First, when speaking of Linux, one usually speaks of a whole bunch of software and not all software might support unicode.
Second, Unicode is just an encoding (or a set of encodings).
All the messages have to be translated, the applications have to be checked whether the display is correct or not. The layout may be incorrect. Not to mention that the application might rely on some assumptions, which are correct for latin1, but not for other character-sets.
Not to mention that several applications aren't prepared to be localised.
First, it is a common misconception that global warming means, it will be warmer everywhere. This is not true, especially for Europe (see Gulf-stream, effect of lower density due to molted ice on).
Second, Greenland (named by Erik the Red to encourage his people to settle there, after discovering that a name like Iceland was detrimental to it's publicity) is still green in some areas (and there are still glaciers, too)).
> The problem is that global warming doesn't take into acount the previous warming and cooling cycles presented via geology.
Depends what you are looking for. If your interested in global warming on the scale of 10E6 years, it would be certainly be a quite small timeframe.
The point is, this global warming is on a much smaller time-scale, more up to 10E2. (Actually, being on such a small time-scale is the problem).
Same point applies to local weather. The knowledge of global climate does not help us to predict, wether it rains in four days in Seattle or not.
>Fact is we aren't going to have an accurate snapshot...
It does make as much sense as saying life doesn't exists because we don't have statistical evidence. On a certain scale, it may be correct. But on the scale, which currently interests us, it is not.
BTW, there are a geological study, which took geological cycles into account, which actually make much less optimistic. Here is an essay
PS: Hopefully, you don't involve some butterflies in the discussion.
First, the "ripoff" part. Practically, you can reduce every story so much, so that it is practically a rip off of another story. (NGE is certainly not the first "Boy Fights Aliens in Robot"-Anime)
Some minor details, which RahXephon contains in contrast to NGE and Argent Soma: RahXephon tells much more about the opponent, who is quite different from NGE and Argent Soma. Ah, and the Time in RahXephon is a bit more twisted.
Second, the "bad" part. This is certainly a personal opinion, but I find the series well drawn and told, not to mention that the soundtrack is by Yoko Kanno. Have a look at her discography. I guess, she can choose the projects she works on.
Not that I'm qualified enough to challenge your statement, but what kind of bridges does one build then?
And what drove those incompetent blokes to built the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (1,280m span), or the Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo. Not to mention the largest one Akashi Kaikyo (1,990m span) which is mentioned in the submission (follow the link "old record").
Well, not quite. It's executive agreed to it, as you already pointed out, but that doesn't equate to an agreement of it's nation.
Usually, for a treaty, which is binding under the international law, the people has to agree, too. In a representative democracy, that means the parliament as the people's representant has to agree.
That's why there is this news. All nations representants at the Kyoto summit agreed already to the protocol. But now all the EU nations have ratified it.
Nonetheless, the protocol can still be enacted.
To take effect, the pact must be ratified by at least 55 nations representing 55 percent of developed countries' carbon dioxide emissions. Seventy nations have now ratified, representing 26.6 percent of wealthy nations' emissions.
Of the 41 nations that have signed but not yet ratified, Japan has said it will ratify shortly and Russia is expected to do so by the end of the year, which would give the protocol the necessary 55 percent, Wallstrom said.
Meanwhile, Japan has ratified the protocol, Russia
Actually, I can tell you from non-US perspective: No-one actually believed that the US would ratify the protocol, unless there would be some heavy lobbying by the Gore-Administration.
AFAIK, the dissapointment in most nations stems from the withdrawel from any negotiations and the rejection of any reglementation.
> Acutally I think if you look around you can find that 4 countries could produce all the food needed in the world. Argintina, US, Canada, and Austraila.
Well, they probably could produce all the food needed in the world.
But according to the FAO those are the numbers for some countries:
Let's see what the CIA contributes to this argumentation...
Industry contributed only to 18% to the GDP of the US ($9.963 trillion total)
The Chinese GDP ($4.5 trillion total) consisted to 50% from the industrial sector.
So, it really dwarves the Chinese GDP. The CO_2 contribution of China can surely be found somewhere in this discussion.
>How many nations rely on our grain exports?
Let's see...
GDP composition Agriculture: 2%
Export partners...
Canada 23%, Mexico 14%, Japan 8%, UK 5%, Germany 4%
Canada? Mexico? Don't know, must be hidden somewhere in the position after decimal point.
The US hasn't been an agricultural nation for quite some time, neither is it an industrial, anymore. It advances to be a information/service nation, which doesn't neccessarily require a tremendious amount of energy.
You are implying, the steel industry cannot reduce its pollution, because they have no money.
The reason why they have no money is due to steel imports from Europe (who ratified the protocol).
Hence, the US raises import taxes on steel. This should strengthen the nation steel industry.
The European ratified the protocol, so the European industry has to undertake similar measures (and have similar costs) like US one. So there is no disadvantage in ratifying the protocol, just a missing advantage.
Furthermore, the US goverment considers (like many other nations and the EU) rising tariffs as an appropriate mean to protect their industry. So why shouldn't that work when implementing the protocol?
>Another factor... Try to consider it from the other side from the pond. There are some corporations "with already minimal profit margins, who will simply be unable..."
But I think the market is quite able to accomodate such changes, and lastly a corporation, which is not able to adapt is not worth to be supported. The work-force of its employees is better put at a more promising place.
> > "(the US agreed to 7%.)" Furthermore, its not "agreed to", but "did not agreed to".
> Germany allready lowerd the emissions by about 10%.
Well, this is mostly due to the collapsed industry in the eastern part (ex. GDR), which consisted mostly of inefficient industry in the ex-communist part (welcome to capitalism:)). So it's not quite as impressive as it sounds, but still better than nothing.
In contrast, Japan, which ratified the protocol on 2002/05/22, increased its greenhouse by 7%. But several parts of its industry signaled support in attaining the goal.
Hope, the goverment will not give in to the lobbying of opposing companies in implementing the regulations.
> While no one can dispute that Pinochet was a brutal military dictator, most people forget how bad things were in Chile before Pinochet took power.
AFAIK, Chile was ruled by a Socialist named Salvador Allende, who was elected and was determined to reform the admittantly crumbling economy with structural changes. Those structural changes included the nationalising of of the industrial sector (including U.S.-owned copper mines). This lead to strong oppositon of the expropriated U.S. companies, (esp. copper mining and ITT) and the US goverment. To quote Henry Kissinger:
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.
In the two first years of Allende's rule "Unemployment declined as the economy expanded, inflation was kept under control, and workers' incomes rose by fifty percent[...]"(John Foran, Allende's Chile, 1972)
The expatriation of US companies led to countermeasurements from the US goverment. The U.S. ambassador to Chile probably words his goverment's stance best:
Not a nut or a bolt will reach Chile.... We will do all in our power to condemn Chileans to utmost poverty
For some reason, the Chilenian economy was declining. Despite heavy support from the US goverment for the conservative party and the economical decline, Allende's party increased its share of the votes at the next election.
The CIA was heavily involved in supporting the conservative and right-wing groups with money, weapons and training. In 1971 to 1972 several coups were attempted, when Pinochet finally succeded. The National Security Archive of the GWU has some of the partially disclosed CIA documents.
Lastly, about the economical developement in Chile. Between 1972 nd 1987, the GNP per capita fell 6.4 percent.
To quote from the Hadley Centre, (who represent the Had part in the named models), which is about 1 link away from the page you quoted:
The specific aims of the research conducted by the centre are to: [...] understand physical, chemical and biological processes within the climate system and develop state-of-the-art climate models which represent them;[...](Emphasis mine)
> All it is is a degree of freedom That's the problem, there is no known thing, which can move in the supposed 4th dimension (time) freely. Time is not a another degree of freedom. To be precise, (at least in according to the relativity theory) it is a 3+1 dimensional system. The first three dimensions are orthogonal, but since Einstein, we know time is not orthogonal to space. You can move freely in one direction without affecting your position in the two other dimensions, but it will always have a temporal side-effect.
AFAIK, the nature of time is still not fathomed, and to quote a someone far more qualified in these matters than me:
"It is my opinion that our present picture of physical reality, particularly in relation to the nature of time, is due for a grand shake up even greater, perhaps, than that which has already been provided by present-day relativity and quantum mechanics."
Ah, that's why they are going to build maglevs especially in Europe and Japan Because they are more expensive to build and maintain.
In fact, they are building them because current trains have NOT enough capacity. Especially the highly congested route between Tokyo and Osaka. (Probably the first "real" route sporting maglev.)
AFAIK, the construction costs are indeed higher. Nonetheless, the conventional successors of highspeed trains as the Shinkansen, the TGV or the ICE are mostly limited to roughly 300km/h operational speed. The problem is at very high speed the wheels and the track are strained to the extreme, which leads to wear and tear of the same. A future successors of the Shinkansen (Linear Chuo Shinkansen ) will be based on maglev, as the supposed successor of the ICE-line the Transrapid. The Linear Chuo Shinkansen is supposed to have an operational speed of 500km/h. The current Transrapid built in China has an operational speed of 300km/h Not to mention the better acceleration and lower noise rate, delivered by these solutions. The Transrapid reaches 300km/h after 5km from a standing start and breaks certainly as fast as it accelerates.
Furthermore, the energy consumption of current maglev based trains are about 40% lower than their conventional counterparts.
> That is probably why they don't have a military (I think they now have a token military but not a real one) and have no need to simulate nuclear weapons.
Actually, it is/was not a dictated decision. Quite the contrary, the US was quite eager to arm (West-)Germany and Japan after WWII in order to have strong partners against the Warshaw Pact nations. Due to their historical background, both nations have a strong pacifistic movement (at last), which actually opposed against building up any armed forces. Probably to appease these movements (and their neighbours), both armies contain something like defense in their name (~jiei~ / -wehr) and in their respective foundations actually forbade military actions outside the nations boundaries.
Both countries are capable to produce nuclear weapons, having nuclear plants and capable scientists, but strongly oppose to the idea of doing so. (Which might be easier, when you have a strong ally, who assures MAD, in case of an attack.)
Japan has a spending limit of 1% of GNP (The US spends about 3%, Germany 1.5%)
You just add one level of indirection. Now they don't vote stupid decisions, but people, who promote stupid ideas, so that they get voted.
Well, actually, I don't think that way, I just exaggerated a bit to make a point.
Re:Military threats promote innovation
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually, competition promotes innovation. Military conflicts are a form of competition. But in contrast to most other forms of conflicts, military ones tend to be quite lethal.
Furthermore, for some reason, the military tends to be quite picky about releasing their achievements to the public.
They have developed a microchip-cpu for some fighter several years before the supposed first one by Intel. And now guess what, about a year or two ago the chief architect was finally allowed to lecture about the chip. What an achievement for humanity.
Of course, the money is not lost. Military people tend to spend their money, too. But the scientific and technological achievements are surely hidden away for about 20 to 30 years.
An neuronal network can be simulated by an adjacence matrix and a activation-function. The growing weights are symbolising the growth of the dendrits.
Problems:
O(n^2)-structure
Learning (Growing)
Current learning algorithms include (among others): Various backpropagation algorithms, AFAIK not observed in biological systems. A fairly mathematical approach. Self Organising Maps (SOM), especially Kohonen-networks: a similar strucure has been observed in the visual cortex.
Both algorithm do not include a temporal component although biological neurons rely heavily on temporal information, but IRC there are some neuronal networks out there that employ a temporal encoding.
Of course, all existing networks rely heavily on the knowledge of the programmer, who tailors the system to the problems (and partly the other way around). Partly, this is due to the prohibitivly expensive costs of large neuronal networks and partly nature does the same. Humans are pre-wired, so may AIs.
Furthermore, it is quite interesting that an "AI", programmed to learn articulating words, made similar errors to those of a baby learning speaking.
Have a look at Ghengis, AFAIK the only programmed knowledge is: "contact with ground -> bad", "moving forward -> good", and how to learn.
> In other words, the AI itself isn't self-contained, as it were.
This reminds me somehow at an AI Koan:
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe" Sussman replied.
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.
Now, if they just could convince China to equip their rockets with C-band transponders, too, this would be a tremendious step forward. (Of course, it is still a technical achievement, just not such a great one as Lockhead it wants to be.)
Maybe have a look at a (probably little outdated) article by Bob Harris. Especially the quote from the "Interagency Intelligence Assessment of Possible Soviet Responses to the US Strategic Defense Initiative" report (1983) about the feasibility of SDI (now BMD) is worth noticing.
To preempt a 9/11 statement, the report of the National Intelligence Council "Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States Through 2015" considers "non-missle delivery options" more likely.
To quote Mr. Harris interpretation of the report:
Think about it: pretend you're a crazed dictator hell-bent to wipe out Pittsburgh. (Nothing personal, guys. Actually, there are people in Pittsburgh I love very much. Just making a point.) Are you gonna spend all your cash on a big-ass missile system that takes years to develop -- thereby all but guaranteeing satellite detection and a pre-emptive attack from the U.S. -- and which in any case leaves your fingerprints all over the attack, guaranteeing your subsequent annihilation? Or are you gonna just have a few guys smuggle the bomb parts into Canada, drive it over at Niagara Falls in the back of a VW minibus, and then simply pull the trigger on Three Rivers Stadium?
(The stadium, by the way, can go, as far as I'm concerned.)
> You could make each tower hand out it own IP subnet. Some of this is handled in the wrieless today and routing to your PC as you wonder the building and single is jumping from access point to access point.
The different access points are all part of a single Ethernet. You surely didn't tried to wander from a different administrative network to a different one while using the Internet.
> The only big problem now is getting a DNS to up the with your current ip/route...
Not really, unless you want to have a server on your mobile.
The real problem is the routing.
Let's say you travel from Strasbourg to Venice. Someone else is driving, you're bored and you have to much money. So what are you doing? Watching a video via a mobile.
What does that mean? You initiate a connection to a server, which will send the data to your IP. Now what happens when your leaving the reach of a Base Station Controller? If I understand you correctly, you'll recieve a new IP. Wonderful, what happens with your video?
Now let's assume you keep the IP between different BSCs.
Sorry, pal. You're leaving France, here comes Germany, I guess the France Telecom doesn't provide access there.
That would be a switch between two telcos.
Furthermore, several telcos only provide partial coverage and outsource the missing areas to a different telco. What happens when you leave that area?
Now, let's assume that the telcos don't have a problem with handing out IPs from their pool to a different telco, how will the traffic be routed?
Always over all adminsitrative borders you have passed, since one carrier will never allow a different carrier to mess with their routers. Imagine what would happen: what work those routers'd have to handle, every millisecond a change in routes, routing tables over several thousand entries.
Slashdot Mirror
Reeinforcement Learning comes to mind.
The "pairing up new combinations" could be an anthromorphism.
First, when speaking of Linux, one usually speaks of a whole bunch of software and not all software might support unicode.
Second, Unicode is just an encoding (or a set of encodings).
All the messages have to be translated, the applications have to be checked whether the display is correct or not.
The layout may be incorrect. Not to mention that the application might rely on some assumptions, which are correct for latin1, but not for other character-sets.
Not to mention that several applications aren't prepared to be localised.
Distributing data on different computer is not easy, in fact, it can be quite hard (at least doing it correct)
Probably, thats why distributed computing is a discipline for itself.
> And also consider the fact that quite a few companies have 64 bits, Digital, Sun. And did the world change? Not really...
1960: And quite some companies have computers, and did the world change? Not really...
Same with Internet, 3D-graphics, cars...
There is a great difference between being available and being commodity.
Nonetheless, you are certainly right that switching from 32bit to 64bit won't revolutionise the world.
Probably, you are referring to Greenland.
First, it is a common misconception that global warming means, it will be warmer everywhere. This is not true, especially for Europe (see Gulf-stream, effect of lower density due to molted ice on).
Second, Greenland (named by Erik the Red to encourage his people to settle there, after discovering that a name like Iceland was detrimental to it's publicity) is still green in some areas (and there are still glaciers, too)).
> The problem is that global warming doesn't take into acount the previous warming and cooling cycles presented via geology.
...
Depends what you are looking for. If your interested in global warming on the scale of 10E6 years, it would be certainly be a quite small timeframe.
The point is, this global warming is on a much smaller time-scale, more up to 10E2. (Actually, being on such a small time-scale is the problem).
Same point applies to local weather. The knowledge of global climate does not help us to predict, wether it rains in four days in Seattle or not.
>Fact is we aren't going to have an accurate snapshot
It does make as much sense as saying life doesn't exists because we don't have statistical evidence. On a certain scale, it may be correct. But on the scale, which currently interests us, it is not.
BTW, there are a geological study, which took geological cycles into account, which actually make much less optimistic.
Here is an essay
PS: Hopefully, you don't involve some butterflies in the discussion.
Maybe it was this one. in this posting.
I was just looking for IP-stack fo microcontrollers and found it (again).
> Rahxephon is just a bad NGE ripoff
Objection, sir.
First, the "ripoff" part. Practically, you can reduce every story so much, so that it is practically a rip off of another story.
(NGE is certainly not the first "Boy Fights Aliens in Robot"-Anime)
Some minor details, which RahXephon contains in contrast to NGE and Argent Soma: RahXephon tells much more about the opponent, who is quite different from NGE and Argent Soma. Ah, and the Time in RahXephon is a bit more twisted.
Second, the "bad" part. This is certainly a personal opinion, but I find the series well drawn and told, not to mention that the soundtrack is by Yoko Kanno. Have a look at her discography. I guess, she can choose the projects she works on.
The US isn't poor. But the Federal US Government is... kind of. Budget deficit comes to mind.
Have a look at a debt clock.
Oh, another one in Java and ticking!.
I don't consider a debt of $20.000 (pp) as very wealthy.
(What do I hear, my country's deficit is more than twice as high? Well, I'd better shut up now and consider moving to Singapore, Monaco or Norway.)
Not that I'm qualified enough to challenge your statement, but what kind of bridges does one build then?
And what drove those incompetent blokes to built the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (1,280m span), or the Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo.
Not to mention the largest one Akashi Kaikyo (1,990m span) which is mentioned in the submission (follow the link "old record").
Well, not quite. It's executive agreed to it, as you already pointed out, but that doesn't equate to an agreement of it's nation.
Usually, for a treaty, which is binding under the international law, the people has to agree, too.
In a representative democracy, that means the parliament as the people's representant has to agree.
That's why there is this news.
All nations representants at the Kyoto summit agreed already to the protocol. But now all the EU nations have ratified it.
Nonetheless, the protocol can still be enacted.
(from CNN )
Meanwhile, Japan has ratified the protocol, Russia
Actually, I can tell you from non-US perspective: No-one actually believed that the US would ratify the protocol, unless there would be some heavy lobbying by the Gore-Administration.
AFAIK, the dissapointment in most nations stems from the withdrawel from any negotiations and the rejection of any reglementation.
> Acutally I think if you look around you can find that 4 countries could produce all the food needed in the world. Argintina, US, Canada, and Austraila.
Well, they probably could produce all the food needed in the world.
But according to the FAO those are the numbers for some countries:
Cereals in 2001 (metric tons):
China: 404,126,308
EU: 202,424,960
India: 230,611,000
USA: 325,315,236
Rice:
China: 181,514,992
India: 131,900,000
Countries not listed, including Canada and Argentina produced only some 10^7 metric tons.
Let's see what the CIA contributes to this argumentation...
Industry contributed only to 18% to the GDP of the US ($9.963 trillion total)
The Chinese GDP ($4.5 trillion total) consisted to 50% from the industrial sector.
So, it really dwarves the Chinese GDP.
The CO_2 contribution of China can surely be found somewhere in this discussion.
>How many nations rely on our grain exports?
Let's see...
Export partners...
Canada? Mexico? Don't know, must be hidden somewhere in the position after decimal point.
The US hasn't been an agricultural nation for quite some time, neither is it an industrial, anymore. It advances to be a information/service nation, which doesn't neccessarily require a tremendious amount of energy.
Let try to reelaborate your argumentation:
You are implying, the steel industry cannot reduce its pollution, because they have no money.
The reason why they have no money is due to steel imports from Europe (who ratified the protocol).
Hence, the US raises import taxes on steel.
This should strengthen the nation steel industry.
The European ratified the protocol, so the European industry has to undertake similar measures (and have similar costs) like US one.
So there is no disadvantage in ratifying the protocol, just a missing advantage.
Furthermore, the US goverment considers (like many other nations and the EU) rising tariffs as an appropriate mean to protect their industry.
So why shouldn't that work when implementing the protocol?
>Another factor...
Try to consider it from the other side from the pond. There are some corporations "with already minimal profit margins, who will simply be unable..."
But I think the market is quite able to accomodate such changes, and lastly a corporation, which is not able to adapt is not worth to be supported.
The work-force of its employees is better put at a more promising place.
> > "(the US agreed to 7%.)"
:)).
Furthermore, its not "agreed to", but "did not agreed to".
> Germany allready lowerd the emissions by about 10%.
Well, this is mostly due to the collapsed industry in the eastern part (ex. GDR), which consisted mostly of inefficient industry in the ex-communist part (welcome to capitalism
So it's not quite as impressive as it sounds, but still better than nothing.
In contrast, Japan, which ratified the protocol on 2002/05/22, increased its greenhouse by 7%.
But several parts of its industry signaled support in attaining the goal.
Hope, the goverment will not give in to the lobbying of opposing companies in implementing the regulations.
AFAIK, Chile was ruled by a Socialist named Salvador Allende,
who was elected and was determined to reform the admittantly crumbling economy with structural changes.
Those structural changes included the nationalising of of the industrial sector (including U.S.-owned copper mines). This lead to strong oppositon of the expropriated U.S. companies, (esp. copper mining and ITT) and the US goverment.
To quote Henry Kissinger:
In the two first years of Allende's rule "Unemployment declined as the economy expanded, inflation was kept under control, and workers' incomes rose by fifty percent[...]"(John Foran, Allende's Chile, 1972)
The expatriation of US companies led to countermeasurements from the US goverment.
The U.S. ambassador to Chile probably words his goverment's stance best:
For some reason, the Chilenian economy was declining.
Despite heavy support from the US goverment for the conservative party and the economical decline, Allende's party increased its share of the votes at the next election.
The CIA was heavily involved in supporting the conservative and right-wing groups with money, weapons and training. In 1971 to 1972 several coups were attempted, when Pinochet finally succeded.
The National Security Archive of the GWU has some of the partially disclosed CIA documents.
Lastly, about the economical developement in Chile.
Between 1972 nd 1987, the GNP per capita fell 6.4 percent.
Maybe have a look at "Analysis of Chilean economic and socioeconomic policy: 1975-1989 by Sherman Souther".
That's the problem, there is no known thing, which can move in the supposed 4th dimension (time) freely.
Time is not a another degree of freedom.
To be precise, (at least in according to the relativity theory) it is a 3+1 dimensional system.
The first three dimensions are orthogonal, but since Einstein, we know time is not orthogonal to space.
You can move freely in one direction without affecting your position in the two other dimensions, but it will always have a temporal side-effect.
AFAIK, the nature of time is still not fathomed, and to quote a someone far more qualified in these matters than me:
Ah, that's why they are going to build maglevs especially in Europe and Japan Because they are more expensive to build and maintain.
In fact, they are building them because current trains have NOT enough capacity. Especially the highly congested route between Tokyo and Osaka. (Probably the first "real" route sporting maglev.)
AFAIK, the construction costs are indeed higher. Nonetheless, the conventional successors of highspeed trains as the Shinkansen, the TGV or the ICE are mostly limited to roughly 300km/h operational speed. The problem is at very high speed the wheels and the track are strained to the extreme, which leads to wear and tear of the same.
A future successors of the Shinkansen (Linear Chuo Shinkansen ) will be based on maglev, as the supposed successor of the ICE-line the Transrapid.
The Linear Chuo Shinkansen is supposed to have an operational speed of 500km/h. The current Transrapid built in China has an operational speed of 300km/h
Not to mention the better acceleration and lower noise rate, delivered by these solutions.
The Transrapid reaches 300km/h after 5km from a standing start and breaks certainly as fast as it accelerates.
Furthermore, the energy consumption of current maglev based trains are about 40% lower than their conventional counterparts.
> That is probably why they don't have a military (I think they now have a token military but not a real one) and have no need to simulate nuclear weapons.
Actually, it is/was not a dictated decision.
Quite the contrary, the US was quite eager to arm (West-)Germany and Japan after WWII in order to have strong partners against the Warshaw Pact nations.
Due to their historical background, both nations have a strong pacifistic movement (at last), which actually opposed against building up any armed forces. Probably to appease these movements (and their neighbours), both armies contain something like defense in their name (~jiei~ / -wehr) and in their respective foundations actually forbade military actions outside the nations boundaries.
Both countries are capable to produce nuclear weapons, having nuclear plants and capable scientists, but strongly oppose to the idea of doing so.
(Which might be easier, when you have a strong ally, who assures MAD, in case of an attack.)
Japan has a spending limit of 1% of GNP
(The US spends about 3%, Germany 1.5%)
You just add one level of indirection. Now they don't vote stupid decisions, but people, who promote stupid ideas, so that they get voted.
Well, actually, I don't think that way, I just exaggerated a bit to make a point.
Actually, competition promotes innovation. Military conflicts are a form of competition.
But in contrast to most other forms of conflicts, military ones tend to be quite lethal.
Furthermore, for some reason, the military tends to be quite picky about releasing their achievements to the public.
They have developed a microchip-cpu for some fighter several years before the supposed first one by Intel. And now guess what, about a year or two ago the chief architect was finally allowed to lecture about the chip. What an achievement for humanity.
Of course, the money is not lost. Military people tend to spend their money, too. But the scientific and technological achievements are surely hidden away for about 20 to 30 years.
Problems:
O(n^2)-structure
Learning (Growing)
Current learning algorithms include (among others):
Various backpropagation algorithms, AFAIK not observed in biological systems. A fairly mathematical approach.
Self Organising Maps (SOM), especially Kohonen-networks: a similar strucure has been observed in the visual cortex.
Both algorithm do not include a temporal component although biological neurons rely heavily on temporal information, but IRC there are some neuronal networks out there that employ a temporal encoding.
Of course, all existing networks rely heavily on the knowledge of the programmer, who tailors the system to the problems (and partly the other way around). Partly, this is due to the prohibitivly expensive costs of large neuronal networks and partly nature does the same.
Humans are pre-wired, so may AIs.
Furthermore, it is quite interesting that an "AI", programmed to learn articulating words, made similar errors to those of a baby learning speaking.
Have a look at Ghengis, AFAIK the only programmed knowledge is: "contact with ground -> bad", "moving forward -> good", and how to learn.
> In other words, the AI itself isn't self-contained, as it were.
This reminds me somehow at an AI Koan:
Maybe have a look at a (probably little outdated) article by Bob Harris.
Especially the quote from the "Interagency Intelligence Assessment of Possible Soviet Responses to the US Strategic Defense Initiative" report (1983) about the feasibility of SDI (now BMD) is worth noticing.
To preempt a 9/11 statement, the report of the National Intelligence Council "Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States Through 2015" considers "non-missle delivery options" more likely.
To quote Mr. Harris interpretation of the report:
> You could make each tower hand out it own IP subnet. Some of this is handled in the wrieless today and routing to your PC as you wonder the building and single is jumping from access point to access point.
:)
The different access points are all part of a single Ethernet. You surely didn't tried to wander from a different administrative network to a different one while using the Internet.
> The only big problem now is getting a DNS to up the with your current ip/route...
Not really, unless you want to have a server on your mobile.
The real problem is the routing.
Let's say you travel from Strasbourg to Venice.
Someone else is driving, you're bored and you have to much money. So what are you doing? Watching a video via a mobile.
What does that mean?
You initiate a connection to a server, which will send the data to your IP. Now what happens when your leaving the reach of a Base Station Controller?
If I understand you correctly, you'll recieve a new IP.
Wonderful, what happens with your video?
Now let's assume you keep the IP between different BSCs.
Sorry, pal. You're leaving France, here comes Germany, I guess the France Telecom doesn't provide access there.
That would be a switch between two telcos.
Furthermore, several telcos only provide partial coverage and outsource the missing areas to a different telco.
What happens when you leave that area?
Now, let's assume that the telcos don't have a problem with handing out IPs from their pool to a different telco, how will the traffic be routed?
Always over all adminsitrative borders you have passed, since one carrier will never allow a different carrier to mess with their routers.
Imagine what would happen: what work those routers'd have to handle, every millisecond a change in routes, routing tables over several thousand entries.
So, happy travelling from Strasbourg to Venice
Ever thought of mobile devices? Especially obiles/cellulars?
Do you expect them to NAT all those?
How will they route their traffic?
All over one NAT-box?
Over several NAT-boxes?
Or do you expect them to assign them a dynamic IP for every connection?
When is the IP free to use for another device?
After 10s of no use? 20s?
How do you achieve a handover between Gateway GPRS Support Nodes?
Or between different telcos?
Or between different telcos in different countries?