would, so they point to it and say "aha! this program is intelligent". In reality, the program is fixed and does one function - the intelligence remains in the person.
And finally, there is the tendency to narrowly over-analyze some small aspect which has little bearing on the subject. Check out how many types of artificial neurons there are - and the in-depth analysis of each. It's all "reproduce such-and-so function using a neural net" and "numerical analysis of output given the input". Nowhere will you see any conclusions which state "this then implements a feature of intelligence".
So far as I can tell, no one in AI has a clearly defined goal, nor any plan on how to get there (or even a plan on how to define the goal). Until that happens, AI will fundamentally be a rudderless ship blown around on a sea of unrelated ideas.
If you've got no electronics experience, DON'T USE a triac!
A triac is an extremely fast electronic switch which is used as follows:
1) You monitor the AC current. Specifically, you notice when the sine wave crosses zero volts (120 times a second).
2) You then turn on the AC power sometime *after* the zero crossing occurs, but before the next crossing, where you turn it off again.
With the right timing, you let only a portion of the AC current through, which results in less power - effectively dimming the light. For instance, if you turn the triac on 50% into the cycle, only half the current gets through. The other half was blocked during the time the triac was off.
Microncontrollers are very fast, and can easily adjust the "turn on" time with great precision, giving the appearance of smooth dimming.
The problem with triacs is that you have to connect to the AC system. This is not very difficult, but there's a ton of extra information you need above and beyond the electronics in order to do it safely.
For instance, you need an opto-isolator to separate the AC wiring from the low voltage microcontroller wiring. This prevents the system from catching fire if there's ever a problem. It also prevents the system from becoming dangerous if there's a problem. You roll over in the morning and hit the switch - only to find out it's now connected directly to the AC lines due to some fault.
Connecting hobbyist (ie - non UL approved) circuits to your AC will also void your insurance if there's a fire (I think that's the case). This is why wall warts are used everywhere: the supply is itself UL approved, and the device is far away at the end of a long wire.
A better solution is to use an X-10 module to control the light. It's got a triac inside it and it's already UL approved, so they've done all the work for you. You can get a TW-523 interface, which is essentially a serial port interface to X-10 and hook *that* up to whatever micro control system you want to build. This has the advantage in being able to control any light in your house, even more than one.
Hooking a motor up to a dimmer switch is also an excellent solution. You will understand the mechanism, can see that it works, and it's effectively insulated from the AC lines.
Good luck on your project.
Smoking 1 pack/day is about $150 per month, or $900 for 6 months. You can buy a 'sorta decent LCD TV for that, if you look around.
One would need discipline to save the money into an account for 6 months, and not spend it in the meantime.
It is my understanding that people who smoke have a tendency (statistically) to be people who do not form rational long-term planning and who tend not to put off pleasure for future greater gain.
Before some psych major posts about how the RAS isn't involved with goals, let me clarify.
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) decides what is "important" to your conscious mind.
As you read this, you can feel the weight of the chair on your legs, feel the clothes on your shoulders, see the wall beyond the monitor, and hear the backgound noise. You can feel your breathing, and if you concentrate you can maybe hear your heart beat.
None of this information makes it to your consious mind because the RAS steps in and says "this isn't important to me". You don't notice the feel of your pants clinging to your leg, but if a bug started crawling up your leg the RAS would go nuts bringing it to the attention of your mind.
The interesting thing about the RAS is that we can tell it what is important. Once we decide on a goal, anything that reasonates with that goal will be allowed through to our conscious minds.
Day by day we are awash in possibilities that we pay no attention to. Once we set a goal and let the RAS know what's important, these possibilities start to come through to the conscious mind and we find that by exploring more and more possibilities, eventually we get to our goal.
People who set and write down goals comment on how "magical" this all appears. Almost as if there is some force in the universe that is coming to their aid. Suddenly, someone mentions that their son is selling his car and it happens to be the exact make, model, and price you were hoping for.
Of course, the possibilities were there *before* you set your goals as well - you just didn't notice them. Some people have suggested that this is how prayer works.
Whatever the underlying reasons, writing down goals seems to work. It's how people people get to be extremely successful in whatever area they choose.
I've been studying this very subject heavily for the past 18 months or so.
We now know a great deal about how the mind works and have applied it to the general subject of "becoming a success". Being successful always involves explicitly setting goals, and this can be done with New Years' resolutions SO LONG AS they are done correctly.
I'm boiling the issues down to a few simple facts, but they are all verified by psychological studies and have their basis in well-known underlying mechanisms. It all comes from your Reticular Activating System, which is a part of your brain that is involved with setting goals (I'm simplifying).
1) Don't make resolutions, set goals. Pick the major areas of your life (personal, work, relationship, church, community) and write down things that you'd like to achieve in the upcoming year.
2) Resolutions need to be written down. No one has explained why writing is needed, but it works. Lots of studies have shown this. (Maybe it's because wirting things activates all areas of your mind at once: you "say" it in your mind while writing it, you see it, you write it, &c).
3) Resolutions must be personal. Use "I" when writing them (as in "I read 15 books by year's end").
4) Resolutions must be positive. If you say "I stop smoking" or "I stop chewing my nails", it won't work. The RAS only deals with positive commands, and not negative ones. To deal with biting your nails, write "I notice every time I bring my fingers to my mouth" or something, and then stop yourself at those times.
5) Resolutions must be in present tense. Write "I earn $80K a year", not "I earn $80K by the end of the year".
6) Where possible, resolutions should be measurable. If you want to lose weight, say "I weigh 175 pounds".
7) Resolutions should be reasonable. Don't say "I earn a million dollars a year", take your salary, add 20% and write "I earn XXX a year".
The more specific and detailed you are, the greater likelyhood that the goal will happen. Want a new car? Write down the make, model, color, options, and everything else you can think of.
Once you have your goals written out, occasionally look at them. Once a week or more will really drive the message home to your subconscious.
People who do this are generally amazed at the results. It's making use of existing well-known mechanisms in your mind, but we've only recently discovered how to make use of them.
What everyone seems to be missing here is a sense of priorities.
There are roughly 10 major issues which are relevent in the upcoming election, and any number of minor ones. The war in Iraq, abortion, health care, personal liberties, and so on.
Of these, which one do you feel is *most important* to get right?
Ron Paul can be seen to be pro- or anti- or avoid- abortion. Some people will not be voting for him on this basis.
Which is more important: his stance on abortion, or ending the war in Iraq?
Is his stance on abortion more important than restoring our rights and liberties?
Is his stance on abortion more important than ending the war on drugs?
Please be specific in your views. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is this:
I feel that the issue of abortion is more important than the war in Iraq, so I will not be voting for this candidate.
I feel that the issue of abortion is more important than loss of personal liberties, so I will not be voting for this candidate.
You can use this logic for any of the major issues which you personally feel is important. It's a valid position to take - except that I've not heard many people phrase it this completely.
My perception is that most of Ron Paul's positions reasonate with a large number of people, but they disagree with one or two. That's actually a *huge* proportion to agree with, and given his voting history in the senate it's likely that he would in fact be faithful to his positions.
Eight out of 10 with a virtual guarantee that he wouldn't sell out - that's an enormous improvement.
I'm voting for Paul. Fix 8 of the top 10 problems immediately, I can wait 4 years to fix the rest.
Nice screed.
Um... I notice that neither of you have actually posted any analysis or criticism of his work.
Would either of you, by any chance, like to say something about his theories?
Oh, and BTW: that wikipedia article you linked to appears at first reading to be nothing like Jeff's proposal.
In the face of all this Ad Hominem, skepticism is in fact reasonable.
Jeff has proposed a theory of how the cerebral cortex works, which is not in itself unusual. There's lots of people who have proposed outlandish solutions to the various problems posed by AI. They're usually labelled crackpots.
Jeff's proposal is different in that he has actual working code based on his theories which do a pretty good job of recognizing things. And he bases his theories on his interpretation of how the cortex actually works - from neuropsychology studies. Not from suppositions founded on math and creative thinking.
In my opinion, Jeff's stuff is correct but incomplete. His software makes a great recognizer, but the human brain contains other parts that his software doesn't address. His software has no provisions for goal seeking, for instance (the reticular activation system), or attaching an "emotion" to a memory as a way of indicating the advisability of repeating it (hippocampus, perhaps).
His system has the capability to predict the future outcome of current actions, but no method of rooting around in the various possible outcomes in order to choose a course of action which is beneficial to the organism's goals. It can't think ahead, or even identify the need to.
His work is also unclear about how the system generates outputs. Having chosen a course of action, speaking a thought perhaps, there is no clear description of how the system "unrecognizes" the goal into its base output components - the speaking or writing motions which would cause the output to be rendered.
His work is alluring in that it seems to reflect current models of brain physiology and function, and even anecdotally with my own inner workings and those of other people.
You shouldn't count him out with such a small wave of the hand. Certainly not without more direct reasoning, comparison, or critique.
One problem with ET estimates which I've never seen addressed is the likelyhood of periodic extinctions.
On Earth, we've seen life evolve to a stable, unintelligent state several times in the past. It seems that life gets to some sort of evolutionary "plateau" and then stays there indefinitely until something comes along to reset everything. This happens about every 60 million years.
This is nothing more than natural selection forcing the evolution of intelligent species. If life on the planet is just animals, then it keeps getting reset until something evolves which is smart enough to notice the problem and do something about it. As a civilization we're starting to notice the effect of asteroid impacts on the planet, and coming up with ways to avoid them.
From this, I suspect that life in the galaxy is actually pretty common, but in the majority of cases it has evolved to some sort of plateau which won't result in intelligence.
How common are mass extinctions in other planets? I don't know of anyone who has studied this. Maybe this should be a separate factor in the Drake equation.
One thought problem that came up in Scientific American a few back runs like this.
How long does a civilization take to go from scratch to space travel? On Earth, we went from prehistory to modern day in about 4,000 years, and there's no apparent technical reason why [interstellar] space travel can't happen. Take 5,000 years as a reasonable estimate.
If we send a colony to another star system, one would expect that in another 5,000 years its infrastructure will be sufficiently advanced so that *they* could colonize the next star.
And so on and so on, with civilization spreading throughout the galaxy.
Given the size of the galaxy, how long does it take to for civilization to be everywhere?
The numbers range from as little as 50 million years to as much as 5 billion years, depending on how long a colonization jump takes. The galaxy is about 14 billion years old, so the system should be saturated with civilizations *at least* 3 times over by now.
And the paradox is: where is everyone?
It's a captcha, and so I got a different one. But...
The equation I got had an "evaluated at x=4*pi" tacked onto the end. Substituting 4*pi before the partial derivitive results in zero, which can be easily done in one's head.
Do they all have an "evaluated at" tacked on the end?
Phoenix Technologies used to make both BIOS and printer software. The printer software department split off and became a different company, and then I lost track of them...
They made printer software that went into virtually every printer not made by HP at the time. Canon, Ricoh, Lexmark, or whoever would come out with new hardware and license the software from Phoenix. Yep, some of my code is in every Lexmark printer right now.
They had a couple hundred thousand lines of code that did PCL, GL, and Postscript for the consumer market, and it was the most readable and well developed code I have seen. Comments were explanatory, variables were well named, and execution paths were well defined and easy to follow.
They really had their act together for testing as well, with an elaborate and comprehensive regression suite that checked *every* aspect of all of the [printer] languages, and a team of QA people who would go over the results nightly. I'm not making this up - you would come in to work in the morning and there would be maybe 5 E-mails from QA outlining bugs which were either in your code or assigned to you for reasonable reasons.
We did the software for the first Lexmark printer. The first internal release gathered 900 bug reports from QA. When we went to market there were 7 remaining, all of which were deemed inconsequential.
When you are in the commercial market making fixed-program computers (dishwashers, printers, cell phones, VCRs) you don't have security updates and new versions, and a recall is usually out of the question. It's much cheaper to do all of your QA up front and ship a quality product.
In my opinion we've grown sloppy in the programming business. I've been a contractor for the past 30 years and I haven't seen anyone else who comes close to true quality procedures. Even FAA safety certified stuff is usually hokey and obscure. Thank god we've still got human pilots.
Having seen the procedures firsthand I have an appreciation of how easy and valuable it all is. No one else seems to understand that, and so everyone keeps running around putting out fires and slipping deadlines.
If your credit card is stolen, you are only liable for the first $50 of fraudlent charges.
Debit cards give you NO such protection. If your debit card is stolen and used to drain your bank account, you have no recourse but to eat the losses.
Furthermore, since the credit card companies are responsible for managing fraud, they have incentives to use good security practices. Debit card info carriers take the position of "our system is secure, so it must have been your fault".
Many people have been surprised when their bank/ATM cards (which also function as debit cards) are stolen and used fraudulently to drain their account. This is why it's always a good idea to request that your bank issue you an ATM card which cannot be also used as a debit card.
Giving, in essence, everyone a default debit card is a bad idea. Fraud would become endemic.
This is a non-issue which is getting far too much press right now.
I've talked at length to some friends who work at Red Hat, and they're ignoring it.
For one thing, they claim that Microsoft comes out with this sort of statement about once a year... and never follows up on it. (I can't attest to the correctness of this statement.)
But more importantly, RedHat has a patent portfolio of its own, and they know that Microsoft violates some of their patents. RedHat specifically allows any OSS project to use their patents - but reserves the right to demand a license from any proprietary software vendor.
Google "RedHat Patent Promise" for more info.
Then they pointed out that the larger OSS players have entered into a loose consortium with agreements not to enforce each others' patents *and* to come to the aid of anyone who is attacked by a proprietary vendor. They had an acronym for it "OIG" or something (open information group, something like that). The group includes IBM and Novell.
If Microsoft attempted to actually enforce any patents on open source, two things would happen:
1) The offending software would be immediately changed to be non-infringing
2) Microsoft would be forced deal with its own patent infringements.
Microsoft making anything of this would be the legal equivalent of hitting a beehive with a stick.
Don't worry about this, it's a non-issue.
If anyone goes looking around on her website, check out her music section. The 1st entry, a composition written and performed by her, is really quite beautiful.
I won't list her website here (it's on the Hackaday site) - can someone cache it and then provide a link?
The IFE systems I've seen have a mode where you can see various plane/trip statistics, such as current altitude, distance to destination, and an icon of your plane superimposed on a map showing your point of departure and your destination.
One of the items shown is OAT, which means "Outside Air Temperature". This and the several other plane data items leade me to believe that the IFE system is connected to the plane's ARINC bus.
The ARINC bus is a wired network system within the airplane, and is used by the avionics systems to pass information back and forth. The altimeter places altitude on the bus, the autopilot reads altitude and makes corrections. The gas tanks place "amount of fuel left" on the bus, the cockpit computer reads this information and triggers an alert if necessary. And so on and so on for literally hundreds of types of information.
If the IFE is connected to the flight computer ARINC bus directly (likely), then it is possible for the IFE to fail in such a way as to interfere with the flight computer. One simple way would be for the IFE to send zillions of ARINC packets back to the flight computer and slow it down enough to degrade performance.
Of course, the flight computer is level-A, and has a separate ARINC bus for the IFE, and is specifically engineered to defend against such problems from external devices. And these sorts of problems are trivial to simulate during testing, so we know that the avionics computer is robust. (Testing for these sorts of problems is specifically called for in the FAA regs.)
But the point is this: the IFE *is* connected to the avionics system, but that system is hardened and will not crash.
Test *software*, if it is used, is software that exists outside of the avionics software in question. It does not need to be rigorously tested, only "qualified" (FAA term). Qualification means that someone goes over the code in a cursory manner and checks each logical case the software tests for, and verifies correct operation.
For example, a coverage analysis tool would have a qualification test report that shows the system works for an if-statement, a for-loop, a while-loop, and so on. Similarly, the compiler is qualified by showing that it generates correct code for an if-statement, a for-loop, &c.
In practice, there is usually very little external test software that can be used effectively. Exceptions exist, but largely much of the avionics software components don't port to another system for testing very well. (As opposed to testing the *entire unit* by having some sort of simulator computer which generates synthesized inputs, which works very well.) (Fly-by-wire calculation engines being one of the exceptions.)
In the case of ASSERT's and other constructs which continuously check the code inside the unit, they are considered to be part of the avionics software and thus must undergo the same level of criticality testing as the rest of the code.
As an example from projects I have worked on, in a level-A project each separate ASSERT statement was tested for both cases (pass/fail) and verified to be working. In a level-C project the ASSERT macro was analyzed and shown to generate correct code, and then a handful of the simple-clause ASSERT's were rigorously tested, and from this all the rest of the simple ASSERT's were deemed OK. (and complex clause ASSERT's were rewritten to use simple clauses, and the one remaining complex ASSERT was tested rigorously).
Okay, I *am* an avionics programmer. Here's some background.
FAA regulations categorize software in 5 different levels of criticality, depending on how a failure of the software would affect the safety of the plane. Level "A" software is reserved for things like the "low fuel" alarm, which could potentially knock the plane out of the air on failure, to level "C" for things like the cabin pressurization system where the pilots can take emergency actions to compensate, to level "E" for things like the microwave in the kitchen.
(Beware: I gloss over a few details for clarity.)
The higher levels of software criticality have progressively higher levels of standards for testing. In the case of level-A software, each individual line of code must be examined for correctness in the context of the rest of the code. Each line of code must be executed as part of testing and actively shown to be correct, and each line of code must be individually code reviewed by another engineer.
At the higher levels of software, limit testing is required for all function arguments and if-statements. Multiple-clause if statements such as "if A and B but not C" must be tested for all combinations of the subject clauses, and so on.
In addition to this, all avionics software I've worked on makes a distinction between showing erroneous information and showing *no* information (or, working incorrectly versus not working at all). If the digital altimeter goes blank, the pilots will notice and can take corrective action. If the altimeter is reading the wrong information, then that's a critical failure which could cause an accident.
Thus, avionics software innards are heavily checked throughout execution to ensure proper operation, and any failure causes the system to immediately go offline. All function arguments are ASSERT'ed for correct range, all calculations are checked for range and accuracy, &c.
The entertainment system, and in particular a game within the entertainment system, is almost certainly a level-E software component, and so is not required to go through such rigorous testing. The hardware has to be shown to not interfere with the avionics and that's about it.
It sounds like you've got a good business model based on sound premises and with reasonable expectations. Don't worry too much about naysayers unless they happen to be experts and can back up their position with observation and rationale.
Prehistoric humans with even a little telepathy would have enormous survival advantage. You'd be able to tell whether a predator was hiding behind the next rock, or whether it's an animal you're hunting for food. Or nothing, in which case you go off and hunt somewhere else.
In that case, natural selection would at the same time pressure animals, both predators and prey, to evolve to a form where they could block the effect so that their adversary (human or other) would have no idea where they were hiding.
Even if we can't tell where animals are hiding, even a little telepathy between humans could be used in group hunting and teaching offspring, or summoning help in a dire emergency. Even a brief feeling which influences your actions based on information from another human would confer enormous advantage.
Some people have reported that they have gotten "feelings" that some loved one is in trouble, but frankly there is an overwhemingly enormous number of dire incidents throughout human history, each one of which would select for having the telepathic trait. Something as simple as children having the ability to alert their parents that they are in trouble would still confer enormous survival advantage.
From an evolutionary perspective, telepathy is a strong survival trait. Since we don't see it in the gene pool, it's unlikely that it's even possible.
Circumstantial I know, but it's hard to prove that something doesn't exist...
I have actually had this (civillian) type of surgery.
The "flap" is a thin, transparent layer over the cornea which is peeled back to allow the laser to shape the cornea, then it is placed back over the cornea and it heals. Older surgeries used to discard the flap entirely, but a crescent heals faster and with less discomfort.
In my case the flap was discarded, it grew back with no problem. There was discomfort for the first week or so.
I was awake during the entire process. They gave me a mild sedative but I don't really think it was necessary - there was nothing particularly exciting about it. The eye was anesthetized, of course, and this was tested before the procedure began. I was using the eye up to and during the surgery, at which point it was bandaged over.
The actual laser part involved looking at a particular spot while the doc counted up some numbers like he was zeroing in on some chosen value. That's all there was: just look at some spot for about a minuts and it's done. No laser (visibly), no sound, no feeling, no buzzing or cutting or anything like that.
The anesthesia wears off a couple of hours later, and the eye hurts like it has a bad foreign object in it, but it the pain was periodic and not excruciating. It didn't prevent me from working on the computer.
There's nothing particularly exciting or scary about the procedure, and when it's all over you get to see clearly without glasses.
Having spent about 100 hours trying to get KnoppMyth and MythTV working on my system, my advice to everyone is this: don't!
KnoppMyth has bugs(*), MythTV has bugs(*), the drivers have bugs(*), the hardware has bugs(*), the documentation is contradictory, the right documentation is hard to find, and the people on the mailing lists are generally unresponsive and unhelpful even when they do respond.
I did all the research, looked at all the reports of how people had done it, for months. I bought the best supported TV card (PVR 350), had a reasonably fast system (900 mhz), and used the most up-to-date versions of everything.
My system is currently workable: it only crashes about once a week and it doesn't play DVD's yet (more hours to spend...) but for the pricetag and the number of hours I spent, I would have been far happier paying $200 for a TIVO and $300 for the lifetime subscription.
My recommendation: do NOT build your own PVR. You could be very lucky, or it could turn into the most time consuming, annoying hobby you have.
*) KnoppMyth didn't work with my network card (other Linux distros do, I still don't know what the problem was). This is not a biggie, except that the distro *halted on install*, forcing me to spend hours trying to figure out the problem. A simple "this card doesn't seem to work with this distro" would have been wayyyy too helpful.
*) Some of the MythTV setup pages plot the "next/prev" buttons below the bottom of the screen... where you can't see them. Only happens on some of the pages, but it makes navigating the setup screens a challenge.
*) Newer hauppage PVR cards come with new version tuners (type 42 et. al.). There's a driver that detects the tuner type, and another that takes "tuner type" as an argument. These drivers don't work together - I had to recompile the 2nd driver and force the tuner type in code. There's tons of messageboard entries from people who are having trouble with this. (Do *you* know how to debug driver modules in the kernel? You will...)
*) Getting TV-Out working is relatively easy, only had to spend 4 hours figuring this one out. Requires knowledge of lspci, pasting obscure numbers into obscure X-windows config files. Oh, and there was confusion as to whether the obscure X-window file wanted hex or decimal.
*) The VIA chip on my motherboard will hang the system when run at close to top DMA speed. This is apparently a common problem, as the VIA chip in question is common. Nothing I can do but accept the fact that the system will lock up occasionally, and hope that the people at VIA technology will spend any time looking into this (they don't have to - no one else but PVR people are reporting this problem). The messageboards show a lot of people having this problem as well.
*) Google "IVTV" and you'll find the official page and the wiki. Which one is current, and which one has outdated information that will cause grief and aggravation? The answer is, as always, left as an exercise to the reader.
*) Google "MythTV setup" or "KnoppMyth setup" and the like and you'll find many pages of people telling you how they managed to get their system up and running. Unfortunately, all of these pages refer to out of date versions of the software, and the software has changed so much in the last 3 to 6 months that the information is no longer valid. (Note: The correct information is contained in a messageboard post on one of the Wiki's somewhere. Good luck finding it!)