I say this robot is a reasonable next step past my audio-only monitor that I use when my adorable child is sleeping. Some (very rare) times when he awakes, he plays quietly in his crib. It would be nice to have a video monitoring his actions, so we can both enjoy some alone time.
Kids need to be left alone as well as spending time with their parents. Constant adult supervision and attention can be as harmful as not enough. You don't really want your amazingly cute little girl unable to deal with you being out of the room for 10 minutes. Her life shouldn't revolve around you - that's unhealthy.
"...will this effect Jabber's overall share of the IM market?"
Since Jabber already has market share, this move by Apple will not Effect (verb: to create) a share for Jabber. However, including Jabber in iChat may Affect (verb: to influence) the market that already exists.
OTOH - The Effect (noun: influence) of the ignorant substitution of inappropriate words Affects (verb: to influence) your ability to write clearly. Learn to the difference between english vowels, or you'll be condemned to confuse a cat with a cot (or Al with an eel)
OTOH giving a mnemonic to remember which is always the verb is more helpful. [You only get one "A", so it's an effect rather than an affect.]
> Works just fine, unless you pop a fuse, then you're stuck with last speed and rudder settings
*YAWN* and those new-fangled engines are no good because as soon as you blow a rod you're stuck in the water with no sails. And those sails, don't get me started....in certain seas you can go into irons for days and if you don't have oars....
Don't even get me started on getting rid of swords in favor of pistols as sidearms!
The US Navy wishes it had 804 ships. More like 294.
And what in the world is "docking location"? Their home port? Big whoop. What's important is where they are when they're on mission, not what city the sailors happen to live in.
It's not like you can hide a warship from public knowledge in any case. Anyone with a waterfront view can tell you what ships are in port.
As a genealogist, I've spent a lot of time digging around old census records. The first one was in 1790 and the records for every census through 1920 are publicly available.
The 1790 census simply asked for the last name of the head of household and the number, age, sex and free/slave status of other household members. It was felt that knowing how many men of fighting age was important to such a new country.
As the years progressed, other information was collected and census results started being used for other purposes (i.e., to decide where to locate a school for the blind or deaf.)
So, other information was collected. The "how long does it take you to get to work" question might be used when mass transit decisions are made for example.
None of these additional questions are in the constitutional mandate of the Census Bureau, but that has never stopped them.
Personally, I'm thrilled that my ancestors answered all the questions, although I often doubt how correct they were. It all depended on who answered the door the day the enumerator came around.
By the way, I received and completed the long form. --
"You despise me, don't you?"
"This may be the end of the electoral college once people realize that the Executive branch of government is not truly representative of the people's will."
Yes, but...
It is not fair to say that without the Electoral College Gore would have won this election.
Things like the EC effect voter turn-out and behavior. If we all knew that the popular vote would determine the presidency, many people who didn't vote would and those who did might vote differently.
Two points:
In a highly Democratic state (like Maryland, for example), Republicans may stay home since they know that a vote for Bush will go ignored in their state. Obviously, the reverse applies in states that are highly slated for the Republicans. I nearly stayed home myself, but we had a close House race.
A third party candidate becomes a much smarter choice for those in the pivotal "swing" states. We've heard here that many Nader supporters wouldn't vote for him because they were in a swing state.
So, until we change the system to make the popular vote mean something, it doesn't. --
"You despise me, don't you?"
Been using fitaly on my Palm VII for about 2 months. I can type about 30-35 wpm, still slower than my qwerty keyboard speed, but much faster than qwerty-pen speed or graffti speed. The only real downfall of it is that you pretty much have to be looking at the screen to type. Graffti, for all its problems, can be used without looking. So I still use Graffti to take notes in meetings, but use Fitaly to write e-mails and the like.
With the standard qwerty layout, not only do you have to look at the Palm, you have to often move your hand rather than just the pen. Fitaly puts all the keys within easy reach with minimum movement. You even get used to some of the more common letter combinations which can jack up your speed. This only makes sense, since qwerty was designed to put common letters on different hands (i.e., far away from each other) while fitaly was designed to center the most common letters. -- "You despise me, don't you?"
As others have said, it can be good and bad. I've been telecommuting for 3 1/2 months. I've never worked at the office for this job. Here are the things that I do to keep sane.
We use instant messaging (our own, see shameless plug at: http://www.infoworkspace.com) and online collaboration to solve most of the "in-person" problems. All of my colleagues are also telecommuting, so that makes it easier. We're all in the same boat.
My job has some very clear goals, which make it easy to "prove" that I've been doing work at home. I think this is key for an employer to feel comfortable about not seeing an employee. I IM my boss nearly every day and send weekly e-mail updates about how I've been spending my time and what I plan to do in the future. This gives him a warm and fuzzy that he still is managing me.
I use music to set my day. In the morning, when I first get up (usually with my husband, sometimes early to go run), I listen to local radio. This is the time I get on the computer and check my personal e-mail and do my personal on line errands. Then, I switch to classical music until about 9 when I take a break to go shower, have breakfast, etc. Anytime I'm not actively working, I turn local radio back on.
I always leave the house every day to do something. Whether it's errands at the post office or a cup of coffee at Starbuck's, I have to get out of our place for at least a little while.
At the end of the day, I put on a particular CD (Meat Loaf, Back into Hell) to signify that my work day is over. Then I get away from the computer, clean the house, do dishes, watch TV, whatever. It doesn't matter what I'm doing as long as I'm doing it away from the computer.
The danger of having your place of work being the same as your place of play is that it becomes difficult to distinguish the two and you never stop working. Using music to "cue" me into different modes works quite well.
Don't underestimate the power of talking. Call people or do Voice-over-IP, not just e-mail and text chat. Voice inflections are important. Call your co-workers just to see how their weekend went. Build those friendships that you would if you were physically co-located.
Speaking of friendships, I found that I had to become active in another area to make friends. We're new to the area, so I joined a running club. My fellow runners are the support group that I need.
That's it. I do really enjoy working barefoot (85% of telecommuters don't wear shoes while working). I do think that a certain personality and job are required to make it work. -- "You despise me, don't you?"
Yes, for goodness sake, we can't have Beetle Bailey conducting CyberWarfare.
Really. The military intelligence arm is full of trained professionals who understand the impact of warfare of all types on a society. They have war colleges that study cyberwarfare, not only how to attack, but how to defend. These intelligence warriors can integrate a cyber attack with other more conventional types of warfare. They can coordinate the strike times to make most effective use of limited resources. They can deny service just when it is worst for the enemy.
The last thing we need is civilian organization grabbing turf during a war. Keep one leader for all efforts and then (theoretically at least) the right hand will know what the left is doing.
Leave warfare to those who are paid (albeit not very well) do to it. They are highly trained and dedicated men and women who are more deserving of your respect than the above shows.
Alternatives don't just mean alt tags. It can mean presenting the information in an alternative form. Or it could mean the death of Flash, which wouldn't bother me none.
The net is not historically graphical. Mosiac was the first true graphical browser and definitely came in the later days of the net. Okay, granted, the pretty graphics and the point/click interface made the web popular, but the net wasn't, isn't, shouldn't be inherently graphical.
Graphic-intensive is fine. Graphic-dependent is poor coding and just plain dumb.
If AOL truly just wants to ignore the blind, they should be able to. They should market themselves as "SAOL" - Sighted America On Line. However, they claim to care, and then whine about the difficulty of adding alt tags. Keyboard short-cuts are easy to add in HTML as well. While I don't like frivolous lawsuits much more than anyone else, it sure serves to get a lot of attention focused on what is a very real problem.
The ADA serves to protect those who don't have enough market impact to change companies' behavior through market forces. As a society, we have decided that people without sight, or mobility, or hearing, should be able to function as much like those who do as possible. It's easy to say that the blind should just not use AOL, but the reality of it is quite different. AOL (like it or not) is a huge portal to the net. I'd love to see one of their competitors streak past them on this issue and advertise that they really do care about everyone, while AOL just cares about everyone's money. I just don't see it happening. The market for the blind just isn't that big.
At the same time, if I'm Braille/reader friendly, I would also be phone-internet, car-radio-internet, etc. friendly.
Lawyers for inventor Bruce Dickens are reportedly threatening legal action to enforce payments from Fortune 500 companies that have used software fixes based on the now-patented technology.
How can they possibly claim a solid patent with no prior art if the folks they're suing were using the method before the patent?
This "absentee education" was inevitable and, of course, no one's ideal way to learn. And as the author points out, finding a way to go back to the "good ole' days" isn't the answer.
We must re-examine how we learn and how we teach. What skills are truly important? What information is vital? What information is required for further learning? How are cognitive skills attained? How do we learn to think?
How are new concepts grasped? What is the best way to present those concepts? What is the best way to evaluate an understanding of concepts?
This is merely the front of a very massive wave that will change the way we teach.
The main difference seems to be that the group nominates the evictees, but the viewing public actually decides. Two are already gone. Out of the remaining eight, five will be booted before the new year. The remaining three get about $118,000US each.
My favorite quote from the article: Their trips to the bathroom will be on camera in the control room for security reasons and to prevent secret meetings, but not broadcast. Nor will the fronts of showering ladies.
I have the same problem with over 5 hours of film, some of which has already gone beyond hope, (60+ years old, stored poorly). Right now, I just had them transfered over to VHS, with several copies. I choose VHS over Beta since one of my goals was to allow relatives to enjoy the memories now.
It's important to scatter copies, because even if the quality is low, the probability of the film surviving and remaining in the hands of relatives increases proportionately to the number of copies.
I just found out about a company that will take your content and encode it to any format you want. They will provide it back as a CD or FTP (for smaller files). They will also host for streaming video. While they seem to be targeting the business market, I plan to see what they can do for my home movies.
"much of online chat is about role-playing and fantasy"
But this man (reportedly) had child porn on his computer.
This was not entrapment. Nor is it role-playing.
He was the one who (reportedly) suggested that they meet, that she skip school, that they "kiss, make out, and play and stuff." And he actually did go to Santa Monica to meet her. Not much role-playing going on when you hop on a plane.
Years ago at a small conference at Carleton College, one of the presenters described an "AI". The program took disparate facts, compared them against an enormous database and developed a relevant solution. Each time the program was presented with the same set of facts, it had to go through the same set of actions. And it never got bored. The ability to be bored by repetitive tasks is probably one of the better harbingers of true AI.
We are years from this, but the idea of mechanical life "taking over" still is fairly ridiculous. In every scenario, from Rosum's Universal Robots to Matrix assumes that these AL/UL/AI will all have similar motivations and desires, which is tough to believe. A medical AI probably would have problems with a construction AI who doesn't get along with the shipping AI. Competing interests don't go away with higher intelligence.
"Clarke imagines AI machines taking over all but the most creative and trivial human work, inserting themselves into the loop between humans, work, creativity and entertainment.
Nearly every technical advance has promised more time, more creativity, more leisure. We have yet to see this promise fulfilled.
In any case, perhaps we should program the Univeral Laws of Robotics into every AI.
Is anyone else reminded of the sci-fi story where all flora and fauna is reduced to gene-banks? (Foundation, by Asimov, perhaps?)
The concept was that "someday" when there was enough food for people, those animals and plants that didn't have any other "purpose" would be restored. In the meantime, the whole of the planet (and all subsequently discovered planets) was turned into a massive city with living space and hydroponics.
Maybe this isn't in our future, but doesn't it get easier to drive a species to extinction if we can always bring them back "someday"?
Slashdot Mirror
I say this robot is a reasonable next step past my audio-only monitor that I use when my adorable child is sleeping. Some (very rare) times when he awakes, he plays quietly in his crib. It would be nice to have a video monitoring his actions, so we can both enjoy some alone time.
Kids need to be left alone as well as spending time with their parents. Constant adult supervision and attention can be as harmful as not enough. You don't really want your amazingly cute little girl unable to deal with you being out of the room for 10 minutes. Her life shouldn't revolve around you - that's unhealthy.
What I'd like is for the search engines to exclude the words in the ads from the page.
Too many times I go looking for an article. Every page listed has my search terms in the *ads* surrounding the article. No content.
No, FOUO is not a classification like confidential, secret, top secret, which are classified by Executive Order.
It is an administrative category meaning that the document is exempt from disclosure under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.
> Works just fine, unless you pop a fuse, then you're stuck with last speed and rudder settings
*YAWN* and those new-fangled engines are no good because as soon as you blow a rod you're stuck in the water with no sails. And those sails, don't get me started....in certain seas you can go into irons for days and if you don't have oars....
Don't even get me started on getting rid of swords in favor of pistols as sidearms!
Ask the ancient Carthaginians if violence ever settled anything.
If you're going to quote Heinlein, you might at least give him credit (Starship Troopers).
The US Navy wishes it had 804 ships. More like 294.
And what in the world is "docking location"? Their home port? Big whoop. What's important is where they are when they're on mission, not what city the sailors happen to live in.
It's not like you can hide a warship from public knowledge in any case. Anyone with a waterfront view can tell you what ships are in port.
As a genealogist, I've spent a lot of time digging around old census records. The first one was in 1790 and the records for every census through 1920 are publicly available.
The 1790 census simply asked for the last name of the head of household and the number, age, sex and free/slave status of other household members. It was felt that knowing how many men of fighting age was important to such a new country.
As the years progressed, other information was collected and census results started being used for other purposes (i.e., to decide where to locate a school for the blind or deaf.)
So, other information was collected. The "how long does it take you to get to work" question might be used when mass transit decisions are made for example.
None of these additional questions are in the constitutional mandate of the Census Bureau, but that has never stopped them.
Personally, I'm thrilled that my ancestors answered all the questions, although I often doubt how correct they were. It all depended on who answered the door the day the enumerator came around.
By the way, I received and completed the long form.
--
"You despise me, don't you?"
"This may be the end of the electoral college once people realize that the Executive branch of government is not truly representative of the people's will."
Yes, but...
It is not fair to say that without the Electoral College Gore would have won this election.
Things like the EC effect voter turn-out and behavior. If we all knew that the popular vote would determine the presidency, many people who didn't vote would and those who did might vote differently.
Two points:
In a highly Democratic state (like Maryland, for example), Republicans may stay home since they know that a vote for Bush will go ignored in their state. Obviously, the reverse applies in states that are highly slated for the Republicans. I nearly stayed home myself, but we had a close House race.
A third party candidate becomes a much smarter choice for those in the pivotal "swing" states. We've heard here that many Nader supporters wouldn't vote for him because they were in a swing state.
So, until we change the system to make the popular vote mean something, it doesn't.
--
"You despise me, don't you?"
Any source for this statistic?
"the last role call looked something around 80-85%"
I just checked my web logs and I'm getting only 54% MSIE, and that's counting MSIE4 and 3 as well.
--
"You despise me, don't you?"
With the standard qwerty layout, not only do you have to look at the Palm, you have to often move your hand rather than just the pen. Fitaly puts all the keys within easy reach with minimum movement. You even get used to some of the more common letter combinations which can jack up your speed. This only makes sense, since qwerty was designed to put common letters on different hands (i.e., far away from each other) while fitaly was designed to center the most common letters.
--
"You despise me, don't you?"
As others have said, it can be good and bad. I've been telecommuting for 3 1/2 months. I've never worked at the office for this job. Here are the things that I do to keep sane.
We use instant messaging (our own, see shameless plug at: http://www.infoworkspace.com) and online collaboration to solve most of the "in-person" problems. All of my colleagues are also telecommuting, so that makes it easier. We're all in the same boat.
My job has some very clear goals, which make it easy to "prove" that I've been doing work at home. I think this is key for an employer to feel comfortable about not seeing an employee. I IM my boss nearly every day and send weekly e-mail updates about how I've been spending my time and what I plan to do in the future. This gives him a warm and fuzzy that he still is managing me.
I use music to set my day. In the morning, when I first get up (usually with my husband, sometimes early to go run), I listen to local radio. This is the time I get on the computer and check my personal e-mail and do my personal on line errands. Then, I switch to classical music until about 9 when I take a break to go shower, have breakfast, etc. Anytime I'm not actively working, I turn local radio back on.
I always leave the house every day to do something. Whether it's errands at the post office or a cup of coffee at Starbuck's, I have to get out of our place for at least a little while.
At the end of the day, I put on a particular CD (Meat Loaf, Back into Hell) to signify that my work day is over. Then I get away from the computer, clean the house, do dishes, watch TV, whatever. It doesn't matter what I'm doing as long as I'm doing it away from the computer.
The danger of having your place of work being the same as your place of play is that it becomes difficult to distinguish the two and you never stop working. Using music to "cue" me into different modes works quite well.
Don't underestimate the power of talking. Call people or do Voice-over-IP, not just e-mail and text chat. Voice inflections are important. Call your co-workers just to see how their weekend went. Build those friendships that you would if you were physically co-located.
Speaking of friendships, I found that I had to become active in another area to make friends. We're new to the area, so I joined a running club. My fellow runners are the support group that I need.
That's it. I do really enjoy working barefoot (85% of telecommuters don't wear shoes while working). I do think that a certain personality and job are required to make it work.
--
"You despise me, don't you?"
Yes, for goodness sake, we can't have Beetle Bailey conducting CyberWarfare.
Really. The military intelligence arm is full of trained professionals who understand the impact of warfare of all types on a society. They have war colleges that study cyberwarfare, not only how to attack, but how to defend. These intelligence warriors can integrate a cyber attack with other more conventional types of warfare. They can coordinate the strike times to make most effective use of limited resources. They can deny service just when it is worst for the enemy.
The last thing we need is civilian organization grabbing turf during a war. Keep one leader for all efforts and then (theoretically at least) the right hand will know what the left is doing.
Leave warfare to those who are paid (albeit not very well) do to it. They are highly trained and dedicated men and women who are more deserving of your respect than the above shows.
--
"You despise me, don't you?"
Alternatives don't just mean alt tags. It can mean presenting the information in an alternative form. Or it could mean the death of Flash, which wouldn't bother me none.
See:
W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
for more info about accessibility.
Interestingly, they recommend graphical alternatives to text as well, for those who can't read.
--
"You despise me, don't you?"
The net is not historically graphical. Mosiac was the first true graphical browser and definitely came in the later days of the net. Okay, granted, the pretty graphics and the point/click interface made the web popular, but the net wasn't, isn't, shouldn't be inherently graphical.
Graphic-intensive is fine. Graphic-dependent is poor coding and just plain dumb.
If AOL truly just wants to ignore the blind, they should be able to. They should market themselves as "SAOL" - Sighted America On Line. However, they claim to care, and then whine about the difficulty of adding alt tags. Keyboard short-cuts are easy to add in HTML as well. While I don't like frivolous lawsuits much more than anyone else, it sure serves to get a lot of attention focused on what is a very real problem.
The ADA serves to protect those who don't have enough market impact to change companies' behavior through market forces. As a society, we have decided that people without sight, or mobility, or hearing, should be able to function as much like those who do as possible. It's easy to say that the blind should just not use AOL, but the reality of it is quite different. AOL (like it or not) is a huge portal to the net. I'd love to see one of their competitors streak past them on this issue and advertise that they really do care about everyone, while AOL just cares about everyone's money. I just don't see it happening. The market for the blind just isn't that big.
At the same time, if I'm Braille/reader friendly, I would also be phone-internet, car-radio-internet, etc. friendly.
Enough rambling.
--
"You despise me, don't you?"
What am I missing?
Lawyers for inventor Bruce Dickens are reportedly threatening legal action to enforce payments from Fortune 500 companies that have used software fixes based on the now-patented technology.
How can they possibly claim a solid patent with no prior art if the folks they're suing were using the method before the patent?
--
"You despise me, don't you?"
This "absentee education" was inevitable and, of course, no one's ideal way to learn. And as the author points out, finding a way to go back to the "good ole' days" isn't the answer.
We must re-examine how we learn and how we teach. What skills are truly important? What information is vital? What information is required for further learning? How are cognitive skills attained? How do we learn to think?
How are new concepts grasped? What is the best way to present those concepts? What is the best way to evaluate an understanding of concepts?
This is merely the front of a very massive wave that will change the way we teach.
For more ramblings on this subject:
http://www.cren.net/~jboettch/look.html
Actually, the "Big Brother" show is shot in the Netherlands. They have a web site at:
://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09 /25/094l-092599-idx.html
http://www.big-brother.nl/
There's also an article about it at the Washington Post site (which is in English).
http
The main difference seems to be that the group nominates the evictees, but the viewing public actually decides. Two are already gone. Out of the remaining eight, five will be booted before the new year. The remaining three get about $118,000US each.
My favorite quote from the article:
Their trips to the bathroom will be on camera in the control room for security reasons and to prevent secret meetings, but not broadcast. Nor will the fronts of showering ladies.
it's amazing that AOL can have a trademark on it.
/08/16/1545204.shtml
They don't. See:
http://slashdot.org/articles/99
I have the same problem with over 5 hours of film, some of which has already gone beyond hope, (60+ years old, stored poorly). Right now, I just had them transfered over to VHS, with several copies. I choose VHS over Beta since one of my goals was to allow relatives to enjoy the memories now.
It's important to scatter copies, because even if the quality is low, the probability of the film surviving and remaining in the hands of relatives increases proportionately to the number of copies.
I just found out about a company that will take your content and encode it to any format you want. They will provide it back as a CD or FTP (for smaller files). They will also host for streaming video. While they seem to be targeting the business market, I plan to see what they can do for my home movies.
http://www.encoding.com/sol utions/get_a_quote/main.html
will allow you to request a quote. The page is a bit confusing and I can't vouch for the quality of the work.
"much of online chat is about role-playing and fantasy"
But this man (reportedly) had child porn on his computer.
This was not entrapment. Nor is it role-playing.
He was the one who (reportedly) suggested that they meet, that she skip school, that they "kiss, make out, and play and stuff." And he actually did go to Santa Monica to meet her. Not much role-playing going on when you hop on a plane.
Years ago at a small conference at Carleton College, one of the presenters described an "AI". The program took disparate facts, compared them against an enormous database and developed a relevant solution. Each time the program was presented with the same set of facts, it had to go through the same set of actions. And it never got bored. The ability to be bored by repetitive tasks is probably one of the better harbingers of true AI.
We are years from this, but the idea of mechanical life "taking over" still is fairly ridiculous. In every scenario, from Rosum's Universal Robots to Matrix assumes that these AL/UL/AI will all have similar motivations and desires, which is tough to believe. A medical AI probably would have problems with a construction AI who doesn't get along with the shipping AI. Competing interests don't go away with higher intelligence.
Nearly every technical advance has promised more time, more creativity, more leisure. We have yet to see this promise fulfilled.
In any case, perhaps we should program the Univeral Laws of Robotics into every AI.
Is anyone else reminded of the sci-fi story where all flora and fauna is reduced to gene-banks? (Foundation, by Asimov, perhaps?)
The concept was that "someday" when there was enough food for people, those animals and plants that didn't have any other "purpose" would be restored. In the meantime, the whole of the planet (and all subsequently discovered planets) was turned into a massive city with living space and hydroponics.
Maybe this isn't in our future, but doesn't it get easier to drive a species to extinction if we can always bring them back "someday"?