One CPU cycle as one second might be a good metaphor for computer memory but not AI. It's closer to the equivalent of a neuron firing in the human brain, then it is to 1 second of human time. Human speech takes more than one neuron to fire, and it would take way more than one CPU cycle to process. An AI algorithm which is processing data, and analyzing it would literally take millions or billions of cycles most likely to do the most basic things. While no doubt speech recognition has gotten much faster, it is still and probably will always be a massive undertaking for a CPU to do, as opposed to say adding two 32-bit integers.
Yes this book (the 2nd Edition) is indeed something everyone should read. As is The Pragmatic Programmer, Gang of Four Design Patterns ( but initially I found it a bit terse, so Head First Design Pattern was a good initial grounding for OO), as well as whatever seminal books there are for your language of choice. For instance Effective C++ or Effective Java.
While I can see the allure of being very responsive to voters, this seems to be a potentially dangerous idea. By being very receptive to voters immediate desires, voters who by and large are not informed enough to make good decisions, it seems like we could very easily be stuck in both political standstill or trap where required actions could not be taken. If the logic end of your idea is that more candidates should be doing this, it seems we could very quickly become paralyzed.
I did something like this for a first year project, it involved charged particles which obeys a similar inverse square as gravity does for determining position. You basically had a fixed set of charges, that users could toggle to be between {-8,-4,-2,-1,0,1,2,4,8} * K, then you'd hit start and you'd try to get the puck to go to the goal (It was very much based on this: http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/electric-hockey).
It involved basically looking at
F_x (the force applied in the x direction, from every other point).
F_y (the force applied in the y direction, from every other point).
When you sum these up you get an instantaneous picture of the scene, that is you know it's position, and you know the forces acting upon it. Then I believe I used a technique called Runge-Kutta which gets me a prediction, of where it would be in a small time slice, (say 1/20th of a second), so I moved the particle there and repeat (This was all done in Java AWT I believe). All in all it was fairly straight forward, and gave the user the experience I think you are looking for.
Most things allow you to keep your settings while removing the rest of the application. There is a big difference between left over Registry entries not being removed, and merely hiding IE. While I suspect they are closer to the hiding IE side of things, I think the proof they offer is silly.
I switched to Dvorak because of wrist pain about 6 or 7 years ago. I too was a touch typist, and didn't use homerow at all, etc... With Dvorak though I did it properly and now use homerow on Dvorak. It wasn't an easy switch, I wasn't working or in school at the time, so it was easy for me to afford the slowdown it took and used an old version of Mavis Beacon to do it. You need some time to use only Dvorak before you go back and forth between the layouts. Before I switched to Dvorak I was at about 90 WPM and it took me about a month to get up to 60 WPM in Dvorak. Later I got the same speed but never ever went past my QWERTY speed. I can still type QWERTY at a fast speed, but it's hard because sometimes the brain switches.
About a month ago I was in the middle of writing proof of Concept code, that may perhaps later be used in production code, after a full rewrite. As opposed to properly handling Exceptions, (especially some generated from SSL problems), for the interm I decided to quash them and just print out unique messages each time one was quashed. Now as everyone knows quashing exceptions is VERY bad practice, and the comments reflected that. "I really shouldn't have done this", "What kind of newb programmer does this","I'm a moron, I should know better than to do this", "You must be getting very frustrated", "Why do I even have a job?". While demoing the product, they encountered a problem, and my manager ended up having to go look at the log (The problem was external to this). The log ended up looking something like this:
Recieved Request ID=34 (Params a=...,b=...)
Why do I even have a job?
Why do I even have a job?
Why do I even have a job?
Recieved Request ID=35 (Params a=...,b=...)
Why do I even have a job?
Why do I even have a job?
Why do I even have a job? ...
It ended up being resulting in two really awkward meetings, where people wanted to reassure me that I had job security. Needless to say, I was told that perhaps I should write something else in my code.
I had done quiet a few bike trips and generally can't be without my iPod, PSP, and cellphone so I have had some experiance using Solar Panels previously, though never for something as power hungry as a notebook/netbook.
Two years ago I purchased the
Soldius 1 Solar Charger, seen here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/7d34/. I found that even stationary it really just drained my iPods batteries and made them unusable, as the change in voltages associated with clouds would cause the iPod to constantly redetect that the charging had started and illuminate the screen thus draining more power. I may have only gotten one meaningful charge or two out of it, in the two years I've had it. It also didn't charge some devices, that were USB powered, and seemed very brittle.
This summer past, I had taken time off to go cycling for 2 months across Canada, and so invested in another Solar Panel, the SolarFocus SolarMio 31 Solar Charger: http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302697169&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524442620595. It was very durable, and I had it strapped on my rear rack, even in the worst rains. It also has a portable battery pack so you can charge during the day, and then have power for later, and it charges relatively quickly. I found that 4 hours would give it a full charge to the battery, (it is probably much better than this, as being on my bike rack and in motion means that it is not really positioned for optimum solar energy collection) and that would charge my iPod to 90%. It also has an external AC adapter to charge the battery overnight, and a USB port for 'most' USB devices. Some draw backs are that it didn't charge my Phone at the time, a Motorola KRZR, and after my trip I found out it doesn't charge my iPhone (which is kinda a disappointment). Another plus is that the battery is detachable, and while replacements/spares are expensive, it made it convient to charge at camping sights.
They make an equivilant solar panel for laptops which is a bit pricer at CAD $595: http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302697169&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524442625524. Which is too rich for my blood at the moment, but if the quality is anything like this one, I'd definately recommend it.
Finally some other words of wisdom:
1) The Solar Device compatibility list actually seems to matter at least for obvious devices not listed, just because it's USB doesn't mean it will charge it.
2) Getting a dead iPod (I had both a iPod 4G Photo and 5.5G Video) to charge is a bit tricky if you are charging straight from the sun in less than ideal conditions, as when it turns on, the screen comes on maximum brightness, and I believe stops charging for a moment, and will cause the iPod to turn off. I found that both the above would eventually charge by just booting it into Disk Mode a few times, eventually it would have enough power to stay on in Disk Mode and charge. Finally after two minutes rebooting it into Normal mode, so that the screen turns off resulted in a quicker charge.
When I was 12 I noticed that I could put two hard disks on the same cable, and plug them onto my motherboard and that I could read both harddrives. So then I thought, well what happens if I put in two motherboards and one harddrive, that would be cool right? WRONG, after powering them on, a plume of smoke arose and both systems died.
A year later I had a computer that worked, but one of the RAM slots was broken, physically, so I couldn't use one of the slots. This was an IBM PS/2, the MCA kind. So I took a piece of KNEX and put it between the RAM and the riser card, and the system worked fine.
Three years later, I got a laptop while in highschool. I was taking really good care of it, cleaning the screen everyday with windex, when all of a sudden a line appeared, a 1 pixel red line down the center of the screen.
Later that month, I decided I didn't want it to get infected so I Took the OEM Anti-virus for my mobo and installed it, Windows instantly blew up, and then the computer wouldn't boot, a second try got it to boot however. I shut it down again and it wouldn't boot again, after a couple more tries it booted. It grew exponentially, until I gave up. It wasn't that anything was broken but it was just b0rked. A few months later I got frustarted and tried again, it booted. I became dedicated to finding a solution. I knew that if I hit ESC the system would prompt for the bios. So I decided, maybe there is a secret key. I began holding down every key, trying to turn it on, and then shutting it down. Eventually (well like 5 minutes later) F12 did the trick, and it prompted for a BIOS Disk, I found someone to reflash and it worked, sorta. A few months later it died again, and then it had to be reflashed, costing me another $20 bucks. Then another 6 months, then another year. I end up reflashing it about once every year now.
One time, my friend asked me to go to a LAN party, he about 10 km away, and it was snowing. So I grabbed my laptop, put it in my bag and rode my bike over, only to find out it was cancelled, and then rode it back. My cdrom drive never closed agani after that.
A year after I got it, I got home after a night of not sleeping, plugged it in, walked to my desk, and tripped over the power cord, dropping it down to the cement floor below. I FREAKED!!!! I picked it up again, plugged it back in, went to go grab my screw driver, and tripped over the cord again.
The screen was cracked but still working fine, except the red line and all, and the hard drive needed to be replaced but thats all.
A year later, I was looking for a floppy drive to fix the BIOS again, as it was cgosting me a good chunk of money, to flash it everytime because I didn't have a disk drive my self. This guy on a newsgroup said he thought he had one, he wasn't sure tho. I met him, and checked the connector, it looked right, I mean "if the plug fits, why not", WRONG! My sound card last all amplification, and my modem, just stopped responding.
Strangley enough after all that, a replacement keyboard, hard drive, 2x battery, cdrom, floppy, the laptop still works fine. The red line is there and the crack in the screen casing from 4 years ago, requires duck tape now as the screen goes crazy until I smack it now. The sound and modem, came back one day, then went away, then came back a month later, then went away, then came back two weeks later, then went away, and came back a week later, then stayed for 6 months, then went for a day, and have been fine for the past 2 years.
I also stuck an piece of SDRAM in my laptop, which is EDO (its 144 pin, both kinds) but that caused no damage.
Back in highschool, I had a PCCHIPS mobo, that sucked. The Mobo was LITERALLY burning the AT mobo connectors. One day it wouldn't boot, and the connector was loose because the whole plastic, had melted. So I reattached it, and stuck a tooth pick in it to keep it in place. A while later it wouldn't boot again, so I stuck another tooth pick in. Then as I was eating an egg mcmuffin, it broke again, and so while fixing it, some grease dripped off my finger ont
You know in the past month I have seen that 80% of Spam is caused by infected PC's in Windows. That 80% of Spam comes from China. That 70% come from Russia and China. That the US accounts for 60% of Spam. That Eastern Europe Accounts for 60% of Spam. So from this I know that there is 80+80+70+60+60= 350% Spam. This also tells me that Russia accounts for Negative 10% of Spam. Don't believe me, take this The Reg Story, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/04/trojan_spa m_study/, This one, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/25/spam_delug e/ and thats just El Reg. The only conclusive thing I have been able to determine is that these stories are worse than spam, not only are they useless, but we actually read these stories.
Slashdot Mirror
I might recommend the following along with the associated free textbook: https://lagunita.stanford.edu/... Textbook: http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth... Afterwards you can look at the more advanced free textbook: http://statweb.stanford.edu/~t...
One CPU cycle as one second might be a good metaphor for computer memory but not AI. It's closer to the equivalent of a neuron firing in the human brain, then it is to 1 second of human time. Human speech takes more than one neuron to fire, and it would take way more than one CPU cycle to process. An AI algorithm which is processing data, and analyzing it would literally take millions or billions of cycles most likely to do the most basic things. While no doubt speech recognition has gotten much faster, it is still and probably will always be a massive undertaking for a CPU to do, as opposed to say adding two 32-bit integers.
Yes this book (the 2nd Edition) is indeed something everyone should read. As is The Pragmatic Programmer, Gang of Four Design Patterns ( but initially I found it a bit terse, so Head First Design Pattern was a good initial grounding for OO), as well as whatever seminal books there are for your language of choice. For instance Effective C++ or Effective Java.
While I can see the allure of being very responsive to voters, this seems to be a potentially dangerous idea. By being very receptive to voters immediate desires, voters who by and large are not informed enough to make good decisions, it seems like we could very easily be stuck in both political standstill or trap where required actions could not be taken. If the logic end of your idea is that more candidates should be doing this, it seems we could very quickly become paralyzed.
I did something like this for a first year project, it involved charged particles which obeys a similar inverse square as gravity does for determining position. You basically had a fixed set of charges, that users could toggle to be between {-8,-4,-2,-1,0,1,2,4,8} * K, then you'd hit start and you'd try to get the puck to go to the goal (It was very much based on this: http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/electric-hockey). It involved basically looking at F_x (the force applied in the x direction, from every other point). F_y (the force applied in the y direction, from every other point). When you sum these up you get an instantaneous picture of the scene, that is you know it's position, and you know the forces acting upon it. Then I believe I used a technique called Runge-Kutta which gets me a prediction, of where it would be in a small time slice, (say 1/20th of a second), so I moved the particle there and repeat (This was all done in Java AWT I believe). All in all it was fairly straight forward, and gave the user the experience I think you are looking for.
Most things allow you to keep your settings while removing the rest of the application. There is a big difference between left over Registry entries not being removed, and merely hiding IE. While I suspect they are closer to the hiding IE side of things, I think the proof they offer is silly.
I switched to Dvorak because of wrist pain about 6 or 7 years ago. I too was a touch typist, and didn't use homerow at all, etc... With Dvorak though I did it properly and now use homerow on Dvorak. It wasn't an easy switch, I wasn't working or in school at the time, so it was easy for me to afford the slowdown it took and used an old version of Mavis Beacon to do it. You need some time to use only Dvorak before you go back and forth between the layouts. Before I switched to Dvorak I was at about 90 WPM and it took me about a month to get up to 60 WPM in Dvorak. Later I got the same speed but never ever went past my QWERTY speed. I can still type QWERTY at a fast speed, but it's hard because sometimes the brain switches.
After some checking, it seems that atleast Wikipedia, seems to indicate that the key people behind Wine and CrossOver are indeed the same people.
About a month ago I was in the middle of writing proof of Concept code, that may perhaps later be used in production code, after a full rewrite. As opposed to properly handling Exceptions, (especially some generated from SSL problems), for the interm I decided to quash them and just print out unique messages each time one was quashed. Now as everyone knows quashing exceptions is VERY bad practice, and the comments reflected that. "I really shouldn't have done this", "What kind of newb programmer does this","I'm a moron, I should know better than to do this", "You must be getting very frustrated", "Why do I even have a job?". While demoing the product, they encountered a problem, and my manager ended up having to go look at the log (The problem was external to this). The log ended up looking something like this: Recieved Request ID=34 (Params a=...,b=...)
...
It ended up being resulting in two really awkward meetings, where people wanted to reassure me that I had job security. Needless to say, I was told that perhaps I should write something else in my code.
Why do I even have a job?
Why do I even have a job?
Why do I even have a job?
Recieved Request ID=35 (Params a=...,b=...)
Why do I even have a job?
Why do I even have a job?
Why do I even have a job?
I had done quiet a few bike trips and generally can't be without my iPod, PSP, and cellphone so I have had some experiance using Solar Panels previously, though never for something as power hungry as a notebook/netbook. Two years ago I purchased the Soldius 1 Solar Charger, seen here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/7d34/. I found that even stationary it really just drained my iPods batteries and made them unusable, as the change in voltages associated with clouds would cause the iPod to constantly redetect that the charging had started and illuminate the screen thus draining more power. I may have only gotten one meaningful charge or two out of it, in the two years I've had it. It also didn't charge some devices, that were USB powered, and seemed very brittle. This summer past, I had taken time off to go cycling for 2 months across Canada, and so invested in another Solar Panel, the SolarFocus SolarMio 31 Solar Charger: http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302697169&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524442620595. It was very durable, and I had it strapped on my rear rack, even in the worst rains. It also has a portable battery pack so you can charge during the day, and then have power for later, and it charges relatively quickly. I found that 4 hours would give it a full charge to the battery, (it is probably much better than this, as being on my bike rack and in motion means that it is not really positioned for optimum solar energy collection) and that would charge my iPod to 90%. It also has an external AC adapter to charge the battery overnight, and a USB port for 'most' USB devices. Some draw backs are that it didn't charge my Phone at the time, a Motorola KRZR, and after my trip I found out it doesn't charge my iPhone (which is kinda a disappointment). Another plus is that the battery is detachable, and while replacements/spares are expensive, it made it convient to charge at camping sights. They make an equivilant solar panel for laptops which is a bit pricer at CAD $595: http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302697169&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524442625524. Which is too rich for my blood at the moment, but if the quality is anything like this one, I'd definately recommend it. Finally some other words of wisdom: 1) The Solar Device compatibility list actually seems to matter at least for obvious devices not listed, just because it's USB doesn't mean it will charge it. 2) Getting a dead iPod (I had both a iPod 4G Photo and 5.5G Video) to charge is a bit tricky if you are charging straight from the sun in less than ideal conditions, as when it turns on, the screen comes on maximum brightness, and I believe stops charging for a moment, and will cause the iPod to turn off. I found that both the above would eventually charge by just booting it into Disk Mode a few times, eventually it would have enough power to stay on in Disk Mode and charge. Finally after two minutes rebooting it into Normal mode, so that the screen turns off resulted in a quicker charge.
When I was 12 I noticed that I could put two hard disks on the same cable, and plug them onto my motherboard and that I could read both harddrives. So then I thought, well what happens if I put in two motherboards and one harddrive, that would be cool right? WRONG, after powering them on, a plume of smoke arose and both systems died. A year later I had a computer that worked, but one of the RAM slots was broken, physically, so I couldn't use one of the slots. This was an IBM PS/2, the MCA kind. So I took a piece of KNEX and put it between the RAM and the riser card, and the system worked fine. Three years later, I got a laptop while in highschool. I was taking really good care of it, cleaning the screen everyday with windex, when all of a sudden a line appeared, a 1 pixel red line down the center of the screen. Later that month, I decided I didn't want it to get infected so I Took the OEM Anti-virus for my mobo and installed it, Windows instantly blew up, and then the computer wouldn't boot, a second try got it to boot however. I shut it down again and it wouldn't boot again, after a couple more tries it booted. It grew exponentially, until I gave up. It wasn't that anything was broken but it was just b0rked. A few months later I got frustarted and tried again, it booted. I became dedicated to finding a solution. I knew that if I hit ESC the system would prompt for the bios. So I decided, maybe there is a secret key. I began holding down every key, trying to turn it on, and then shutting it down. Eventually (well like 5 minutes later) F12 did the trick, and it prompted for a BIOS Disk, I found someone to reflash and it worked, sorta. A few months later it died again, and then it had to be reflashed, costing me another $20 bucks. Then another 6 months, then another year. I end up reflashing it about once every year now. One time, my friend asked me to go to a LAN party, he about 10 km away, and it was snowing. So I grabbed my laptop, put it in my bag and rode my bike over, only to find out it was cancelled, and then rode it back. My cdrom drive never closed agani after that. A year after I got it, I got home after a night of not sleeping, plugged it in, walked to my desk, and tripped over the power cord, dropping it down to the cement floor below. I FREAKED!!!! I picked it up again, plugged it back in, went to go grab my screw driver, and tripped over the cord again. The screen was cracked but still working fine, except the red line and all, and the hard drive needed to be replaced but thats all. A year later, I was looking for a floppy drive to fix the BIOS again, as it was cgosting me a good chunk of money, to flash it everytime because I didn't have a disk drive my self. This guy on a newsgroup said he thought he had one, he wasn't sure tho. I met him, and checked the connector, it looked right, I mean "if the plug fits, why not", WRONG! My sound card last all amplification, and my modem, just stopped responding. Strangley enough after all that, a replacement keyboard, hard drive, 2x battery, cdrom, floppy, the laptop still works fine. The red line is there and the crack in the screen casing from 4 years ago, requires duck tape now as the screen goes crazy until I smack it now. The sound and modem, came back one day, then went away, then came back a month later, then went away, then came back two weeks later, then went away, and came back a week later, then stayed for 6 months, then went for a day, and have been fine for the past 2 years. I also stuck an piece of SDRAM in my laptop, which is EDO (its 144 pin, both kinds) but that caused no damage. Back in highschool, I had a PCCHIPS mobo, that sucked. The Mobo was LITERALLY burning the AT mobo connectors. One day it wouldn't boot, and the connector was loose because the whole plastic, had melted. So I reattached it, and stuck a tooth pick in it to keep it in place. A while later it wouldn't boot again, so I stuck another tooth pick in. Then as I was eating an egg mcmuffin, it broke again, and so while fixing it, some grease dripped off my finger ont
You know in the past month I have seen that 80% of Spam is caused by infected PC's in Windows. That 80% of Spam comes from China. That 70% come from Russia and China. That the US accounts for 60% of Spam. That Eastern Europe Accounts for 60% of Spam. So from this I know that there is 80+80+70+60+60= 350% Spam. This also tells me that Russia accounts for Negative 10% of Spam. Don't believe me, take this The Reg Story, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/04/trojan_spa m_study/, This one, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/25/spam_delug e/ and thats just El Reg. The only conclusive thing I have been able to determine is that these stories are worse than spam, not only are they useless, but we actually read these stories.