You're right that encryption is an option, but as a consumer, I don't want to pay for the FBI's backdoors. Furthermore, this request will have NO effect on terrorists (who are the supposed target). Terrorists already use encryption. It's more likely to make J. Edgar Hoover style tricks easier.
It MIGHT help nab criminals who are well less organized than terrorists, but is that really reason enough to re-engineer our routers?
I agree. The proposal that new equipment conform to these standards is ridiculous, but then the fact that old systems aren't even grandfathered in (i.e. existing systems are also required to upgrade) is even more ridiculous.
Existing factories and power plants don't have to upgrade to comply with new environmental standards. Why should existing routers have to be patched to satisfy Big Brother.
The first amendment does not protect against fraud or extortion. What SCO is doing amounts to that. They are lying about their IP... furthermore they are attempting extortion by their constant threats to sue various people. They furthermore are slandering various entities involved with Linux, AIX, etc.
U.S. courts muzzle people as well... frequently when the Enquirer or some other rag prints some inaccurate garbage about someone, they are forced to stop and often pay a settlment. What SCO is saying is inaccurate, and they're being muzzled is totally reasonable.
"What's this mindless yammering that says everything has to do with children?? Save the children! Help the children! You know what I say? Fuck the children... I know what you're saying, 'Jesus, he's not going to attack children, is he??' YES HE IS!!! He's going to attack children."
Seriously, I might get modded down for this, but why do we put the little fuckers on a pedastle?
Do you really think that little Johnny seeing pics of people loving one another (even in strange ways) is really awful enough to put someone through the damaging experience that is prison.
Seriously, kids will just have to deal with shit like the human beings that they are.
So by that point of view, nothing is an embryo. No mass of cells can be called an embryo until they differentiate (they might not), but when the cells in that mass differentiate... it's not an embryo either. It's a fetus.
Amazingly precise surgery. Imagine tiny robots that could destro cancer cells, but leave healthy cells alone. Imagine if solid sheets of clear diamond were cheaper than glass.
Imagine if the only real cost to build a product (such as a rocket engine or a child's toy) were only the design (and then self-replicating nano-bots would take-over given a supply of common elements).
Yes, yes. This seems to be a long way off, but the scientific principles are sound even if we don't have the engineering know how yet. Furthermore, the risks are significant, so it's about time that we start planning for how to do these things safely and securely.
Read the book The Diamond Age Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson. Besides being a fantastic (if strange) read, it gives an idea of the possibilities and (to some extent) the dangers of nanotech.
Also, check out Engines of Creation The Coming Era of Nanotechnology by Eric Drexler. It also explores the possibilities of nanotech, but presents a compelling case that we should be planning for this technology to make sure that it is safe secure and truly beneficial.
I ask for personally selfish reasons. I'm a graduate student at U of R (not Eastman). I don't live in the dorms, but I do have friends who do.
I'm happy that I'll probably see benefit from this, but I'm not sure it's a good expenditure of University funds.
On the other hand, it is a good idea for a community to pull together and bargain collectively with the music industry. That's really the only way to reach a reasonably fair deal.
Re:Speaking of progress, article text, here:
on
Google v. Microsoft
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The Coming Search Wars By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: February 1, 2004
PALO ALTO, Calif.
AT the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Microsoft, the software heavyweight, and Google, the scrappy Internet search company, eyed each other like wary prizefighters entering the ring.
Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, stated his admiration for the "high level of I.Q." of Google's designers. "We took an approach that I now realize was wrong,'' he said of his company's earlier decision to ignore the search market. But, he added pointedly, "we will catch them.''
The four top Google executives attending the forum, at the ski resort of Davos, were no less obsessed with Mr. Gates's every move. "We had many opportunities to see Bill and Microsoft here in Davos," Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague that was distributed to employees through an internal company mailing list.
Microsoft is intently poring over Google's portfolio of patents, hunting for potential vulnerabilities, Mr. Schmidt contended. And because Google is running its business using Linux - the free open source software that has become the biggest challenger of Windows - Microsoft is concerned that it may be at a competitive disadvantage. "Based on their visceral reactions to any discussions about 'open source,' '' Mr. Schmidt wrote in his e-mail message, "they are obsessed with open source as a business model.''
Get ready for Microsoft vs. Silicon Valley, Round 2.
The last time around, in the mid-1990's, Netscape Communications, another brash, high-tech start-up from the Bay Area, commercialized the Web browser, touching off the dot-com gold rush. The company told anyone who would listen that its newfangled software program would reduce Microsoft's flagship Windows operating system to a "slightly buggy set of device drivers.''
As it turned out, Microsoft - based in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, far from Silicon Valley, the heart of the nation's technology industry - was listening.
Mr. Gates, belatedly waking up to the threat that the Internet posed to his business, aimed Microsoft's firepower at Netscape and flattened his rival, which was later acquired by America Online and is now a shadow of its former self in an obscure corner of Time Warner.
As a consequence, however, he brought a federal antitrust lawsuit down upon his company, raising the specter of a Microsoft breakup. In the end, Microsoft escaped with little more than a requirement that it operate under a relatively mild court-ordered consent decree.
Today, nearly everyone in Silicon Valley, from venture capitalists and chip engineers to real estate agents and restaurateurs, has begun to ask: Will Google become the next Netscape?
Mr. Gates, who for more than a decade has promised - but not yet delivered - "information at your fingertips" for his customers, has decided that the Internet search business is both a serious threat and a valuable opportunity.
The co-founder and now the chief software architect of his company, Mr. Gates readily acknowledges these days that Microsoft "blew it" in the market for Internet search. Despite his early grand vision, he displayed little inclination to deploy software that would improve the ability of computer users to find information - until he saw the dollars in the business.
THAT opportunity fell to two Stanford computer science graduate students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who disregarded the industry's common wisdom that search technology would become an inexpensive, marginal commodity.
While the Internet's dominant companies fought one another over Web portals, the promise of e-commerce and access to providers like America Online, Google developed a speedy search engine that soon became almost a universal first step onto the Internet. It displaced earlier search engines because the technology invented by Mr. Brin and Mr. Page did a measurably better job in returning results that satis
Speaking of progress, article text, here:
on
Google v. Microsoft
·
· Score: 1
The Coming Search Wars
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: February 1, 2004
PALO ALTO, Calif.
AT the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Microsoft, the software heavyweight, and Google, the scrappy Internet search company, eyed each other like wary prizefighters entering the ring.
Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, stated his admiration for the "high level of I.Q." of Google's designers. "We took an approach that I now realize was wrong,'' he said of his company's earlier decision to ignore the search market. But, he added pointedly, "we will catch them.''
The four top Google executives attending the forum, at the ski resort of Davos, were no less obsessed with Mr. Gates's every move. "We had many opportunities to see Bill and Microsoft here in Davos," Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague that was distributed to employees through an internal company mailing list.
Microsoft is intently poring over Google's portfolio of patents, hunting for potential vulnerabilities, Mr. Schmidt contended. And because Google is running its business using Linux - the free open source software that has become the biggest challenger of Windows - Microsoft is concerned that it may be at a competitive disadvantage. "Based on their visceral reactions to any discussions about 'open source,' '' Mr. Schmidt wrote in his e-mail message, "they are obsessed with open source as a business model.''
Get ready for Microsoft vs. Silicon Valley, Round 2.
The last time around, in the mid-1990's, Netscape Communications, another brash, high-tech start-up from the Bay Area, commercialized the Web browser, touching off the dot-com gold rush. The company told anyone who would listen that its newfangled software program would reduce Microsoft's flagship Windows operating system to a "slightly buggy set of device drivers.''
As it turned out, Microsoft - based in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, far from Silicon Valley, the heart of the nation's technology industry - was listening.
Mr. Gates, belatedly waking up to the threat that the Internet posed to his business, aimed Microsoft's firepower at Netscape and flattened his rival, which was later acquired by America Online and is now a shadow of its former self in an obscure corner of Time Warner.
As a consequence, however, he brought a federal antitrust lawsuit down upon his company, raising the specter of a Microsoft breakup. In the end, Microsoft escaped with little more than a requirement that it operate under a relatively mild court-ordered consent decree.
Today, nearly everyone in Silicon Valley, from venture capitalists and chip engineers to real estate agents and restaurateurs, has begun to ask: Will Google become the next Netscape?
Mr. Gates, who for more than a decade has promised - but not yet delivered - "information at your fingertips" for his customers, has decided that the Internet search business is both a serious threat and a valuable opportunity.
The co-founder and now the chief software architect of his company, Mr. Gates readily acknowledges these days that Microsoft "blew it" in the market for Internet search. Despite his early grand vision, he displayed little inclination to deploy software that would improve the ability of computer users to find information - until he saw the dollars in the business.
THAT opportunity fell to two Stanford computer science graduate students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who disregarded the industry's common wisdom that search technology would become an inexpensive, marginal commodity.
While the Internet's dominant companies fought one another over Web portals, the promise of e-commerce and access to providers like America Online, Google developed a speedy search engine that soon became almost a universal first step onto the Internet. It displaced earlier search engines because the technology invented by Mr. Brin and Mr. Page did a measurably better job in returning results that satisfied Web surfers' requests.
As a result, Google now has an immense number of users, with 200 million searches on a
The real captchas that Blum proposed were much more difficult. They actually involve two word superimposed and then convoluted. Not so hard for a human to decify, but OCR has a hell of a hard time. Yahoo! just thought that they were too difficult, so it used the easier system. If spammers are able to create too many accounts, I'm sure that Yahoo! will switch to the original (harder) captchas.
First, I think that you should decide what kind of a career you want. If you want a more practical experience building apps and writing code that's used lots of places, I would advise finding an open source project to work on. A previous poster mentioned the GNU project. I think that sounds good. The other option is a more academic career. You'll still be writing plenty of code, but most of you work will likely be proof of concept. You'll also have to write papers explaining why what you've done is important.
If you want to go the academic route, find a good CS graduate program where you live. Take some undergraduate courses (and keep in mind that knowing tons about computers doesn't mean you know tons about computer science). Form relationships with the faculty members. Find some interesting research projects to work on. If you do well, you could end being offered a position as a Ph.D. student or at least some sort of a scholarship.
A friend of mine Ali took that route. He ran and owned a few Subways. The he decided to go back to school. He's now almost finished with his doctorate.
Sure, give credit, but not to spammers. Manuel Blum, who invented CAPTCHA, came to speak at my school. First, he explained CAPTCHA. Then he explained how to beat it. The idea is called 'stealing cycles'. In his version, the CAPTCHA tests would be part of games rather than porn sites, but the concept is the same.
I didn't say that Iraqis weren't materially better off or even that they're less free now than before. What I SAID was that they are less free than we are here in the US.
Read the fucking comment and think for two seconds before you reply, ass-bag.
Ohh, BTW, I support John Edwards not Howard Dean, but anybody is better than Bush.
One of the reasons that I oppose Bush so strongly is that when he took office, he scrapped Clinton's anti-terrorism plans (which had foiled numerous plots). Then after 9/11 and Afghanistan, he comes off looking like some kind of hero.
While civil liberties in the country seem to be going down the toilet, Iraq doesn't seem to be better off.
The caucuses in Iraq that the Bush administration is planning are not "Iowa" style caucuses. Instead of everyone showing up at a townhall to discuss issues and elect leaders, the American administrators of Iraq will choose representatives from each area.
No wonder the Bush administration doesn't want free elections! More info here.
You're lucky. I opened a box to see a tiny silver device with earbuds attached. I thought, "good, an mp3 player!" Turns out that the device just plays nature noises.
Was it the tail? Really, is the pointy tail a deal-breaker?
Hmmm. I don't get it? The header seemed to refer to some potential BSD deal that was quashed, but the story is talking about VMWare, Microsoft and EMC Corp.
Well, I'll answer your questions both in respect to NLP, and also more generally.
First of all, most practical NLP techniques aren't *that* complicated simply because they must be able to be computed quickly. There are quite a few statistical hacks prevalent
Most NLP techniques use probabilistic variants of two models finite automata and pushdown automata (both models are actually pretty simple, but if you don't know what they are, they may sound complicated).
Finite automata consume input and transition to different states (a finite number of them) based on that input. They can also be interpretted as generating output instead of consuming input.
Push down automata are almost the same except that they have a stack that they can push symbols onto.
Another name for push down automata are Context Free Grammars.
As I said above, most NLP techniques use probabilistic variants of and small extensions to these two concepts.
The reason that Markov models (probabilistic finite automata) work so well to model speech is because they are flexible, simple, and linear just like speech. The reason that CFGs work so well to model language is that they are flexible, and hierarchical, and so can capture the recursive nature of language (think about "the man who killed the horse who killed the dog who...").
Having said all of that, I don't think that these models capture the way that humans process language/speech. I think that neural networks have the potential to capture this better. They just aren't mature enough. We also don't really have a good architecture to run neural networks. A human brain has about 10^14 neurons (within a couple of orders of magnitude) that run in parallel. Try simulating that on todays serial architectures, and you'll run into problems.
So my hypothesis is that there is probably some inherently simple learning algorithm for neural networks that we just don't know yet that will help solve many different types of problems (there is some biological evidence of there being a single learning algorithm implemented in the brain).
So yes, there is likely a simpler answer, but until we know it, we have to use heuristics and statistical hacks in order to build systems that work.
As to science in general, the reason it all sounds complicated is twofold:
First things interect in a very chaotic way. Even if the interactions are simple, when you compose many very small interactions, you find complex behavior.
Secondly, even if the interactions are actually simple, we humans with our Neutonian intuitions have a hard time understanding non-Neutonian interactions.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but seriously for which languages has Microsoft written .NET compilers?
And how closely have those compilers implemented the standard?
You're right that encryption is an option, but as a consumer, I don't want to pay for the FBI's backdoors. Furthermore, this request will have NO effect on terrorists (who are the supposed target). Terrorists already use encryption. It's more likely to make J. Edgar Hoover style tricks easier.
It MIGHT help nab criminals who are well less organized than terrorists, but is that really reason enough to re-engineer our routers?
I agree. The proposal that new equipment conform to these standards is ridiculous, but then the fact that old systems aren't even grandfathered in (i.e. existing systems are also required to upgrade) is even more ridiculous.
Existing factories and power plants don't have to upgrade to comply with new environmental standards. Why should existing routers have to be patched to satisfy Big Brother.
The first amendment does not protect against fraud or extortion. What SCO is doing amounts to that. They are lying about their IP ... furthermore they are attempting extortion by their constant threats to sue various people. They furthermore are slandering various entities involved with Linux, AIX, etc.
... frequently when the Enquirer or some other rag prints some inaccurate garbage about someone, they are forced to stop and often pay a settlment. What SCO is saying is inaccurate, and they're being muzzled is totally reasonable.
U.S. courts muzzle people as well
"What's this mindless yammering that says everything has to do with children?? Save the children! Help the children! You know what I say? Fuck the children ... I know what you're saying, 'Jesus, he's not going to attack children, is he??' YES HE IS!!! He's going to attack children."
Seriously, I might get modded down for this, but why do we put the little fuckers on a pedastle?
Do you really think that little Johnny seeing pics of people loving one another (even in strange ways) is really awful enough to put someone through the damaging experience that is prison.
Seriously, kids will just have to deal with shit like the human beings that they are.
RTFA, it mentions one such case: that of Jose Padilla. It also links this article which discusses the Padilla case as well as several others.
Holy cow! That's a lotta dollars! Hope he hurt his back carting it all away. ;)
Sadly, with the current exchange rate 550 GBP is almost 550 lbs. of USD.
So by that point of view, nothing is an embryo. No mass of cells can be called an embryo until they differentiate (they might not), but when the cells in that mass differentiate ... it's not an embryo either. It's a fetus.
It'll be called "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at SCO."
It'll be out soon in hardback.
Amazingly precise surgery. Imagine tiny robots that could destro cancer cells, but leave healthy cells alone. Imagine if solid sheets of clear diamond were cheaper than glass.
Imagine if the only real cost to build a product (such as a rocket engine or a child's toy) were only the design (and then self-replicating nano-bots would take-over given a supply of common elements).
Yes, yes. This seems to be a long way off, but the scientific principles are sound even if we don't have the engineering know how yet. Furthermore, the risks are significant, so it's about time that we start planning for how to do these things safely and securely.
Read the book The Diamond Age Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson. Besides being a fantastic (if strange) read, it gives an idea of the possibilities and (to some extent) the dangers of nanotech.
Also, check out Engines of Creation The Coming Era of Nanotechnology by Eric Drexler. It also explores the possibilities of nanotech, but presents a compelling case that we should be planning for this technology to make sure that it is safe secure and truly beneficial.
So how does it work? What does it allow you to do? Has it been cracked?
What kind of DRM do they employ?
I ask for personally selfish reasons. I'm a graduate student at U of R (not Eastman). I don't live in the dorms, but I do have friends who do.
I'm happy that I'll probably see benefit from this, but I'm not sure it's a good expenditure of University funds.
On the other hand, it is a good idea for a community to pull together and bargain collectively with the music industry. That's really the only way to reach a reasonably fair deal.
The Coming Search Wars
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: February 1, 2004
PALO ALTO, Calif.
AT the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Microsoft, the software heavyweight, and Google, the scrappy Internet search company, eyed each other like wary prizefighters entering the ring.
Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, stated his admiration for the "high level of I.Q." of Google's designers. "We took an approach that I now realize was wrong,'' he said of his company's earlier decision to ignore the search market. But, he added pointedly, "we will catch them.''
The four top Google executives attending the forum, at the ski resort of Davos, were no less obsessed with Mr. Gates's every move. "We had many opportunities to see Bill and Microsoft here in Davos," Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague that was distributed to employees through an internal company mailing list.
Microsoft is intently poring over Google's portfolio of patents, hunting for potential vulnerabilities, Mr. Schmidt contended. And because Google is running its business using Linux - the free open source software that has become the biggest challenger of Windows - Microsoft is concerned that it may be at a competitive disadvantage. "Based on their visceral reactions to any discussions about 'open source,' '' Mr. Schmidt wrote in his e-mail message, "they are obsessed with open source as a business model.''
Get ready for Microsoft vs. Silicon Valley, Round 2.
The last time around, in the mid-1990's, Netscape Communications, another brash, high-tech start-up from the Bay Area, commercialized the Web browser, touching off the dot-com gold rush. The company told anyone who would listen that its newfangled software program would reduce Microsoft's flagship Windows operating system to a "slightly buggy set of device drivers.''
As it turned out, Microsoft - based in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, far from Silicon Valley, the heart of the nation's technology industry - was listening.
Mr. Gates, belatedly waking up to the threat that the Internet posed to his business, aimed Microsoft's firepower at Netscape and flattened his rival, which was later acquired by America Online and is now a shadow of its former self in an obscure corner of Time Warner.
As a consequence, however, he brought a federal antitrust lawsuit down upon his company, raising the specter of a Microsoft breakup. In the end, Microsoft escaped with little more than a requirement that it operate under a relatively mild court-ordered consent decree.
Today, nearly everyone in Silicon Valley, from venture capitalists and chip engineers to real estate agents and restaurateurs, has begun to ask: Will Google become the next Netscape?
Mr. Gates, who for more than a decade has promised - but not yet delivered - "information at your fingertips" for his customers, has decided that the Internet search business is both a serious threat and a valuable opportunity.
The co-founder and now the chief software architect of his company, Mr. Gates readily acknowledges these days that Microsoft "blew it" in the market for Internet search. Despite his early grand vision, he displayed little inclination to deploy software that would improve the ability of computer users to find information - until he saw the dollars in the business.
THAT opportunity fell to two Stanford computer science graduate students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who disregarded the industry's common wisdom that search technology would become an inexpensive, marginal commodity.
While the Internet's dominant companies fought one another over Web portals, the promise of e-commerce and access to providers like America Online, Google developed a speedy search engine that soon became almost a universal first step onto the Internet. It displaced earlier search engines because the technology invented by Mr. Brin and Mr. Page did a measurably better job in returning results that satis
The Coming Search Wars By JOHN MARKOFF Published: February 1, 2004 PALO ALTO, Calif. AT the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Microsoft, the software heavyweight, and Google, the scrappy Internet search company, eyed each other like wary prizefighters entering the ring. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, stated his admiration for the "high level of I.Q." of Google's designers. "We took an approach that I now realize was wrong,'' he said of his company's earlier decision to ignore the search market. But, he added pointedly, "we will catch them.'' The four top Google executives attending the forum, at the ski resort of Davos, were no less obsessed with Mr. Gates's every move. "We had many opportunities to see Bill and Microsoft here in Davos," Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague that was distributed to employees through an internal company mailing list. Microsoft is intently poring over Google's portfolio of patents, hunting for potential vulnerabilities, Mr. Schmidt contended. And because Google is running its business using Linux - the free open source software that has become the biggest challenger of Windows - Microsoft is concerned that it may be at a competitive disadvantage. "Based on their visceral reactions to any discussions about 'open source,' '' Mr. Schmidt wrote in his e-mail message, "they are obsessed with open source as a business model.'' Get ready for Microsoft vs. Silicon Valley, Round 2. The last time around, in the mid-1990's, Netscape Communications, another brash, high-tech start-up from the Bay Area, commercialized the Web browser, touching off the dot-com gold rush. The company told anyone who would listen that its newfangled software program would reduce Microsoft's flagship Windows operating system to a "slightly buggy set of device drivers.'' As it turned out, Microsoft - based in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, far from Silicon Valley, the heart of the nation's technology industry - was listening. Mr. Gates, belatedly waking up to the threat that the Internet posed to his business, aimed Microsoft's firepower at Netscape and flattened his rival, which was later acquired by America Online and is now a shadow of its former self in an obscure corner of Time Warner. As a consequence, however, he brought a federal antitrust lawsuit down upon his company, raising the specter of a Microsoft breakup. In the end, Microsoft escaped with little more than a requirement that it operate under a relatively mild court-ordered consent decree. Today, nearly everyone in Silicon Valley, from venture capitalists and chip engineers to real estate agents and restaurateurs, has begun to ask: Will Google become the next Netscape? Mr. Gates, who for more than a decade has promised - but not yet delivered - "information at your fingertips" for his customers, has decided that the Internet search business is both a serious threat and a valuable opportunity. The co-founder and now the chief software architect of his company, Mr. Gates readily acknowledges these days that Microsoft "blew it" in the market for Internet search. Despite his early grand vision, he displayed little inclination to deploy software that would improve the ability of computer users to find information - until he saw the dollars in the business. THAT opportunity fell to two Stanford computer science graduate students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who disregarded the industry's common wisdom that search technology would become an inexpensive, marginal commodity. While the Internet's dominant companies fought one another over Web portals, the promise of e-commerce and access to providers like America Online, Google developed a speedy search engine that soon became almost a universal first step onto the Internet. It displaced earlier search engines because the technology invented by Mr. Brin and Mr. Page did a measurably better job in returning results that satisfied Web surfers' requests. As a result, Google now has an immense number of users, with 200 million searches on a
The real captchas that Blum proposed were much more difficult. They actually involve two word superimposed and then convoluted. Not so hard for a human to decify, but OCR has a hell of a hard time. Yahoo! just thought that they were too difficult, so it used the easier system. If spammers are able to create too many accounts, I'm sure that Yahoo! will switch to the original (harder) captchas.
First, I think that you should decide what kind of a career you want. If you want a more practical experience building apps and writing code that's used lots of places, I would advise finding an open source project to work on. A previous poster mentioned the GNU project. I think that sounds good. The other option is a more academic career. You'll still be writing plenty of code, but most of you work will likely be proof of concept. You'll also have to write papers explaining why what you've done is important.
If you want to go the academic route, find a good CS graduate program where you live. Take some undergraduate courses (and keep in mind that knowing tons about computers doesn't mean you know tons about computer science). Form relationships with the faculty members. Find some interesting research projects to work on. If you do well, you could end being offered a position as a Ph.D. student or at least some sort of a scholarship.
A friend of mine Ali took that route. He ran and owned a few Subways. The he decided to go back to school. He's now almost finished with his doctorate.
Could someone please try to explain the point of web based "social networks" (I know the point of real world social networks)?
Sure, give credit, but not to spammers. Manuel Blum, who invented CAPTCHA, came to speak at my school. First, he explained CAPTCHA. Then he explained how to beat it. The idea is called 'stealing cycles'. In his version, the CAPTCHA tests would be part of games rather than porn sites, but the concept is the same.
I didn't say that Iraqis weren't materially better off or even that they're less free now than before. What I SAID was that they are less free than we are here in the US.
Read the fucking comment and think for two seconds before you reply, ass-bag.
Ohh, BTW, I support John Edwards not Howard Dean, but anybody is better than Bush.
One of the reasons that I oppose Bush so strongly is that when he took office, he scrapped Clinton's anti-terrorism plans (which had foiled numerous plots). Then after 9/11 and Afghanistan, he comes off looking like some kind of hero.
While civil liberties in the country seem to be going down the toilet, Iraq doesn't seem to be better off.
The caucuses in Iraq that the Bush administration is planning are not "Iowa" style caucuses. Instead of everyone showing up at a townhall to discuss issues and elect leaders, the American administrators of Iraq will choose representatives from each area.
No wonder the Bush administration doesn't want free elections! More info here.
Why not Radon? It also has 8 valence electrons, but more mass.
You're lucky. I opened a box to see a tiny silver device with earbuds attached. I thought, "good, an mp3 player!" Turns out that the device just plays nature noises.
Was it the tail? Really, is the pointy tail a deal-breaker?
Hmmm. I don't get it? The header seemed to refer to some potential BSD deal that was quashed, but the story is talking about VMWare, Microsoft and EMC Corp.
What gives? Did I miss something?
She's still very hot, and obviously very intelligent. I'm in love with her regardless whether or not the proof stands.
Well, I'll answer your questions both in respect to NLP, and also more generally.
First of all, most practical NLP techniques aren't *that* complicated simply because they must be able to be computed quickly. There are quite a few statistical hacks prevalent
Most NLP techniques use probabilistic variants of two models finite automata and pushdown automata (both models are actually pretty simple, but if you don't know what they are, they may sound complicated).
Finite automata consume input and transition to different states (a finite number of them) based on that input. They can also be interpretted as generating output instead of consuming input.
Push down automata are almost the same except that they have a stack that they can push symbols onto. Another name for push down automata are Context Free Grammars.
As I said above, most NLP techniques use probabilistic variants of and small extensions to these two concepts.
The reason that Markov models (probabilistic finite automata) work so well to model speech is because they are flexible, simple, and linear just like speech. The reason that CFGs work so well to model language is that they are flexible, and hierarchical, and so can capture the recursive nature of language (think about "the man who killed the horse who killed the dog who...").
Having said all of that, I don't think that these models capture the way that humans process language/speech. I think that neural networks have the potential to capture this better. They just aren't mature enough. We also don't really have a good architecture to run neural networks. A human brain has about 10^14 neurons (within a couple of orders of magnitude) that run in parallel. Try simulating that on todays serial architectures, and you'll run into problems.
So my hypothesis is that there is probably some inherently simple learning algorithm for neural networks that we just don't know yet that will help solve many different types of problems (there is some biological evidence of there being a single learning algorithm implemented in the brain).
So yes, there is likely a simpler answer, but until we know it, we have to use heuristics and statistical hacks in order to build systems that work.
As to science in general, the reason it all sounds complicated is twofold:
First things interect in a very chaotic way. Even if the interactions are simple, when you compose many very small interactions, you find complex behavior.
Secondly, even if the interactions are actually simple, we humans with our Neutonian intuitions have a hard time understanding non-Neutonian interactions.
Hope that helped.