This is not the return of a "bigger better battleship" nor is it even a remotely similar philosophy.
Now, Naval power is measured by speed of deployment and how well you can take a hit.
Given that the new DD(X) class ships will be part of carrier groups, speed of deployment won't be a problem. We can have a whole air wing, Marines, missiles, and artilery off of any coast in a day or two. As for being able to take a hit, the new DD(X) is designed to sit mostly below water and, be as survivable as possible. The thing looks almost more like a submarine than a surface ship. We've learned our lesson from the USS Cole. Besides, nothing is getting close to a carrier group if it's sitting 50 to 100 miles off-shore.
The goal should be things like small fast stealthy (hydrofoil? lifting body?) vtol-aircraft carriers, or missile launchers.
Why? The Navy tried hydrofoil and lifting body. The speed and maneuverability might be fine when fighting small boats in intercoastal waters, but those platforms don't support the firepower or high-seas capability that the Navy needs to have. I have no idea why you think VTOL Carriers are a good idea. Any advantages you might gain are completely outweighed by the reduction in firepower. Given the air and sea power surrounding the modern aircraft carrier, it is virtually invulnerable to anything less than a nuclear attack. The carrier group is designed to attack land based targets and support land-based operations and you can't do that effectively with a small platform.
If you lose one... it's sad, but at least you don't lose a couple hundred crew and a huge investment...
What makes you think that being 50 miles offshore while bombarding targets 100 miles inland puts the destroyer at any greater risk than the ones it already faces? Just how far from shore do you think our carrier group(s) is in the Persian Gulf? The railgun is not designed to replace aircraft or missiles. The new system fills a particular niche in a ship's armament and does it better than any other system can. 1) The ammunition is cheap, small, and inert. This increases survivability in the event that the ship is hit and allows for sustained bombardment at much lower cost without having to resupply. 2)
The munitions are guided. Most people in this thread seem to be overlooking that fact. This isn't a dumb-fire weapon designed to bombard large areas. 3) The munitions are delivered VERY rapidly. Imagine that special forces are on the ground and they have just identified an important enemy position that was previously unknown. 3 minutes later and with no warning, that enemy target is now a 20' crater. The time it takes to scramble an aircraft or wait for a missile could mean that the window of opportunity has passed. We are talking 3 minutes vs. 30 minutes and that's a HUGE difference. 4) Railgun munitions offer deep penetration. No cruise missle is going to penetrate 40' into a hardened target. Railguns can. 5) You can strike without warning. If you are 50 miles from shore and launch a hypersonic projectile, no one is going to know it's coming until it hits. Missiles and aircraft can be detected and shot down or diverted.
Just to re-iterate, the railgun is a supplement to missiles and conventional guns, not a replacement. This is not a return to big/clunky battleship mentality, but a realization of the high accuracy, rapid delivery, deep penetration goals that new weapons are aiming to meet.
... but it's folly to think that they media lobbies are going to let this go unmolested. They have almost unlimited funds (money we've paid for CDs and movies) to fight this.
The "unlimited funds" of the entertainment industry don't come anywhere near the funds of even a single company like Intel. Intel, Sun Microsystems, Verizon, SBC, Qwest, Gateway and BellSouth and the rest of the bill's sponsors make more money combined in a few days than the entertainment industry makes in a year. All of these companies have a big stake in the convergence of computers, networks, and multimedia entertainment and they will NOT be pushed around by the same people who once said that VCRs would bring about the end of the movie theater. Without VOD and P2P file sharing, BellSouth, Verizon, SBC, and Qwest have a harder time selling broadband. If Intel and Gateway can't guarantee that your MP3s, CDs, and DVDs will work in the products they sell, they can't sell multimedia PCs and digital entertainment devices. The big tech companies have to find a way to move their products now that processor speeds and bandwidth are far beyond "good enough" for most everyday tasks (i.e. word processing, email, web surfing). Most of them believe that multimedia is the answer to this problem.
This is just the first volley of fire between the tech companies and the entertainment industry. If Rep. Boucher's bill does not get passed, this battle is going to get very ugly, with both sides throwing around massive amounts of money in Congress.
But the kicker is his anecdotal evidence that there's no market demand for DRM. He whines about how he hit the 3 CPU limit of iTunes DRM, because he forgot to decertify one of his Powerbooks before he sent it back to Apple for repair, and that he already used up his other two authorizations on his other machine, and his mom's machine....he failed to mention several points, like how you can call Apple and they will remove the dead auth for the dead machine, and that Apple extended the limit to 5 CPUs. But that doesn't even account for the fact that Cory was just a damn idiot that didn't deauth his machine before sending it in for service.
Wow, talk about missing the point completely. Does the computer need to be functioning for Apple to remove the cert? I honestly don't know. If the computer needs to be turned on and have information accessed, then he couldn't call Apple for the decert b/c the computer crashed on him. Unless the cert is somehow tied to the serial number of the computer, I doubt he could do anything if the system was dead. He brings up this computer crash scenario several times in the article. Hardware/software failures rendering your media un-playable is not acceptable from the average consumer's point of view. Even assuming that the decert is possible given the dead computer, why should he have to bend over backwards to do something legal with the media that he purchased? Do you honestly think the average consumer wants to worry about certs and decerts to play a music file? The whole point of the article was that the more hoops you make consumers jump through, the less they will buy your product. So, no, it doesn't matter whether the device limit is 3 or 5, either. Besides, it sounds like Mr Doctorow owns far more than 5 devices and is therefore likely to run up against the increased limit at some point.
The ultimate point of his lecture is where he rants about how nobody's calling up manufacturers and begging them for features that restrict rights, therefore there is no market demand for DRM.
No, the point of his lecture is that when faced with a choice between a restrictive (ex: DRM) technology and an open technology, the open technology wins every time. Not only does the open technology win, it winds up being a benefit to the very groups that wanted the restrictions in the first place. He uses the VCR and the home telephone market as examples of this point.
But he overlooks the obvious fact there are whole markets that would not exist if not for DRM. Like iTunes and DVDs, for example. If the manufacturers won't release the products without DRM, and customers want the product, they'll buy it with DRM, therefore, there IS market demand for DRM.
It amazes me that you can criticize Mr. Doctorow for "sloppy thinking" and then make such a lame-brained argument. They buy the product for the product, not for the DRM, obviously. The demand is not for the DRM, it's for the videos and music (to use your example). The customer will only accept the DRM if it does not significantly restrict their ability to use the media they purchased AND there is no non-DRM product on the market. Given the success of DVD-copying software and PlayFair in overcoming CSS/Zone restrictions on DVD and FairPlay on iTunes, respectively, it seems that there are plenty of customers chafing under these rather modest restrictions. Any player(s) that bypassed DRM would trounce the rest of the market. The demand for the non-DRM player would be far greater than the DRM enabled player. THAT is Mr. Doctorow's point.
BTW, if a customer does not know about the DRM restrictions on a piece of media they have purchased, does that constitute a "market for DRM" in your mind?
They're not Linux innovations either.
It's okay for KDE/GNOME to shamelessly rip everything off, but not Microsoft?
The point still stands. Windows 95 popularized the taskbar, start menu, and more. Windows 98 popularized the integrated filesystem/net browser. All are used in KDE, and most in GNOME.
No one claimed that they were Linux innovations. Why are you arguing points that no one in this thread has made? Also, the original post in this thread never said anything about "popularizing" technologies. The discussion is about whether or not MS has innovated by implementing new technologies. BTW, I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that MS popularized the taskbar and integrated browser. Saying that impies that Microsoft has this great taskbar and integrated browser, therefore I use Windows. The reality is closer to I use Windows at work and at home, therefore I use the taskbar and integrated browser that comes with it. That's not a value judgement, just the facts as I see them.
KDE and GNOME copy Windows because they want to steal market share from MS. They say, "look we're just like Windows, but we're free!" IMO, they should be focusing on making the most compelling user experience possible and giving developers a reason to use their environments, not simply trying to copy something they are fighting against.
Microsoft never innovates or popularizes a single idea!
Way to misrepresent the grandparent's point by adding "popularizes" to that statement. You are changing the terms of the argument.
Hang on while I go install KDE with a taskbar, start menu, integrated filesystem/net browser, Mono, etc....
So your real point is that KDE (et al) is copying Microsoft. Mono ports.NET which is mostly a Java re-hash without the cross platform compatability. MS got to design it's languages with plenty of data on Java's strengths, weaknesses, and position in the market before they made their move.
The Start Menu is little more than the Apple menu on a Mac. It looks a bit different and it is on the taskbar instead of a menu on the desktop. The basic idea is the same, though.
As for the "integrated filesystem/net browser," if it even is an innovation, it's terrible. It adds virtually zero useful functionality and exposes my operating system to all sorts of hacks.
The taskbar had been around in various forms before MS made it a part of Windows.
This isn't an anti-Microsoft post. I'm not terribly anti-Microsoft. They make some good products that I use every day. The grandparent is correct, though. MS, despite all of its money and coding talent, is never the first mover on a new technology. They wait for an implementation of an idea to hit the market, assess its viability, and then use it if they see fit. This is actually quite good business sense. There is no first mover advantage anymore (if there ever was one). The first mover invariably makes mistakes and exposes inherent design flaws in their products, exposing them to competition from newer competitors in their market space. I'm surprised that more big corporations have not figured this out.
Have a look at Rackable. Notice that Google is one of their customers. They offer up to 88 half-depth 1U servers in a rack and can even do DC power to cut down on heat generation from such a dense configuration. I'm sure Google is taking advantage of their custom configuration services, too.
The rights of INDIVIDUALS exist independently of government fiat. Corporations are inherently legal, state-sanctioned entities. They have none of the inalienable human rights that our forefathers wrote about. As such, they are subject to a different set of rules, regulations, and freedoms than individuals like you and me.
You may disagree that this dictinction between individuals and corporations SHOULD be in place. However, you should also realize that this is simply the truth of the matter in democratic Western nations. To give corporations and individuals the same rights is to tear down the law as we know it in the Western world.
tiled_rainbows is totally correct about this one. I was a student of philosophy and linguistics and was therefore referring to Philosophical Behaviorism and not Scientific (or Psychological) Behaviorism. I should have made the distinction in my post, especially since the/. crowd is more likely to be familiar with the scientific theory.
Scientific behaviorism sought to redefine the subject and methodology of psychology. The focus was moved from introspection on mental states to the prediction and explaination of behavior. As I understand it, this paradigm was replaced by more cognitive approaches, like those of Chomsky (with whom I am more familiar as I was a student of linguistics). Philsophical behaviorism, OTOH, is essentially a semantic thesis about the meaning or referents of mentalistic expressions. Put succinctly, the theory was that mentalistic expressions (happy, for example) mean nothing more than, and can therefore be translated into, statements describing a set of publicly testable behaviors and/or bodily processes. It's quite a reductionist theory. This was primarily put forward by the logical positivists including Carnap, Ayer, and Hempel. Ryle was also quite an influential figure in this movement with his 1949 book The Concept of Mind in which he put together a less reductionist theory that stated that mental terms don't report on facts. Instead, these terms only rationalize or justify inferences about behavior.
I hope I got the general characterization of Scientific behaviorism right. Like I said, before, it isn't my field of study. But now I think you'll see that we were, in fact talking about different theories. Re: Turing, I think it's pretty clear that the presuppositions behind the Turing Test are consistent with the most reductionist versions of philosophical behaviorism. Turing also came up with the idea at the height of the behaviorist movement, 1950. Given that many look at philosophical behaviorism as a rather embarassing chapter in the history of philosophy (and given the fact that sci. behaviorism has not been in vogue for a long time), it is incredibly surprising to me that the Turing Test is so widely accepted in the CS community.
The idea is that behaviorism completely discounts the existence internal or "private" mental states. The joke is that someone who was not paying much attention to their own behavior might then have to ask someone else to observe their behavior and report on how they were feeling.
It's just a joke, not a logical argument. But I do believe that it humorously exposes the basic intuition that makes behaviorism seem wrong to most people.
Perhaps I've got you all wrong. Maybe you're a functionalist and not a behaviorist. Doesn't really matter. I'm somehow no longer shocked and amazed that people still believe that Turing was right.
Roland has a modeling technology that they call COSM. It's similar to the Line 6 technology, but goes a bit further. Roland not only tries to simulate vintage amps, they simulate microphones and effects boxes as well. It's a pretty simple concept. Roland records a reference device (i.e. a modern mic, amp, or set of monitors) and records the vintage device. Then the differences in the sound characterisics between the two are analyzed and a model of the vintage device is created. Basically, the COSM processor then modifies the signal so that it will match the modeled device when the reference device is used.
I haven't been able to find a good link for the COSM modelling. Just go to http://www.rolandus.com
> False: The Lucas structure is not "right under the 101 freeway".
It's very close to the highway and its on ramp. "Right under it" is just a hyperbolic figure of speech.
> False: The only thing to do on the site was to build a newer, bigger structure with more traffic demands on already clogged roads.
I never said that. I only said that the Lucas complex was not ruining some pristine part of the park.
BTW, it would be great if you could provide some links or other references to the studies about traffic, stress on infrastructure, etc. I understand what you are saying, but don't expect me to take and Anonymous poster at his word. I'd like to learn more. Enlighten me.
> False: The Lucas development has no impact on the surrounding area. The roads are not currently designed for the additional traffic. Nor is there adequate police or fire support in the area. (etc, etc.)
This, I think is the best part of the argument against the project. I really would like to see more info if you have it.
>True: This park does not generate the same emotional impact as a Yosemite, or Yellowstone National Park. >False: The park is therefore fair game for the Republican anti-environment policies.
Jesus, where did you get that line of argument? I certainly didn't imply anything of the sort. So, have there been studies assessing the potential environmental impact of the Lucas facility? Perhaps the increase in traffic would create such problems. Overall, I don't see it as an environmental issue. The problem here is that the complex sets a bad precedent for use of public park lands and screws over the city government.
As a resident of San Francisco, I feel I should point out some things that were not made clear in the article.
First, the Lucas facility will not be in any of the beautiful wooded park land that most people associate with Presidio National Park. Rather, it is right under the 101 freeway overpass and built on the site of an old Army hospital that has been nothing more than pavement and abandoned buildings for decades. It is on the edge of the park and will not affect any major throughfares into or through the park. None of the parks wilderness is threatened by the project.
You bring up a good point about paranoia and security. The Lucas companies are very security conscious to the point of paranoia. Granted, some of that is justified as they have had a great deal of problems with people trying to break into their facilities, fans rummaging through the garbage, etc. I don't see security being as much an issue as it is easier to secure a small group of tightly knit bulidings than many locations in Marin that share office space or parking lots with other businesses. The complex doesn't envellop any major roads into the park, so I doubt that there would be any effect of park traffic due to security concerns.
Overall, I think the move is a positive one for the Presidio. They get a non-polluting business on the edge of their property to help keep them self sufficient. None of the park will be ruined by the development and access to the park should not be affected. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
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Given that the new DD(X) class ships will be part of carrier groups, speed of deployment won't be a problem. We can have a whole air wing, Marines, missiles, and artilery off of any coast in a day or two. As for being able to take a hit, the new DD(X) is designed to sit mostly below water and, be as survivable as possible. The thing looks almost more like a submarine than a surface ship. We've learned our lesson from the USS Cole. Besides, nothing is getting close to a carrier group if it's sitting 50 to 100 miles off-shore.
Why? The Navy tried hydrofoil and lifting body. The speed and maneuverability might be fine when fighting small boats in intercoastal waters, but those platforms don't support the firepower or high-seas capability that the Navy needs to have. I have no idea why you think VTOL Carriers are a good idea. Any advantages you might gain are completely outweighed by the reduction in firepower. Given the air and sea power surrounding the modern aircraft carrier, it is virtually invulnerable to anything less than a nuclear attack. The carrier group is designed to attack land based targets and support land-based operations and you can't do that effectively with a small platform.
What makes you think that being 50 miles offshore while bombarding targets 100 miles inland puts the destroyer at any greater risk than the ones it already faces? Just how far from shore do you think our carrier group(s) is in the Persian Gulf? The railgun is not designed to replace aircraft or missiles. The new system fills a particular niche in a ship's armament and does it better than any other system can. 1) The ammunition is cheap, small, and inert. This increases survivability in the event that the ship is hit and allows for sustained bombardment at much lower cost without having to resupply. 2) The munitions are guided. Most people in this thread seem to be overlooking that fact. This isn't a dumb-fire weapon designed to bombard large areas. 3) The munitions are delivered VERY rapidly. Imagine that special forces are on the ground and they have just identified an important enemy position that was previously unknown. 3 minutes later and with no warning, that enemy target is now a 20' crater. The time it takes to scramble an aircraft or wait for a missile could mean that the window of opportunity has passed. We are talking 3 minutes vs. 30 minutes and that's a HUGE difference. 4) Railgun munitions offer deep penetration. No cruise missle is going to penetrate 40' into a hardened target. Railguns can. 5) You can strike without warning. If you are 50 miles from shore and launch a hypersonic projectile, no one is going to know it's coming until it hits. Missiles and aircraft can be detected and shot down or diverted.
Just to re-iterate, the railgun is a supplement to missiles and conventional guns, not a replacement. This is not a return to big/clunky battleship mentality, but a realization of the high accuracy, rapid delivery, deep penetration goals that new weapons are aiming to meet.
The "unlimited funds" of the entertainment industry don't come anywhere near the funds of even a single company like Intel. Intel, Sun Microsystems, Verizon, SBC, Qwest, Gateway and BellSouth and the rest of the bill's sponsors make more money combined in a few days than the entertainment industry makes in a year. All of these companies have a big stake in the convergence of computers, networks, and multimedia entertainment and they will NOT be pushed around by the same people who once said that VCRs would bring about the end of the movie theater. Without VOD and P2P file sharing, BellSouth, Verizon, SBC, and Qwest have a harder time selling broadband. If Intel and Gateway can't guarantee that your MP3s, CDs, and DVDs will work in the products they sell, they can't sell multimedia PCs and digital entertainment devices. The big tech companies have to find a way to move their products now that processor speeds and bandwidth are far beyond "good enough" for most everyday tasks (i.e. word processing, email, web surfing). Most of them believe that multimedia is the answer to this problem.
This is just the first volley of fire between the tech companies and the entertainment industry. If Rep. Boucher's bill does not get passed, this battle is going to get very ugly, with both sides throwing around massive amounts of money in Congress.
Wow, talk about missing the point completely. Does the computer need to be functioning for Apple to remove the cert? I honestly don't know. If the computer needs to be turned on and have information accessed, then he couldn't call Apple for the decert b/c the computer crashed on him. Unless the cert is somehow tied to the serial number of the computer, I doubt he could do anything if the system was dead. He brings up this computer crash scenario several times in the article. Hardware/software failures rendering your media un-playable is not acceptable from the average consumer's point of view. Even assuming that the decert is possible given the dead computer, why should he have to bend over backwards to do something legal with the media that he purchased? Do you honestly think the average consumer wants to worry about certs and decerts to play a music file? The whole point of the article was that the more hoops you make consumers jump through, the less they will buy your product. So, no, it doesn't matter whether the device limit is 3 or 5, either. Besides, it sounds like Mr Doctorow owns far more than 5 devices and is therefore likely to run up against the increased limit at some point.
No, the point of his lecture is that when faced with a choice between a restrictive (ex: DRM) technology and an open technology, the open technology wins every time. Not only does the open technology win, it winds up being a benefit to the very groups that wanted the restrictions in the first place. He uses the VCR and the home telephone market as examples of this point.
It amazes me that you can criticize Mr. Doctorow for "sloppy thinking" and then make such a lame-brained argument. They buy the product for the product, not for the DRM, obviously. The demand is not for the DRM, it's for the videos and music (to use your example). The customer will only accept the DRM if it does not significantly restrict their ability to use the media they purchased AND there is no non-DRM product on the market. Given the success of DVD-copying software and PlayFair in overcoming CSS/Zone restrictions on DVD and FairPlay on iTunes, respectively, it seems that there are plenty of customers chafing under these rather modest restrictions. Any player(s) that bypassed DRM would trounce the rest of the market. The demand for the non-DRM player would be far greater than the DRM enabled player. THAT is Mr. Doctorow's point.
BTW, if a customer does not know about the DRM restrictions on a piece of media they have purchased, does that constitute a "market for DRM" in your mind?
No one claimed that they were Linux innovations. Why are you arguing points that no one in this thread has made? Also, the original post in this thread never said anything about "popularizing" technologies. The discussion is about whether or not MS has innovated by implementing new technologies. BTW, I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that MS popularized the taskbar and integrated browser. Saying that impies that Microsoft has this great taskbar and integrated browser, therefore I use Windows. The reality is closer to I use Windows at work and at home, therefore I use the taskbar and integrated browser that comes with it. That's not a value judgement, just the facts as I see them.
KDE and GNOME copy Windows because they want to steal market share from MS. They say, "look we're just like Windows, but we're free!" IMO, they should be focusing on making the most compelling user experience possible and giving developers a reason to use their environments, not simply trying to copy something they are fighting against.
Microsoft never innovates or popularizes a single idea!
Way to misrepresent the grandparent's point by adding "popularizes" to that statement. You are changing the terms of the argument.
Hang on while I go install KDE with a taskbar, start menu, integrated filesystem/net browser, Mono, etc....
So your real point is that KDE (et al) is copying Microsoft. Mono ports .NET which is mostly a Java re-hash without the cross platform compatability. MS got to design it's languages with plenty of data on Java's strengths, weaknesses, and position in the market before they made their move.
The Start Menu is little more than the Apple menu on a Mac. It looks a bit different and it is on the taskbar instead of a menu on the desktop. The basic idea is the same, though.
As for the "integrated filesystem/net browser," if it even is an innovation, it's terrible. It adds virtually zero useful functionality and exposes my operating system to all sorts of hacks.
The taskbar had been around in various forms before MS made it a part of Windows.
This isn't an anti-Microsoft post. I'm not terribly anti-Microsoft. They make some good products that I use every day. The grandparent is correct, though. MS, despite all of its money and coding talent, is never the first mover on a new technology. They wait for an implementation of an idea to hit the market, assess its viability, and then use it if they see fit. This is actually quite good business sense. There is no first mover advantage anymore (if there ever was one). The first mover invariably makes mistakes and exposes inherent design flaws in their products, exposing them to competition from newer competitors in their market space. I'm surprised that more big corporations have not figured this out.
Dr. Nick: Inflammable means flammable? What a country!
Have a look at Rackable. Notice that Google is one of their customers. They offer up to 88 half-depth 1U servers in a rack and can even do DC power to cut down on heat generation from such a dense configuration. I'm sure Google is taking advantage of their custom configuration services, too.
The rights of INDIVIDUALS exist independently of government fiat. Corporations are inherently legal, state-sanctioned entities. They have none of the inalienable human rights that our forefathers wrote about. As such, they are subject to a different set of rules, regulations, and freedoms than individuals like you and me.
You may disagree that this dictinction between individuals and corporations SHOULD be in place. However, you should also realize that this is simply the truth of the matter in democratic Western nations. To give corporations and individuals the same rights is to tear down the law as we know it in the Western world.
$> man woman
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
$> man woman Segmentation fault (core dumped)
tiled_rainbows is totally correct about this one. I was a student of philosophy and linguistics and was therefore referring to Philosophical Behaviorism and not Scientific (or Psychological) Behaviorism. I should have made the distinction in my post, especially since the /. crowd is more likely to be familiar with the scientific theory.
Scientific behaviorism sought to redefine the subject and methodology of psychology. The focus was moved from introspection on mental states to the prediction and explaination of behavior. As I understand it, this paradigm was replaced by more cognitive approaches, like those of Chomsky (with whom I am more familiar as I was a student of linguistics). Philsophical behaviorism, OTOH, is essentially a semantic thesis about the meaning or referents of mentalistic expressions. Put succinctly, the theory was that mentalistic expressions (happy, for example) mean nothing more than, and can therefore be translated into, statements describing a set of publicly testable behaviors and/or bodily processes. It's quite a reductionist theory. This was primarily put forward by the logical positivists including Carnap, Ayer, and Hempel. Ryle was also quite an influential figure in this movement with his 1949 book The Concept of Mind in which he put together a less reductionist theory that stated that mental terms don't report on facts. Instead, these terms only rationalize or justify inferences about behavior.
I hope I got the general characterization of Scientific behaviorism right. Like I said, before, it isn't my field of study. But now I think you'll see that we were, in fact talking about different theories. Re: Turing, I think it's pretty clear that the presuppositions behind the Turing Test are consistent with the most reductionist versions of philosophical behaviorism. Turing also came up with the idea at the height of the behaviorist movement, 1950. Given that many look at philosophical behaviorism as a rather embarassing chapter in the history of philosophy (and given the fact that sci. behaviorism has not been in vogue for a long time), it is incredibly surprising to me that the Turing Test is so widely accepted in the CS community.
The idea is that behaviorism completely discounts the existence internal or "private" mental states. The joke is that someone who was not paying much attention to their own behavior might then have to ask someone else to observe their behavior and report on how they were feeling.
It's just a joke, not a logical argument. But I do believe that it humorously exposes the basic intuition that makes behaviorism seem wrong to most people.
Perhaps I've got you all wrong. Maybe you're a functionalist and not a behaviorist. Doesn't really matter. I'm somehow no longer shocked and amazed that people still believe that Turing was right.
That pretty much sums up why I think behaviorism and the Turing Test are complete crap.
Roland has a modeling technology that they call COSM. It's similar to the Line 6 technology, but goes a bit further. Roland not only tries to simulate vintage amps, they simulate microphones and effects boxes as well. It's a pretty simple concept. Roland records a reference device (i.e. a modern mic, amp, or set of monitors) and records the vintage device. Then the differences in the sound characterisics between the two are analyzed and a model of the vintage device is created. Basically, the COSM processor then modifies the signal so that it will match the modeled device when the reference device is used. I haven't been able to find a good link for the COSM modelling. Just go to http://www.rolandus.com
> False: The Lucas structure is not "right under the 101 freeway".
It's very close to the highway and its on ramp. "Right under it" is just a hyperbolic figure of speech.
> False: The only thing to do on the site was to build a newer, bigger structure with more traffic demands on already clogged roads.
I never said that. I only said that the Lucas complex was not ruining some pristine part of the park.
BTW, it would be great if you could provide some links or other references to the studies about traffic, stress on infrastructure, etc. I understand what you are saying, but don't expect me to take and Anonymous poster at his word. I'd like to learn more. Enlighten me.
> False: The Lucas development has no impact on the surrounding area. The roads are not currently designed for the additional traffic. Nor is there adequate police or fire support in the area. (etc, etc.)
This, I think is the best part of the argument against the project. I really would like to see more info if you have it.
>True: This park does not generate the same emotional impact as a Yosemite, or Yellowstone National Park.
>False: The park is therefore fair game for the Republican anti-environment policies.
Jesus, where did you get that line of argument? I certainly didn't imply anything of the sort. So, have there been studies assessing the potential environmental impact of the Lucas facility? Perhaps the increase in traffic would create such problems. Overall, I don't see it as an environmental issue. The problem here is that the complex sets a bad precedent for use of public park lands and screws over the city government.
-------
As a resident of San Francisco, I feel I should point out some things that were not made clear in the article. First, the Lucas facility will not be in any of the beautiful wooded park land that most people associate with Presidio National Park. Rather, it is right under the 101 freeway overpass and built on the site of an old Army hospital that has been nothing more than pavement and abandoned buildings for decades. It is on the edge of the park and will not affect any major throughfares into or through the park. None of the parks wilderness is threatened by the project. You bring up a good point about paranoia and security. The Lucas companies are very security conscious to the point of paranoia. Granted, some of that is justified as they have had a great deal of problems with people trying to break into their facilities, fans rummaging through the garbage, etc. I don't see security being as much an issue as it is easier to secure a small group of tightly knit bulidings than many locations in Marin that share office space or parking lots with other businesses. The complex doesn't envellop any major roads into the park, so I doubt that there would be any effect of park traffic due to security concerns. Overall, I think the move is a positive one for the Presidio. They get a non-polluting business on the edge of their property to help keep them self sufficient. None of the park will be ruined by the development and access to the park should not be affected. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.