As the industry moves over to optical logic, what will that mean for current electrical engineers who have until now been focused solely/primarily on electronic logic with semiconductor devices? Will there still be a place for conventional electronics in the "optical age" or will we all be looking for new jobs, regretting our past career decisions?
I haven't seen it yet, and I'm now contemplating whether I should. I absolutely loved The Matrix and thought The Matrix Reloaded was okay, but nothing compared to the original. I kind of expected more of the same from this one, and now my fears have been confirmed.
Of course, it'll still be a box office hit, because there are gazillions of people who get excited and lose all mental capacity for reasoning as soon as they hear the word matrix. In fact, it is my prediction that this movie will gross more box office sales than either of the previous two films, despite its apparent lack of appeal (understatement). Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony...
...ThinkGeek starts selling "glider" tee-shirts, caps, and coffee mugs. Maybe a brand of highly-caffeinated beverage bearing the glider logo. That's how we'll know it's been accepted as the logo of hackerdom.
In my opinion, these guidelines for defining life are outdated in light of this scenario. Personally, I do not believe that life, by definition, must involve growth (as in cellular division processes) or even a cellular structure to begin with. Metabolism, arguably, is a requirement, based on one's definition of metabolism; if metabolism requires conversion of food into energy and disposal of waste products, then indeed an intelligent computer does not meet the requirement, however, if simple conversion of energy of one type into energy of another constitutes metabolism, then a computer converting electricity into heat fits the definition exactly. Motion is a decided non-requirement, simply based on the parent poster's observations above. Finally, it is obvious that a computer which does not exhibit some sort of stimulus-response mechanism is fairly useless, as there would be no way to input information into or extract information from such a system.
These definitions of life were generated in an age when sentient AI was not yet close to possibility. I believe that, in cases such as this one, life should be redefined to be constituted by one thing and one thing alone: intelligence. Therefore, the answer to the question of whether a computer can be alive must rest solely on the question of whether it is intelligent.
...is a Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 on the ISA bus. Always used it, works great, never had a reason to upgrade it (except for the fact that it's damn hard to find mobos with ISA slots these days)
"Now, Gordon, if you could accelerate the hadrons to acceptable collision velocity and-- What? Shutting down! It's not working! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
BOOM! ZAP! FLASH!
"My, Gordon, I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade!"
I can see how the data in the benchmarks appear to be a bit skewed, however, how could they make the data "appear" this way? Data is data after all, and if it's wrong, well, it seems as if someone deliberately made it that way. This may be a stupid question -- I know little to nothing about network benchmarks -- but if Microsoft payed for the test, are you implying that they asked for the data to be given a little "nudge" in the right direction as well?
...that this is a hoax.
Visit lordoftherings.net (the official movie site). No report there of pushing back the release date, and the date at the top of the home page still says 12/17/2003... You people sure are easy to fool!
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The SARS spread is believed to have started in Hong Kong's Metropole Hotel on Feb. 21, when six strangers waiting for a ninth-floor elevator came in contact with a seventh person, a sick Chinese professor from Guangdong province who died in Hong Kong March 4. [worldhealth.com]
Can they really tell the origin of the virus that specifically? The ninth floor of some Chinese hotel by the elevators? I'm not sure I can believe that. Amazing stuff, if it's true.
We've just started running Red Hat on the machines in our school programming lab. That's really something considering we're a public school (although the school in that artice was too). I guess this means open source is becoming more and more mainstream. Yay!
Slashdot Mirror
It's a popular port scanning utility.
A link to the non-castrated version of the article with images, for the lazy among us. Lots of nice ads to look at too! http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_catalyst_5 .13_video_quality/
The Internet is supposed to transcend location. Making TLDs dependent on country of origin sort of negates that nice aspect of the network.
As the industry moves over to optical logic, what will that mean for current electrical engineers who have until now been focused solely/primarily on electronic logic with semiconductor devices? Will there still be a place for conventional electronics in the "optical age" or will we all be looking for new jobs, regretting our past career decisions?
The industry moves slowly when completely overhauling itself in comparison to its relative quickness to adopt less drastic changes.
Centripetal acceleration
There was no lack of user-made plugins though, and I think that's what Bethesda had in mind when making the engine/editing tools so flexible.
... or as electrically conductive.
Of course, it'll still be a box office hit, because there are gazillions of people who get excited and lose all mental capacity for reasoning as soon as they hear the word matrix. In fact, it is my prediction that this movie will gross more box office sales than either of the previous two films, despite its apparent lack of appeal (understatement). Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony...
...ThinkGeek starts selling "glider" tee-shirts, caps, and coffee mugs. Maybe a brand of highly-caffeinated beverage bearing the glider logo. That's how we'll know it's been accepted as the logo of hackerdom.
These definitions of life were generated in an age when sentient AI was not yet close to possibility. I believe that, in cases such as this one, life should be redefined to be constituted by one thing and one thing alone: intelligence. Therefore, the answer to the question of whether a computer can be alive must rest solely on the question of whether it is intelligent.
...is a Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 on the ISA bus. Always used it, works great, never had a reason to upgrade it (except for the fact that it's damn hard to find mobos with ISA slots these days)
No.
(from the Skype FAQ)
I dont know whether to trust this, but they do assert that there's no spyware or adware involved.
My Myst trilogy: Myst: 2 CDs Riven: 5 CDs Exile: 4 CDs Uru: probably 3-4 CDs Conclusion: That's a lot of CDs.
In A.D.2101, war was beginning. BOOM! What happen? Somebody set up us the asteroid!
[7] ????
[8] PROFIT!!!!!
BOOM! ZAP! FLASH!
"My, Gordon, I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade!"
Now can they do it over 802.11b? My laptop is running low on juice and I don't feel like coming in off the back porch to recharge it...
I can see how the data in the benchmarks appear to be a bit skewed, however, how could they make the data "appear" this way? Data is data after all, and if it's wrong, well, it seems as if someone deliberately made it that way. This may be a stupid question -- I know little to nothing about network benchmarks -- but if Microsoft payed for the test, are you implying that they asked for the data to be given a little "nudge" in the right direction as well?
Again
and again
and again
and again
and again...
"You sank my Jenga ship?! We're playing Connect Four!" [Homestar Runner]
They are still around, though I don't know exactly where you can get them.
Sometimes, when I eat something, I drink something. [www.homestarrunner.com]
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Can they really tell the origin of the virus that specifically? The ninth floor of some Chinese hotel by the elevators? I'm not sure I can believe that. Amazing stuff, if it's true.
We've just started running Red Hat on the machines in our school programming lab. That's really something considering we're a public school (although the school in that artice was too). I guess this means open source is becoming more and more mainstream. Yay!