Before I relied on this for much of anything, I'd want to see some pretty well controlled studies on just how accurate it is. For example, they should put the test subjects under some kind of stress,
That is an interesting, but tedious way to test the overall system on average across all users. I think I could test the hillclimber algorithm itself, on an individual user, by making the algorithm converge intentionally slowly, simulated annealing style. Then pester the person with lots of very slowly converging and even occasionally diverging sets of faces, and see how "consistent" the persons answers are compared to their final answer. Does the user always select the bushy eyebrows, or only about 50% of the time, etc? Perhaps even assign a numerical or verbal value to their consistency as part of the final report each time the system is used.
TFA says that up to six faces may be "bred" together resulting in a new generation, which would indeed be genetic, so the EvoFit package seems to be genuinely genetic.
Worst case scenario, by breeding faces together, they may only mean six simultaneous hillclimber algorithms, one for the chin, one for the eyes, snout, eyebrows, cheeks, lips, completely independent hillclimbers, one for each region...
Modded as funny, but its a semi serious question. Power = volts times amps.
Volts, well, you know, they were running at.450 TeV and eventually the thing will run at 7 TeV, supposedly.
Amps, I googled for LHC beam current and get answers ranging from 180 mA (unknown date) to 530 mA (design as of 1999).
So, multiply them up and you get somewhere between 80 and 3710 gigawatts.
Energy equals power multiplied by time. Power is immense, time would be just about zilch, multiply them together and you probably get something vaguely around a billionth of a gigawatt-hour, plus or minus a couple orders of magnitude.
You could probably estimate time by imagining shorting the beam out by completely, instantly, blocking the tube. Since the particles run about the speed of light, the time would be about the circumference of the accelerator divided by the speed of the speed of light.
If they had a shot-gun clause in their agreement, this would be a simple matter of one party or the other buying full rights and continuing on with the project, no legal system and multi-year drawn out court battles designed to put all the money in lawyers pockets.
Only if both sides have roughly the same financial resources. Otherwise the poor guy can't possibly buy out the rich guy, so the rich guy has a huge advantage... I get the feeling, in this situation, the other guys have a lot more resources.
That thing looks great, too. But how many books are available for it? Until most publishers wise up and start offering DRM-free books, the size of the library your ebook has access to is an extremely important factor.
Nobody would ever trade ebooks like they trade music. Nope.
you're going travelling, to experience new cultures, people and ideas
How would I do that without inet access? Seriously? I guess in the more 3rd world areas they still print out flyers and newspapers, and use paper maps, and don't use social networking sites, but in the more developed areas they'll think you're a visiting Amish. Restaurant reviews, hotel reviews, tourist trap reviews, train/bus/plane schedules... And remember to bookmark webmd.com or whatever for Montezumas Revenge.
I did all my online shopping Thursday morning... If not cooking, or while taking a break from the cooking, assuming the house is "decorated" enough, there is nothing else holiday related left to do.
If I want to walk a windows user through changing the desktop resolution, it's easy. Good luck doing those in linux.
ssh -X into the machine, and run:
xdpyinfo | grep dimensions
I have no idea why "a low end non power user" would know or care what their display resolution is. Its like complaining that linux is not ready for the desktop because a sterotypical grannie would have a hard time setting up a hard-realtime CNC controller. Who cares?
I don't print much. Didn't even own a printer from 1995 thru 2009. Based on my recent experiences, seems that changing the default printer is much simpler than understanding the concept of even having a default printer, or the concept of being able to print to multiple printers.
That's the biggest question, what does it COST to have fancruft in wikipedia?
Inability to play dominance games by being a deletionist. Which is the primary form of recreation for "those in charge" of Wikipedia. They're not happy until you're not happy.
My wife is a teacher now for 6 years and from what I can make of it, teachers are there own worse enemy when it comes to any improvements in the schools. They regularly resist any change, argue over almost any point, and back stab each other the smallest perceived slight.
My sister in law is also a teacher. I think a major part of the issue is public school K12 teaching is the only profession in the modern world that still more or less hazes the newbies and lets the old timers retire-in-place. Newbies get the worst schools, worst classes, terrible pay, sink or swim, etc. Everyone knows the gravy train the old timers get. There is really nothing else like it in the modern world with the possible exception of the military, (and formerly airline pilots).
In that unique working environment, everything you discuss, and everything I hear from SiL, makes sense, in a weird way. Someone whom doesn't pay their dues is cheating, and no one likes a cheater. I suffered while paying my dues, now no changing anything now that I'm getting the payoff. Can't get ahead in a hyper-regulated micromanaged environment, so anyone whom somehow gets ahead anyway, must be cheating, and no one likes a cheater.
The logical follow up question is why K12 public education isn't managed like everyone elses "real job".
Parents with no sense of wonder about science? Kids without one, too.
I absolutely will not allow my two children to pursue a STEM education. I will not let them ruin their lives by learning something that our culture and economy have declared worthless, resulting in a life of semi-permanent poverty and profound under-employment. If they want to major in STEM they're doing it on their own dime and not under my roof. Smoke dope, have sex, whatever just don't get hurt, but you major in Physics or anything with the word Engineering in it, and you're out of here, young man. (Note to moderators, this isn't supposed to be tagged funny, I'm serious)
On the other hand, ALL my hobbies and interests revolve around "the wonder of science" and STEM-type hobbies, and I do my best to pass that on to my kids. We don't watch sports, don't watch much TV in general other than "semi-educational" stuff, we do lots of electronics, computers, radio, we look at stuff with my microscope, take nature walks to look at plants and bugs, etc.
Perfectly acceptable to have "a sense of wonder" about science, but classify selecting a STEM major right up there in the youthful stupidity column with "I'm gonna be a rockstar" and "I'm gonna get drafted by the NBA". "OK kid, let me try to explain how the world works...".
Because that means the kids that grow up to be scientists do so because they want to be scientists rather than because it is cool. Real science is hard, dull, and painfully boring detail work - except to those with an interest in and a passion for it.
Oh, science is pretty cool, but they must have the stupidity to believe they are only worthy if they take a vow of poverty.
Oddly enough, no one expects investment bankers or lawyers to take a vow of poverty, and oddly enough, those are "cooler" professions. What a coincidence.
Ah, it can handle that, what it can't compete with is H1B, NAFTA.
The supply is already far too high for the demand, given the levels of under-employment, unemployment, and low salary I've seen over the past few decades.
So, what's the point of increasing the oversupply even further?
Well, if you assume the govt always does what screws the most middle class people, you'll find that explains a heck of a lot about... everything.
Remember the old geocities type web pages with absolutely everything on one staggeringly long page vs "clickthru articles" with about one paragraph per page of ads...
RTS "Scantily Clothed Girls with Zerg Rush." Flight Simulators "No Scantily Clothed Girls, thus they don't sell them anymore" Fantasy "Scantily Clothed Girls on Slashdot."
Based on human behavior, we can roughly guess that at least 10% of any/all intelligent receivers will be agressive.
Really want to mess with your head? Try this on for size. Based on human behavior, we can roughly guess that at least 90% of any/all intelligent receivers will believe in some form of supernatural friend in the sky whom runs the whole show. Now how are they going to freak out when a dude in the sky starts talking to them?
See, now slashdotters whom watch too much BSG are worried about fighting the cylons, but the average (and below average) moron on the street is going to be worried about the supernatural implications.
Since ET already gets all our TV transmissions, plus cell phones and wifi, I don't think this one will make much difference.
Check out Radio Astronomy by Kraus. The end of one of the chapters discusses the relative signal strength of various earth transmissions. From memory, planetary radar was by far the strongest, the AM modulated video carrier of old fashioned analog UHF TV transmitters came in second (of course they're shut down now, and the "peak" from ATSC is not nearly as impressive).
Cell towers are actually pretty low power, your typical EMS land mobile is much more impressive (think of what you hear on a police scanner), and aimed down, think about it, you need a two way path, so a MW level cell tower could easily be built, but it could never hear your little mW level phone, so there is no point. A gross generalization is that receive technology/ability is pretty constant in the radio world, the only thing big money buys is transmit power.
To grotesquely butcher and summarize Professor Kraus's calculations, if you're close enough to visit the earth (couple centuries near light speed flight time), you're probably close enough to notice very odd radio emissions from the earth in general, not just special planetary radar stunts.
Considering that your transmission is going to take a hundred years to get there in the first place, 1 bit per second wouldn't be all that bad.
1 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 * 100 / 8 = a bit less than 400 megs enroute at any given time. So you could send them about half a cdrom before they even got the first bit, or about a wikipedia per decade. Of course if the deletionists get their way, we could probably send the wikipedia in about a month.
Note that the bit rate is proportional to the transmit power and antenna size. I suspect if there were actually something out there, we'd have multiple GW class power plants feeding an orbital antenna the size of a small asteroid.
Then you would have forbidden them from buying a PC, and required they buy a mac, which basically "just works". Apple support is pretty good, assuming your family members don't smoke.
Also, realize that some people (mostly of the XX chromosome variety) literally live off of drama, they love it. For them, there is no higher calling than buying the cruddiest PC they can get, and then complaining about the inevitable, easily foreseeable disaster. Trying to explain penny-wise and pound foolish is literally a waste of your time, because success to them, is the drama, and success to you, is it works, and those don't match up... They enjoy it, so don't feel bad about it. When you understand this situation, you are liberated from it, like its a lesson of Buddha or something. You know how some old people are compelled to tell you about their health problems, well some folks are compelled to tell you about their (self induced) PC problems. Don't make the mistake of thinking they want you to "fix the problem", they just want to talk. I have several decades of experience with this, going back to the 80s, I am not kidding about this.
Why do I get the feeling, when slashdoters discuss military tactics and strategies, that we're inside some kind of "Enders Game" scenario, and some pentagon general, recently reassigned from SG-1, is high-fiving cmdr taco right now, over our great insights into warfare?
Slashdot Mirror
Before I relied on this for much of anything, I'd want to see some pretty well controlled studies on just how accurate it is. For example, they should put the test subjects under some kind of stress,
That is an interesting, but tedious way to test the overall system on average across all users. I think I could test the hillclimber algorithm itself, on an individual user, by making the algorithm converge intentionally slowly, simulated annealing style. Then pester the person with lots of very slowly converging and even occasionally diverging sets of faces, and see how "consistent" the persons answers are compared to their final answer. Does the user always select the bushy eyebrows, or only about 50% of the time, etc? Perhaps even assign a numerical or verbal value to their consistency as part of the final report each time the system is used.
TFA says that up to six faces may be "bred" together resulting in a new generation, which would indeed be genetic, so the EvoFit package seems to be genuinely genetic.
Worst case scenario, by breeding faces together, they may only mean six simultaneous hillclimber algorithms, one for the chin, one for the eyes, snout, eyebrows, cheeks, lips, completely independent hillclimbers, one for each region...
How much is that in gigawatts?
Modded as funny, but its a semi serious question. Power = volts times amps.
Volts, well, you know, they were running at .450 TeV and eventually the thing will run at 7 TeV, supposedly.
Amps, I googled for LHC beam current and get answers ranging from 180 mA (unknown date) to 530 mA (design as of 1999).
So, multiply them up and you get somewhere between 80 and 3710 gigawatts.
Energy equals power multiplied by time. Power is immense, time would be just about zilch, multiply them together and you probably get something vaguely around a billionth of a gigawatt-hour, plus or minus a couple orders of magnitude.
You could probably estimate time by imagining shorting the beam out by completely, instantly, blocking the tube. Since the particles run about the speed of light, the time would be about the circumference of the accelerator divided by the speed of the speed of light.
If they had a shot-gun clause in their agreement, this would be a simple matter of one party or the other buying full rights and continuing on with the project, no legal system and multi-year drawn out court battles designed to put all the money in lawyers pockets.
Only if both sides have roughly the same financial resources. Otherwise the poor guy can't possibly buy out the rich guy, so the rich guy has a huge advantage... I get the feeling, in this situation, the other guys have a lot more resources.
That thing looks great, too. But how many books are available for it? Until most publishers wise up and start offering DRM-free books, the size of the library your ebook has access to is an extremely important factor.
Nobody would ever trade ebooks like they trade music. Nope.
you're going travelling, to experience new cultures, people and ideas
How would I do that without inet access? Seriously? I guess in the more 3rd world areas they still print out flyers and newspapers, and use paper maps, and don't use social networking sites, but in the more developed areas they'll think you're a visiting Amish. Restaurant reviews, hotel reviews, tourist trap reviews, train/bus/plane schedules... And remember to bookmark webmd.com or whatever for Montezumas Revenge.
I did all my online shopping Thursday morning... If not cooking, or while taking a break from the cooking, assuming the house is "decorated" enough, there is nothing else holiday related left to do.
If I want to walk a windows user through changing the desktop resolution, it's easy. Good luck doing those in linux.
ssh -X into the machine, and run:
xdpyinfo | grep dimensions
I have no idea why "a low end non power user" would know or care what their display resolution is. Its like complaining that linux is not ready for the desktop because a sterotypical grannie would have a hard time setting up a hard-realtime CNC controller. Who cares?
I don't print much. Didn't even own a printer from 1995 thru 2009. Based on my recent experiences, seems that changing the default printer is much simpler than understanding the concept of even having a default printer, or the concept of being able to print to multiple printers.
independently market the various KDE applications as usable in any workspace, whether it be the Plasma Desktop, Windows, or XFCE.
Where's my Amarok on winders, and why does a simple port need all kinds of name changing foolishness?
Plasma? My mom would be like WTF is PLASMA.
Selling plasma to buy a KDE netbook, of course?
Thanks, clarity committee!
Uh, that would be "klarity", not "clarity" thanks.
I love it when I look up NFS commands and all the ads are for the newest "Need For Speed" game.
Try googling for exportfs.
The weird stuff is found in a images.google.com search for exportfs. Not disturbing weird like a goatse, just plain old weird.
A pirate flag, some cartoon simpsons looking dude, pages of kanji, a picture of someones little white dog...
That's the biggest question, what does it COST to have fancruft in wikipedia?
Inability to play dominance games by being a deletionist.
Which is the primary form of recreation for "those in charge" of Wikipedia.
They're not happy until you're not happy.
Why do games have to be 2D? I've programmed fairly complex text adventures just fine.
Unless you squirt out your text in morse code, you'll be using a 2D display, at least.
A morse code text adventure would be a pretty interesting artifact, especially if it was not PC hosted, but plugged into a telegraph key.
My wife is a teacher now for 6 years and from what I can make of it, teachers are there own worse enemy when it comes to any improvements in the schools. They regularly resist any change, argue over almost any point, and back stab each other the smallest perceived slight.
My sister in law is also a teacher. I think a major part of the issue is public school K12 teaching is the only profession in the modern world that still more or less hazes the newbies and lets the old timers retire-in-place. Newbies get the worst schools, worst classes, terrible pay, sink or swim, etc. Everyone knows the gravy train the old timers get. There is really nothing else like it in the modern world with the possible exception of the military, (and formerly airline pilots).
In that unique working environment, everything you discuss, and everything I hear from SiL, makes sense, in a weird way. Someone whom doesn't pay their dues is cheating, and no one likes a cheater. I suffered while paying my dues, now no changing anything now that I'm getting the payoff. Can't get ahead in a hyper-regulated micromanaged environment, so anyone whom somehow gets ahead anyway, must be cheating, and no one likes a cheater.
The logical follow up question is why K12 public education isn't managed like everyone elses "real job".
Parents with no sense of wonder about science? Kids without one, too.
I absolutely will not allow my two children to pursue a STEM education. I will not let them ruin their lives by learning something that our culture and economy have declared worthless, resulting in a life of semi-permanent poverty and profound under-employment. If they want to major in STEM they're doing it on their own dime and not under my roof. Smoke dope, have sex, whatever just don't get hurt, but you major in Physics or anything with the word Engineering in it, and you're out of here, young man. (Note to moderators, this isn't supposed to be tagged funny, I'm serious)
On the other hand, ALL my hobbies and interests revolve around "the wonder of science" and STEM-type hobbies, and I do my best to pass that on to my kids. We don't watch sports, don't watch much TV in general other than "semi-educational" stuff, we do lots of electronics, computers, radio, we look at stuff with my microscope, take nature walks to look at plants and bugs, etc.
Perfectly acceptable to have "a sense of wonder" about science, but classify selecting a STEM major right up there in the youthful stupidity column with "I'm gonna be a rockstar" and "I'm gonna get drafted by the NBA". "OK kid, let me try to explain how the world works...".
Because that means the kids that grow up to be scientists do so because they want to be scientists rather than because it is cool. Real science is hard, dull, and painfully boring detail work - except to those with an interest in and a passion for it.
Oh, science is pretty cool, but they must have the stupidity to believe they are only worthy if they take a vow of poverty.
Oddly enough, no one expects investment bankers or lawyers to take a vow of poverty, and oddly enough, those are "cooler" professions. What a coincidence.
still can't compete with PS, Xbox, Wii, DS, etc.
Ah, it can handle that, what it can't compete with is H1B, NAFTA.
The supply is already far too high for the demand, given the levels of under-employment, unemployment, and low salary I've seen over the past few decades.
So, what's the point of increasing the oversupply even further?
Well, if you assume the govt always does what screws the most middle class people, you'll find that explains a heck of a lot about ... everything.
Wimmen vs internet pr0n websites...
Remember the old geocities type web pages with absolutely everything on one staggeringly long page vs "clickthru articles" with about one paragraph per page of ads...
RTS "Scantily Clothed Girls with Zerg Rush."
Flight Simulators "No Scantily Clothed Girls, thus they don't sell them anymore"
Fantasy "Scantily Clothed Girls on Slashdot."
Based on human behavior, we can roughly guess that at least 10% of any/all intelligent receivers will be agressive.
Really want to mess with your head? Try this on for size. Based on human behavior, we can roughly guess that at least 90% of any/all intelligent receivers will believe in some form of supernatural friend in the sky whom runs the whole show. Now how are they going to freak out when a dude in the sky starts talking to them?
See, now slashdotters whom watch too much BSG are worried about fighting the cylons, but the average (and below average) moron on the street is going to be worried about the supernatural implications.
Since ET already gets all our TV transmissions, plus cell phones and wifi, I don't think this one will make much difference.
Check out Radio Astronomy by Kraus. The end of one of the chapters discusses the relative signal strength of various earth transmissions. From memory, planetary radar was by far the strongest, the AM modulated video carrier of old fashioned analog UHF TV transmitters came in second (of course they're shut down now, and the "peak" from ATSC is not nearly as impressive).
Cell towers are actually pretty low power, your typical EMS land mobile is much more impressive (think of what you hear on a police scanner), and aimed down, think about it, you need a two way path, so a MW level cell tower could easily be built, but it could never hear your little mW level phone, so there is no point. A gross generalization is that receive technology/ability is pretty constant in the radio world, the only thing big money buys is transmit power.
http://www.cqbooks.com/radastro.htm
To grotesquely butcher and summarize Professor Kraus's calculations, if you're close enough to visit the earth (couple centuries near light speed flight time), you're probably close enough to notice very odd radio emissions from the earth in general, not just special planetary radar stunts.
Considering that your transmission is going to take a hundred years to get there in the first place, 1 bit per second wouldn't be all that bad.
1 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 * 100 / 8 = a bit less than 400 megs enroute at any given time. So you could send them about half a cdrom before they even got the first bit, or about a wikipedia per decade. Of course if the deletionists get their way, we could probably send the wikipedia in about a month.
The Entire wikipedia is only about 5 gigs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_database
Note that the bit rate is proportional to the transmit power and antenna size. I suspect if there were actually something out there, we'd have multiple GW class power plants feeding an orbital antenna the size of a small asteroid.
What if I like my family?
Then you would have forbidden them from buying a PC, and required they buy a mac, which basically "just works".
Apple support is pretty good, assuming your family members don't smoke.
Also, realize that some people (mostly of the XX chromosome variety) literally live off of drama, they love it. For them, there is no higher calling than buying the cruddiest PC they can get, and then complaining about the inevitable, easily foreseeable disaster. Trying to explain penny-wise and pound foolish is literally a waste of your time, because success to them, is the drama, and success to you, is it works, and those don't match up... They enjoy it, so don't feel bad about it. When you understand this situation, you are liberated from it, like its a lesson of Buddha or something. You know how some old people are compelled to tell you about their health problems, well some folks are compelled to tell you about their (self induced) PC problems. Don't make the mistake of thinking they want you to "fix the problem", they just want to talk. I have several decades of experience with this, going back to the 80s, I am not kidding about this.
Why do I get the feeling, when slashdoters discuss military tactics and strategies, that we're inside some kind of "Enders Game" scenario, and some pentagon general, recently reassigned from SG-1, is high-fiving cmdr taco right now, over our great insights into warfare?