The difference is, the corporate labs had lots of smart people and a funding parent company that were interested in the field they were researching. Bell was interested in solid state dohickeys to help them make a better telephone system.
Google is a web advertising company. With enough motivation and money they could hire alternative energy engineers and set up a productive lab and potentially make some breakthroughs, but not in a few years. And since it's Google, who can't even muster up the motivation to keep a web advertising project going more than a few years, they quit.
"Do you think that a place like, say, Haiti, which has sun, humidity and wind aplenty, but lots of problems getting sanity drinking water couldn't use this technology?"
Yes. Using a Peltier element to essentially produce a solar powered solid state air conditioner is a really inefficient way of purifying water. For small scale desalination or purification where distillation is necessary, a solar still works much better and can be made with much cheaper and available materials. Often you can make one out of scavenged stuff.
It's because for most places you can make a more efficient, cheaper and more easily scalable version with a bucket, some plastic and a rock. The only drawback is that it's harder to mount on a bike.
Their specific scenario is solved by western court systems in the same way: if you cannot prove, in a reasonable amount of time, that the potentially evil programmer really did write malicious code then you must let her go.
These things are generally implemented very simply, in hardware. There is no memory controller, or memory, or OS. If you want to be really sure, the algorithm is implemented as a mechanical device.
Yes, even those can fail. But hardware failure is a separate problem from software failure.
You both read it wrong. It says that you can't build a robot that can decide whether any other possible robot will always make the right decision. And by the way, all the robots have infinite inputs, infinite memory and infinite time to decide.
The other part of the halting problem proof is "Turing machine." Your phrase "8 state Turing machine" is nonsensical, because a Turing machine, by definition, is infinite in all directions.
The halting problem can be solved for a finite (in either memory or running time) pseudo-Turing machine, as you point out. Even that's not necessary, as the GP pointed out.
Not quite. The proof says that there is not way to build an automated process that will determine that the source code of and and all robots works correctly. It's perfectly possible to prove that particular examples do work as expected.
The halting problem, or rather Turing's proof that it's unsolvable, usually doesn't get specified quite completely, certainly not in pop sci articles.
Turing showed that there is no general solution to determine whether a program running on a Turing machine will terminate or not. Seems simple. Until you look at the details.
"General solution" means that you have to write a program that can determine whether ANY program will terminate. "Turing machine" means that the machine has infinite memory and can take infinite time.
So the proof basically says that it is not possible to write a program (that itself has to run on a Turing machine) that can determine whether any possible program, running on an impossible infinite computer, will terminate, given infinite running time.
That doesn't really connect with practical applications very well. It's perfectly possible to prove that a particular program will halt. It's also perfectly possible to determine whether any given program will finish or not in a particular amount of time.
The authors of the paper come up with a dilemma involving keeping a possibly evil programmer in jail. The real world solution is that if you can't prove evil intent within some specified amount of time, you release the programmer.
I'm sure someone says that, and calls it feminism, but it's pretty clearly ridiculous. The male supplement racket is a multi-billion dollar a year business and female obesity is increasing, just like it is for men.
Like it or not, Facebook is the primary exposure to mass media and advertisements for many people. You can see the same thing if you browse a magazine rack or watch TV though. And not just today. The 90 lb weakling getting sand kicked in his face then bulking up is a well established trope.
Everybody is vulnerable to poor body image, justifiably or not, and there seems to have never been a shortage of advertisers ready to pounce on that to sell you crap, regardless of your sex.
Are they? I recently read an article by a prominent feminist writer talking about the media and female body image. She included a throwaway sentence about this being the result of the "patriarchy" suppressing women. I then took a scroll through my Facebook feed, where every fourth item was an advertisement urging me to take some sort of drug to increase my muscle mass.
People are portrayed in degrading ways in modern media, but I'm not sure it's quite as one sided as generally presented. GTA had prostitutes, but it also had psychotic gangsters who were invariably male.
Quebec has low rates of actual marriage because the francophones used to be very catholic and then got pissed off at the church in the 70s. So now the worst swear words reference religion and churches and not many people get married.
You're not under the impression that the fatty tissue that visibly differentiates male and female breasts is functional in feeding babies, are you? There's really no reason for one sex (either one) to have large external breasts except as a sexual signalling device. Breasts in the human species are sexual organs.
I also don't understand your insistence that recognizing breasts as sexual organs is misogyny. You could claim that shaming women who expose their breasts is misogynistic, but I think you'll find that the people who do that also tend to object to exposed penises, asses and pelvises in general, so a more likely motive would seem to be plain old gender neutral sexual repression.
I'm very much in favour of women breast feeding wherever they like. I also think it's very counterproductive to incorrectly attribute things to misogyny or some mysterious "patriarchy", and to claim that sexual organs aren't. Breast feeding in public isn't okay because breasts aren't sexual, it's okay because flashing a secondary sexual characteristic in order to feed a baby is just fine.
Breasts are secondary sexual characteristics. They're inconvenient to the point of being a natural survival hazard in many women and the fatty tissue that we're really talking about when we talk about breasts doesn't really serve any particularly beneficial purpose except to attract mates.
The real question is why certain segments of society get their underwear in a twist about sexual characteristics.
The point of a degree is to assess that "can you write it from scratch part." When I was in CS one assignment was to write pong in assembly. My professor didn't care whether I could write pong. He wanted to know whether I could solve a problem and code in assembly.
"it might take some coordination among the various agencies."
Various other companies also charter cargo planes if it's mostly supplies that need to be delivered. Or smaller planes could be chartered from various other airports, such as in southern Europe or Morocco. The argument that regular passenger service needs to be maintained so that professional medical help can get into and rotate out of the affected countries doesn't really seem to hold water.
Airlines are perfectly willing to charter planes to people who don't have their own. It's actually cheaper to do it that way if you're flying a decent number of people. Yeah, it might take some coordination among the various agencies. They should be doing that anyway.
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The difference is, the corporate labs had lots of smart people and a funding parent company that were interested in the field they were researching. Bell was interested in solid state dohickeys to help them make a better telephone system.
Google is a web advertising company. With enough motivation and money they could hire alternative energy engineers and set up a productive lab and potentially make some breakthroughs, but not in a few years. And since it's Google, who can't even muster up the motivation to keep a web advertising project going more than a few years, they quit.
So a startup CEO then.
"Do you think that a place like, say, Haiti, which has sun, humidity and wind aplenty, but lots of problems getting sanity drinking water couldn't use this technology?"
Yes. Using a Peltier element to essentially produce a solar powered solid state air conditioner is a really inefficient way of purifying water. For small scale desalination or purification where distillation is necessary, a solar still works much better and can be made with much cheaper and available materials. Often you can make one out of scavenged stuff.
Note that it's an award for industrial design, which is an arts (not engineering) program. The inventor is a student at an applied arts school.
Does that change your assessment?
It's because for most places you can make a more efficient, cheaper and more easily scalable version with a bucket, some plastic and a rock. The only drawback is that it's harder to mount on a bike.
Their specific scenario is solved by western court systems in the same way: if you cannot prove, in a reasonable amount of time, that the potentially evil programmer really did write malicious code then you must let her go.
These things are generally implemented very simply, in hardware. There is no memory controller, or memory, or OS. If you want to be really sure, the algorithm is implemented as a mechanical device.
Yes, even those can fail. But hardware failure is a separate problem from software failure.
A Turing machine isn't a finite state machine either.
You both read it wrong. It says that you can't build a robot that can decide whether any other possible robot will always make the right decision. And by the way, all the robots have infinite inputs, infinite memory and infinite time to decide.
The other part of the halting problem proof is "Turing machine." Your phrase "8 state Turing machine" is nonsensical, because a Turing machine, by definition, is infinite in all directions.
The halting problem can be solved for a finite (in either memory or running time) pseudo-Turing machine, as you point out. Even that's not necessary, as the GP pointed out.
Not quite. The proof says that there is not way to build an automated process that will determine that the source code of and and all robots works correctly. It's perfectly possible to prove that particular examples do work as expected.
The halting problem, or rather Turing's proof that it's unsolvable, usually doesn't get specified quite completely, certainly not in pop sci articles.
Turing showed that there is no general solution to determine whether a program running on a Turing machine will terminate or not. Seems simple. Until you look at the details.
"General solution" means that you have to write a program that can determine whether ANY program will terminate. "Turing machine" means that the machine has infinite memory and can take infinite time.
So the proof basically says that it is not possible to write a program (that itself has to run on a Turing machine) that can determine whether any possible program, running on an impossible infinite computer, will terminate, given infinite running time.
That doesn't really connect with practical applications very well. It's perfectly possible to prove that a particular program will halt. It's also perfectly possible to determine whether any given program will finish or not in a particular amount of time.
The authors of the paper come up with a dilemma involving keeping a possibly evil programmer in jail. The real world solution is that if you can't prove evil intent within some specified amount of time, you release the programmer.
I'm sure someone says that, and calls it feminism, but it's pretty clearly ridiculous. The male supplement racket is a multi-billion dollar a year business and female obesity is increasing, just like it is for men.
Like it or not, Facebook is the primary exposure to mass media and advertisements for many people. You can see the same thing if you browse a magazine rack or watch TV though. And not just today. The 90 lb weakling getting sand kicked in his face then bulking up is a well established trope.
Everybody is vulnerable to poor body image, justifiably or not, and there seems to have never been a shortage of advertisers ready to pounce on that to sell you crap, regardless of your sex.
"Because for the vast majority of them, the game portrays a positive image for the 'vicious musclebound gun toting maniacs'"
That would seem to be more of a problem to me than portraying negative stereotypes as negative.
Leisure Suit Larry?
Are they? I recently read an article by a prominent feminist writer talking about the media and female body image. She included a throwaway sentence about this being the result of the "patriarchy" suppressing women. I then took a scroll through my Facebook feed, where every fourth item was an advertisement urging me to take some sort of drug to increase my muscle mass.
People are portrayed in degrading ways in modern media, but I'm not sure it's quite as one sided as generally presented. GTA had prostitutes, but it also had psychotic gangsters who were invariably male.
Quebec has low rates of actual marriage because the francophones used to be very catholic and then got pissed off at the church in the 70s. So now the worst swear words reference religion and churches and not many people get married.
You're not under the impression that the fatty tissue that visibly differentiates male and female breasts is functional in feeding babies, are you? There's really no reason for one sex (either one) to have large external breasts except as a sexual signalling device. Breasts in the human species are sexual organs.
I also don't understand your insistence that recognizing breasts as sexual organs is misogyny. You could claim that shaming women who expose their breasts is misogynistic, but I think you'll find that the people who do that also tend to object to exposed penises, asses and pelvises in general, so a more likely motive would seem to be plain old gender neutral sexual repression.
I'm very much in favour of women breast feeding wherever they like. I also think it's very counterproductive to incorrectly attribute things to misogyny or some mysterious "patriarchy", and to claim that sexual organs aren't. Breast feeding in public isn't okay because breasts aren't sexual, it's okay because flashing a secondary sexual characteristic in order to feed a baby is just fine.
Breasts are secondary sexual characteristics. They're inconvenient to the point of being a natural survival hazard in many women and the fatty tissue that we're really talking about when we talk about breasts doesn't really serve any particularly beneficial purpose except to attract mates.
The real question is why certain segments of society get their underwear in a twist about sexual characteristics.
Even bigger difference: the white woman is in Australia and the black woman is in the US.
The point of a degree is to assess that "can you write it from scratch part." When I was in CS one assignment was to write pong in assembly. My professor didn't care whether I could write pong. He wanted to know whether I could solve a problem and code in assembly.
"it might take some coordination among the various agencies."
Various other companies also charter cargo planes if it's mostly supplies that need to be delivered. Or smaller planes could be chartered from various other airports, such as in southern Europe or Morocco. The argument that regular passenger service needs to be maintained so that professional medical help can get into and rotate out of the affected countries doesn't really seem to hold water.
Read more carefully. What I said:
"[BMI] works pretty well as a population health metric"
"BMI doesn't work as well when applied to individuals."
You understand that the Snapple lady is an individual, right? And that individuals and a population are quite different things?
Airlines are perfectly willing to charter planes to people who don't have their own. It's actually cheaper to do it that way if you're flying a decent number of people. Yeah, it might take some coordination among the various agencies. They should be doing that anyway.