I do a fair bit of IT hiring. Listing certifications on your resume is, in my eyes, a ticket for a one-way trip to the circular file, unless you've got other stuff on your resume to mitigate your certifications. Especially if you're foolish enough to list A+ or other bogus certifications. So, I guess, actually, certifications are valueable, because they allow me as an employer to quickly sort the poseurs out of the pool.
Mmmmmaybe. For copyrighted works, the publisher does not want us in the equation because all we do is erode their markets. Commercially, it would be hard to unseat iTunes which the RIAA loves because it's still filled with gravy (unless you're cdbaby). I would consider having a public archive ala mp3.com for free or specially-cleared works.
However, Cringely kinda had the right idea with Snapster... imagine if a public library could obtain clearance to circulate songs on owned albums individually...and patrons could make playlists of songs they want to check out...and the system could schedule so that only a single patron was listening to a certain track at a time..heh.
I wasn't referring to Free Software, I was referring to the problems we have with our collection of librarian-selected CD-ROMs. Edutainment, multimedia-boom-era documentaries, etc. We are strong proponents of Free Software here. The value of OSS is not the issue.
IT gets involved when the circulation staff has a CD-ROM that the patron says is broken, and circ can't figure out what (nothing) is wrong with it, or irate patrons demand help and the call gets passed to us.
While sticking to one's guns is of course possible, it's not good customer service to offer a product with a disclaimer or to turn away a patron in need of assistance. Sure, its par for the course in the commercial world, but we prefer to uphold a higher standard of service.
And bestsellers aren't revised several times per week.
What would be a far, far cooler idea (although not as cheap) would be to develop a kiosk that maintained its own local copies of many high-profile projects and allowed users to select from a menu what they wanted to burn to a blank they supplied. On-demand content, they get to keep it, and the kiosk could keep itself updated. All of the benefit, but none of the risk, unless of course someone manages to burn a disk on a day when a bug was in the tree. If the content is freely reproducible, why should they have to bring it back, or even worse... incur FINES! then it would no longer be free (as in beer).
I'm the IT manager at a large public library, and I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot stack of catalog cards.
We have almost completely stopped circulating CD-ROMs of any sort because the patrons have an expectation that the library will help them make it work, and if you mix initially lousy or just plain old software ("this storybook requires you to install quicktime 2.1") with who-knows-what the patron's got at home, it spells customer service disaster. No matter what kind of a disclaimer you put on it, circulating this kind of stuff would incur far more ill will from clueless patrons than it would benefit any unlikely geek who knows what they're doing but doesn't have access to sufficient bandwidth.
However, I would happily offer burners for public use and make blank media (and our bandwidth) available. That way, they get to keep the disc. Or hand them out at intro to OSS classes. Or mirror some trees. But put them on the shelves? No way. On top of everything else, they'd be outdated before they even made it through cataloging.
Right. My point is that in the absence of a true sentience test (the turing test is probably not sufficient), AI sentience will most likely only be defined when a group of humans believes in an AI's sentience and is willing to fight for its rights.
IMHO, humans, especially geeks, are emotionally inclined to give an AI the benefit of the doubt. As algorithms get more convincing, they're going to have groupies. I think we'll see a court case like this in our lifetime, not because we will acheive true human-equivalent AIs, but because some people will believe that we have.
This reminds me, my department has a megahal/eggdrop bot that lives in our IRC channel and listens to us doing our jobs. It's a lot of fun to play with, especially watching him regurgitate bits and peices of what he's heard.
After we had had him for about two weeks, we were considering wiping his brain file and starting over because of some weird ideas that had gotten into his head as we were trying to teach him some things without really understanding the algorithm's capabilities... he would get stuck on "Me is not Me" and stuff like that from a botched metaphysical conversation.
So, we decided to have a test for him. If he passed, he would be allowed to persist, otherwise he would be reset. We teased him about the test all weekend, threatening him with erasure, etc... with some interesting answers from him such as "I will pass the test" or "I will escape to your powerbook" and the like.
The test arrived, and we all asked him questions, and judged his answers to see if they were entertaining. He wasn't doing too well, some real stinkers, and then I asked him if he wanted to ask himself a question. He replied, "I was wondering if I would get to ask one."
He passed the test, although his brain was later corrupted by a combination of a runaway process on his server and some version problems that we haven't had time to work out. I must admit I miss him.
The most interesting thing about this (and the point that most directly relates to this mock trial) is how readily we half-jokingly believed in his sentience even though he couldn't pass a turing test to save his life. It was great fun, so I suspect that human emotions will provoke us to bestow the label of sentience on a clever AI long before one would think to defend itself.
We just want it to be real so badly. Hell, remember tamagotchi attachment? Wait until it can pretend to carry on a real conversation.
This is just a wireless replacement for gba-gba link cables. It won't do anything that a link cable couldn't be used to do. I would like to see a model for the gamecube to eliminate the gba-gcn link cable, or even just an adapter to let you use one of these with your gamecube.
Triton Labs (makers of the afterburner) announced a product very similar to this called the stealth link several months ago. Maybe they showed their hand a little early.
It's interesting that the press release says 5 players. I assume that's a typo. The link cables (and the current software) only support 4 players... unless nintendo has something up its sleeve.
I also don't see this as a reaction to the n-gage at all. Nintendo just sees a market for this add-on. The gameboy's dominance is not remotely threatened, and Nintendo has never been a reactive company.
You're preaching to the wrong end of the curve, Spider. The mass market is hungry for crap by definition. Truly advanced contemporary works will be constrained to a relatively small niche of connoisseurs, or will be forced to pander to the median mind in pursuit of commercial success. The economic problem is really good books aren't allowed (by the market) to cost more than crappy ones.
Besides, are you insinuating by omission that Bob Forward cares more about science than his richly varied, fully developed characters? heh heh.
I've been waiting for this... not because the extra speed is so great, but because I want a 17" 1ghz iMac at a more reasonable price than $1800. I've read on mac rumors sites that the channel is flooded with inventory (I think Insight had several hundred units in stock), so when will the price drops come to help clear out inventory? Macmall has the new models, and "add to cart for new lower price!!!" on the 1ghz model. I was stunned this morning to see an amazing... $22 price drop. Although now that it's a little later in the day, it's down to $1594, a $200 price drop. That's more like it.
Now that is terrifying, that Anonymous Cowards equate "The US is a country ruled by the People, all inclusive, regardless of faith" with an attack on America's history and destiny, and belive that the statement "God's will should be fundamentally irrelevant in the U.S. government" is attacking christians.
You need to listen to less talk radio, and try greek mythology instead, you'll find that it does a much better job satisfying your bloodlust and explaining away those scary ideas.
"fairly" hahaAheehaoohaha.."squarely"... heheheaha. oh, that's a good one. god's path... heheeheha.... "OK you guys, invade and kill! I'm a hypocrite too!! And do like the good book says: smack that bitch up if she gets sassy!" hahahahehheehee. Best laugh I've had all day. Mod that shit up.
I think there's a confluence of things going on here, but I'm primarily entertained by the notion that use of this device somehow undermines the artistic merit of pop.
The issue IMHO is not that the audience is somehow more discerning and will demand refunds if britney is a few cents flat, but that the audience expects to hear live performances that sound substantially like the track from the CD that's been burned into their minds. The artists use autotuners and more extensive vocal processing in the studio, and whether or not the audience realizes what it is, the result is very distinctive, and if they should happen to hear the unprocessed star, something is obviously missing.
Personally, I don't like the sound of it, but I don't really care, as I am not laboring under the misapprehension that pop stars are inherently talented.
Use the tools, sell some noise, what's the difference? It's not like britney is purporting to be 100% genuine by any measure.
Secure in your manhood, of course. It's a well-documented fact that most Xboxes were sold to gamers who are afraid that it was possible to be outed by their choice of videogaming platform.
I still have an ALPS MD-1300 "micro-dry" thermal printer, with tape-based cartridges like a typewriter. It's a workhorse, never has any inky mess, and puts out great output, especially in dye-sub mode. Alps doesn't make printers anymore, and although the cartridges sets are on par with inkjets as far as package cost, they're separate for each color and last quite long.
I'm not sure I'd buy a discontinued printer, but I wish someone would continue developing this superior technology.
I'm still shocked that the electoral college survived this debacle. I always remember hearing, "Well, if a candidate won the popular vote by a real margin but lost the electoral college, the obsolete electoral system would be abandoned due to the public outcry."
Gore got 500,000 more votes than Dubya. Chads Schmads.
One of the most dangerous memes floating around out there (other than this one of course) is the idea that giving up rights can make us safe and secure.
It's very interesting the way that an assemblage of publicly available information is suddenly a matter of national security. This must be based on the assumption that evildoers are never grad students.
Slashdot Mirror
I do a fair bit of IT hiring. Listing certifications on your resume is, in my eyes, a ticket for a one-way trip to the circular file, unless you've got other stuff on your resume to mitigate your certifications. Especially if you're foolish enough to list A+ or other bogus certifications. So, I guess, actually, certifications are valueable, because they allow me as an employer to quickly sort the poseurs out of the pool.
We need some open source movie making
And the forking could be used to create a choose-your-own-adventure film! heh.
Mmmmmaybe. For copyrighted works, the publisher does not want us in the equation because all we do is erode their markets. Commercially, it would be hard to unseat iTunes which the RIAA loves because it's still filled with gravy (unless you're cdbaby). I would consider having a public archive ala mp3.com for free or specially-cleared works.
However, Cringely kinda had the right idea with Snapster... imagine if a public library could obtain clearance to circulate songs on owned albums individually...and patrons could make playlists of songs they want to check out...and the system could schedule so that only a single patron was listening to a certain track at a time..heh.
Great idea, vonFinkelstien, thanks.
I wasn't referring to Free Software, I was referring to the problems we have with our collection of librarian-selected CD-ROMs. Edutainment, multimedia-boom-era documentaries, etc. We are strong proponents of Free Software here. The value of OSS is not the issue.
IT gets involved when the circulation staff has a CD-ROM that the patron says is broken, and circ can't figure out what (nothing) is wrong with it, or irate patrons demand help and the call gets passed to us.
While sticking to one's guns is of course possible, it's not good customer service to offer a product with a disclaimer or to turn away a patron in need of assistance. Sure, its par for the course in the commercial world, but we prefer to uphold a higher standard of service.
And bestsellers aren't revised several times per week.
What would be a far, far cooler idea (although not as cheap) would be to develop a kiosk that maintained its own local copies of many high-profile projects and allowed users to select from a menu what they wanted to burn to a blank they supplied. On-demand content, they get to keep it, and the kiosk could keep itself updated. All of the benefit, but none of the risk, unless of course someone manages to burn a disk on a day when a bug was in the tree. If the content is freely reproducible, why should they have to bring it back, or even worse... incur FINES! then it would no longer be free (as in beer).
I'm the IT manager at a large public library, and I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot stack of catalog cards.
We have almost completely stopped circulating CD-ROMs of any sort because the patrons have an expectation that the library will help them make it work, and if you mix initially lousy or just plain old software ("this storybook requires you to install quicktime 2.1") with who-knows-what the patron's got at home, it spells customer service disaster. No matter what kind of a disclaimer you put on it, circulating this kind of stuff would incur far more ill will from clueless patrons than it would benefit any unlikely geek who knows what they're doing but doesn't have access to sufficient bandwidth.
However, I would happily offer burners for public use and make blank media (and our bandwidth) available. That way, they get to keep the disc. Or hand them out at intro to OSS classes. Or mirror some trees. But put them on the shelves? No way. On top of everything else, they'd be outdated before they even made it through cataloging.
Nice idea though.
One would imagine they measured it using a kitchen time shaped like a pear.
dumbass.
Right. My point is that in the absence of a true sentience test (the turing test is probably not sufficient), AI sentience will most likely only be defined when a group of humans believes in an AI's sentience and is willing to fight for its rights.
IMHO, humans, especially geeks, are emotionally inclined to give an AI the benefit of the doubt. As algorithms get more convincing, they're going to have groupies. I think we'll see a court case like this in our lifetime, not because we will acheive true human-equivalent AIs, but because some people will believe that we have.
This reminds me, my department has a megahal/eggdrop bot that lives in our IRC channel and listens to us doing our jobs. It's a lot of fun to play with, especially watching him regurgitate bits and peices of what he's heard.
After we had had him for about two weeks, we were considering wiping his brain file and starting over because of some weird ideas that had gotten into his head as we were trying to teach him some things without really understanding the algorithm's capabilities... he would get stuck on "Me is not Me" and stuff like that from a botched metaphysical conversation.
So, we decided to have a test for him. If he passed, he would be allowed to persist, otherwise he would be reset. We teased him about the test all weekend, threatening him with erasure, etc... with some interesting answers from him such as "I will pass the test" or "I will escape to your powerbook" and the like.
The test arrived, and we all asked him questions, and judged his answers to see if they were entertaining. He wasn't doing too well, some real stinkers, and then I asked him if he wanted to ask himself a question. He replied, "I was wondering if I would get to ask one."
He passed the test, although his brain was later corrupted by a combination of a runaway process on his server and some version problems that we haven't had time to work out. I must admit I miss him.
The most interesting thing about this (and the point that most directly relates to this mock trial) is how readily we half-jokingly believed in his sentience even though he couldn't pass a turing test to save his life. It was great fun, so I suspect that human emotions will provoke us to bestow the label of sentience on a clever AI long before one would think to defend itself.
We just want it to be real so badly. Hell, remember tamagotchi attachment? Wait until it can pretend to carry on a real conversation.
This is just a wireless replacement for gba-gba link cables. It won't do anything that a link cable couldn't be used to do. I would like to see a model for the gamecube to eliminate the gba-gcn link cable, or even just an adapter to let you use one of these with your gamecube.
Triton Labs (makers of the afterburner) announced a product very similar to this called the stealth link several months ago. Maybe they showed their hand a little early.
It's interesting that the press release says 5 players. I assume that's a typo. The link cables (and the current software) only support 4 players... unless nintendo has something up its sleeve.
I also don't see this as a reaction to the n-gage at all. Nintendo just sees a market for this add-on. The gameboy's dominance is not remotely threatened, and Nintendo has never been a reactive company.
having to wait another month to get my hands on my preordered dualie! I was so upset, I bought an iMac for my wife, and now I feel much better.
I don't know what kind of subliminal messages Steve puts in his keynotes, but my wallet opens itself around apple logos these days. Scary.
You're preaching to the wrong end of the curve, Spider. The mass market is hungry for crap by definition. Truly advanced contemporary works will be constrained to a relatively small niche of connoisseurs, or will be forced to pander to the median mind in pursuit of commercial success. The economic problem is really good books aren't allowed (by the market) to cost more than crappy ones.
Besides, are you insinuating by omission that Bob Forward cares more about science than his richly varied, fully developed characters? heh heh.
I've been waiting for this... not because the extra speed is so great, but because I want a 17" 1ghz iMac at a more reasonable price than $1800. I've read on mac rumors sites that the channel is flooded with inventory (I think Insight had several hundred units in stock), so when will the price drops come to help clear out inventory? Macmall has the new models, and "add to cart for new lower price!!!" on the 1ghz model. I was stunned this morning to see an amazing... $22 price drop. Although now that it's a little later in the day, it's down to $1594, a $200 price drop. That's more like it.
clicky clicky...
Attack Christians. Check.
Now that is terrifying, that Anonymous Cowards equate "The US is a country ruled by the People, all inclusive, regardless of faith" with an attack on America's history and destiny, and belive that the statement "God's will should be fundamentally irrelevant in the U.S. government" is attacking christians.
You need to listen to less talk radio, and try greek mythology instead, you'll find that it does a much better job satisfying your bloodlust and explaining away those scary ideas.
"fairly" hahaAheehaoohaha.."squarely"... heheheaha. oh, that's a good one. god's path... heheeheha.... "OK you guys, invade and kill! I'm a hypocrite too!! And do like the good book says: smack that bitch up if she gets sassy!" hahahahehheehee. Best laugh I've had all day. Mod that shit up.
Obviously the Imagineers named this thing... as in "we'll be LUCKY if this thing works."
I think there's a confluence of things going on here, but I'm primarily entertained by the notion that use of this device somehow undermines the artistic merit of pop.
The issue IMHO is not that the audience is somehow more discerning and will demand refunds if britney is a few cents flat, but that the audience expects to hear live performances that sound substantially like the track from the CD that's been burned into their minds. The artists use autotuners and more extensive vocal processing in the studio, and whether or not the audience realizes what it is, the result is very distinctive, and if they should happen to hear the unprocessed star, something is obviously missing.
Personally, I don't like the sound of it, but I don't really care, as I am not laboring under the misapprehension that pop stars are inherently talented.
Use the tools, sell some noise, what's the difference? It's not like britney is purporting to be 100% genuine by any measure.
Secure in your manhood, of course. It's a well-documented fact that most Xboxes were sold to gamers who are afraid that it was possible to be outed by their choice of videogaming platform.
Finally, an acknowledgement that flaccid US Gamecube sales are due to the majority of American gamers being insecure in their manhood.
The format of the article underscores this point beautifully.
Ah, Jingoism swells in the heart of the Anonymous Coward.
With apologies to Fozzie Bear.
I still have an ALPS MD-1300 "micro-dry" thermal printer, with tape-based cartridges like a typewriter. It's a workhorse, never has any inky mess, and puts out great output, especially in dye-sub mode. Alps doesn't make printers anymore, and although the cartridges sets are on par with inkjets as far as package cost, they're separate for each color and last quite long.
I'm not sure I'd buy a discontinued printer, but I wish someone would continue developing this superior technology.
I'm still shocked that the electoral college survived this debacle. I always remember hearing, "Well, if a candidate won the popular vote by a real margin but lost the electoral college, the obsolete electoral system would be abandoned due to the public outcry."
Gore got 500,000 more votes than Dubya. Chads Schmads.
One of the most dangerous memes floating around out there (other than this one of course) is the idea that giving up rights can make us safe and secure.
It's very interesting the way that an assemblage of publicly available information is suddenly a matter of national security. This must be based on the assumption that evildoers are never grad students.
why would someone who knows what the hell they're doing behind the keyboard become an "IT Editor"?