Parent's comments just made something clear to me. There are many parallels between the way Congress and USPTO work.
Both are supposed to be level headed organisations that sift through the detail and make sensible decisions, but both throw their responsibilities over the wall and leave it to the courts to figure out the mess.
When Congress pass laws these days, they do this based on what will give them the best sound bites with the least effort. USPTO just cranks out patents as fast as they can. Both are abdicating their responsibilities.
This one is erroneous in at least one way. It suggests that tiny bubbles trapped in hairs on the bug's legs make it float. Tosh! The bubbles are too small to make it boyant. What the bubbles do is increase the surface area which, in turn, increases the amount of surface tension "skin" that the bug walks on and therefore the carrying capacity.
As most fly fishermen would tell you, surface tension is far stronger than you'd think. Hatching bugs struggle to get through the surface tension which keeps them under the surface. Once they break through they are able to sit and walk quite easily.
I used to be pro-nuke, worked for a nuclear company etc, but am no longer so. For me, the biggest issues with nuke are handling long-term bulk waste and the costs: nuke is far more expensive than anything else even though the promises of the 50s and 60s were energy that would be so cheap that it was not worth metering.
A machine cannot make education and freedom happen, it can only help people do that **if** they are allowed to and **if** the OPLCs trickle down to where they are needed/can make a difference.
Where's the internet connection coming from? A rice-stealing dictator is hardly going to run broadband through the slums. First off, he'd rather put the money into a new Mercedes or tanks to suppress riots. Secondly he does not want to give extra communications infrastructure to his enemies.
That rice-stealig dictator will only give out OLPCs to his lackeys, not to those who need freedom from him.
Get real folk. Africa isn't fscked because it lacks PCs. It has more basic problems with crime and mismanagement. There is no evidence that OLPC will fix these.
Even in South Africa, where I lived for 30 years, installing infrastucture is almost impossible because stuff gets stolen so fast. Some years ago, the road building materials for some 10 miles of road got stolen over a long week end. Telephone and power wires get stolen for scrap befor they are even used. Even security fencing gets stolen!
You're kidding yourself if you really think an OLPC will make a difference.
If you've studied Turings work much, you'd probably come to the conclusion that he never seriously proposed that the Turing Test would be a practical way to test machine intelligence.
Turing was a mathematician, which came through in all his thinking, including devising the Turing Test. When faced with questions like "can a machine ever be intellignt?" it is virtually impossible to answer this directly because, firstly, how do you define intelligence; and secondly,how do you measure intelligence?
Mathematicians **hate** imprecise questions because they cannot be proven or answered satisfactorily.
When faced with this problem, Turing used the well loved mathematical method of reductio ad absurdum: if you cannot tell the difference between a human and a machine, then it is absurd to claim the human is intelligent but the machine is not. That neatly sidesteps all the impossible to answer questions like the precise definition of intelligence. Typical mathematician wriggle out move.
Is the Turing Test practical? Well perhaps not. Machine intelligence (whatever that means) can be useful without the machine holding a conversation with you. Annoyingly it has soaked up a lot of effort with people building talkbots instead of getting on with more practical aspects of machine intelligence.
The biggest issue, IMHO, is that making something that can run Windows adds extra constraints and drives up hardware costs. For example, Windows needs x86 and lots of RAM. That automatically prevents making a lot od design decisions such as using ARM CPUs and smaller RAM footprints - which would have made a cheaper, lower power device (less hand cranks per page load).
... and taser you long before you get your kick in
Leaving money on the table is not always bad
on
What If Yoda Ran IBM?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Nor is leaving room open for competition.
These build a healthy industry in which you can play. Complete dominance of an industry is unhealthy (look at Old IBM or M$). Having competition gives you feedback which is vital for the long term success of a company. Trying to be all things to all people dilutes your business strategy too. Far better to leave some opportunites unexploited.
All the software would be written in Forth
on
What If Yoda Ran IBM?
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· Score: 5, Funny
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/692.html
Just about anyone that has got things done has been, at some level, an asshole. Politicians, military generals and even geeks.
The trick to being a successful asshole is to be in control and use that as a tool. Darl just had no control.
Damn... I logged on just to respond to this. "Consuming Volts", "travelling at 5 knots per hour", "uses 4 kW per hour" and similar flagrant misuse of units really winds my shorts (to a torque of 5 Nm). You can forgive USA Today, but a Geek rag should get this right.
The speed at which you see and respond is not at all linked to intelligence. It is far more linked to your need for this speed (ie. due to evolution), priimarily driven by your need to control motion and for feeding.
For example animals which feed by catching fast moving bugs in their mouth (eg. birds and fish) need to respond very quickly otherwise their food is long gone. Animals that eat berries and kill their food or have paws and hands don't have to be that fast. Animals that live in trees etc and need to judge distance better (monkeys etc) need faster responses than ground based humans etc.
I forget what this effect is called, but I understand that trout have a speed 20x that of humans. That's to be expected when a trout has to feed by eating little bugs coming past it in fast moving water. The trout has to be able to respond quickly to make an energy efficient movement and get the bug before it has gone. The energy in a small gnat is not enough to waste on charging around the stream.
As a result of this, I'm not at all suprised that a chimp beats a human in a low level counting game.
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Both are supposed to be level headed organisations that sift through the detail and make sensible decisions, but both throw their responsibilities over the wall and leave it to the courts to figure out the mess.
When Congress pass laws these days, they do this based on what will give them the best sound bites with the least effort. USPTO just cranks out patents as fast as they can. Both are abdicating their responsibilities.
The "robot" spreads its weight out using the whole length of its legs in contact with the water. That is nothing like a water strider.
A water strider walks on the **ends** of its legs (feet, if you will). For a far better description see http://www.livescience.com/animals/041103_water_strider.html.
The only similarity is that they both use surface tension.
This one is erroneous in at least one way. It suggests that tiny bubbles trapped in hairs on the bug's legs make it float. Tosh! The bubbles are too small to make it boyant. What the bubbles do is increase the surface area which, in turn, increases the amount of surface tension "skin" that the bug walks on and therefore the carrying capacity.
As most fly fishermen would tell you, surface tension is far stronger than you'd think. Hatching bugs struggle to get through the surface tension which keeps them under the surface. Once they break through they are able to sit and walk quite easily.
I used to be pro-nuke, worked for a nuclear company etc, but am no longer so. For me, the biggest issues with nuke are handling long-term bulk waste and the costs: nuke is far more expensive than anything else even though the promises of the 50s and 60s were energy that would be so cheap that it was not worth metering.
And they don't need a slime-operated touch screen computer to help them out!
Where's the internet connection coming from? A rice-stealing dictator is hardly going to run broadband through the slums. First off, he'd rather put the money into a new Mercedes or tanks to suppress riots. Secondly he does not want to give extra communications infrastructure to his enemies.
That rice-stealig dictator will only give out OLPCs to his lackeys, not to those who need freedom from him.
Get real folk. Africa isn't fscked because it lacks PCs. It has more basic problems with crime and mismanagement. There is no evidence that OLPC will fix these.
Even in South Africa, where I lived for 30 years, installing infrastucture is almost impossible because stuff gets stolen so fast. Some years ago, the road building materials for some 10 miles of road got stolen over a long week end. Telephone and power wires get stolen for scrap befor they are even used. Even security fencing gets stolen!
You're kidding yourself if you really think an OLPC will make a difference.
because they'll steal your fishing tackle and bait!
Turing was a mathematician, which came through in all his thinking, including devising the Turing Test. When faced with questions like "can a machine ever be intellignt?" it is virtually impossible to answer this directly because, firstly, how do you define intelligence; and secondly,how do you measure intelligence?
Mathematicians **hate** imprecise questions because they cannot be proven or answered satisfactorily.
When faced with this problem, Turing used the well loved mathematical method of reductio ad absurdum: if you cannot tell the difference between a human and a machine, then it is absurd to claim the human is intelligent but the machine is not. That neatly sidesteps all the impossible to answer questions like the precise definition of intelligence. Typical mathematician wriggle out move.
Is the Turing Test practical? Well perhaps not. Machine intelligence (whatever that means) can be useful without the machine holding a conversation with you. Annoyingly it has soaked up a lot of effort with people building talkbots instead of getting on with more practical aspects of machine intelligence.
Just hook the botnet up to Diebold machines and you can do away with pesky human voters.
Maybe they get started in Canada, eh?
WinCE runs on various architectures, but it is a toy OS. Still, CE would be capable of serving educational goals.
Many of the experimental NT kernels (PowerPC, MIPS, etc) sowed some of the seeds for WinCE.
XP Embedded does not provide the full MS experience. To get people addicted to MS KoolAid needs more than that.
The biggest issue, IMHO, is that making something that can run Windows adds extra constraints and drives up hardware costs. For example, Windows needs x86 and lots of RAM. That automatically prevents making a lot od design decisions such as using ARM CPUs and smaller RAM footprints - which would have made a cheaper, lower power device (less hand cranks per page load).
Use FUSE and a shim module that renames files.
There. Two quick ways to get around this.
... and taser you long before you get your kick in
These build a healthy industry in which you can play. Complete dominance of an industry is unhealthy (look at Old IBM or M$). Having competition gives you feedback which is vital for the long term success of a company. Trying to be all things to all people dilutes your business strategy too. Far better to leave some opportunites unexploited.
Which might be a Good Thing.
Sure, even the most diligent scientists can forget correct procedure when caught up in euphoria or other pressures.
You're right I feel better already! Wow everything feels faster! Any more exclamaitions and I'd be using Yahoo!!
It seems here that this is actually just a result of a vanilla screw-up.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Though instead of "stupidity" I'd substitute "error".
It all looks like porn to me!
Just about anyone that has got things done has been, at some level, an asshole. Politicians, military generals and even geeks.
The trick to being a successful asshole is to be in control and use that as a tool. Darl just had no control.
Was the previous technology less than 1% accurate?
The only slight mitigation here is that P = V^2/R, or I = V/R so reducing voltage reduces current too. Of course that does make TFS accurate.
Damn... I logged on just to respond to this. "Consuming Volts", "travelling at 5 knots per hour", "uses 4 kW per hour" and similar flagrant misuse of units really winds my shorts (to a torque of 5 Nm). You can forgive USA Today, but a Geek rag should get this right.
For example animals which feed by catching fast moving bugs in their mouth (eg. birds and fish) need to respond very quickly otherwise their food is long gone. Animals that eat berries and kill their food or have paws and hands don't have to be that fast. Animals that live in trees etc and need to judge distance better (monkeys etc) need faster responses than ground based humans etc.
I forget what this effect is called, but I understand that trout have a speed 20x that of humans. That's to be expected when a trout has to feed by eating little bugs coming past it in fast moving water. The trout has to be able to respond quickly to make an energy efficient movement and get the bug before it has gone. The energy in a small gnat is not enough to waste on charging around the stream.
As a result of this, I'm not at all suprised that a chimp beats a human in a low level counting game.