A couple of problems. A liquid crystal only changes the polarization of light. So to make it actually block light you need to polarize it. That involves a polarizing filter, which will always block half the light anyway. So now you've just thrown away half your light, across the board.
Second, I'm not sure a liquid crystal would be fast enough. Wikipedia says LCDs may not be able to actually switch fast enough to keep up with the latest 240 Hz LCD TVs. That suggests the maximum "shutter speed" you could get would be something south of 1/240th, which is pretty slow for most situations when you'd actually want to do HDR.
A better approach would be to make a sensor with an electronic shutter for each pixel. Most sensors have a global electronic shutter and many make use of it, including most compacts and most of the Nikon SLR line.
Of course, the best way (and quite likely cheaper than either of the other methods) would be just to make a natively high dynamic range sensor.
I see what you're getting at, and it might be useful in very specialized circumstances, but probably not in a camera. Modern sensors usually only need a few photons to produce a signal. The problem is figuring out what is signal and what is noise. So your four little pixels are always putting out a signal, it's just too noisy to make anything out of.
You can certainly average adjacent pixels to reduce noise. The effect isn't linear though, you get a sqrt(N) noise reduction by averaging over N pixels. Because of the extra real estate you lose on your sensor due to support for each pixel, you're better off just having one big pixel instead of lots of little ones you average. But you're doing noise reduction, not increasing dynamic range.
Limits on dynamic range really aren't due to the amount of light falling on the sensor, but rather to the way the sensor is designed to accumulate charge. It's possible to make sensors that do capture a wide dynamic range, but they're expensive and the average person doesn't really use them anyway. Current cameras generally capture quite a bit more dynamic range than most people use. You'll even find a lot of people making "HDR" photos by taking a single RAW exposure and processing it.
I'm familiar with HDR, thanks. You'll note that the article you linked to doesn't contain the words "average" or "averaging."
HDR requires that you have the same picture but with multiple, different exposures. You could potentially acquired this in one shot by making adjacent pixels more or less light sensitive (which has to be done in hardware), but averaging identical pixels isn't going to help. Nor does the HDR process involve averaging, even with multiple exposures.
Intel doesn't take much revenue from software. Nor AMD, nVidia, Dell, Apple....
Yeah, deflation would definitely change the economy, but it doesn't seem to be particularly bad for businesses that adapt to it. Some of the most successful businesses today have always existed in an environment of effective deflation.
It might kill off economic models based on constant borrowing and overspending though. So it might even work out better than what we have now.
I got an iPad, preordered. I showed up at the lab with it and everyone dropped by to see. Two days later, a guy across the hall was trying to get one for his wife. By the next week he had gotten her one, and a couple of other guys had picked up iPads. Forward a couple more weeks and a girl across the hall asks me if I'd mind talking to her mother on the phone - she was trying to figure out which iPad to get.
Now half the lab (and their mothers, apparently) have iPads. I've heard from most of them, and they absolutely love them.
My notebook can do everything your netbook can do, except better.
Well, except that the netbook is more convenient for a lot of things. And the iPad is even more convenient than a netbook for many of those.
If you want one computer, get a notebook. If you can afford two, a notebook and an iPad is a good combination for many people. A notebook and a netbook might actually work better for a few.
I was on my way to a restaurant that had a website that did that. Apparently to find the address you had to navigate through a big flash thing. I picked a different restaurant. I would have done the same thing had I been on a computer that did support Flash. I have better things to do than put up with broken websites.
Pick a property you believe to be associated with intelligence. You can pick whatever you want. I might choose "posts whiny messages on Slashdot." Are human brains observed to do this? Yes. Are individual neurons observed to do this? No. Therefore, posting whiny messages on Slashdot is an emergent property of groups of interconnected neurons.
It's left as an exercise to the reader to extend that method to any of the examples I posted.
It does if you build the hardware. With a vengeance.
If you believe Penrose, it isn't even possible to create intelligence through a simulation on a standard digital computer. But so what? We're not so bad at building (or growing, if necessary) hardware.
As someone who actually does neuroscience research, the tools and techniques available today were almost undreamed of a couple of decades ago. Nothing is slowing down. But more money is always greatly appreciated, of course.
Emergent properties do not emerge out of properties, they emerge out of parts that are joined together. Yes, an emergent property can influence the parts that produce it. You can decide to shoot yourself in the head, for example. Or smoke pot.
"We could model a brain but that wouldn't mean we modeled a mind. To model a mind you need to model a great deal of the environment the mind lives in... and that is many many orders of magnitude more complex."
Few serious hard AI approaches since the 60s have actually tried to do this as you suggest. Most use the ACTUAL environment rather than trying to model it. This process is usually called "learning."
PZs meaningful point is that the prenatal development environment affects brain development, in addition to genetics. This is true, but PZ seems to have neglected to mention that the prenatal environment is also determined by genes. On the other hand, Kurzweil fails to take into account that, even if you equate the genetic code to software, you still need a machine to run it on. In the case of genes this is the physics and chemistry of the real world, and a considerable amount of complexity can reside there.
So basically PZ objected to Kurzweil's genetic code -> software analogy, which is indeed grossly over simplified, but not for the reasons that PZ (or you, and your reason is not the one PZ stated) suggest.
PS - even if intelligence is a "superpolynomial" problem, the goal is to create an AI, not simulate one on a serial digital computer. That's one way of doing it, but not the only way.
Even if Penrose isn't full of it, you build yourself a hardware neuron model or a quantum randomness coprocessor and you're good to go. It would be VERY interesting if the brain did rely on quantum effects, because then we could measure (and duplicate) them.
If you're using a phone provided to you by your employer, you're pretty much asking for some big brothering. Anyway, the precedent is long since set. Windows phones and Blackberries have had this feature for ages and iPhones have had it for a couple of years.
Personally, I think it's pretty handy. Since my phone is my personal property, I'm the one who has wipe control over it. If I lose it or it's stolen I can locate it, or, failing that, wipe all my information off it.
Slashdot Mirror
A couple of problems. A liquid crystal only changes the polarization of light. So to make it actually block light you need to polarize it. That involves a polarizing filter, which will always block half the light anyway. So now you've just thrown away half your light, across the board.
Second, I'm not sure a liquid crystal would be fast enough. Wikipedia says LCDs may not be able to actually switch fast enough to keep up with the latest 240 Hz LCD TVs. That suggests the maximum "shutter speed" you could get would be something south of 1/240th, which is pretty slow for most situations when you'd actually want to do HDR.
A better approach would be to make a sensor with an electronic shutter for each pixel. Most sensors have a global electronic shutter and many make use of it, including most compacts and most of the Nikon SLR line.
Of course, the best way (and quite likely cheaper than either of the other methods) would be just to make a natively high dynamic range sensor.
Same as your eye does. Interesting, hey?
I see what you're getting at, and it might be useful in very specialized circumstances, but probably not in a camera. Modern sensors usually only need a few photons to produce a signal. The problem is figuring out what is signal and what is noise. So your four little pixels are always putting out a signal, it's just too noisy to make anything out of.
You can certainly average adjacent pixels to reduce noise. The effect isn't linear though, you get a sqrt(N) noise reduction by averaging over N pixels. Because of the extra real estate you lose on your sensor due to support for each pixel, you're better off just having one big pixel instead of lots of little ones you average. But you're doing noise reduction, not increasing dynamic range.
Limits on dynamic range really aren't due to the amount of light falling on the sensor, but rather to the way the sensor is designed to accumulate charge. It's possible to make sensors that do capture a wide dynamic range, but they're expensive and the average person doesn't really use them anyway. Current cameras generally capture quite a bit more dynamic range than most people use. You'll even find a lot of people making "HDR" photos by taking a single RAW exposure and processing it.
I'm familiar with HDR, thanks. You'll note that the article you linked to doesn't contain the words "average" or "averaging."
HDR requires that you have the same picture but with multiple, different exposures. You could potentially acquired this in one shot by making adjacent pixels more or less light sensitive (which has to be done in hardware), but averaging identical pixels isn't going to help. Nor does the HDR process involve averaging, even with multiple exposures.
How would that help dynamic range?
It still makes a difference. Businesses that bleed customers either figure it out or go out of business. But yes, I told them.
Why do you suppose I was looking up the address on the web page? Perhaps because Google maps didn't have it listed?
There seem to be a lot of people here who think Google is both infallible and all knowing. It isn't.
Because Google didn't know where it was.
Intel doesn't take much revenue from software. Nor AMD, nVidia, Dell, Apple....
Yeah, deflation would definitely change the economy, but it doesn't seem to be particularly bad for businesses that adapt to it. Some of the most successful businesses today have always existed in an environment of effective deflation.
It might kill off economic models based on constant borrowing and overspending though. So it might even work out better than what we have now.
The iPod is dominant, and the music store is as well. Other than that, you're quite right. Unless you count UNIX-on-the-desktop as a market segment.
I got an iPad, preordered. I showed up at the lab with it and everyone dropped by to see. Two days later, a guy across the hall was trying to get one for his wife. By the next week he had gotten her one, and a couple of other guys had picked up iPads. Forward a couple more weeks and a girl across the hall asks me if I'd mind talking to her mother on the phone - she was trying to figure out which iPad to get.
Now half the lab (and their mothers, apparently) have iPads. I've heard from most of them, and they absolutely love them.
My notebook can do everything your netbook can do, except better.
Well, except that the netbook is more convenient for a lot of things. And the iPad is even more convenient than a netbook for many of those.
If you want one computer, get a notebook. If you can afford two, a notebook and an iPad is a good combination for many people. A notebook and a netbook might actually work better for a few.
I was on my way to a restaurant that had a website that did that. Apparently to find the address you had to navigate through a big flash thing. I picked a different restaurant. I would have done the same thing had I been on a computer that did support Flash. I have better things to do than put up with broken websites.
The progress that has been made in the last five years is similarly incredible.
"American students"
Ah... you have an American bias. Yeah, could be American neuroscience, done by Americans, is in trouble. I don't know. I'm not an American.
How do we define empirically? How do we define we? How do we define how? How do we define define?
Your questions are meaningless. Someone's been taking too much philosophy.
Pick a property you believe to be associated with intelligence. You can pick whatever you want. I might choose "posts whiny messages on Slashdot." Are human brains observed to do this? Yes. Are individual neurons observed to do this? No. Therefore, posting whiny messages on Slashdot is an emergent property of groups of interconnected neurons.
It's left as an exercise to the reader to extend that method to any of the examples I posted.
It does if you build the hardware. With a vengeance.
If you believe Penrose, it isn't even possible to create intelligence through a simulation on a standard digital computer. But so what? We're not so bad at building (or growing, if necessary) hardware.
As someone who actually does neuroscience research, the tools and techniques available today were almost undreamed of a couple of decades ago. Nothing is slowing down. But more money is always greatly appreciated, of course.
Locke and Demosthene?
Yes. That's an excellent analogy. Of course, we do happen to have access to the universe....
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/emergent+property
That was hard.
Emergent properties do not emerge out of properties, they emerge out of parts that are joined together. Yes, an emergent property can influence the parts that produce it. You can decide to shoot yourself in the head, for example. Or smoke pot.
"We could model a brain but that wouldn't mean we modeled a mind. To model a mind you need to model a great deal of the environment the mind lives in... and that is many many orders of magnitude more complex."
Few serious hard AI approaches since the 60s have actually tried to do this as you suggest. Most use the ACTUAL environment rather than trying to model it. This process is usually called "learning."
PZs meaningful point is that the prenatal development environment affects brain development, in addition to genetics. This is true, but PZ seems to have neglected to mention that the prenatal environment is also determined by genes. On the other hand, Kurzweil fails to take into account that, even if you equate the genetic code to software, you still need a machine to run it on. In the case of genes this is the physics and chemistry of the real world, and a considerable amount of complexity can reside there.
So basically PZ objected to Kurzweil's genetic code -> software analogy, which is indeed grossly over simplified, but not for the reasons that PZ (or you, and your reason is not the one PZ stated) suggest.
PS - even if intelligence is a "superpolynomial" problem, the goal is to create an AI, not simulate one on a serial digital computer. That's one way of doing it, but not the only way.
Even if Penrose isn't full of it, you build yourself a hardware neuron model or a quantum randomness coprocessor and you're good to go. It would be VERY interesting if the brain did rely on quantum effects, because then we could measure (and duplicate) them.
If you're using a phone provided to you by your employer, you're pretty much asking for some big brothering. Anyway, the precedent is long since set. Windows phones and Blackberries have had this feature for ages and iPhones have had it for a couple of years.
Personally, I think it's pretty handy. Since my phone is my personal property, I'm the one who has wipe control over it. If I lose it or it's stolen I can locate it, or, failing that, wipe all my information off it.
If they wanted to make even a token stab at stopping jailbreaking you'd think they'd at least change the root password.