Surely all you need to perform the Schroedinger's Cat experiment for real is a box, a cat and a radioactive substance which decays into a poison. I thought the whole idea of superposition is that the object is simultaneously in multiple states until you observe it, at which point it is in a single state. If they can observe something in different states simultaneously, doesn't that debunk the whole theory? If they can't then what is the point of the experiment? My layman's knowledge of quantum physics is obviously lacking. Could someone explain?
Why would you create a thinking machine that would care about being abused? That's like building a car that felt pain as it burned gasoline (oblig car analogy).
Most people would probably love to have a car which retaliated against vandals. Your analogy is poor - burning gasoline is a normal healthy function for a car. Building a car which "felt pain" when something was going wrong, e.g. gasoline burning outside the engine, would be pretty smart, because then it could take the appriopriate action to prevent itself being damaged. That is the purpose of pain after all. The only reason I can see for building a thinking machine which doesn't care if it's abused is if you were building it purely to abuse it. Except if it didn't care, it wouldn't really be abuse would it?
With either one, if I come up with a truly original idea, I feel that I should be permitted to make money from it, for a period of time. No competition, it's all mine.
This is what the current problem with patents is. The point of patents is not that you get ownership of the bright idea you had during your lunch break simply because you came up with it 1 day earlier than someone else did. The point is that if you spend $100k developing a better mousetrap you can then recoup your investment because everyone else is prevented from just taking your research and selling it themselves without reimbursing you for the value of the research you would have effectively done for them for free. It also means that because your investment is protected you can publish the details so that other people can develop your ideas further and themsleves patent any significant advances, hence encouraging innovation.
If you can just patent some random idea which is generic enough to cover all manner of future innovations without actually doing any significant investment yourself then claim ownership of future research and development which other people have spent significant sums on, you effectively turn the process on its head. For a patent system to work it is necessary to ensure that this does not happen by rigorous review of the work undertaken, which, at least in the american system, does not seem to take place.
That really isn't what the story is about, though. Maybe Spotify is great, but "Spotify released for another platform" isn't that exciting and probably wouldn't end up posted on Slashdot, if there weren't some reason that it being released for the iPhone was surprising or at some point in doubt.
How is it surprising? LastFM has been available on the iPhone for ages.
I hate to pop your balloon (pun intended) but 10,000 feet is not that high. In World War 2 the Germans had anti-aircraft guns that could easily get to much over 20,000 feet. Many cheap modern shoulder held anti-aircraft missiles can easily shoot this high and a blimp would be easy to hit. It might be safe from small arms fire but a few small holes wouldn't hurt it much. An anti-aircraft missile is another matter.
That's hardly relevant though. This is a stand-off radar platform which will be tethered well inside friendly territory and have a range of over 300 miles. If the enemy get anywhere near close enough to shoot this down with anything other than an aircraft or cruise missile, losing a blimp will be the least of your problems.
The trouble comes when you're mixing and matching software with different licenses. GPL might seem like the shangri-la of open source licensing, but it's actually very restrictive. This is not to say that it's bad - it's very good for encouraging people to share their code, and preventing abuse of said code by comercial interests, but then you try and embed some other non-gpl code in your project and find yourself in a legal minefield. That's why the LGPL was written - if only the GPL existed, GNU/* would be missing a lot of really good software.
I've read (and saw once) that the Netbooks with Atom processors have issues with having enough processing power to handle HD video. (though basical video played fine) Whats the point of the HDMI video out if it has issues with HD video?
Because it's the only reasonable choice of connector if you want to interface your laptop to a modern TV.
No one organization out there right now can provide definitive prove that playing âoeviolentâ video games train kids to be killers or desensitizes them from violence.
I'm not sure that's true. The reason the military use shooting simulators is that a large majority of people are psychologically unable to pull the trigger when aiming at another human being, even after extensive shooting range experience. Shooting at images of people is intended to remove this instinct. This is also why targets are shaped as soldiers rather than just concentric circles (which would technically be better for marksmanship training). I'm pretty sure they have plenty of evidence that video games do desensitize people to violence.
That being said, I doubt anyone psychotic enough to go on a random killing spree falls into the group of people who would be unable to shoot someone, so saying that video games make people killers is probably much like saying that giving someone matches makes them an arsonist
Not very clear wording. I would interpret that as 90% of those detained are terrorists
That's like saying if you toss a coin and get heads, the next toss will be tails. If the test works 90% of the time, each of the people who tests positive has a 90% chance of being a terrorist, but it's entirely possible that none of them are.
Lets say you are running a web browser on X and you load a malicious web site which exploits a flaw in your browser which enables it to communicate with the X server. The X server has direct access to the video hardware, so if there is a flaw which an X client (your compromised web browser) can use to control your video card, you can do arbitrary DMA transfers outwith kernel control. This is quite a complicated vector but it does exist, and requires either the X server to be flawless or all X clients to be flawless. In effect you are offloading responsibility for your system security from the kernel to your X server.
The real benefit is you wont have to worry about cross talk or other electromagnetic interference. The short haul of the board level optical interconnects means we can have very high speed chip to chip interconnects without worrying too much about trace routing or length. And LED's are quite efficient when it comes to turning to electrical power into light. Metal wires at high frequencies develop a high resistance which has to be overcome by using more energy.
I'm not convinced. You can still get electromagnetic interference with light - look at TV remotes. Of course, if you use fibre optic cable it's not a problem, but that's akin to using coaxial cable to route electrical signals. While it would be possible to embed coaxial structures in PCBs to eliminate the possibility of cross-talk and noise, in practice this would be prohibitively expensive and the same result can be achieved with stripline and careful routing. The question is, what does an optical PCB look like? You'll still need copper for power distribution so the optical PCB will need to tolerate soldering temperatures. Do you have a layer of interwoven fibre optic cables? How do these interface with the components such that there is tolerance in the size and position of the terminals? Do you use mirrors and optical waveguides embedded in the substrate? If so how do you make this cost effective to manufacture? If you use fibre optics, you have a minimum bend radius, so you open up a whole new set of routing problems. While there are obviously clear benefits in theory, when it comes to actually implementing this as a cost effective PCB interconnect you'll have a whole set of new problems to deal with, and it's unlikely to be anywhere close in cost to gluing layers of copper and plastic together.
X is freakin' awesome? Are you kidding me? Tell me, what kind of backwards logic makes the X server be the display and the X client be the application?
A server provides services to a client. In X windows, the display provides services to the application. Therefore the display is the server and the application is the client.
Are you saying that human irrationality is defined by something other than the laws of physics, genetics, and chemistry?
If we are to believe that the universe does have a set of laws applied to it, then by understanding those rules can lead to models that will predict otherwise seemly irrational universe.
You just have to have the right model and a computer powerful enough to compute all the date required to get something use.
Models are by their nature simplifications of a real system. The point is that some problems can't be simplified because there are no variables which are trivial enough that you can remove them and still get reasonably accurate results. While you may in theory be able to accurately predict a stock price, for example, by modelling every neuron in every brain of every stockbroker in the world, what would be the point? If the model ends up taking longer to run than the system it's modelling, there is no point in having a model.
I still wonder how the occasional barefoot track runner deals with the gravel. I guess they grow leathery hobbit-feet or something.
Pretty much. If you walk around barefoot on a regular basis the skin on the soles of your feet will thicken and become leathery and you no longer need shoes, even when walking or running over gravel. The reason the skin on your feet is so soft compared to every other animal is because you've worn shoes your whole life.
Prior art requires that the invention be in the public domain, not simply "thought of first". This means it has to be actually published to the general public. You and I could make the same invention independently, and try and patent it, and the one to get the patent would be the first to apply, regardless of who actually made the invention first. IANAL, but I believe that in your scenario, any one of the companies would be perfectly entitled to patent the invention.
Slashdot Mirror
"but no WiFi support means I can't connect to the Internet"
Err, have you never heard of an ethernet cable?
It's so much harder to plug an ethernet cable into your neighbour's router without them noticing.
(except in England, where cameras are only used by terrorists...)
...and paedophiles
Surely all you need to perform the Schroedinger's Cat experiment for real is a box, a cat and a radioactive substance which decays into a poison. I thought the whole idea of superposition is that the object is simultaneously in multiple states until you observe it, at which point it is in a single state. If they can observe something in different states simultaneously, doesn't that debunk the whole theory? If they can't then what is the point of the experiment? My layman's knowledge of quantum physics is obviously lacking. Could someone explain?
Why would you create a thinking machine that would care about being abused? That's like building a car that felt pain as it burned gasoline (oblig car analogy).
Most people would probably love to have a car which retaliated against vandals. Your analogy is poor - burning gasoline is a normal healthy function for a car. Building a car which "felt pain" when something was going wrong, e.g. gasoline burning outside the engine, would be pretty smart, because then it could take the appriopriate action to prevent itself being damaged. That is the purpose of pain after all. The only reason I can see for building a thinking machine which doesn't care if it's abused is if you were building it purely to abuse it. Except if it didn't care, it wouldn't really be abuse would it?
With either one, if I come up with a truly original idea, I feel that I should be permitted to make money from it, for a period of time. No competition, it's all mine.
This is what the current problem with patents is. The point of patents is not that you get ownership of the bright idea you had during your lunch break simply because you came up with it 1 day earlier than someone else did. The point is that if you spend $100k developing a better mousetrap you can then recoup your investment because everyone else is prevented from just taking your research and selling it themselves without reimbursing you for the value of the research you would have effectively done for them for free. It also means that because your investment is protected you can publish the details so that other people can develop your ideas further and themsleves patent any significant advances, hence encouraging innovation.
If you can just patent some random idea which is generic enough to cover all manner of future innovations without actually doing any significant investment yourself then claim ownership of future research and development which other people have spent significant sums on, you effectively turn the process on its head. For a patent system to work it is necessary to ensure that this does not happen by rigorous review of the work undertaken, which, at least in the american system, does not seem to take place.
Could that be because the whole point of the article is to argue that Ray Kurzweil is wrong?
That really isn't what the story is about, though. Maybe Spotify is great, but "Spotify released for another platform" isn't that exciting and probably wouldn't end up posted on Slashdot, if there weren't some reason that it being released for the iPhone was surprising or at some point in doubt.
How is it surprising? LastFM has been available on the iPhone for ages.
I hate to pop your balloon (pun intended) but 10,000 feet is not that high. In World War 2 the Germans had anti-aircraft guns that could easily get to much over 20,000 feet. Many cheap modern shoulder held anti-aircraft missiles can easily shoot this high and a blimp would be easy to hit. It might be safe from small arms fire but a few small holes wouldn't hurt it much. An anti-aircraft missile is another matter.
That's hardly relevant though. This is a stand-off radar platform which will be tethered well inside friendly territory and have a range of over 300 miles. If the enemy get anywhere near close enough to shoot this down with anything other than an aircraft or cruise missile, losing a blimp will be the least of your problems.
You're confusing depression with unhappiness.
The trouble comes when you're mixing and matching software with different licenses. GPL might seem like the shangri-la of open source licensing, but it's actually very restrictive. This is not to say that it's bad - it's very good for encouraging people to share their code, and preventing abuse of said code by comercial interests, but then you try and embed some other non-gpl code in your project and find yourself in a legal minefield. That's why the LGPL was written - if only the GPL existed, GNU/* would be missing a lot of really good software.
It doesn't matter if those eyes are organic or electronic.
If someone mugs you in front of a CCTV camera, you've still been mugged.
I've read (and saw once) that the Netbooks with Atom processors have issues with having enough processing power to handle HD video. (though basical video played fine) Whats the point of the HDMI video out if it has issues with HD video?
Because it's the only reasonable choice of connector if you want to interface your laptop to a modern TV.
No one organization out there right now can provide definitive prove that playing âoeviolentâ video games train kids to be killers or desensitizes them from violence.
I'm not sure that's true. The reason the military use shooting simulators is that a large majority of people are psychologically unable to pull the trigger when aiming at another human being, even after extensive shooting range experience. Shooting at images of people is intended to remove this instinct. This is also why targets are shaped as soldiers rather than just concentric circles (which would technically be better for marksmanship training). I'm pretty sure they have plenty of evidence that video games do desensitize people to violence.
That being said, I doubt anyone psychotic enough to go on a random killing spree falls into the group of people who would be unable to shoot someone, so saying that video games make people killers is probably much like saying that giving someone matches makes them an arsonist
Until you can build a self-modifying learning machine
Surely the best way to learn how to build a self-modifying learning machine is to try and copy an existing one.
Not very clear wording. I would interpret that as 90% of those detained are terrorists
That's like saying if you toss a coin and get heads, the next toss will be tails. If the test works 90% of the time, each of the people who tests positive has a 90% chance of being a terrorist, but it's entirely possible that none of them are.
Instead of setting a radar to pump out radio waves, why not set a device like that to send an amplified return?
Yes, let's make bats safer around wind turbines by jamming their sonar ;)
Lets say you are running a web browser on X and you load a malicious web site which exploits a flaw in your browser which enables it to communicate with the X server. The X server has direct access to the video hardware, so if there is a flaw which an X client (your compromised web browser) can use to control your video card, you can do arbitrary DMA transfers outwith kernel control. This is quite a complicated vector but it does exist, and requires either the X server to be flawless or all X clients to be flawless. In effect you are offloading responsibility for your system security from the kernel to your X server.
The real benefit is you wont have to worry about cross talk or other electromagnetic interference. The short haul of the board level optical interconnects means we can have very high speed chip to chip interconnects without worrying too much about trace routing or length. And LED's are quite efficient when it comes to turning to electrical power into light. Metal wires at high frequencies develop a high resistance which has to be overcome by using more energy.
I'm not convinced. You can still get electromagnetic interference with light - look at TV remotes. Of course, if you use fibre optic cable it's not a problem, but that's akin to using coaxial cable to route electrical signals. While it would be possible to embed coaxial structures in PCBs to eliminate the possibility of cross-talk and noise, in practice this would be prohibitively expensive and the same result can be achieved with stripline and careful routing. The question is, what does an optical PCB look like? You'll still need copper for power distribution so the optical PCB will need to tolerate soldering temperatures. Do you have a layer of interwoven fibre optic cables? How do these interface with the components such that there is tolerance in the size and position of the terminals? Do you use mirrors and optical waveguides embedded in the substrate? If so how do you make this cost effective to manufacture? If you use fibre optics, you have a minimum bend radius, so you open up a whole new set of routing problems. While there are obviously clear benefits in theory, when it comes to actually implementing this as a cost effective PCB interconnect you'll have a whole set of new problems to deal with, and it's unlikely to be anywhere close in cost to gluing layers of copper and plastic together.
X is freakin' awesome? Are you kidding me? Tell me, what kind of backwards logic makes the X server be the display and the X client be the application?
A server provides services to a client. In X windows, the display provides services to the application. Therefore the display is the server and the application is the client.
Their 15km version would need ten years of the entire world's helium production to fill it.
The 200km version would use up over half the world's estimated helium reserves.
That's why hydrogen would probably be a better gas to use.
Are you saying that human irrationality is defined by something other than the laws of physics, genetics, and chemistry?
If we are to believe that the universe does have a set of laws applied to it, then by understanding those rules can lead to models that will predict otherwise seemly irrational universe.
You just have to have the right model and a computer powerful enough to compute all the date required to get something use.
Models are by their nature simplifications of a real system. The point is that some problems can't be simplified because there are no variables which are trivial enough that you can remove them and still get reasonably accurate results. While you may in theory be able to accurately predict a stock price, for example, by modelling every neuron in every brain of every stockbroker in the world, what would be the point? If the model ends up taking longer to run than the system it's modelling, there is no point in having a model.
Do we know the language of nerve impulses?
Do we need to? It's likely easier for a brain to learn to communicate with a motor than it is for a motor to learn to communicate with a brain.
I still wonder how the occasional barefoot track runner deals with the gravel. I guess they grow leathery hobbit-feet or something.
Pretty much. If you walk around barefoot on a regular basis the skin on the soles of your feet will thicken and become leathery and you no longer need shoes, even when walking or running over gravel. The reason the skin on your feet is so soft compared to every other animal is because you've worn shoes your whole life.
Prior art requires that the invention be in the public domain, not simply "thought of first". This means it has to be actually published to the general public. You and I could make the same invention independently, and try and patent it, and the one to get the patent would be the first to apply, regardless of who actually made the invention first. IANAL, but I believe that in your scenario, any one of the companies would be perfectly entitled to patent the invention.
...and the energy required to liquefy air in order to extract nitrogen would be supplied by the wind turbine too right?