Most of the active army is NOT a "fighting force", If you mean the guys who go out and fight. Over 44% of all the Army's combat divisions are in the National Guard. That's not even counting the reserves.
The reason that the National Guard is called out all the time is that the active force doesn't have enough combat arms types. Ok, not without having the active folks deployed non-stop. This was done on purpose, and was part of that whole "peace dividend"/shrink the military movement. This was done with the full knowledge that the guard would have to be called up more in the future. Whether this was a good idea is left as an exercise for the reader.
It's actually pretty slick.
I'm not sure how valid the "check out" view is.
The library passes you through to the 24x7 site, and (as long as you have come from the kcls [king county library system] site, you get to play for free/on the library's dime.
at the 24x7 site, they have a hosted enviroment (The books are on "their" server). You can "browse" the collection, and add books to your "bookshelf", etc.
When you want to read a book that is in your collection, or that you've browsed to, It is displayed via your web browser, as html, one chunk at a time.
It may be possible to download an entire book, I've never tried. Obviously, they want you to read in the browser, and not download. Since it is Free (beer) and works, I've decided to play nice. My bookshelf generally has between 25-30 books on it at a time. Generally reference/coding stuff.
"What part of financial information such as credit card number didn't you understand?"
The part where it applies to library users?...
If you sign up DIRECTLY with books24x7, they may require whatever it is that they choose to require.
As a regular user of Books24x7 via the King County Library system, I can state as an absolute fact that I gave my *Library Card* number, and *_NO_* credit card number, at any time whatsover.
Which they? It appears that InformIt has gone corporate (though they still give the first "hit" for free), but neither the Baen site nor the library site require any sort of credit card info. So, that's 2 of 3 that don't require cc info. And since I was posting that _Libraries_ w/e-books was not new (Note subject line)...
The library site does require your library card number, for some odd reason....
Skipping the various examples of Bain , inform it , and etc, Legit e-books have been available for free, or nearly so for quite some time. My favorite being the King County, Wa library system.Mostly tech books, but then it's mostly geeks who will look for and use them at this point.
Feeling Blue? This Robot Knows It
By Louise Knapp
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56921, 00.html
02:00 AM Jan. 01, 2003 PT
Science fiction often depicts robots of the future as machines that look like people and feel, or at least hanker after the ability to feel, human emotions.
A team at Vanderbilt University is turning this notion on its head by developing a robotic assistant whose goal is not to develop emotions, but rather respond to the moods of its human master.
By processing information sent from physiological sensors the human counterpart wears, the Vanderbilt robot can detect when its master is having a bad day and approach with the query: "I sense that you are anxious. Is there anything I can do to help?"
But do people really want a machine sensing their anxiety and offering assistance?
If that's all the Vanderbilt robot was intended to do, it wouldn't have much shelf life. But the research team has a specific kind of service in mind for its mechanical assistant.
Researchers envision the emotion-sensing robot serving military personnel on the battlefield.
"The human commander may get into trouble but be unable to ask for help," said Nilanjan Sarkar, team member and assistant professor of Vanderbilt University's Department of Mechanical Engineering.
"In cases like these his robot assistant will be able to detect his stress and either communicate the need for assistance or assist in some way itself."
The robot's sensors consist of an electrocardiogram to record heartbeat, a skin sensor that can detect tiny changes in sweat production, an electromyography sensor that detects minute muscle activity in the jaw and brow, a blood-volume pressure sensor that measures the constriction on the arteries and a temperature sensor.
"The robot uses algorithms to translate the information it gets from the sensors into a format it can understand," Sarkar said. "One of our most important claims is that the robot can process this information in real time."
So far tests with the robot have proved promising. The machine responds on cue to signals of distress and approaches its human counterpart to ask if he's OK.
The robot's biggest hurdle may not be its design but rather its human counterpart accepting it as a trusted assistant.
"Speaking as a former soldier, the last thing I would want is an artificial girlfriend by my side to nag me about how I am feeling while out in the battlefield," said John Petrik, corporate communications officer at the Office of Naval Research.
But, Petrik added, as one of the project's sponsors, the ONR believes the research has potential to develop smarter robotic aids for military use.
Other robotics researchers agree that the Vanderbilt robot has potential but needs fine-tuning.
"Taking these (physiological) signals is certainly a good indication of the human state, but we are at a very primitive stage of understanding the relation between the internal states -- what is observable -- and human emotion," said Takeo Kanade, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
The Vanderbilt team has time to work the kinks out of its robot's emotion-detecting abilities. Sarkar admits that it will be a few more years before the robot makes it onto the battlefield.
Amen. Keep the plethora of choices in the "expert" install (or just on the CD), and just put 1 each "vanilla" xterm, ftp client, etc. Newbs will be happy. Geeks will still be able to make it just the way they want.
That being said, 2002 was great. Mandrake 8.2 got my home system 100% Linux and 0% MS. And there was much rejoicing.
-
Re:Happening on a smaller scale as well...
on
Robot Pharmacists
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· Score: 1
The robots have no bugs or glitches?
I hope you'll understand if I prefer to trust my life to a system that (at least in theory) has some human intellegence somewhere in it.
I've noticed a disturbing tendancy of family/friends/co-workers to "trust the machine" because "computers don't make mistakes" (OK, technically, the computer does EXACTLY what it was told to do, but you get my point).
Light Speed limits...
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the active army is NOT a "fighting force", If you mean the guys who go out and fight. Over 44% of all the Army's combat divisions are in the National Guard. That's not even counting the reserves. /shrink the military movement.
The reason that the National Guard is called out all the time is that the active force doesn't have enough combat arms types. Ok, not without having the active folks deployed non-stop.
This was done on purpose, and was part of that whole "peace dividend"
This was done with the full knowledge that the guard would have to be called up more in the future. Whether this was a good idea is left as an exercise for the reader.
Old saying: "Big brother ain't so bad when you're one of the brothers." Oh, ObMSSucks.
It's actually pretty slick.
I'm not sure how valid the "check out" view is.
The library passes you through to the 24x7 site, and (as long as you have come from the kcls [king county library system] site, you get to play for free/on the library's dime.
at the 24x7 site, they have a hosted enviroment (The books are on "their" server). You can "browse" the collection, and add books to your "bookshelf", etc.
When you want to read a book that is in your collection, or that you've browsed to, It is displayed via your web browser, as html, one chunk at a time.
It may be possible to download an entire book, I've never tried. Obviously, they want you to read in the browser, and not download. Since it is Free (beer) and works, I've decided to play nice.
My bookshelf generally has between 25-30 books on it at a time. Generally reference/coding stuff.
"What part of financial information such as credit card number didn't you understand?"
The part where it applies to library users?...
If you sign up DIRECTLY with books24x7, they may require whatever it is that they choose to require.
As a regular user of Books24x7 via the King County Library system, I can state as an absolute fact that I gave my *Library Card* number, and *_NO_* credit card number, at any time whatsover.
Which they? It appears that InformIt has gone corporate (though they still give the first "hit" for free), but neither the Baen site nor the library site require any sort of credit card info. So, that's 2 of 3 that don't require cc info. And since I was posting that _Libraries_ w/e-books was not new (Note subject line)... The library site does require your library card number, for some odd reason....
Skipping the various examples of Bain , inform it , and etc, Legit e-books have been available for free, or nearly so for quite some time. My favorite being the King County, Wa library system.Mostly tech books, but then it's mostly geeks who will look for and use them at this point.
Feeling Blue? This Robot Knows It By Louise Knapp Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56921, 00.html
02:00 AM Jan. 01, 2003 PT
Science fiction often depicts robots of the future as machines that look like people and feel, or at least hanker after the ability to feel, human emotions.
A team at Vanderbilt University is turning this notion on its head by developing a robotic assistant whose goal is not to develop emotions, but rather respond to the moods of its human master.
By processing information sent from physiological sensors the human counterpart wears, the Vanderbilt robot can detect when its master is having a bad day and approach with the query: "I sense that you are anxious. Is there anything I can do to help?"
But do people really want a machine sensing their anxiety and offering assistance?
If that's all the Vanderbilt robot was intended to do, it wouldn't have much shelf life. But the research team has a specific kind of service in mind for its mechanical assistant.
Researchers envision the emotion-sensing robot serving military personnel on the battlefield.
"The human commander may get into trouble but be unable to ask for help," said Nilanjan Sarkar, team member and assistant professor of Vanderbilt University's Department of Mechanical Engineering.
"In cases like these his robot assistant will be able to detect his stress and either communicate the need for assistance or assist in some way itself."
The robot's sensors consist of an electrocardiogram to record heartbeat, a skin sensor that can detect tiny changes in sweat production, an electromyography sensor that detects minute muscle activity in the jaw and brow, a blood-volume pressure sensor that measures the constriction on the arteries and a temperature sensor.
"The robot uses algorithms to translate the information it gets from the sensors into a format it can understand," Sarkar said. "One of our most important claims is that the robot can process this information in real time."
So far tests with the robot have proved promising. The machine responds on cue to signals of distress and approaches its human counterpart to ask if he's OK.
The robot's biggest hurdle may not be its design but rather its human counterpart accepting it as a trusted assistant.
"Speaking as a former soldier, the last thing I would want is an artificial girlfriend by my side to nag me about how I am feeling while out in the battlefield," said John Petrik, corporate communications officer at the Office of Naval Research.
But, Petrik added, as one of the project's sponsors, the ONR believes the research has potential to develop smarter robotic aids for military use.
Other robotics researchers agree that the Vanderbilt robot has potential but needs fine-tuning.
"Taking these (physiological) signals is certainly a good indication of the human state, but we are at a very primitive stage of understanding the relation between the internal states -- what is observable -- and human emotion," said Takeo Kanade, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
The Vanderbilt team has time to work the kinks out of its robot's emotion-detecting abilities. Sarkar admits that it will be a few more years before the robot makes it onto the battlefield.
Amen. Keep the plethora of choices in the "expert" install (or just on the CD), and just put 1 each "vanilla" xterm, ftp client, etc. Newbs will be happy. Geeks will still be able to make it just the way they want. That being said, 2002 was great. Mandrake 8.2 got my home system 100% Linux and 0% MS. And there was much rejoicing. -
The robots have no bugs or glitches? I hope you'll understand if I prefer to trust my life to a system that (at least in theory) has some human intellegence somewhere in it. I've noticed a disturbing tendancy of family/friends/co-workers to "trust the machine" because "computers don't make mistakes" (OK, technically, the computer does EXACTLY what it was told to do, but you get my point).
Just A good idea. Not the law. ?
Some movies are so bad that even Natalie Portman can't save them. Even with a Beowulf cluster....