But how is it different from ordinary Slashdot "articles"? At least Roland's summaries are accurate, have images, proper links and relevant information selected and presented in a clear and readable way. I don't have the time to read all his blog posts, and he doesn't have a discussion forum, like Slashdot has, but frankly, I am happy we finally have a submitter who can write decent summaries and check his spelling before posting. The fact that he makes money using his blog is irrelevant to me - Slashdot does too, so what?
I saw totally perfect metals in 2002, in DVD extras to Two Towers. There was a video of two sets of armour, side by side. One was 100% CGI, another was 100% real. They were indistinguishable. And I stopped being impressed with technological aspects of water surfaces after I saw The Perfect Storm and The Day After Tomorrow.
I am not trying to bash Pixar or claim that they don't make good stories (they do) and successful films (though that doesn't mean that Incredibles was better than Immortel: Ad Vitam). I am just saying that they are no longer technology driven, and because of that, even if you give them some uber-computer cluster, the visual quality of the films will not really improve much.
Not exactly. It's not Pixar that did it, it's a particular researcher. I am not saying that Pixar doesn't have brilliant computer graphics scientists and programmers - they certainly have. I am just saying that currently Pixar doesn't appear to concentrate on technological innovations.
They are a animation studio, so that might not be a bad thing. But if you are looking for breakthroughs in CGI, it might not make sense to look at Pixar.
OK, you are the second person to tell me about Violet's hair today... I know that Pixar makes a big point of having developed an ultra-cool hair technology, but IMHO it's mostly just PR. The technology s certainly nice, but overall relatively unimportant (just as Sully's fur was). From a technological point of view the amazing Polar Express is much more advanced (the performance capture, the realistic humans, the IMAX release).
I should have made myself clearer. Definitely, Pixar was a pioneer in 3D animation a decade ago. And clearly, it still makes a lot of process innovationss that improve the rendering technology, management and storage of art assets, etc. It's just that the visual quality (i.e. realism and special effects) of its animated films is nothing special, compare with other studios.
What's the point of your post? Haven't you heard of S-curves? This technology will not replace internal combustion engines overnight, but if the capacity is sufficient for certain customers, the adoption will gradually increase, supporting additional R&D investments. Eventually both cost and performance will be better than those of existing technologies.
Complaining that it haven't happened yet is ridiculous.
There doesn't seem to be anything technologically spectacular about Pixar movies these days. Toy Story was impressive. Finding Nemo was impressive. But Incredibles and Robots are generic 3D animation (with supposedly excellent stories, characters, etc.). Pixar is not a 3D graphics pioneer and the only thing Apple Xserves will do is drive the costs down (or up) a bit. Graphically it will all look the same.
I am much more impressed with Kaena, Immortel, Sky Captain, Advent Children and the like. Pixar is passe, it's just that most people haven't caught up with the fact.
Oops. I browsed at too high a threshold and didn't realise that both comments were made by you. It looked like someone proposed "JWfimf#aIgtVae" and someone replied "too easy to crack".
If it is even slightly important, spend 2-5 minutes of your time and use mnemonics to memorize your random password. For example, using the easily remembered phrase "the star for jihad month 28 and two points one wave" you can instantly reconstruct the password. And then you can add a small story that you will not be able to forget. The one about the supernova (ze star/the star), which is the symbol for (4) the start of jihad (jhD) against Americans that will start in February (a month with 28 days) and (ampersand) will strike two points (colon) - Los-Angeles and San-Francisco - on the Pacific coast using a nuke detonated underwater to create a giant tsunami (wave - tilde).
It took me less than a minute to create the phrase, a minute more to elaborate the story and a few minutes to compose this post. As a result I will probably be able to reconstruct the password very easily (even with very little practice). You can do the same for any random password.
There is currently no conceivable way to construct a space of common phrases used for acronyms.
Even if we assume that the criminal used a book that he physically posessed, the process of scanning and OCRing all books in his house is too time-consuming.
Acronym passwords are not used, because they make it easier to generate a password, but because they are very easy to remember (mnemonics). If you generate a strong random password and create a backronym for it, it would probably work just as well. Especially if you use the most often recommended mnemonic technique - make it related to sex.
Taking the parent's password JWfimf#aIgtVae, we can create the following easy to remember phrase: "Just When fucking in my face # anna Immediately grabs testicles. Venerable amazing extasy."
If you are willing to give up some security, an existing phrase would be nearly as strong, as long as you do not use something extremely obvious.
A user can get into problems anywhere. There are definitely shady porn sites, shady crack sites, there are bogus files on P2P, you can catch a virus/troyan anywhere (in addition to those that get onto the PC using exploits).
But when a user realises that running exe files that are downloaded automatically is a bad idea, when he realises that downloading any "clients" from porn sites is a bad idea, etc., then he is relatively safe (especially with safer browsers such as Opera or Moz).
Even warez is 99% safe if you have some net experience. It is usually obvious when someone is trying to cheat you into installing some malware. But most of the time getting cracks from asta is safe, as well as getting software from P2P (if you check comments, filenames, etc.).
I don't know about self-replicating robots, but self-replicating links to iPod scams sure are annoying. Especially when they are pasted into comment body. Please, mod parent down.
FontMap is only 20$ and it can print font listings and do other stuff as well. I don't think your company is as stingy as to refuse to finance a 20$ shareware application...
I am amazed at your studpidity, kebes. What you are saying is essentially "the feature is useless and will remain a gimmick until it works perfectly". May be you were not aware of it, but all new technologies go through these stages. First DVD players were bulky, expensive and there were no DVDs to play on them. First mobile phones, for fuck's sake, weighted several kilos and were carried around in a briefcase. Of course this is a prototype - have you seen any phones with projectors before? Of course, it is not perfect - it is just a prototype. Would you prefer companies keeping all their concept products secret? No one expects customers to buy these phones en masse. But if there is some interest, the technology will be developed further and eventually perfected.
You don't seem to understand any of this and act as if your groundless and irrational bashing has some merit. It doesn't. Your comment is 100% content-free and in the future, please kindly think before typing anything on the keyboard in front of you. Thank you.
Using the eyes would slow things down only if you create unnecessary loops (see the key, move the hand, find the key, confirm that it's the correct one, press it, look at the screen, check that the letter typed is correct, and so on).
Using your eyes for cursor would be nearly instant, because moving your eye precisely is much faster and more accurate than moving a mouse pointer and clicking can be as fast or a bit faster.
Of course, a direct link to brain would be even better...
Simply put: You make mistakes, but flame others, as if making spelling mistakes was bad, but you were infallible. This is called hypocricy. I make mistakes (such as "noone"), but I don't flame others for their spelling errors. See the difference?
I guess you are not very fond of abstract art and cubism then... Seriously, if people do communicate this way, then there might be some benefit in it, even if you can't fathom it.
You must also realise that some people can read/write in such shortcuts very easily, and it's you who can be ridiculous not being able to quickly read the "garbled" message (especially in MMOGs, counter-strike and web-chats).
I almost never use webspeak/textspeak/leetspeak, but I do appreciate the beauty of it and I would have used it more for SMSing if only I was sure that people would understand it (it's silly to ask in advance, and I suspect they aren't hip and trendy enough to be familiar with it).
In that book Rita Carter mentioned that brains in our ancestors developed the following way (I can't look up the quote right now, so please accept this simplified recollection).
First we (our fish/reptilian/whatever ancestors) had general purpose intelligence without specialisation. Organisms could learn anything, but the process was rather slow and complex behaviour was impossible.
Second came specialised units, where you had, e.g. a object recognition centre in the brain that would do only one thing, but do it very well. This was much faster and complex behaviour was easier to form, but it wasn't flexible and thus couldn't even fix obvious errors (i.e. behaviour that decreased the chances of survival).
Finally the third generation of intelligence came. Specialised units that could exchange data and information and communicate with each other. This might be what makes us capable of making the mental jump from cows to cars.
But in order to get here we need to create 1st and 2nd generation intelligence. The first includes inference engines and the like, the second includes face recognition, voice recognition, OCR, pathfinding and AI in computer games, etc. Actually, if you think about AI in computer games, you would realise that it is already built using the modular approach, just like with the human brain (only on a smaller scale and in a much simplier environment). Once we have these separate modules working well enough (in a decade or so), we can try to implement them in a more compatible way and start connecting them.
So Hawkins is doing exactly what is right - making something that works, not trying to invent a single underlying principle that would magically make computer think.:)
As for humour, it is a complex behaviour that is quite well understood (partly by studying people without a sense of it). Your left brain can easily create a feeling of amusement in practically any situation. The right brain sometimes generates a feeling that "something is not right!" - a form of alert at a dislocation in logic. This is actually a mild form of fear. Finally, the context, assumptions and knowledge of your own prejudices are combined to form the meaning (using many brain parts in conjunction). Add to it the feelings of amusement and alert from left and right hemispheres and you will laught at something funny. No need for general intelligence, just a complex interplay of speclalised parts.
Re:Steve Jobs, great instincts
on
Re-Imagining Apple
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The Segway failed because Kamen is a moron. He's a great inventor, but a pathetic businessman. He was trying to micromanage his company, while being extremely niggardly about the cash. Because of this the company lost a CEO every year on average. There was practically no marketing done before the prodcut launch because of Kamen's paranoid fears that Honda would steal the idea if anyone knew what IT was.
Read "Code Name Ginger" for the straight dope on why Segway failed. It was a brilliant product with a poor business built around it. Jobs offered his services as a consultant for free, but Kamen didn't care. If only Kamen retired to inventing something else and left the company to someone more qualified, Segway would be selling tens of millions of its machines...:(
For example, where are dual cursors? Instead of two cursors I'd rather have two hi-def cameras on the monitor, zoomed on my eyes, constantly tracking at what exactly screen pixel I am looking at the moment. That would work essentially like an infinite number of instantly accessible cursors.
Oh, the irony! It's not irony, it's hypocrisy. Noone expects posts such as yours to be error-free. People who proofread and correct their own posts rarely feel the urge to correct everybody else. I'm sometimes wonder about your friend's letters to that company being in perfectly correct English...
Slashdot Mirror
But how is it different from ordinary Slashdot "articles"? At least Roland's summaries are accurate, have images, proper links and relevant information selected and presented in a clear and readable way. I don't have the time to read all his blog posts, and he doesn't have a discussion forum, like Slashdot has, but frankly, I am happy we finally have a submitter who can write decent summaries and check his spelling before posting. The fact that he makes money using his blog is irrelevant to me - Slashdot does too, so what?
I saw totally perfect metals in 2002, in DVD extras to Two Towers. There was a video of two sets of armour, side by side. One was 100% CGI, another was 100% real. They were indistinguishable. And I stopped being impressed with technological aspects of water surfaces after I saw The Perfect Storm and The Day After Tomorrow.
I am not trying to bash Pixar or claim that they don't make good stories (they do) and successful films (though that doesn't mean that Incredibles was better than Immortel: Ad Vitam). I am just saying that they are no longer technology driven, and because of that, even if you give them some uber-computer cluster, the visual quality of the films will not really improve much.
Not exactly. It's not Pixar that did it, it's a particular researcher. I am not saying that Pixar doesn't have brilliant computer graphics scientists and programmers - they certainly have. I am just saying that currently Pixar doesn't appear to concentrate on technological innovations.
They are a animation studio, so that might not be a bad thing. But if you are looking for breakthroughs in CGI, it might not make sense to look at Pixar.
Check how the realistic hair was done in the Matrix Revolutions, for example.
OK, you are the second person to tell me about Violet's hair today... I know that Pixar makes a big point of having developed an ultra-cool hair technology, but IMHO it's mostly just PR. The technology s certainly nice, but overall relatively unimportant (just as Sully's fur was). From a technological point of view the amazing Polar Express is much more advanced (the performance capture, the realistic humans, the IMAX release).
I should have made myself clearer. Definitely, Pixar was a pioneer in 3D animation a decade ago. And clearly, it still makes a lot of process innovationss that improve the rendering technology, management and storage of art assets, etc. It's just that the visual quality (i.e. realism and special effects) of its animated films is nothing special, compare with other studios.
What's the point of your post? Haven't you heard of S-curves? This technology will not replace internal combustion engines overnight, but if the capacity is sufficient for certain customers, the adoption will gradually increase, supporting additional R&D investments. Eventually both cost and performance will be better than those of existing technologies.
Complaining that it haven't happened yet is ridiculous.
I guess you haven't seen the 3dfx ads? "You could use the technology to save lives.... or play games".
There doesn't seem to be anything technologically spectacular about Pixar movies these days. Toy Story was impressive. Finding Nemo was impressive. But Incredibles and Robots are generic 3D animation (with supposedly excellent stories, characters, etc.). Pixar is not a 3D graphics pioneer and the only thing Apple Xserves will do is drive the costs down (or up) a bit. Graphically it will all look the same.
I am much more impressed with Kaena, Immortel, Sky Captain, Advent Children and the like. Pixar is passe, it's just that most people haven't caught up with the fact.
Oops. I browsed at too high a threshold and didn't realise that both comments were made by you. It looked like someone proposed "JWfimf#aIgtVae" and someone replied "too easy to crack".
Well, it worked for Moria dwarves...
pedo mellon a minno
If it is even slightly important, spend 2-5 minutes of your time and use mnemonics to memorize your random password. For example, using the easily remembered phrase "the star for jihad month 28 and two points one wave" you can instantly reconstruct the password. And then you can add a small story that you will not be able to forget. The one about the supernova (ze star/the star), which is the symbol for (4) the start of jihad (jhD) against Americans that will start in February (a month with 28 days) and (ampersand) will strike two points (colon) - Los-Angeles and San-Francisco - on the Pacific coast using a nuke detonated underwater to create a giant tsunami (wave - tilde).
It took me less than a minute to create the phrase, a minute more to elaborate the story and a few minutes to compose this post. As a result I will probably be able to reconstruct the password very easily (even with very little practice). You can do the same for any random password.
I don't think so. Ticncwtcasocpufa.
There is currently no conceivable way to construct a space of common phrases used for acronyms.
Even if we assume that the criminal used a book that he physically posessed, the process of scanning and OCRing all books in his house is too time-consuming.
Acronym passwords are not used, because they make it easier to generate a password, but because they are very easy to remember (mnemonics). If you generate a strong random password and create a backronym for it, it would probably work just as well. Especially if you use the most often recommended mnemonic technique - make it related to sex.
Taking the parent's password JWfimf#aIgtVae, we can create the following easy to remember phrase: "Just When fucking in my face # anna Immediately grabs testicles. Venerable amazing extasy."
If you are willing to give up some security, an existing phrase would be nearly as strong, as long as you do not use something extremely obvious.
A user can get into problems anywhere. There are definitely shady porn sites, shady crack sites, there are bogus files on P2P, you can catch a virus/troyan anywhere (in addition to those that get onto the PC using exploits).
But when a user realises that running exe files that are downloaded automatically is a bad idea, when he realises that downloading any "clients" from porn sites is a bad idea, etc., then he is relatively safe (especially with safer browsers such as Opera or Moz).
Even warez is 99% safe if you have some net experience. It is usually obvious when someone is trying to cheat you into installing some malware. But most of the time getting cracks from asta is safe, as well as getting software from P2P (if you check comments, filenames, etc.).
I don't know about self-replicating robots, but self-replicating links to iPod scams sure are annoying. Especially when they are pasted into comment body. Please, mod parent down.
FontMap is only 20$ and it can print font listings and do other stuff as well. I don't think your company is as stingy as to refuse to finance a 20$ shareware application...
I guess I shall apologize. My first response to you was (as I can see now) rather irrational and not really justified. I am sorry.
I am amazed at your studpidity, kebes. What you are saying is essentially "the feature is useless and will remain a gimmick until it works perfectly". May be you were not aware of it, but all new technologies go through these stages. First DVD players were bulky, expensive and there were no DVDs to play on them. First mobile phones, for fuck's sake, weighted several kilos and were carried around in a briefcase. Of course this is a prototype - have you seen any phones with projectors before? Of course, it is not perfect - it is just a prototype. Would you prefer companies keeping all their concept products secret? No one expects customers to buy these phones en masse. But if there is some interest, the technology will be developed further and eventually perfected.
You don't seem to understand any of this and act as if your groundless and irrational bashing has some merit. It doesn't. Your comment is 100% content-free and in the future, please kindly think before typing anything on the keyboard in front of you. Thank you.
Using the eyes would slow things down only if you create unnecessary loops (see the key, move the hand, find the key, confirm that it's the correct one, press it, look at the screen, check that the letter typed is correct, and so on).
Using your eyes for cursor would be nearly instant, because moving your eye precisely is much faster and more accurate than moving a mouse pointer and clicking can be as fast or a bit faster.
Of course, a direct link to brain would be even better...
Simply put: You make mistakes, but flame others, as if making spelling mistakes was bad, but you were infallible. This is called hypocricy. I make mistakes (such as "noone"), but I don't flame others for their spelling errors. See the difference?
I guess you are not very fond of abstract art and cubism then... Seriously, if people do communicate this way, then there might be some benefit in it, even if you can't fathom it.
You must also realise that some people can read/write in such shortcuts very easily, and it's you who can be ridiculous not being able to quickly read the "garbled" message (especially in MMOGs, counter-strike and web-chats).
I almost never use webspeak/textspeak/leetspeak, but I do appreciate the beauty of it and I would have used it more for SMSing if only I was sure that people would understand it (it's silly to ask in advance, and I suspect they aren't hip and trendy enough to be familiar with it).
In that book Rita Carter mentioned that brains in our ancestors developed the following way (I can't look up the quote right now, so please accept this simplified recollection).
:)
First we (our fish/reptilian/whatever ancestors) had general purpose intelligence without specialisation. Organisms could learn anything, but the process was rather slow and complex behaviour was impossible.
Second came specialised units, where you had, e.g. a object recognition centre in the brain that would do only one thing, but do it very well. This was much faster and complex behaviour was easier to form, but it wasn't flexible and thus couldn't even fix obvious errors (i.e. behaviour that decreased the chances of survival).
Finally the third generation of intelligence came. Specialised units that could exchange data and information and communicate with each other. This might be what makes us capable of making the mental jump from cows to cars.
But in order to get here we need to create 1st and 2nd generation intelligence. The first includes inference engines and the like, the second includes face recognition, voice recognition, OCR, pathfinding and AI in computer games, etc. Actually, if you think about AI in computer games, you would realise that it is already built using the modular approach, just like with the human brain (only on a smaller scale and in a much simplier environment). Once we have these separate modules working well enough (in a decade or so), we can try to implement them in a more compatible way and start connecting them.
So Hawkins is doing exactly what is right - making something that works, not trying to invent a single underlying principle that would magically make computer think.
As for humour, it is a complex behaviour that is quite well understood (partly by studying people without a sense of it). Your left brain can easily create a feeling of amusement in practically any situation. The right brain sometimes generates a feeling that "something is not right!" - a form of alert at a dislocation in logic. This is actually a mild form of fear. Finally, the context, assumptions and knowledge of your own prejudices are combined to form the meaning (using many brain parts in conjunction). Add to it the feelings of amusement and alert from left and right hemispheres and you will laught at something funny. No need for general intelligence, just a complex interplay of speclalised parts.
The Segway failed because Kamen is a moron. He's a great inventor, but a pathetic businessman. He was trying to micromanage his company, while being extremely niggardly about the cash. Because of this the company lost a CEO every year on average. There was practically no marketing done before the prodcut launch because of Kamen's paranoid fears that Honda would steal the idea if anyone knew what IT was.
:(
Read "Code Name Ginger" for the straight dope on why Segway failed. It was a brilliant product with a poor business built around it. Jobs offered his services as a consultant for free, but Kamen didn't care. If only Kamen retired to inventing something else and left the company to someone more qualified, Segway would be selling tens of millions of its machines...
For example, where are dual cursors?
Instead of two cursors I'd rather have two hi-def cameras on the monitor, zoomed on my eyes, constantly tracking at what exactly screen pixel I am looking at the moment. That would work essentially like an infinite number of instantly accessible cursors.
Oh, the irony!
It's not irony, it's hypocrisy. Noone expects posts such as yours to be error-free. People who proofread and correct their own posts rarely feel the urge to correct everybody else. I'm sometimes wonder about your friend's letters to that company being in perfectly correct English...