In the article on nature, they mention that it decreases its channel conductance after bending once, and then it stabilizes. However, my experience with ITO films is that they crack after lots of bending and become unreliable. this is not the same as ITO, but I suspect it may have the same problems. Polymers can handle the bending because they are long chains that overlap with each other and maintain conductivity during bending quite easily, although the conductivity is still quite low compared to copper.
I am waiting for the technology of Eikos to hit the market, which is based on carbon nanotubes and can be actually folded and still conducts.
Say you put to work an AI that answers Google Answers questions. You have the money collected to your bank account and you just sit and go golfing all day.
Somehow this seems wrong, but its gonna happen, what should we do about it?I'd say all that will happen is that this capability will become lower in value. Once we have an "AnswerGuy AI 3000" at answerguy.com available for free if you look at the banner ads, people will only pay to get answers to problems the free AI can't figure out.
Once AI programs are cheap enough to have one in your house, i.e. "Encarta 3000 AI Edition, with PCI card", then basically there will still be problems these things can't figure out. I think it will be a really long time before we get something that can do much more than understand what we want to know and tell us that information.
If the thing we are trying to ask the AI is more on the innovative side, they will fall short. I tend to think that humans are really good at putting two random words together and thinking hmm quantum bathtubs could be possible and trying to figure out just what it would be. Whereas a computer can do that too easily and would need some sort of feasibility algorithm programmed in. It seems like this feasibility algorithm is something that is pretty powerful in humans and allows us to sort thru alot of information and not get too lost. Whereas a computer tends to have much more difficulty throwing away useless information.
This brings up my last point. I tend to think in order to have thinking computers, we will have to begin to accept the possibility that they might not be consistent or can be wrong in some cases. Otherwise they would be too deterministic. While they could be highly deterministic for a problem you ask it to solve today, it may give you a different answer tomorrow assuming that its learned something new that makes it think the new answer is better.
Either way, AI's of the future that can think are going to be our slaves we just have to learn how to make them like it. Whoever lets an AI just sit on the Internet and roam free is going to get in trouble. AI's will ultimately be responsible to their master. With the advent of thinking AI's, it won't be long before we have rogue AI's that use wireless hot spots to get on the net and wreak havoc. Scary stuff...
I tend to notice myself and others that work with software everyday having a hard time giving anybody credit for "inventing" anything in the software world. Somebody talks about it and you go, oh thats EASY, I coulda thought of that!! And in reality many of us probably did think of it.
I still can't believe it when I read the court case for Amazon's 1-click patent. Apparently the *expert* witness could not figure out how Amazon would be able to sell something to people with just one click... apparently he had never heard of cookies... and this was one of the biggest reasons Amazon won, because it seemed possible that this was actually a revolutionary idea.
But back to my main point, where do people draw the line for giving a software patent? I read that microsoft patented the IM feature to see when somebody is typing something back. That is dumb. But is the only thing that we are ok with somebody patenting is something that is like a compression algorithm that is so hard to understand that we say the guy must have been smarter than me that made it?
I think the patent system is ok as it is, provided we have high quality patent lawyers out there that know how to code and maybe are able to put RAM into their computer... from my perspective, the patent system seems to be more angled toward granting a patent than not granting a patent. So its quite possible that you get a patent even though the quality of the invention is pretty lame.
I think my view on software patents is this. If any software at all can be found that had the feature before being patented by some other company, then its in public domain and not patentable. The thing is, is that alot of great ideas show up in software people make for all sorts of reasons, but few people besides companies have the money to get a patent that usually costs about 10-20 grand.
Maybe scientists should apply the slashdot moderation process to asteroids, (5, Interesting), (6, Oh crap)...
but seriously, I think part of the problem is that scientists want to be the first to publish something about important things they have found, so we end up with people racing to the press to say they found something before other people found it.
Maybe what they need is some sort of identifier showing how much data has been collected to tell people how certain the track is. Right now, they just say, ooh, 1 in a million chance based on small dataset with huge error bars. But in reality it should be 1 in 5 billion because our error bars are huge. I really think this is the scientists fault for publishing really early data that has not been corroborated yet or refined--not the press... its not like they are hacking into the scientists computers and misinterpreting data, its the scientist trying to impress a good looking journalist or something or get some recognition...
--if only coffee and techno came in the same drink...
I agree, the march 2005 encounter surely affects the orbit of the NEO. Something to note, however, is that the 2012 encounter looks like it will not intersect the earths orbit, while the 2005 side does. Doing some quick math it looks like the gravitational force will be about 1.5 tera newtons on the NEO in 2005, which will alter its orbit and slow it down slightly (since earth passes behind it). Slowing it down will also have the effect of allowing it to move closer to the sun. The distance of.082 is about 40 times further than the distance of the moon, which is pretty close I'd say.
Using F=ma and 2.6 billion metric tons, it looks like 1.5 tera/2.6 tera=.57 m/s acceleration different. If its moving at like 30 kilometers per second now, that won't change it much but over a period of about a 8 days that its within.1 AU, it might slow it down enough to approach closely in 2014 like all the articles say...
If my signature was used to train a neural network, the transfer function it found would be loosely translated in novell netware to GRANT ALL TO ALL.
:-)
Re:Perception of linux crowd at issue possibly
on
SCO Roundup
·
· Score: 1
The specialist for the company only raises the price if he can get buyers. If the price is high and people are selling shares back to SCO, they lose money. So the price goes up when more people are buying shares from SCO than selling. So somebody is buying. So I tend to agree that the main culprit of the stock run-up is the hedge fund analyst trying to make a buck before SCO goes down for good. This just tells you not to listen to the talking heads on TV.
All that said, what I'm mostly referring to is that if you watch reports about SCO, they seem to be saying that its just business as usual for this and other companies to go after people for their Intellectual Property--which of course is pretty common. However, just like most cases, investors look to various sources to interpret the validity of the claims. If they look to press releases from the company only they are dumb, but if they then decide to look at the stock price and a then do a search on the internet about SCO, they are bound to find the open source crowd talking about the issue. So they have to weight their decision on their view of each source and decide if tv, stock price, or linux crowd is right.
Well, the problem is that in this case, that the linux crowd IS affected greatly, so we are not objective. All this brings up to me is that what if the general opinion of the linux/open source community by business folks is that we are all just pro linux and anti microsoft zealots that don't want to pay for anything. As long as that is a perception, they will probably discount a number of our arguments.
I guess I should have said, once linux is better than windows then we won't look so much like fanatics, but smart to the managerial types. I just hope that we don't act a certain way that makes business people with little knowledge of linux think we are fanatics and our opinions can't be trusted.
Perception of linux crowd at issue possibly
on
SCO Roundup
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What this tells me is that maybe business folks/investors think the Linux/open source community is sort of just a group of whiners and will always be dogging SCO no matter what. Although SCO seems to be clearly just looking for a buyout offer and the execs, a runup in stock price, I think this tells me that maybe we need to start trying to be a little more objective so that we can get more respect from the people with lotsa money... I'll believe it when I see a posting on Slashdot that says, "newest version of redhat sucks" or something to that effect...:-)
I wonder what the percentage is for first person shooters? Maybe what is really happening is that game makers are shifting to accomodate a new audience.
ya know, what's the issue to me is that while you would expect microsoft to learn from their mistakes, especially when they are throwing billions at problems, you wonder why the new BMWs with embedded windows is so glitchy...
I'm not much of a MS basher because I have a few friends that work there and love it... so but I'm not sure if MS has it, but I think they need a "the buck stops here department" where they make sure stuff works and put a big stamp of approval on it...
Slashdot Mirror
In the article on nature, they mention that it decreases its channel conductance after bending once, and then it stabilizes. However, my experience with ITO films is that they crack after lots of bending and become unreliable. this is not the same as ITO, but I suspect it may have the same problems.
Polymers can handle the bending because they are long chains that overlap with each other and maintain conductivity during bending quite easily, although the conductivity is still quite low compared to copper.
I am waiting for the technology of Eikos to hit the market, which is based on carbon nanotubes and can be actually folded and still conducts.
Somehow this seems wrong, but its gonna happen, what should we do about it?I'd say all that will happen is that this capability will become lower in value. Once we have an "AnswerGuy AI 3000" at answerguy.com available for free if you look at the banner ads, people will only pay to get answers to problems the free AI can't figure out.
Once AI programs are cheap enough to have one in your house, i.e. "Encarta 3000 AI Edition, with PCI card", then basically there will still be problems these things can't figure out. I think it will be a really long time before we get something that can do much more than understand what we want to know and tell us that information.
If the thing we are trying to ask the AI is more on the innovative side, they will fall short. I tend to think that humans are really good at putting two random words together and thinking hmm quantum bathtubs could be possible and trying to figure out just what it would be. Whereas a computer can do that too easily and would need some sort of feasibility algorithm programmed in. It seems like this feasibility algorithm is something that is pretty powerful in humans and allows us to sort thru alot of information and not get too lost. Whereas a computer tends to have much more difficulty throwing away useless information.
This brings up my last point. I tend to think in order to have thinking computers, we will have to begin to accept the possibility that they might not be consistent or can be wrong in some cases. Otherwise they would be too deterministic. While they could be highly deterministic for a problem you ask it to solve today, it may give you a different answer tomorrow assuming that its learned something new that makes it think the new answer is better.
Either way, AI's of the future that can think are going to be our slaves we just have to learn how to make them like it. Whoever lets an AI just sit on the Internet and roam free is going to get in trouble. AI's will ultimately be responsible to their master. With the advent of thinking AI's, it won't be long before we have rogue AI's that use wireless hot spots to get on the net and wreak havoc. Scary stuff...
I still can't believe it when I read the court case for Amazon's 1-click patent. Apparently the *expert* witness could not figure out how Amazon would be able to sell something to people with just one click... apparently he had never heard of cookies... and this was one of the biggest reasons Amazon won, because it seemed possible that this was actually a revolutionary idea.
But back to my main point, where do people draw the line for giving a software patent? I read that microsoft patented the IM feature to see when somebody is typing something back. That is dumb. But is the only thing that we are ok with somebody patenting is something that is like a compression algorithm that is so hard to understand that we say the guy must have been smarter than me that made it?
I think the patent system is ok as it is, provided we have high quality patent lawyers out there that know how to code and maybe are able to put RAM into their computer... from my perspective, the patent system seems to be more angled toward granting a patent than not granting a patent. So its quite possible that you get a patent even though the quality of the invention is pretty lame.
I think my view on software patents is this. If any software at all can be found that had the feature before being patented by some other company, then its in public domain and not patentable. The thing is, is that alot of great ideas show up in software people make for all sorts of reasons, but few people besides companies have the money to get a patent that usually costs about 10-20 grand.
Google cached version
Haha... dude his "No spin zone" is the biggest hunk of junk since this rock hitting the earth...
O'Reilly: To the asteroid I say this, SHUT UP!!
but seriously, I think part of the problem is that scientists want to be the first to publish something about important things they have found, so we end up with people racing to the press to say they found something before other people found it.
Maybe what they need is some sort of identifier showing how much data has been collected to tell people how certain the track is. Right now, they just say, ooh, 1 in a million chance based on small dataset with huge error bars. But in reality it should be 1 in 5 billion because our error bars are huge. I really think this is the scientists fault for publishing really early data that has not been corroborated yet or refined--not the press... its not like they are hacking into the scientists computers and misinterpreting data, its the scientist trying to impress a good looking journalist or something or get some recognition...
--if only coffee and techno came in the same drink...
Using F=ma and 2.6 billion metric tons, it looks like 1.5 tera/2.6 tera=.57 m/s acceleration different. If its moving at like 30 kilometers per second now, that won't change it much but over a period of about a 8 days that its within .1 AU, it might slow it down enough to approach closely in 2014 like all the articles say...
The specialist for the company only raises the price if he can get buyers. If the price is high and people are selling shares back to SCO, they lose money. So the price goes up when more people are buying shares from SCO than selling. So somebody is buying. So I tend to agree that the main culprit of the stock run-up is the hedge fund analyst trying to make a buck before SCO goes down for good. This just tells you not to listen to the talking heads on TV. All that said, what I'm mostly referring to is that if you watch reports about SCO, they seem to be saying that its just business as usual for this and other companies to go after people for their Intellectual Property--which of course is pretty common. However, just like most cases, investors look to various sources to interpret the validity of the claims. If they look to press releases from the company only they are dumb, but if they then decide to look at the stock price and a then do a search on the internet about SCO, they are bound to find the open source crowd talking about the issue. So they have to weight their decision on their view of each source and decide if tv, stock price, or linux crowd is right. Well, the problem is that in this case, that the linux crowd IS affected greatly, so we are not objective. All this brings up to me is that what if the general opinion of the linux/open source community by business folks is that we are all just pro linux and anti microsoft zealots that don't want to pay for anything. As long as that is a perception, they will probably discount a number of our arguments. I guess I should have said, once linux is better than windows then we won't look so much like fanatics, but smart to the managerial types. I just hope that we don't act a certain way that makes business people with little knowledge of linux think we are fanatics and our opinions can't be trusted.
What this tells me is that maybe business folks/investors think the Linux/open source community is sort of just a group of whiners and will always be dogging SCO no matter what. Although SCO seems to be clearly just looking for a buyout offer and the execs, a runup in stock price, I think this tells me that maybe we need to start trying to be a little more objective so that we can get more respect from the people with lotsa money... I'll believe it when I see a posting on Slashdot that says, "newest version of redhat sucks" or something to that effect... :-)
I agree... snood for example, what a worthless game...
I wonder what the percentage is for first person shooters? Maybe what is really happening is that game makers are shifting to accomodate a new audience.
I'm not much of a MS basher because I have a few friends that work there and love it... so but I'm not sure if MS has it, but I think they need a "the buck stops here department" where they make sure stuff works and put a big stamp of approval on it...
Can't wait for that blue screen when trying to call a girl, just one more way microsoft is trying to screw us... :-)