"So how would you design a seamless interface between sensors and actuators to the high-level code?"
Personally, I would use Perrone Robotics' MAX platform. http://www.perronerobotics.com/ We're already using it in planes, an entry for the DARPA Grand Challenge last go-round, and a new entry for the Urban Challenge this go round. http://www.teamjefferson.com/
Actually, I don't use slashdot's RSS implementation because it doesn't conform to my customized homepage choices. If I didn't have a lot of customization there, slashdot's RSS feed would be great. As it is, it's not worth having for me.
And the point is not that RSS would bring stories faster, which it won't, as it's pull and limited by convention to twice an hour automatic checks. The point it that it's far easier to keep track of a large number of sites that are on different and sometimes obscure update schedules. For the people who only check a couple of sites per day, of course they don't get RSS, because it makes no sense for them. On the other hand, I have hundreds of sites that I can check for changes every half an hour with no work on my part. I scan the headlines of all the new stories, and the things that interest me I read the synopsis. Of the remaining, the things that interest me I read the full story. This lets me keep up on what's happening without overloading myself on things I'm disinterested in.
I would suggest trying the experiment with happiness as a condition versus just gaming. People who are happy have a tendency to do all sorts of things that don't involve critical thinking, so it's possible that this would also modify their tone choosing ways.
Exactly. The problem is not getting it to work at all. The problem is not seriously shortening the life span of the hard drive by opening it up in an unclean environment.
Specifically, it's a word for downloading binary content (generally large binary content, usually audio, video) from the internet in a way that doesn't require active user intervention after subscribing, using a pull model rather than a push model. So emailing an MP3 would not be a podcast, because it's a push technology, but if you use a pull technology such as RSS, Atom, or some manner of SOAP application to direct the download, then it would be a podcast. (Of course, people misuse the word, so it may become more generic than that, but properly, it's as I've written above).
The point is that it's such an easier interface for the end user that it has become popular in its own rights. Technically, television is movies, just in your home and not in a movie theatre, but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be another word describing it because the interface is different.
And what's with the attitude that a dictionary is some sort of sacred document that should only include words that you think means something special? Is it the third-grade teacher mentality, which says that "ain't" isn't a word, despite its common usage? The great thing about dictionaries is that they can include all forms of words, and give you the proper instances for use. In the example above, the Oxford English Dictionary says:
ain't - informal contraction of
am not; are not; is not : if it ain't broke, don't fix it. [ORIGIN: originally representing London dialect.]
has not; have not : they ain't got nothing to say. [ORIGIN: from dialect hain't.]
USAGE The use of ain't was widespread in the 18th century and is still perfectly normal in many dialects and informal contexts in both North America and Britain. Today, however, it does not form part of standard English and should not be used in formal contexts.
A proper dictionary should include words that people want to understand the definition of. If everyone is using the word podcast, and you don't know what it is, a dictionary might be a good place to look it up, especially nowadays when dictionary information is available online so can be distributed faster.
It would be foolish to get a CS degree for the sole purpose of composing music for video games. However, if he wants to make some sort of generative music system such as the world has never seen, then a CS degree might be worthwhile, though a cognitive science might be somewhat more useful, and working with someone who has done generative music (Thomas Dolby comes to mind, for some reason) would make more sense still.
A: "Intelligence is what IQ Tests Measure." (Yeah, I know it's not actually funny)
Basically, the psychologists make this construct they term intelligence quotient, and they try to make a test that will measure the construct. If they can get reliability across a number of tests, plus a few more things, then you have a number that you can attribute to "Intelligence," which is really handy if you want to make a test that determines if men or women have more of this "Intelligence".
That's pretty much it. Oh, okay, that's not all, but in effect, you see if anything else correlates with Intelligence, and if so, then you'll be relatively safe in betting that, whatever positively correlates with it, means that other correlations will similarly relate. So if people who are more intelligent are more likely to get a particular neurodegenerative disease, and men have more intelligence than women, then chances are, more men will have this disease than women.
However, presuming that Intelligence means anything other than what it correlates with in tests is foolish. It's not necessarily a predictor of success, it's not necessarily a predictor of the ability to solve problems other than the ones covered in the IQ tests, and it's not necessarily a predictor that you're a better person. It just means that you have a higher amount of the traits covered by this particular construct.
This is all true, but has little bearing on the podcast market. The great thing about podcasting being an rss service is that, while you can make any given directory its own centralized service, it's trivial to make additional directories. Apple just happens to have theirs packaged nicely up with a program a lot of people use.
However, with the new URI protocol for podcasting allowing you to easily subscribe to a podcasting feed using whichever client you want to default to, it makes it easier to have multiple directories for podcasting rather than harder.
Now, if iTunes were "good enough" of a directory that most people would be unwilling to look elsewhere, and it didn't make it easy to use external directories to work with, then I would say there would be cause for concern. At this point, though, the other podcasting directories still exist, if you prefer their format, content, or interface, you can use them easily with or without using iTunes as well, and it all works nicely.
Podcasting, like a lot of other deployments of technology (think the Web), was a lot more useful before The Man got a hold of it. Before the new iTunes came along, we had places like iPodder.org and podcastalley to list podcasts, and on those sites it was all about indepedent podcasts. There were a few more "official" ones from radio stations and whatnot, but they just weren't as popular.
[...]
Most of the podcasts I listen to aren't even on the iTunes list at all because (oh, the horror) they might play material that is not properly licensed because of copyright issues. It's almost like I feel I have gone "underground" to listen to the *real* podcasts.
Okay, so podcasting is less useful now because you have to go to the same place you used to go to in order to get podcasts?
Honestly, the web is far more useful now that "the man" has gotten a hold of it. Versiontracker is a far more useful tool than the umich archives for Mac Shareware, for example. Yeah, there's more commercial content out there, but it's still a lot easier to find the informational content with Google, despite what people complain about sales links. Plus, you have the various filter sites and weblogs that will point you towards random interesting things.
The early days of the web were not part of some grand electronic utopia. I would far rather be here now than six years ago.
Maybe, but considering we just had about 40 million mastercards potentially exposed to someone of possibly not-necessarily-Nigerian origin, I'd say that slow and stead doesn't always win the race.
Because there are a lot of Nigerians and Russians out there with a list of "reasonable credit cards".
That's not all of it, because there's plenty of stolen credit card numbers in the US and similarly covered countries. I suspect it has to do more with ability to investigate and/or litigate fraudulent charges, rather than just the fact that they charges could be fraudulent.
Addiction is a very specific term that has, like much else, been co-opted by people who want it to mean something else. From a psychological or physiological standpoint it means that, if you don't get the substance, you feel withdrawal symptoms, and you need increasing doses of the substance in order to keep the withdrawal symptoms away.
So, technically, most people are not addicted. They just really like email, and find it useful. However, from the way most people understand addiction, well, I suppose they're addicted. It just that there's nothing wrong with the new type of addiction. It's clinical addiction that causes problems.
And that's not OK, because Dashboard isn't really a proper sandboxed environment.
Can you give me an example of a possible exploit? If you can't access any of the dashboard-only calls without a user granting permission, what's the problem?
For my comment above, it might not be the javascript that's the limiting factor. It might that your plist has to request access to the system-altering routines, but in any case, it should be relatively safe.
Unless, I'll run my own thought experiment, you're suggesting some flaw, such as a buffer-overrun, could hit the patch in memory that tells Dashboard that the widget can access the system routines, but without hitting the routines that would check that they are legal to perform. Something like that?
Depends on the type of widget. If it doesn't have any custom javascript (such as a search widget that submits a form through safari), then it doesn't bother checking to see if it's okay. So you could, for example, make a porn-surfing widget that could auto-install with no trouble.
However, if you wanted to display the search results in a custom list, which would require custom scripting, then a dialog would pop up saying something along the lines of "This is the first time 'Widget Name Here' is running on your system. Do you want to use it?" If you click 'No', it's removed from your Dashboard with no running of scripts.
Okay, expectations sufficiently lowered. I think I get an idea of why Adobe hasn't rushed to announce their XMP importer, though. Since the idea behind XMP is to allow users to custom-define their metadata, the best that Adobe could do is to release an importer for a default set of metadata information, rather than the whole XMP shebang. Of course, you would know more than I on the subject, but I can see adobe focusing more on their CS 2 Browser rather than spending development time on a limited-purpose Tiger addition.
Very disappointing, but hopefully I'll hardly notice when I start using Tiger seriously.
Ahh, I see. Well, that's a bit of a shame. I suppose it's a good opportunity for a third-party developer. In the meantime, I I'll have to peruse the importer documentation and see what it'll take to get at least a scheme of my own up and running. Not quite as dynamic as I had hoped, but nothing that can't at least be improved by a bit of planning.
Spotlight isn't a general-purpose annotation system. In order for you to apply metadata to files, you have to have three things. First, a file format that supports metadata. (Metadata is actually stored inside files.) Two, an application that supports adding metadata. And finally, you have to have a Spotlight importer that extracts the metadata.
I don't think that's entirely true. Take a look at the Ars Technica review of Tiger, the page linked is actually about the arbitrarily extensible metadata information.
The example given is making a text file, then applying random attributes like 'color' or 'name' to it, with data associated to those attributes. It's pretty slick.
And it's possible that you're thinking of something more specific than this, but I believe this will fulfill the parent post's requirements for a general-purpose automatic filing system based on metadata information.
"You were lucky. We had to play on top of lit coals, while our parents would come by from time to time to douse us with lighter fluid. We used to dream of damp carpet."
War is one of the only thigns that gives private companies a reason to truly innovate. its sad that killing another man and defending ourselves is our biggest impetus to advance, but such is the case.
I fail to see why it's sad, rather than obvious, that survival is a big impetus to advance. That's one of the underlying premises of the theory of evolution, after all. That and sex are our primary reason for doing anything, and everything else happens afterwards.
One day, perhaps, we'll be able to never have to be concerned with survival again, and we could just focus on bettering ourselves instead. However, for now, need should clearly outweigh want.
Beware the ides of March! And of September, for that matter. That's right, every six months will be time for EA to determine whether or not you could stand to lose a substantial portion of your workforce, since that's when budgets go into effect. My advice is to find a job outside of EA, unless you like your layoff excitement on a schedule.
That's just because you haven't seen any women with the male booth babes, er, hunks. Whatever. Then you could be embarrassed for all of humanity, or your country, or whatever you prefer.
Anyone know why he was collecting the money himself rather than following ebay's procedure which would guarantee to all bidders that the money really would go to charity?
Well, obviously this is because it's a scam. I mean, it's nice that you didn't come right out and say it, but the only reason to bypass the option twice, especially after getting all the press on it, is because he wants to keep the money for himself. Or, I suppose, that he doesn't trust that eBay will send the money to the proper charity and he is far more trustworthy. I guess that could be true, as well. Ahem.
Is it odd that they'd stop development for a while after getting venture capital? I would imagine that the VC is for something specific, and they have to focus their attention on where the money wants them to.
What, you think that the people who played COH didn't, in some way or another, worship him while he was alive? You don't think that millions of movie goers and comic book readers, when asked to imagine superman in real life, didn't think of Christopher Reeve?
Christopher Reeve was a living legend, and many, many people extended sympathy and support when he had his accident. I've read in several places, including here, that the reason people are hit by Reeve's death more than, say, Rodney Dangerfield was not because of a difference in, er, respect for the two men, but because people were really expecting him to walk again, and it's sad that now we'll never be able to see that.
I have no doubt that the Christopher Reeve Spinal Injury Foundation has been able to raise tremendous amounts of money both before and after his death in the aid of finding a cure.
I'm not a religious man, but what if there is an afterlife, and what if he does get to see the respect that people give him, even though he's dead? And do you think that people in his family, if they do find out about this, are in some way going to feel bad or even not feel better to find out that a large group of people want to pay their respects to their recently lost family member? Unless he ended up bitter at having been remembered as Superman, there's no reason why his family shouldn't appreciate this.
Also, there's no reason why they can't both honor him and donate to his foundation.
Let the man have his legacy, and let people remember him for both his work to cure spinal cord injuries and for the pleasure he brought them, letting people know that it's okay to be a good guy and a super hero.
Slashdot Mirror
"So how would you design a seamless interface between sensors and actuators to the high-level code?" Personally, I would use Perrone Robotics' MAX platform. http://www.perronerobotics.com/ We're already using it in planes, an entry for the DARPA Grand Challenge last go-round, and a new entry for the Urban Challenge this go round. http://www.teamjefferson.com/
Actually, I don't use slashdot's RSS implementation because it doesn't conform to my customized homepage choices. If I didn't have a lot of customization there, slashdot's RSS feed would be great. As it is, it's not worth having for me.
And the point is not that RSS would bring stories faster, which it won't, as it's pull and limited by convention to twice an hour automatic checks. The point it that it's far easier to keep track of a large number of sites that are on different and sometimes obscure update schedules. For the people who only check a couple of sites per day, of course they don't get RSS, because it makes no sense for them. On the other hand, I have hundreds of sites that I can check for changes every half an hour with no work on my part. I scan the headlines of all the new stories, and the things that interest me I read the synopsis. Of the remaining, the things that interest me I read the full story. This lets me keep up on what's happening without overloading myself on things I'm disinterested in.
=Brian
I would suggest trying the experiment with happiness as a condition versus just gaming. People who are happy have a tendency to do all sorts of things that don't involve critical thinking, so it's possible that this would also modify their tone choosing ways.
=Brian
Exactly. The problem is not getting it to work at all. The problem is not seriously shortening the life span of the hard drive by opening it up in an unclean environment.
The point is that it's such an easier interface for the end user that it has become popular in its own rights. Technically, television is movies, just in your home and not in a movie theatre, but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be another word describing it because the interface is different.
And what's with the attitude that a dictionary is some sort of sacred document that should only include words that you think means something special? Is it the third-grade teacher mentality, which says that "ain't" isn't a word, despite its common usage? The great thing about dictionaries is that they can include all forms of words, and give you the proper instances for use. In the example above, the Oxford English Dictionary says:
A proper dictionary should include words that people want to understand the definition of. If everyone is using the word podcast, and you don't know what it is, a dictionary might be a good place to look it up, especially nowadays when dictionary information is available online so can be distributed faster.
=Brian
It would be foolish to get a CS degree for the sole purpose of composing music for video games. However, if he wants to make some sort of generative music system such as the world has never seen, then a CS degree might be worthwhile, though a cognitive science might be somewhat more useful, and working with someone who has done generative music (Thomas Dolby comes to mind, for some reason) would make more sense still.
=Brian
Q: "What is intelligence?"
A: "Intelligence is what IQ Tests Measure."
(Yeah, I know it's not actually funny)
Basically, the psychologists make this construct they term intelligence quotient, and they try to make a test that will measure the construct. If they can get reliability across a number of tests, plus a few more things, then you have a number that you can attribute to "Intelligence," which is really handy if you want to make a test that determines if men or women have more of this "Intelligence".
That's pretty much it. Oh, okay, that's not all, but in effect, you see if anything else correlates with Intelligence, and if so, then you'll be relatively safe in betting that, whatever positively correlates with it, means that other correlations will similarly relate. So if people who are more intelligent are more likely to get a particular neurodegenerative disease, and men have more intelligence than women, then chances are, more men will have this disease than women.
However, presuming that Intelligence means anything other than what it correlates with in tests is foolish. It's not necessarily a predictor of success, it's not necessarily a predictor of the ability to solve problems other than the ones covered in the IQ tests, and it's not necessarily a predictor that you're a better person. It just means that you have a higher amount of the traits covered by this particular construct.
=Brian
This is all true, but has little bearing on the podcast market. The great thing about podcasting being an rss service is that, while you can make any given directory its own centralized service, it's trivial to make additional directories. Apple just happens to have theirs packaged nicely up with a program a lot of people use.
However, with the new URI protocol for podcasting allowing you to easily subscribe to a podcasting feed using whichever client you want to default to, it makes it easier to have multiple directories for podcasting rather than harder.
Now, if iTunes were "good enough" of a directory that most people would be unwilling to look elsewhere, and it didn't make it easy to use external directories to work with, then I would say there would be cause for concern. At this point, though, the other podcasting directories still exist, if you prefer their format, content, or interface, you can use them easily with or without using iTunes as well, and it all works nicely.
Okay, so podcasting is less useful now because you have to go to the same place you used to go to in order to get podcasts?
Honestly, the web is far more useful now that "the man" has gotten a hold of it. Versiontracker is a far more useful tool than the umich archives for Mac Shareware, for example. Yeah, there's more commercial content out there, but it's still a lot easier to find the informational content with Google, despite what people complain about sales links. Plus, you have the various filter sites and weblogs that will point you towards random interesting things.
The early days of the web were not part of some grand electronic utopia. I would far rather be here now than six years ago.
Maybe, but considering we just had about 40 million mastercards potentially exposed to someone of possibly not-necessarily-Nigerian origin, I'd say that slow and stead doesn't always win the race.
Because there are a lot of Nigerians and Russians out there with a list of "reasonable credit cards".
That's not all of it, because there's plenty of stolen credit card numbers in the US and similarly covered countries. I suspect it has to do more with ability to investigate and/or litigate fraudulent charges, rather than just the fact that they charges could be fraudulent.
=Brian
Addiction is a very specific term that has, like much else, been co-opted by people who want it to mean something else. From a psychological or physiological standpoint it means that, if you don't get the substance, you feel withdrawal symptoms, and you need increasing doses of the substance in order to keep the withdrawal symptoms away.
So, technically, most people are not addicted. They just really like email, and find it useful. However, from the way most people understand addiction, well, I suppose they're addicted. It just that there's nothing wrong with the new type of addiction. It's clinical addiction that causes problems.
And that's not OK, because Dashboard isn't really a proper sandboxed environment.
Can you give me an example of a possible exploit? If you can't access any of the dashboard-only calls without a user granting permission, what's the problem?
For my comment above, it might not be the javascript that's the limiting factor. It might that your plist has to request access to the system-altering routines, but in any case, it should be relatively safe.
Unless, I'll run my own thought experiment, you're suggesting some flaw, such as a buffer-overrun, could hit the patch in memory that tells Dashboard that the widget can access the system routines, but without hitting the routines that would check that they are legal to perform. Something like that?
Depends on the type of widget. If it doesn't have any custom javascript (such as a search widget that submits a form through safari), then it doesn't bother checking to see if it's okay. So you could, for example, make a porn-surfing widget that could auto-install with no trouble.
However, if you wanted to display the search results in a custom list, which would require custom scripting, then a dialog would pop up saying something along the lines of "This is the first time 'Widget Name Here' is running on your system. Do you want to use it?" If you click 'No', it's removed from your Dashboard with no running of scripts.
Okay, expectations sufficiently lowered. I think I get an idea of why Adobe hasn't rushed to announce their XMP importer, though. Since the idea behind XMP is to allow users to custom-define their metadata, the best that Adobe could do is to release an importer for a default set of metadata information, rather than the whole XMP shebang. Of course, you would know more than I on the subject, but I can see adobe focusing more on their CS 2 Browser rather than spending development time on a limited-purpose Tiger addition.
Very disappointing, but hopefully I'll hardly notice when I start using Tiger seriously.
=Brian
Ahh, I see. Well, that's a bit of a shame. I suppose it's a good opportunity for a third-party developer. In the meantime, I I'll have to peruse the importer documentation and see what it'll take to get at least a scheme of my own up and running. Not quite as dynamic as I had hoped, but nothing that can't at least be improved by a bit of planning.
=Brian
Spotlight isn't a general-purpose annotation system. In order for you to apply metadata to files, you have to have three things. First, a file format that supports metadata. (Metadata is actually stored inside files.) Two, an application that supports adding metadata. And finally, you have to have a Spotlight importer that extracts the metadata.
I don't think that's entirely true. Take a look at the Ars Technica review of Tiger, the page linked is actually about the arbitrarily extensible metadata information.
The example given is making a text file, then applying random attributes like 'color' or 'name' to it, with data associated to those attributes. It's pretty slick.
And it's possible that you're thinking of something more specific than this, but I believe this will fulfill the parent post's requirements for a general-purpose automatic filing system based on metadata information.
=Brian
"Carpet?"
"Aye."
"You were lucky. We had to play on top of lit coals, while our parents would come by from time to time to douse us with lighter fluid. We used to dream of damp carpet."
There's a pretty good whitepaper about this on AFP548. Specifically, download the PDF.
War is one of the only thigns that gives private companies a reason to truly innovate. its sad that killing another man and defending ourselves is our biggest impetus to advance, but such is the case.
I fail to see why it's sad, rather than obvious, that survival is a big impetus to advance. That's one of the underlying premises of the theory of evolution, after all. That and sex are our primary reason for doing anything, and everything else happens afterwards.
One day, perhaps, we'll be able to never have to be concerned with survival again, and we could just focus on bettering ourselves instead. However, for now, need should clearly outweigh want.
=Brian
Beware the ides of March! And of September, for that matter. That's right, every six months will be time for EA to determine whether or not you could stand to lose a substantial portion of your workforce, since that's when budgets go into effect. My advice is to find a job outside of EA, unless you like your layoff excitement on a schedule.
Makes me embarrased for my gender...
That's just because you haven't seen any women with the male booth babes, er, hunks. Whatever. Then you could be embarrassed for all of humanity, or your country, or whatever you prefer.
Anyone know why he was collecting the money himself rather than following ebay's procedure which would guarantee to all bidders that the money really would go to charity?
Well, obviously this is because it's a scam. I mean, it's nice that you didn't come right out and say it, but the only reason to bypass the option twice, especially after getting all the press on it, is because he wants to keep the money for himself. Or, I suppose, that he doesn't trust that eBay will send the money to the proper charity and he is far more trustworthy. I guess that could be true, as well. Ahem.
Is it odd that they'd stop development for a while after getting venture capital? I would imagine that the VC is for something specific, and they have to focus their attention on where the money wants them to.
What, you think that the people who played COH didn't, in some way or another, worship him while he was alive? You don't think that millions of movie goers and comic book readers, when asked to imagine superman in real life, didn't think of Christopher Reeve?
Christopher Reeve was a living legend, and many, many people extended sympathy and support when he had his accident. I've read in several places, including here, that the reason people are hit by Reeve's death more than, say, Rodney Dangerfield was not because of a difference in, er, respect for the two men, but because people were really expecting him to walk again, and it's sad that now we'll never be able to see that.
I have no doubt that the Christopher Reeve Spinal Injury Foundation has been able to raise tremendous amounts of money both before and after his death in the aid of finding a cure.
I'm not a religious man, but what if there is an afterlife, and what if he does get to see the respect that people give him, even though he's dead? And do you think that people in his family, if they do find out about this, are in some way going to feel bad or even not feel better to find out that a large group of people want to pay their respects to their recently lost family member? Unless he ended up bitter at having been remembered as Superman, there's no reason why his family shouldn't appreciate this.
Also, there's no reason why they can't both honor him and donate to his foundation.
Let the man have his legacy, and let people remember him for both his work to cure spinal cord injuries and for the pleasure he brought them, letting people know that it's okay to be a good guy and a super hero.
=Brian