Another interesting application, if they check further upstream, could be identifying areas containing drug labs. Looking for high concentrations of drugs and various manufacturing by-products in the waste stream could identify neighbourhoods containing labs. Well, if I understand you correctly, I don't think you can really 'check upstream' for drug labs, because the drugs aren't flowing downhill. They enter the home from the highway and road system, not from the upstream water supply. If you have drug use in one area, I don't think you can extrapolate from water flow where exactly the drugs came from; you'd be better off looking at traffic pattern maps.
You probably can identify areas with labs based on the methods they used to survey drug usage, but I don't think you're going to be led to the lab-containing areas by noting drug usage patterns in neighborhoods. I would think the best bet would be to do a random survey of sewer systems, to chance upon lab-containing areas.
I haven't had time to think it through that well either, and now that you mention it, there is a plan in The Netherlands to make school books free for high school children. My cynical reaction to that is that the school book publishers will raise their prices, and only a few people in the government will notice it while the publishers laugh all the way to the bank. Your cynical reaction is to think of the Netherlands as the USSR, with only one book publisher in the whole country?
IIRC, something like this went on with the history of Mad Magazine. Mad used to be a comic book, and as such, it came under the authority of the Comics Code Authority ( or some such body -- google it, I'm late for work ). William Gaines became particularly frustrated during a hearing where the Authority board had a problem with sweat on the brow of a black astronaut. So he made Mad into a magazine instead of a comic book, and continued on his merry way.
I just brushed over the wikipedia article, so get the real scoop there.
Anyway, instead of calling this a video game, maybe they could publish "interactive graphic videos" or something like that?
Also, while the wiki template is open, large parts of the content are very much not open in any true sense. You can very easily get your IP address banned if some Wikinazi disagrees with your opinion, no matter who knowledgeable or correct your opinion is. Entire countries have had their IP addresses banned. This in not in any way open by my definition. Isn't this a problem with any open source software project? Couldn't Linus decide to ban a particular person or even a whole country? And then, isn't the open source response, "Fork it" ?
Bin Laden stated that his goals were to get the United States to withdraw from Saudi Arabia and to bankrupt the US. We withdrew from Saudi Arabia in 2003 and it look like the bankruptcy might be on its way this year or next.
I'd say Bin Laden has done a bang-up job, considering he was just a millionaire without any political power or infrastructure. That, and some help from the Bush team's mismanagement.
Explain your position first, and then I'll explain mine. You are claiming that the only way the terrorist could have won is if they either took over the US government, or at least won the majority of seats in the legislature?
Actually, they set up the United States, which was a government composed of sovereign territories or states. It predates the European Union by some 250+ years.
That's just passing the buck. Representatives to a state legislature are not wiser than representatives to a federal legislature. No, but they are more responsive to the public. And it is easier to get amendments to state constitutions proposed and passed. Why, we passed one here in Ohio back in '06!
The interests of one state are not different than the interests of another state if we are to have a United States. Well, that's not the system that the framers of the constitution set up. They have three different sovereignties: the local government, the state, and the federal government. Each state has its own constitution, and is supposedly sovereign.
The only way this statement could possibly be true is if the terrorists you mention are actually elected U.S. officials. Otherwise, you are either fooled or trying to fool others.
If the goal of the terrorists were to change our way of life, and that has happened ( because of our reaction to their terror attacks ), then how haven't they won? In other words, didn't they accomplish what they set out to do with terrorism?
You're totally correct, but I don't really want to say anything that would dampen the vigilience of the American people against tyranny. For example, In Hussein's Iraq, women were allowed to drive cars, walk around alone, go to school, become doctors, etc. He had a secular progressive state in a region full of Islamic theocracies and kingdoms. However, that doesn't mean that Hussein wasn't a brutal dictator who ruled with fear, megalomania, torture, secret police, etc. etc.
I don't agree with all of his politics, especially his stances on abortion and public health care... I don't agree with Ron Paul about a lot of things, either.
But the wonderful thing about him is that, as a libertarian, he believes that the federal government has no role in deciding these issues. He would leave them up to the states to decide. In favor of women's reproductive rights? Create a petition to get the matter into your state legislature or constitution. Want single payer health care? Pressure your state representatives, or, again, get enough signatures to get it on your state's ballots.
Wow, people might actually start to feel like we have a representational democracy again, instead of a bunch of Washington insiders bought by corporate lobbyists!
The line is basically at the point where your arms become ordinance; in other words, too big to serve as a personal defense against armed individuals. I'm fine with you owning a.50 cal browning, but I have an issue with mortars and heavy artillery. Is this your personal idea, or can you justify it based on the wording of the second amendment?
Algorithms can be written for all these things, because all it takes is a team of a brilliant programmer and a Savannah expert... who can *explain* what he is doing. Then it won't seem like intelligence, because a computer can do it. I'd like to see the algorithm that can point out the trail in an image of a trail meandering through a meadow and then into the woods.
Part of the problem seems to be that all these algorithms are one trick ponies. Yes, we can make an algorithm that solves this specific problem ( trail in woods, trail in meadow, trail in snow, convince husband he's the father, negotiate with brother for heir to cheifhood ) but those algorithms don't do very well once they are tried outside of the specific domain that they are designed to solve.
However nervous systems seem to be very robust when encountering new situations. For instance, the human mind supposedly did most of it's evolution in the African Savannah. 200,000 years ago, people were presumably using the same trail-finding algorithm to walk through the Savannah, the brush, or the forest. However, at some point, humans migrated out of Africa and started having to deal with snow. Now you have a problem that a trail-finding algorithm might have a problem with. In the forest, the trail is darker than the non-trail areas of the image -- compacted, smoothed soil reflects less light than the surrounding vegetation. Once snow has fallen, the trail is now *brighter* than the rest of the image. Did humans evolve a new trail-finding algorithm in their brain to navigate snowy landscapes? Or were they using the same trail-finding algorithm that evolved on the African Savannah, or are they using an even more general, more powerful image processing ability?
So, I do think that human intelligence is composed of various specialized algorithms, but I think that modern computer algorithms are *more* specialized than human algorithms. For instance, face-recognition algorithms often fail when they are presented with image of faces from different angles, different lighting, different orientations, or even other animals, such as gorillas, chimps, and dogs. You will get an answer, but it will be something rediculous, such as identifying the gorilla face as 'Mary'. Forget about asking a computer to tell whether an image is of a cloudy sky, the ocean, a human being, an office building, a forest, a mix of all or some, etc. However, even relatively stupid animals such as pigeons, who have a tiny brain compared to us, can recognize the sky, trees, and buildings in images -- even buildings and trees they have never seen before. Organic nervous systems seem to have a good general ability -- they can adapt to new problems, rather than the specific abilities of computer algorithms.
I've noticed that a number of these RIAA cases have some people who are choosing to defend themselves. More than I would have imagined. I don't know the specifics of each individual motivation, but I always felt that representing yourself was somehow risky. Perhaps it's lawyers seeking to defend their business by planting the meme that 'a lawyer who represents themself has a fool for a client' -- that you can't separate your emotions from the case well enough to adequately represent yourself? If a lawyer can't represent themself, what hope does a common person have? I can understand representing yourself in a small-claims case, but against a corporation with actual lawyers?
But if common people are representing themselves in cases against the presumably well-financed and well-lawyered RIAA, it gives me some amount of belief that the justice system is ultimately just, or basically fair, and that someone who can present their case in a basic and simple enough manner might actually win. I don't know, maybe I'm getting the wrong idea from these cases, but it gives me hope that if I'm ever summoned to court against a giant corporation, I might actually stand a chance instead of going broke even if I come out a winner.
Does anyone else sense that a surprising number of these cases are being won by people who are defending themself? Why would it be that people are choosing to do so ( are the RIAA cases that easy to knock down ), and is it more than typical for average cases?
Man, I'm really hoping that satellite photography is something that's being over-sold to your average law enforcement as some kind of techno-magical panacea that doesn't really live up to its claims, rather than an all-purpose 'know everything about everybody' that conspiracy theorists fear. Even if it doesn't completely allow you 'total information awareness', even partial law-enforcement awareness might be a gigantic invasion of privacy.
You have a vastly overinflated idea of a) how much detail can be seen from satellites, and b) of how thorough the coverage is. (Much of Google's 'satellite' coverage actually comes from aerial photography.) And even so, the top of one car looks pretty much like another. So then, why would law enforcement want to get a hold of this data?
I would argue that computers have been 'bred' or designed to solve the same problems that the hunter gatherer had to solve. Walking down and office hallway, I would argue, is a vast simplification of the find-and-navigate-a-forest-trail task. Human face recognition in standard office lighting is a simplification of the find-the-tiger-in-the-tall-grass task.
However, unlike human or gophers, they suck at it.
Since powerful, practical, affordable computers were introduced, we've been promised good AI. Things that are notoriously difficult for people, such as memorizing the phone book, or factoring large numbers, was no challenge at all for a computer. So if the things are difficult for people are easy for computers, surely the things that easy to the point of being unconscious for us must be *trivial* for a computer, right?
However, that turns out not to be the case. Face recognition, voice recognition, walking ( on any number of legs ), recognizing a 'tree' or a 'river' in an image -- we still don't have a computer that can do those kinds of tasks. So, as it turns out, things that are hard for us ( math, chess ) are easy for computers, while things that are easy for us ( walking, talking ) are hard for computers. That leads me to conclude that the human mind and computers are fundamentally different types of devices. I'm not claiming that the mind is a spirit, or any nonsense such as that. All I'm claiming is that we don't (yet) understand what kind of device the mind is.
The test we're trying to create is a binary one for intelligence , not a measure of how much intelligence.
Ancestor claimed that a test consisting of communication over some IM txtmsg medium in English was a better test for general intelligence than one based on hunting, because it was less bound to human evolutionary experience. I argue that a communicating over IM txtmsg in English is *more specific* to human intelligence than hunting. We have lots of intelligence species on Earth that hunt; however, we know of only one that can use txtmsg. By ancestor's test criteria, we would have to claim that dolphins, whales, wolves and jaguars aren't intelligent.
This strikes me as a much fairer way to judge intelligence than looking for things entirely specific to human development. You think that communicating over text is a better proof of general intelligence than hunting? I would guess that more intelligent animals ( both at home an extra-terrestrially ) hunt than carry on deep conversations. I would say that holding deep conversations via some kind of text message medium is *more* specific to human development than hunting or migrating across a planet.
Slashdot Mirror
You probably can identify areas with labs based on the methods they used to survey drug usage, but I don't think you're going to be led to the lab-containing areas by noting drug usage patterns in neighborhoods. I would think the best bet would be to do a random survey of sewer systems, to chance upon lab-containing areas.
"The Sky Channel" "The Outside Channel" or "Station Reality"...!
IIRC, something like this went on with the history of Mad Magazine. Mad used to be a comic book, and as such, it came under the authority of the Comics Code Authority ( or some such body -- google it, I'm late for work ). William Gaines became particularly frustrated during a hearing where the Authority board had a problem with sweat on the brow of a black astronaut. So he made Mad into a magazine instead of a comic book, and continued on his merry way.
I just brushed over the wikipedia article, so get the real scoop there.
Anyway, instead of calling this a video game, maybe they could publish "interactive graphic videos" or something like that?
Absolutely wrong. He has said time and time again, that abortion is for the states to decide.
Bin Laden stated that his goals were to get the United States to withdraw from Saudi Arabia and to bankrupt the US. We withdrew from Saudi Arabia in 2003 and it look like the bankruptcy might be on its way this year or next.
I'd say Bin Laden has done a bang-up job, considering he was just a millionaire without any political power or infrastructure. That, and some help from the Bush team's mismanagement.
It kind of is for people who have never heard of wikipedia before, or who don't really understand it.
Explain your position first, and then I'll explain mine. You are claiming that the only way the terrorist could have won is if they either took over the US government, or at least won the majority of seats in the legislature?
Actually, they set up the United States, which was a government composed of sovereign territories or states. It predates the European Union by some 250+ years.
If the goal of the terrorists were to change our way of life, and that has happened ( because of our reaction to their terror attacks ), then how haven't they won? In other words, didn't they accomplish what they set out to do with terrorism?
Otherwise known as the War on Terror. The terrorists won; we have lost our freedoms. They have changed our way of life.
You're totally correct, but I don't really want to say anything that would dampen the vigilience of the American people against tyranny. For example, In Hussein's Iraq, women were allowed to drive cars, walk around alone, go to school, become doctors, etc. He had a secular progressive state in a region full of Islamic theocracies and kingdoms. However, that doesn't mean that Hussein wasn't a brutal dictator who ruled with fear, megalomania, torture, secret police, etc. etc.
But the wonderful thing about him is that, as a libertarian, he believes that the federal government has no role in deciding these issues. He would leave them up to the states to decide. In favor of women's reproductive rights? Create a petition to get the matter into your state legislature or constitution. Want single payer health care? Pressure your state representatives, or, again, get enough signatures to get it on your state's ballots.
Wow, people might actually start to feel like we have a representational democracy again, instead of a bunch of Washington insiders bought by corporate lobbyists!
Part of the problem seems to be that all these algorithms are one trick ponies. Yes, we can make an algorithm that solves this specific problem ( trail in woods, trail in meadow, trail in snow, convince husband he's the father, negotiate with brother for heir to cheifhood ) but those algorithms don't do very well once they are tried outside of the specific domain that they are designed to solve.
However nervous systems seem to be very robust when encountering new situations. For instance, the human mind supposedly did most of it's evolution in the African Savannah. 200,000 years ago, people were presumably using the same trail-finding algorithm to walk through the Savannah, the brush, or the forest. However, at some point, humans migrated out of Africa and started having to deal with snow. Now you have a problem that a trail-finding algorithm might have a problem with. In the forest, the trail is darker than the non-trail areas of the image -- compacted, smoothed soil reflects less light than the surrounding vegetation. Once snow has fallen, the trail is now *brighter* than the rest of the image. Did humans evolve a new trail-finding algorithm in their brain to navigate snowy landscapes? Or were they using the same trail-finding algorithm that evolved on the African Savannah, or are they using an even more general, more powerful image processing ability?
So, I do think that human intelligence is composed of various specialized algorithms, but I think that modern computer algorithms are *more* specialized than human algorithms. For instance, face-recognition algorithms often fail when they are presented with image of faces from different angles, different lighting, different orientations, or even other animals, such as gorillas, chimps, and dogs. You will get an answer, but it will be something rediculous, such as identifying the gorilla face as 'Mary'. Forget about asking a computer to tell whether an image is of a cloudy sky, the ocean, a human being, an office building, a forest, a mix of all or some, etc. However, even relatively stupid animals such as pigeons, who have a tiny brain compared to us, can recognize the sky, trees, and buildings in images -- even buildings and trees they have never seen before. Organic nervous systems seem to have a good general ability -- they can adapt to new problems, rather than the specific abilities of computer algorithms.
I've noticed that a number of these RIAA cases have some people who are choosing to defend themselves. More than I would have imagined. I don't know the specifics of each individual motivation, but I always felt that representing yourself was somehow risky. Perhaps it's lawyers seeking to defend their business by planting the meme that 'a lawyer who represents themself has a fool for a client' -- that you can't separate your emotions from the case well enough to adequately represent yourself? If a lawyer can't represent themself, what hope does a common person have? I can understand representing yourself in a small-claims case, but against a corporation with actual lawyers?
But if common people are representing themselves in cases against the presumably well-financed and well-lawyered RIAA, it gives me some amount of belief that the justice system is ultimately just, or basically fair, and that someone who can present their case in a basic and simple enough manner might actually win. I don't know, maybe I'm getting the wrong idea from these cases, but it gives me hope that if I'm ever summoned to court against a giant corporation, I might actually stand a chance instead of going broke even if I come out a winner.
Does anyone else sense that a surprising number of these cases are being won by people who are defending themself? Why would it be that people are choosing to do so ( are the RIAA cases that easy to knock down ), and is it more than typical for average cases?
Man, I'm really hoping that satellite photography is something that's being over-sold to your average law enforcement as some kind of techno-magical panacea that doesn't really live up to its claims, rather than an all-purpose 'know everything about everybody' that conspiracy theorists fear. Even if it doesn't completely allow you 'total information awareness', even partial law-enforcement awareness might be a gigantic invasion of privacy.
Can you point me in the direction of some more resources for this?
I would argue that computers have been 'bred' or designed to solve the same problems that the hunter gatherer had to solve. Walking down and office hallway, I would argue, is a vast simplification of the find-and-navigate-a-forest-trail task. Human face recognition in standard office lighting is a simplification of the find-the-tiger-in-the-tall-grass task. However, unlike human or gophers, they suck at it.
Since powerful, practical, affordable computers were introduced, we've been promised good AI. Things that are notoriously difficult for people, such as memorizing the phone book, or factoring large numbers, was no challenge at all for a computer. So if the things are difficult for people are easy for computers, surely the things that easy to the point of being unconscious for us must be *trivial* for a computer, right?
However, that turns out not to be the case. Face recognition, voice recognition, walking ( on any number of legs ), recognizing a 'tree' or a 'river' in an image -- we still don't have a computer that can do those kinds of tasks. So, as it turns out, things that are hard for us ( math, chess ) are easy for computers, while things that are easy for us ( walking, talking ) are hard for computers. That leads me to conclude that the human mind and computers are fundamentally different types of devices. I'm not claiming that the mind is a spirit, or any nonsense such as that. All I'm claiming is that we don't (yet) understand what kind of device the mind is.
Stephen Hawking does not have a healthy nervous system.
And anyways, isn't he able to take flights across the globe? Does that not count as migration?
The test we're trying to create is a binary one for intelligence , not a measure of how much intelligence.
Ancestor claimed that a test consisting of communication over some IM txtmsg medium in English was a better test for general intelligence than one based on hunting, because it was less bound to human evolutionary experience. I argue that a communicating over IM txtmsg in English is *more specific* to human intelligence than hunting. We have lots of intelligence species on Earth that hunt; however, we know of only one that can use txtmsg. By ancestor's test criteria, we would have to claim that dolphins, whales, wolves and jaguars aren't intelligent.