Don't know why this is marked funny: rice is a natural desiccant, and it would help dry things out. Ever notice that, in humid areas, people put rice in their salt shakers? Now you know why.
Yea, but this is coming from Apple, the company that has two-dozen different non-standard monitor connector plugs...I can't believe that they would honestly care about adding another annoying connector socket.
Actually this isn't that unusual. In nerosurguries where the goal is not to correct some gross defect (e.g. cancer, stroke, railroad spike in a frontal lobe) the subject is often kept awake while the surgeon uses a probe to see if they can stimulate the neurological event that they're trying to surpress. I've seen it mostly with things like epilepsy, but I've been following the deep brain stim research, and it seems completely logical that they'd use the same methodology for that procedure.
That being said, watching a video (oh yes, there are videos) of someone with a big chunk out of the top of their head chattering away while a bunch of surgeons stand around behind them, poking at their brain...Lot of times the stimulation will create neurological artifacts...Memories, smells, lights...It's truly bizarre to watch. Not for the weak of stomach.//Former cognitive science major. Didn't much care for neuroanatomy.
Better not to keep that stuff on your laptop at all, if you're worried. FTP it to yourself, or burn it to some DVDs and stuff 'em in your checked luggage.
If you have more than that, it's best to seek professional help...No one needs to travel with that much pron.
You seem to be suggesting an emotional investment, when I am merely speaking about time, and attention. Simply finding a strip like Opus on a weekly basis will take extra effort for most people.
But, assuming I'm so intellectually bankrupt to seek entertainment, and that I'm so collossally low-brow to read a arty character-driven sunday-only comic strip, I kinda want one that has a bit of staying power, so that after I've bothered to get into it, the creator doesn't just wander off to do something else.
I don't care if he stops drawing. It annoys me that he can't make up his mind.
Actually it was the same band; they got dragged to one of those Tipper Gore congressional hearings and Steve (the manager) eventually caved to congressional pressure on censorship and decency and changed the bands name from "Deathtongue" to "Billy and the Boingers"
(That story arc is a must for people who are against censorship; throughout the whole bit Tipper Gore keeps screaming "Off with their heads" whenever anyone does anything offensive, and through out there are quoted sections of purported Deathtongue songs with such memorable names as "Love Rhino")
I've actually gotten annoyed with BB over the years...What's the point of getting invested in one of his strips? This is what, the third?
As much as I appreciate a newspaper comic artist who will actually let his strip die when he feels like he's gotten stale, it's irritating when he lets it die, brings it back, lets it die, brings it back, and lets it die THIS TIME FOR REAL I PROMISE!
The problem is always that people assume that the only evolution is disease/lifespan related.
Healthcare that removes selectors like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc, just pushes selection in a different direction, and it becomes more about who you can convince to mate with you, rather than whether or not you'll be picked off by a disease.
You don't know of places that enforce the use of French in Canada? Is that a joke, or do you not consider Quebec to be part of Canada?
I have to say that it irritates me that people are unwilling to learn a new language, but it irritates me in both directions. I speak several languages, with varying degrees of skill, and I don't mind helping out someone who doesn't speak english.
If, however, I go to a country where I don't speak the language, I don't get offended that they expect me to make the effort to learn their language...It's a far far greater hassle for their whole country to pick up my language, than it is for me to pick up enough to get around.
So, while the, "Speak American" rednecks annoy the crap out of me, the idea that the vast english-speaking majority should have to learn a new language for the benefit of the minority is equally annoying.
I think the only way you will get bots that will "pass" this test is to have massive databases of words, relationships between words and subjects with corresponding topics of discussion. Still, the computer won't be intelligent, it will just be reciting from its huge database of responses.
I'm interested to hear how you think humans develop the ability to carry on conversations? Having a huge database of possible responses isn't cheating...It's a requirement. People spend their whole lives building up that sort of database.
When the computer database is large enough, and is capable of the sort of ridiculously bizarre cross-linking that the human brain is, then you'll see accurate human-sounding dialogue.
The question of consciousness is essentially meaningless, however. If it appears conscious, you need to treat it as such until it proves otherwise, same as with a person.
Yea, but in Athens Tennessee angry gun-toting rednecks outnumber normal people by 20 to 1. The previous week there was an armed revolt because of a chewing tobacco shortage.
Joking aside, in a postwar culture in Tennessee they would absolutely come out in armed force against a perceived attempt to take away their liberty. Given the lack of quick information during the time period, they would have acted on little info and word of mouth.
Transition that to today, and it would be extremely difficult to get the same situation going. Information would be all over the place; the sense of us against them would be dilluted by a difficult to define "them." It's just hard to get up the same level of xenophobia...Even in Tennesee.
//Born & raised in TN; can still sing all verses of "Rocky Top"
99% of my driving is within the range covered by a regular charge, and hell, I live in the sort of climate where I could throw a single solar panel on my roof and break even on the electricity for the year.
It's all about the batteries though. The guy who invents a workable next-gen source of electricity (be it battery, capacitor, or fuel cell) is going to make Bill Gates look like a poor relative.
I think Feynman's objection there was that, without a gradient, the system would lock up because an equal force would be exerting in both directions...Effectively a system that can be moved in one direction by equilibrium heat can necessarily be moved in the other direction as well, and therefore the net effect would end up being zero.
Well the idea of using the heat energy to do something is all well and good, but they would need something that actually needs to be done...Otherwise it would seem to be more efficient to simply strive for greater efficiency, and try to reduce the amount of waste heat.
I may just be too stupid to follow this, so feel free to slap me down.
The article sucks, obviously, but they repeat the phrase "Brownian Ratchet" incessantly, and I know what those are: a theoretical molecular machine able to extract energy from a heat source that is in thermal equilibrium. Obviously this would be interesting because normally we use heat transfer to generate energy and if there is no excess to transfer one would suppose (based on the second law) that there is no extra energy to be converted to whatever work needs to be done.
But the article and the summary both use the phrase "non-equilibrium" which suggests the existence of heat energy in excess of what is naturally dissipated, which is, gosh, the source of almost all the power that we use, in one form or another.
So either I'm unclear on the concept of a non-equilibrium thermodynamic state, or they don't know what the fuck a Brownian Ratchet is, and are trying to grab a sensationalist headline by making a wild claim that has nothing to do with what they're actually doing (e.g. running the system fans off steam power or something).
It depends...I leveled my druid all the way to 70 as feral, but I often had to heal in instances, and I kept a full set of heal gear.
So when I'd top out (at the 60 cap, and later 70) and respec to resto I was a much better healer because I'd had to learn timing and mana management without having a ton of talents to make it easier...When you're used to working with a feral mana pool, you feel like a fricking superhero when you go full resto...Mana management is a snap, and you've got the sort of badass feral-spec reflexes that can save a raid.
Well being a priest almost always sucks, and that's double if you're a healer because being a healer is pretty thankless as well.
Amusingly though, I could often spot the people who had used bots to level by their performance in instances; they just didn't use their class abilities like someone who'd had (literally) days of their life to learn the ins and outs of their class.
Still though, there is a whole class of people who is incapable of managing in a team situation, and the Hunter team role is extremely picky and requires all kinds of special skills...You have to be able to trap kite and pull like a master, and most of them can't.
I absolutely HATE asking someone who no doubt has better things to do with his time to walk me through an insanely boring instance...Though I'll admit my mains were healer and tank spec, so I tended to be the "lead your low level guildies through the instance" bitch, and I didn't mind it very much.
After getting repeatedly pwned in the high level instances, it's nice to hit a low level instance, pull massive aggro, and have the baddies fail to hurt you at all.
Actually Anarchy Online had all that stuff a loooong long time ago (up to and including a scary overabundance of gender non-specific sexy clothes for your virtual crossdressing needs).
A pretty good MMO actually, for it's era...It's still around, and they've actually been pretty busy with expansions lately, but the core product is pretty dated. The major flaw of the game was twinking, imho, because everything was based on character stats, and there were ways to increase your stats dramatically out of proportion to your level...And since the pvp was level based, you could come across a guy who was the "same" level as you, who could squish you like a bug.
I think the most amusing one I ever saw was a guildie of mine who had a level 60 twink who could manifest a level 150 pet. That was his only skill, and yet it was more than enough...The 150 pet was more than tough enough to stand up to a few level 150 characters...At least for a while. What it did to people he could pvp with had to be seen to be imagined.
I noticed that when I was grinding my second lvl 70; it was about a zillion times harder to get a group for a group quest than it had been for the first character...We're talking the 60->70 grind here, not the 1->70.
I can't frankly imagine what it must be like in the 1-60 right now, even with the massive boost to gained XP. Just skip the instances and the group quests, because there is just no point.
Primals are more constrained by the scarcity of mobs that drop them, and the relative abundance of items that need them...If you can only obtain n primals through farming the mobs that drop them at 100% efficiency, and the demand would stablize at 2n primals, you're basically screwed, and the price is going to remain high, and the supply low.
I played WoW for a long time (by my standards). It's not too bad to level your character up to 70, and the raid game is entertaining; requires a lot of strategy and some decent skills.
The problem for me is that the game only really rewards time committed. Nothing else. If you put in a ton of time, you get all the rewards.
Glider really exposes that. It is a program that doesn't have any particular skills beyond the ability to spend 24/7 playing the game.
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Don't know why this is marked funny: rice is a natural desiccant, and it would help dry things out. Ever notice that, in humid areas, people put rice in their salt shakers? Now you know why.
That being said, I'd buy some silica gel myself.
Yea, but this is coming from Apple, the company that has two-dozen different non-standard monitor connector plugs...I can't believe that they would honestly care about adding another annoying connector socket.
Actually this isn't that unusual. In nerosurguries where the goal is not to correct some gross defect (e.g. cancer, stroke, railroad spike in a frontal lobe) the subject is often kept awake while the surgeon uses a probe to see if they can stimulate the neurological event that they're trying to surpress. I've seen it mostly with things like epilepsy, but I've been following the deep brain stim research, and it seems completely logical that they'd use the same methodology for that procedure.
That being said, watching a video (oh yes, there are videos) of someone with a big chunk out of the top of their head chattering away while a bunch of surgeons stand around behind them, poking at their brain...Lot of times the stimulation will create neurological artifacts...Memories, smells, lights...It's truly bizarre to watch. Not for the weak of stomach. //Former cognitive science major. Didn't much care for neuroanatomy.
Better not to keep that stuff on your laptop at all, if you're worried. FTP it to yourself, or burn it to some DVDs and stuff 'em in your checked luggage.
If you have more than that, it's best to seek professional help...No one needs to travel with that much pron.
There is always the tried and true method of shoving it in a condom and swallowing it...Just tell them you have a bionic stomach.
Otherwise, I think you're probably fucked. If you encrypt, you're just showing that you have something to hide, so that's a trip to GITMO.
If you don't encrypt, then people will see your deviant porn, and that's a trip to PMITA prison.
You seem to be suggesting an emotional investment, when I am merely speaking about time, and attention. Simply finding a strip like Opus on a weekly basis will take extra effort for most people.
But, assuming I'm so intellectually bankrupt to seek entertainment, and that I'm so collossally low-brow to read a arty character-driven sunday-only comic strip, I kinda want one that has a bit of staying power, so that after I've bothered to get into it, the creator doesn't just wander off to do something else.
I don't care if he stops drawing. It annoys me that he can't make up his mind.
Actually it was the same band; they got dragged to one of those Tipper Gore congressional hearings and Steve (the manager) eventually caved to congressional pressure on censorship and decency and changed the bands name from "Deathtongue" to "Billy and the Boingers"
(That story arc is a must for people who are against censorship; throughout the whole bit Tipper Gore keeps screaming "Off with their heads" whenever anyone does anything offensive, and through out there are quoted sections of purported Deathtongue songs with such memorable names as "Love Rhino")
I've actually gotten annoyed with BB over the years...What's the point of getting invested in one of his strips? This is what, the third?
As much as I appreciate a newspaper comic artist who will actually let his strip die when he feels like he's gotten stale, it's irritating when he lets it die, brings it back, lets it die, brings it back, and lets it die THIS TIME FOR REAL I PROMISE!
The problem is always that people assume that the only evolution is disease/lifespan related.
Healthcare that removes selectors like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc, just pushes selection in a different direction, and it becomes more about who you can convince to mate with you, rather than whether or not you'll be picked off by a disease.
Who in Amsterdam doesn't speak English? I spent half my trip there trying to speak anything but English, just to get some practice.
You don't know of places that enforce the use of French in Canada? Is that a joke, or do you not consider Quebec to be part of Canada?
I have to say that it irritates me that people are unwilling to learn a new language, but it irritates me in both directions. I speak several languages, with varying degrees of skill, and I don't mind helping out someone who doesn't speak english.
If, however, I go to a country where I don't speak the language, I don't get offended that they expect me to make the effort to learn their language...It's a far far greater hassle for their whole country to pick up my language, than it is for me to pick up enough to get around.
So, while the, "Speak American" rednecks annoy the crap out of me, the idea that the vast english-speaking majority should have to learn a new language for the benefit of the minority is equally annoying.
I think the only way you will get bots that will "pass" this test is to have massive databases of words, relationships between words and subjects with corresponding topics of discussion. Still, the computer won't be intelligent, it will just be reciting from its huge database of responses.
I'm interested to hear how you think humans develop the ability to carry on conversations? Having a huge database of possible responses isn't cheating...It's a requirement. People spend their whole lives building up that sort of database.
When the computer database is large enough, and is capable of the sort of ridiculously bizarre cross-linking that the human brain is, then you'll see accurate human-sounding dialogue.
The question of consciousness is essentially meaningless, however. If it appears conscious, you need to treat it as such until it proves otherwise, same as with a person.
Yea, but in Athens Tennessee angry gun-toting rednecks outnumber normal people by 20 to 1. The previous week there was an armed revolt because of a chewing tobacco shortage.
Joking aside, in a postwar culture in Tennessee they would absolutely come out in armed force against a perceived attempt to take away their liberty. Given the lack of quick information during the time period, they would have acted on little info and word of mouth.
Transition that to today, and it would be extremely difficult to get the same situation going. Information would be all over the place; the sense of us against them would be dilluted by a difficult to define "them." It's just hard to get up the same level of xenophobia...Even in Tennesee.
//Born & raised in TN; can still sing all verses of "Rocky Top"
99% of my driving is within the range covered by a regular charge, and hell, I live in the sort of climate where I could throw a single solar panel on my roof and break even on the electricity for the year.
It's all about the batteries though. The guy who invents a workable next-gen source of electricity (be it battery, capacitor, or fuel cell) is going to make Bill Gates look like a poor relative.
I think Feynman's objection there was that, without a gradient, the system would lock up because an equal force would be exerting in both directions...Effectively a system that can be moved in one direction by equilibrium heat can necessarily be moved in the other direction as well, and therefore the net effect would end up being zero.
Well the idea of using the heat energy to do something is all well and good, but they would need something that actually needs to be done...Otherwise it would seem to be more efficient to simply strive for greater efficiency, and try to reduce the amount of waste heat.
That's because that's the only place they've ever existed.
These guys are just using the word; they're not really clear on what it means. If they have a thermal gradient, Brownian Ratchets do not apply.
I may just be too stupid to follow this, so feel free to slap me down.
The article sucks, obviously, but they repeat the phrase "Brownian Ratchet" incessantly, and I know what those are: a theoretical molecular machine able to extract energy from a heat source that is in thermal equilibrium. Obviously this would be interesting because normally we use heat transfer to generate energy and if there is no excess to transfer one would suppose (based on the second law) that there is no extra energy to be converted to whatever work needs to be done.
But the article and the summary both use the phrase "non-equilibrium" which suggests the existence of heat energy in excess of what is naturally dissipated, which is, gosh, the source of almost all the power that we use, in one form or another.
So either I'm unclear on the concept of a non-equilibrium thermodynamic state, or they don't know what the fuck a Brownian Ratchet is, and are trying to grab a sensationalist headline by making a wild claim that has nothing to do with what they're actually doing (e.g. running the system fans off steam power or something).
It depends...I leveled my druid all the way to 70 as feral, but I often had to heal in instances, and I kept a full set of heal gear.
So when I'd top out (at the 60 cap, and later 70) and respec to resto I was a much better healer because I'd had to learn timing and mana management without having a ton of talents to make it easier...When you're used to working with a feral mana pool, you feel like a fricking superhero when you go full resto...Mana management is a snap, and you've got the sort of badass feral-spec reflexes that can save a raid.
Well being a priest almost always sucks, and that's double if you're a healer because being a healer is pretty thankless as well.
Amusingly though, I could often spot the people who had used bots to level by their performance in instances; they just didn't use their class abilities like someone who'd had (literally) days of their life to learn the ins and outs of their class.
Still though, there is a whole class of people who is incapable of managing in a team situation, and the Hunter team role is extremely picky and requires all kinds of special skills...You have to be able to trap kite and pull like a master, and most of them can't.
I absolutely HATE asking someone who no doubt has better things to do with his time to walk me through an insanely boring instance...Though I'll admit my mains were healer and tank spec, so I tended to be the "lead your low level guildies through the instance" bitch, and I didn't mind it very much.
After getting repeatedly pwned in the high level instances, it's nice to hit a low level instance, pull massive aggro, and have the baddies fail to hurt you at all.
Actually Anarchy Online had all that stuff a loooong long time ago (up to and including a scary overabundance of gender non-specific sexy clothes for your virtual crossdressing needs).
A pretty good MMO actually, for it's era...It's still around, and they've actually been pretty busy with expansions lately, but the core product is pretty dated. The major flaw of the game was twinking, imho, because everything was based on character stats, and there were ways to increase your stats dramatically out of proportion to your level...And since the pvp was level based, you could come across a guy who was the "same" level as you, who could squish you like a bug.
I think the most amusing one I ever saw was a guildie of mine who had a level 60 twink who could manifest a level 150 pet. That was his only skill, and yet it was more than enough...The 150 pet was more than tough enough to stand up to a few level 150 characters...At least for a while. What it did to people he could pvp with had to be seen to be imagined.
I noticed that when I was grinding my second lvl 70; it was about a zillion times harder to get a group for a group quest than it had been for the first character...We're talking the 60->70 grind here, not the 1->70.
I can't frankly imagine what it must be like in the 1-60 right now, even with the massive boost to gained XP. Just skip the instances and the group quests, because there is just no point.
Primals are more constrained by the scarcity of mobs that drop them, and the relative abundance of items that need them...If you can only obtain n primals through farming the mobs that drop them at 100% efficiency, and the demand would stablize at 2n primals, you're basically screwed, and the price is going to remain high, and the supply low.
I played WoW for a long time (by my standards). It's not too bad to level your character up to 70, and the raid game is entertaining; requires a lot of strategy and some decent skills.
The problem for me is that the game only really rewards time committed. Nothing else. If you put in a ton of time, you get all the rewards.
Glider really exposes that. It is a program that doesn't have any particular skills beyond the ability to spend 24/7 playing the game.