It's a mistake to compare quality of old houses with new houses. Why? Because all the old poorly built houses are already gone. There are well constructed houses built today that will last centuries (provided sufficient maintainence of course). Most of the poorly built houses today won't be around in a hundred years, just like the ones houses built 100 years ago aren't around today.
And really, so much of that depends on the amount of maintainance over the years. Old construction techniques and materials are generally inferior to modern ones, yet if maintained properly they can last a long time. I've just completely renovated a 100+ yo Victorian, I know what I'm talking about. Example, our house has a fieldstone foundation that every decade or so needs new mortar in many of the joints, while a modern reinforced concrete foundation generally needs no maintanence. If we don't do that work, the foundation starts to fail and portions of the house sink. Its already happened to some degree, not single room is level. Yes, that can happen in new construction, but not nearly as much and its usually because of problems in the plots geology not the foundation construction.
Anyway, to reiterate, you don't see many crappy old houses because they are already gone.
they own like 90% of the stations in some markets.
You are talking out of your ass. Show me any market where they own at least 50% of the stations. I'm not a Clear Channel fan, but I hate when misinformation gets modded up.
Ok, after reading that I see they've made an advance in a problem that I never knew existed and barely even affects me.
So thats, uh, good... right?
Ignore your own references often?
on
The Simpsons Movie
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· Score: 2, Informative
You claim that because he wrote more episodes, he had a greater contribution to the show. However, if you actually read the New Yorker article, you'll see that the lead author basically just writes the plot. The episode author also writes gags and jokes, however once its written it basically gets ripped apart and gags and jokes and even plots are added/deleted/changed around by the writers as a group.
So just because Conan didn't write more episodes doesn't mean he didn't add more hilarity.
The article quotes the statistic of New York City's murder rate at 2500 per eight million residents per year. I don't know how old those "stats" are, but they must be way damn outdated, because current stats are about a quarter of that.
Instead of money in the escrow account, how about CPU time?
The escrow service could require senders to compute really expensive things (factor large number for instance) to aquire karma (or whatever you want to call it). Actually, it wouldn't even need to be an escrow service, your email server could keep track of all senders karma points for your mail server.
The scheme works exactly the same, if you receive spam, then you zap their karma instead of money.
This has the benefit of nothing more being lost than some CPU time (otherwise bugs or malicous code could cost you serious $$$). Since the recipient has nothing to gain from falsely identifiying spam, there is little chance that legitimate email senders will need to do the expensive computations more than once (except for newsletters sent to large isp domains like AOL). Hmmm maybe it would be better to track karma for each sender/recipient pair to avoid that as well.
Other than the old problem of getting everyone to use the new system (which is still a huge issue), this seems much easier than their approach.
Other than the huge costs of transmissions equipment, does anyone know what kind of security they use to prevent hackers from doing this (like for instance some mischievous Russian space program scientist)?
Did anyone else read the story title as being sarcastic? Say it out loud to yourself, I'm positive it will sound sarcastic. Actually, I think its impossble to say that sentence out loud and sound even remotely earnest.
What are you an idiot?!? Haven't you seen any teen love movies? Geek chicks always turn out super hot!! All you need to do is take of the glasses, let down her hair and unbutton her shirt a little.
Glasses? check Long hair in bun? check check Dowdy, boyish outfit? check check eheck!!!!
She is the trifecta! MAN SHE IS RIPE FOR THE TAKING!!!!
If you can't see that, well, then that's just sad.
Good childhood nutrition - taller and healthier
on
Tall People Earn More
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· Score: 1
Its well known that children that have better nutrition and medical care tend to be taller on average. This has been demonstrated time and again as third world countries become more prosperous.
Parents who are intelligent and successful are much more likely to provide good nutrition and medical care AND better education. This alone could explain the correlation. Although I think it is at least partly explainable by bias against short people.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you
In 1800, 87% of the total US workforce was involved in farming and agriculture, today its only about 3%. Yet we have far more food available to us. All those poor farmers went on to other industries, and most of those jobs as well have been automated.
The idea that robots or automation is resulting in net job loss has been debunked many many times (although thats not what the author is saying).
However, the author seems to be saying is that more jobs will becoming increasingly automated. Wow! Good job spotting the 200+ year old trend!
Thus, contrary to what most people would feel the thing that is holding AI up is hardware.
So you're saying that a modern computer could be pass the Turing Test if it just had access to really really massive amounts of storage, and its allowed a really long to time to respond? If so, I'm not buying that at all. And I'm certainly not buying that my 2.4 ghz machine could be self aware given enough diskspace and enough time to think about stuff.
No, I think its going to require a major breakthough in how we think about thinking, and more memory and processing power ain't it.
...but there may be a boogie man or boogie men in the house right now!
Bart: AAAIIIHH!!!
Cut to scene of Marge coming home in the late hours with a hole from a shotgun bast in the front door and the rest of the family hiding in the living room under a propped up mattress.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a mistake to compare quality of old houses with new houses. Why? Because all the old poorly built houses are already gone. There are well constructed houses built today that will last centuries (provided sufficient maintainence of course). Most of the poorly built houses today won't be around in a hundred years, just like the ones houses built 100 years ago aren't around today.
And really, so much of that depends on the amount of maintainance over the years. Old construction techniques and materials are generally inferior to modern ones, yet if maintained properly they can last a long time. I've just completely renovated a 100+ yo Victorian, I know what I'm talking about. Example, our house has a fieldstone foundation that every decade or so needs new mortar in many of the joints, while a modern reinforced concrete foundation generally needs no maintanence. If we don't do that work, the foundation starts to fail and portions of the house sink. Its already happened to some degree, not single room is level. Yes, that can happen in new construction, but not nearly as much and its usually because of problems in the plots geology not the foundation construction.
Anyway, to reiterate, you don't see many crappy old houses because they are already gone.
Hey, man, look at that prime... THAT IS HUUGE.
I'm just saying it's a big prime is all.
they own like 90% of the stations in some markets.
You are talking out of your ass. Show me any market where they own at least 50% of the stations. I'm not a Clear Channel fan, but I hate when misinformation gets modded up.
You should see the suit that protects you from giant boulders. Wow those boulders have a lot of natural might! Testify!
That would make a great sig.
Unkle Leo?
You are comparing nuclear weapons to a largely non-existant technology that concievably could be used to weapons.
I'd say the gloom and doom scenarios are a bit premature.
The mantra is, keep everything in memory to minimize disk I/O since even the slowest memory is faster than the fastest disk
i nimizediskI/Osinceeventheslowestmemoryisfasterthan thefastestdisk....ommmmmmmm..."
Dude, that is a horrible mantra.
"ommmmmm....ommmmmmm....keepeverythinginmemorytom
Ok, after reading that I see they've made an advance in a problem that I never knew existed and barely even affects me.
So thats, uh, good... right?
You claim that because he wrote more episodes, he had a greater contribution to the show. However, if you actually read the New Yorker article, you'll see that the lead author basically just writes the plot. The episode author also writes gags and jokes, however once its written it basically gets ripped apart and gags and jokes and even plots are added/deleted/changed around by the writers as a group.
So just because Conan didn't write more episodes doesn't mean he didn't add more hilarity.
The article quotes the statistic of New York City's murder rate at 2500 per eight million residents per year. I don't know how old those "stats" are, but they must be way damn outdated, because current stats are about a quarter of that.
Instead of money in the escrow account, how about CPU time?
The escrow service could require senders to compute really expensive things (factor large number for instance) to aquire karma (or whatever you want to call it). Actually, it wouldn't even need to be an escrow service, your email server could keep track of all senders karma points for your mail server.
The scheme works exactly the same, if you receive spam, then you zap their karma instead of money.
This has the benefit of nothing more being lost than some CPU time (otherwise bugs or malicous code could cost you serious $$$). Since the recipient has nothing to gain from falsely identifiying spam, there is little chance that legitimate email senders will need to do the expensive computations more than once (except for newsletters sent to large isp domains like AOL). Hmmm maybe it would be better to track karma for each sender/recipient pair to avoid that as well.
Other than the old problem of getting everyone to use the new system (which is still a huge issue), this seems much easier than their approach.
Other than the huge costs of transmissions equipment, does anyone know what kind of security they use to prevent hackers from doing this (like for instance some mischievous Russian space program scientist)?
"Hackers on Linux's Exciting Desktop Future"
Did anyone else read the story title as being sarcastic? Say it out loud to yourself, I'm positive it will sound sarcastic. Actually, I think its impossble to say that sentence out loud and sound even remotely earnest.
What are you an idiot?!? Haven't you seen any teen love movies? Geek chicks always turn out super hot!! All you need to do is take of the glasses, let down her hair and unbutton her shirt a little.
Glasses? check
Long hair in bun? check check
Dowdy, boyish outfit? check check eheck!!!!
She is the trifecta! MAN SHE IS RIPE FOR THE TAKING!!!!
If you can't see that, well, then that's just sad.
Its well known that children that have better nutrition and medical care tend to be taller on average. This has been demonstrated time and again as third world countries become more prosperous.
Parents who are intelligent and successful are much more likely to provide good nutrition and medical care AND better education. This alone could explain the correlation. Although I think it is at least partly explainable by bias against short people.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you
Seen on the license plate of a VW Beetle: FEATURE
Special section on the New Scientist site
Gotta love that Major
Agreed, it has happened many times over.
In 1800, 87% of the total US workforce was involved in farming and agriculture, today its only about 3%. Yet we have far more food available to us. All those poor farmers went on to other industries, and most of those jobs as well have been automated.
The idea that robots or automation is resulting in net job loss has been debunked many many times (although thats not what the author is saying).
However, the author seems to be saying is that more jobs will becoming increasingly automated. Wow! Good job spotting the 200+ year old trend!
Now he just sits at home watching TV without pants.
A ROBOT TOOK MY DADDY'S PANTS! (sniff)
... Microsoft has announced that two prominent researchers from Bay Area Research Center have been surgically turned into lobster like creatures.
When pressed for reasons this was done, Bill Gates responded "Lobster tastes really good."
Thus, contrary to what most people would feel the thing that is holding AI up is hardware.
So you're saying that a modern computer could be pass the Turing Test if it just had access to really really massive amounts of storage, and its allowed a really long to time to respond? If so, I'm not buying that at all. And I'm certainly not buying that my 2.4 ghz machine could be self aware given enough diskspace and enough time to think about stuff.
No, I think its going to require a major breakthough in how we think about thinking, and more memory and processing power ain't it.
...but there may be a boogie man or boogie men in the house right now!
Bart: AAAIIIHH!!!
Cut to scene of Marge coming home in the late hours with a hole from a shotgun bast in the front door and the rest of the family hiding in the living room under a propped up mattress.