until I can get a basic plan pre-paid with a card that doesn't expire after 45 days (i.e., discarding all the unused minutes)
Virgin Mobile. You have to buy $20 worth of airtime every three months to keep the account alive, but your minutes never expire, so if you really don't use the phone much it only costs you about $7 per month. And there's no long distance and no roaming--if you get a signal, the call is always the same price per minute.
Maybe, maybe not. Not every technology is scalable. As another poster noted, there are other proven ways of doing fusion at room temperature. They just aren't practical for power generation and don't easily scale up.
I've always been partial to muon catalyzed fusion, myself. Very cool. All you need is a cheap supply of muons and a way to keep them going longer. Someday, maybe...
I don't see any inconsistency in expecting satellite radio and broadcast radio to live by the same rules. (likewise cable and broadcast TV)
I think it comes down to the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech. The government isn't supposed to be able to regulate what you can say. They can do it with broadcast radio and TV because the government sort-of 'owns' the spectrum (or rather the American people do and the gov't administers it on their behalf). Since the government 'owns' the spectrum and licenses broadcasters to use it, they can set rules on what those broadcasters are permitted to do with their allocated portion of the spectrum. This argument does not apply to cable TV, and may not apply to satellite.
Geez, you really missed the point. The 'wonk' would make some rational decision, like having the US companies that are interested in the issues put forward representatives to go, or by having someone in the government pick people based on technical qualifications or something. Whether or not someone donated to Kerry's campaign is pretty much irrelevant to whether they have technical expertise on telecommunications issues.
The failing of the 'hack' is to see everything as politics, and not to appreciate the value in rational analysis of issues to find real solutions to problems.
I disagree. While he drew on preexisting mythologies, he created something that was new to English literature. For example, elves existed in English literature and mythology before Tolkien, but they were not much like Tolkien's elves. Nearly all of the 'elves' in fantasy literature after Tolkien, however, follow Tolkien's model.
It is difficult for people to go from Open Office > Microsoft Office
If true, that would be a good argument for not converting a high school computer lab to OO. Surely a primary educational goal in having office software in the schools is to prepare students to use that software once they get out into the workforce. Since MSO is the most widely used office application suite, OO meets the school's primary objective only to the extent that learning on OO will enable students to use MSO.
I bring this up, since I suspect this argument will come up when the original poster tries to 'sell' OO to his/her superiors. To sell Open Office to a school district, you have to be able to make the case that learning on Open Office will satisfactorily prepare the students to be able to use Microsoft Office (or any other office software) later.
Actually the 'tax ID number' (TIN) is something slightly different. People who are not eligible to get a SSN but who are subject to U.S. tax are issued a TIN. The most common example would be foreign citizens who are not authorized to work in the U.S. but who have investments in the U.S. and pay U.S. income tax on those investments.
I think most of the researchers on these projects are probably aware of how far programs like ALICE are from true intelligence, or from passing an actual Turing test. I think they probably would also agree that this kind of research alone is never going to reach that goal, although it might provide useful insights into the larger problem. Clearly, to pass a true Turing test the program has to have more going on than just pattern matching or pattern recognition. It has to have some knowledge about the world, and some ability to learn and understand.
In your first post, you criticized the Turing test itself (as well as modern implementations of it). I think this criticism is misplaced. A program that could actually pass a true Turing test would be pretty impressive, and I don't think one could argue that it isn't 'intelligent'. What fails, though, is trying to make any kind of restricted or handicapped Turing test. It's too easy then to make programs that pass without really being anywhere close to 'intelligent'.
I think the most interesting thing about stimulus-response programs like ALICE is just how far you can get with such a simple program. This doesn't necessarily lead you toward development of true A.I., but it may still lead to insights on how to handle parsing of speech, etc.
Part of the goal with Firefox (vs. the Mozilla suite) was to avoid bloat. Not everybody likes all the extensions and chrome you like. The only thing I typically install when I set up Firefox for other people is Acrobat, although I would consider adding Adblock now that I've tried it. On my own machine I also use Mouse Gestures, but I wouldn't install that on someone else's machine unless they asked for it. The default preferences are just fine for most people, and they can play with them themselves if they want. Most other plugins can be easily downloaded the first time they are needed.
You are not willing to pay a penny for tv huh? So I guess you think you deserve you should get it for free.
No, I think he is saying that he wouldn't care if TV vaporized because nobody was willing to pay for it. Nor would I. I do actually pay for cable, and I do sometimes watch ads, but mostly I fast forward through them. If everyone were like me, one of three things would happen: either the advertisers would learn to make commercials that people want to watch (funny, informative, whatever), or the industry would find another business model that works, or they would go out of business. I see the web the same way: I don't mind most ads, and only block the ones that are annoying. But I don't usually read the ads either. If a website can't pay the bills that's not my problem. Either they will disappear or they will find a business model that works. There will be winners and losers, and in the end we will end up mostly with a net that works. Some sites will be supported by ads, some by subscriptions, and some by some other means. Regardless, noone has the right to put something out in the open on the web and then demand that I pay for it by viewing their ads. If they want to force me to pay, they need to restrict access to their content. If they choose to make their content freely available, then it is entirely up to me whether I want to view their ads or not. That is my version of the social contract. The businesses that understand this and build their business model accordingly will do just fine. The businesses that expect to coerce consumers into paying will find themselves looking for a new line of work.
Capitalism in action--the strong business models survive and the weak are eliminated, and the marketplace is improved by both.
The first coca cola ad you saw when you were a child was useful, every other one was a waste of your time.
Actually, that's not true. I kind of enjoyed the ad for the new Coke with lime ("Put the lime in the Coke, you nut, and drink it all up..."). And, you know, it worked. The other day I bought one at lunch. I might have just had coffee otherwise, and without the ad I might well not have noticed it or bothered to try it. It's just coke with lime in it, after all.
Not all reflection is due to infinite index of refraction.
The experiments where they stopped light worked by changing the index of refraction of the material while the light was in it. If the material always had an infinite index, the light would just reflect off. By changing the index from a normal value to infinity while the light is in it, they were able to make the light stop propagating for long periods of time. Changing the index back then allowed the light to continue propagating. The photons that were in the material when the index is changed cease to exist, but identical ones are recreated when the index is changed back. (No, I don't know how this works in detail, but it's similar to quantum teleportation and other quantum coherence effects.)
The speed of light in a vacuum is constant. When light enters any material, it slows down. The amount it slows down is related to the refractive index of the material. These 'slow light' researchers have managed to create very weird materials that have extraordinarily high refractive index at low temperatures. This causes the light to slow down a lot, or even to stop (for materials where the refractive index becomes infinite).
I don't buy it. This sounds like FUD from older people who don't grok computers. Computers allow an engineer to do a lot of things that couldn't be done before. Yes, it's impressive what they were able to do without computers, but today's engineers are just as bright. They just have more tools at their disposal.
The quote that we couldn't land on the moon in 20 years now is similarly unbelievable. All that stands in our way is the will to do it. That could change pretty fast when, for example, the Chinese start launching lunar missions. Other countries will follow suit, or be left behind.
I thought it was a Niven quote too, but it appears that it may be originally from Arthur C. Clarke. At least, he claims credit for it.
Niven is widely quoted as having said this, with the additional line "And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!"
The situation with space reminds me a lot about the early colonization of North America by Europeans. The earliest colonists all died. The next batch all died too. It took a few tries for them to get it right.
Attempting to colonize space now would be like that. We aren't really ready technologically, and most likely we will make some mistakes. Unfortunately, the public now has a much lower tolerance for expensive colonization missions ending with everyone dying. That doesn't mean that this isn't a good idea, though. OTOH, our technology will improve with time and it is possible that we will eventually be 'more ready' to give it a try. I hope one way or another we do go to space in a more permanent way someday. I'm not expecting to see it anytime soon, though.
Unless a significant portion of the change in responses over time is due to the subgroup that is annoyed by spam becoming less likely to respond to surveys.
This is not as unlikely as it may seem. I'm very concerned about online privacy, scams, privacy of personal information, etc. I have always been annoyed by spam. I used to like surveys, but in recent years I have become more concerned about the ways major coporations (hello, Choicepoint) are building databases of private information, in part based on 'marketing' surveys. I no longer respond to surveys.
I agree with you about the causes of the current upswing in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It is pretty clear that a lot of it comes from the misuse of antibiotics to 'treat' colds.
A lot of the problems with salmonella come from a different source, though. Modern industrial food-handling processes provide a much better environment for spreading bacteria than traditional methods. Your grandparents cut up a raw chicken that they either killed themselves, or bought from somone who had killed it somewhere nearby, not long before. Modern chickens are killed en masse in an assembly line that processes many per day. Despite efforts to control it, bacteria grow in that environment and contaminate the meat.
Similarly, it was pretty common at one time for people to eat raw eggs. One has to be much more careful about that now, since eggs are more likely to contain salmonella due to the way they are handled. The mass production that brings us cheap food does have its drawbacks.
What the grandparent described is actually a current (or recent, at least) hypothesis on allergies. Researchers have noted that the number of people with allergies has been increasing for quite some time. One of the proposed explanations for this is essentially that the oversensitivity of the immune system that causes allergies arises when the immune system is not challenged enough in childhood. So, you're right that once someone has an oversensitive immune system, exposure to allergens increases the sensitivity, but it may also be true that exposure to larger amounts of allergens before one develops an oversensitive immune system may prevent that oversensitivity from occurring.
A related hypothesis had to do with number of childhood infections: it was suggested that children who had fewer infections in their early years were more likely to develop allergies. Same idea behind this: an under-challenged immune system develops oversensitivity.
I'm not sure what the current status of either of these hypotheses is. I think there was some evidence that favored these ideas, but I'm not sure if further research has supported it.
The trouble with prions is that they aren't alive to begin with, so you can't 'kill' them. They're just proteins, nothing more. Prion disease is not really an infection in the classic sense--it's a self-reproducing protein replication error.
Slashdot Mirror
The minutes do carry over. You have to buy at least $20 worth every three months, but minutes are never lost as long as you keep your account active.
Virgin Mobile. You have to buy $20 worth of airtime every three months to keep the account alive, but your minutes never expire, so if you really don't use the phone much it only costs you about $7 per month. And there's no long distance and no roaming--if you get a signal, the call is always the same price per minute.
The distinction has often been somewhat vague in Card's writing.
But be aware of insider trading rules.
I've always been partial to muon catalyzed fusion, myself. Very cool. All you need is a cheap supply of muons and a way to keep them going longer. Someday, maybe...
Or you can save money buy buying a digital convertor once for $50-70.
I think it comes down to the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech. The government isn't supposed to be able to regulate what you can say. They can do it with broadcast radio and TV because the government sort-of 'owns' the spectrum (or rather the American people do and the gov't administers it on their behalf). Since the government 'owns' the spectrum and licenses broadcasters to use it, they can set rules on what those broadcasters are permitted to do with their allocated portion of the spectrum. This argument does not apply to cable TV, and may not apply to satellite.
The failing of the 'hack' is to see everything as politics, and not to appreciate the value in rational analysis of issues to find real solutions to problems.
I disagree. While he drew on preexisting mythologies, he created something that was new to English literature. For example, elves existed in English literature and mythology before Tolkien, but they were not much like Tolkien's elves. Nearly all of the 'elves' in fantasy literature after Tolkien, however, follow Tolkien's model.
If true, that would be a good argument for not converting a high school computer lab to OO. Surely a primary educational goal in having office software in the schools is to prepare students to use that software once they get out into the workforce. Since MSO is the most widely used office application suite, OO meets the school's primary objective only to the extent that learning on OO will enable students to use MSO.
I bring this up, since I suspect this argument will come up when the original poster tries to 'sell' OO to his/her superiors. To sell Open Office to a school district, you have to be able to make the case that learning on Open Office will satisfactorily prepare the students to be able to use Microsoft Office (or any other office software) later.
Actually the 'tax ID number' (TIN) is something slightly different. People who are not eligible to get a SSN but who are subject to U.S. tax are issued a TIN. The most common example would be foreign citizens who are not authorized to work in the U.S. but who have investments in the U.S. and pay U.S. income tax on those investments.
In your first post, you criticized the Turing test itself (as well as modern implementations of it). I think this criticism is misplaced. A program that could actually pass a true Turing test would be pretty impressive, and I don't think one could argue that it isn't 'intelligent'. What fails, though, is trying to make any kind of restricted or handicapped Turing test. It's too easy then to make programs that pass without really being anywhere close to 'intelligent'.
I think the most interesting thing about stimulus-response programs like ALICE is just how far you can get with such a simple program. This doesn't necessarily lead you toward development of true A.I., but it may still lead to insights on how to handle parsing of speech, etc.
Part of the goal with Firefox (vs. the Mozilla suite) was to avoid bloat. Not everybody likes all the extensions and chrome you like. The only thing I typically install when I set up Firefox for other people is Acrobat, although I would consider adding Adblock now that I've tried it. On my own machine I also use Mouse Gestures, but I wouldn't install that on someone else's machine unless they asked for it. The default preferences are just fine for most people, and they can play with them themselves if they want. Most other plugins can be easily downloaded the first time they are needed.
No, I think he is saying that he wouldn't care if TV vaporized because nobody was willing to pay for it. Nor would I. I do actually pay for cable, and I do sometimes watch ads, but mostly I fast forward through them. If everyone were like me, one of three things would happen: either the advertisers would learn to make commercials that people want to watch (funny, informative, whatever), or the industry would find another business model that works, or they would go out of business. I see the web the same way: I don't mind most ads, and only block the ones that are annoying. But I don't usually read the ads either. If a website can't pay the bills that's not my problem. Either they will disappear or they will find a business model that works. There will be winners and losers, and in the end we will end up mostly with a net that works. Some sites will be supported by ads, some by subscriptions, and some by some other means. Regardless, noone has the right to put something out in the open on the web and then demand that I pay for it by viewing their ads. If they want to force me to pay, they need to restrict access to their content. If they choose to make their content freely available, then it is entirely up to me whether I want to view their ads or not. That is my version of the social contract. The businesses that understand this and build their business model accordingly will do just fine. The businesses that expect to coerce consumers into paying will find themselves looking for a new line of work.
Capitalism in action--the strong business models survive and the weak are eliminated, and the marketplace is improved by both.
Actually, that's not true. I kind of enjoyed the ad for the new Coke with lime ("Put the lime in the Coke, you nut, and drink it all up..."). And, you know, it worked. The other day I bought one at lunch. I might have just had coffee otherwise, and without the ad I might well not have noticed it or bothered to try it. It's just coke with lime in it, after all.
It was pretty good.
The experiments where they stopped light worked by changing the index of refraction of the material while the light was in it. If the material always had an infinite index, the light would just reflect off. By changing the index from a normal value to infinity while the light is in it, they were able to make the light stop propagating for long periods of time. Changing the index back then allowed the light to continue propagating. The photons that were in the material when the index is changed cease to exist, but identical ones are recreated when the index is changed back. (No, I don't know how this works in detail, but it's similar to quantum teleportation and other quantum coherence effects.)
The speed of light in a vacuum is constant. When light enters any material, it slows down. The amount it slows down is related to the refractive index of the material. These 'slow light' researchers have managed to create very weird materials that have extraordinarily high refractive index at low temperatures. This causes the light to slow down a lot, or even to stop (for materials where the refractive index becomes infinite).
The quote that we couldn't land on the moon in 20 years now is similarly unbelievable. All that stands in our way is the will to do it. That could change pretty fast when, for example, the Chinese start launching lunar missions. Other countries will follow suit, or be left behind.
No, apparently the salmonella gets inside the eggs as well.
Niven is widely quoted as having said this, with the additional line "And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!"
Attempting to colonize space now would be like that. We aren't really ready technologically, and most likely we will make some mistakes. Unfortunately, the public now has a much lower tolerance for expensive colonization missions ending with everyone dying. That doesn't mean that this isn't a good idea, though. OTOH, our technology will improve with time and it is possible that we will eventually be 'more ready' to give it a try. I hope one way or another we do go to space in a more permanent way someday. I'm not expecting to see it anytime soon, though.
This is not as unlikely as it may seem. I'm very concerned about online privacy, scams, privacy of personal information, etc. I have always been annoyed by spam. I used to like surveys, but in recent years I have become more concerned about the ways major coporations (hello, Choicepoint) are building databases of private information, in part based on 'marketing' surveys. I no longer respond to surveys.
A lot of the problems with salmonella come from a different source, though. Modern industrial food-handling processes provide a much better environment for spreading bacteria than traditional methods. Your grandparents cut up a raw chicken that they either killed themselves, or bought from somone who had killed it somewhere nearby, not long before. Modern chickens are killed en masse in an assembly line that processes many per day. Despite efforts to control it, bacteria grow in that environment and contaminate the meat.
Similarly, it was pretty common at one time for people to eat raw eggs. One has to be much more careful about that now, since eggs are more likely to contain salmonella due to the way they are handled. The mass production that brings us cheap food does have its drawbacks.
A related hypothesis had to do with number of childhood infections: it was suggested that children who had fewer infections in their early years were more likely to develop allergies. Same idea behind this: an under-challenged immune system develops oversensitivity.
I'm not sure what the current status of either of these hypotheses is. I think there was some evidence that favored these ideas, but I'm not sure if further research has supported it.
The trouble with prions is that they aren't alive to begin with, so you can't 'kill' them. They're just proteins, nothing more. Prion disease is not really an infection in the classic sense--it's a self-reproducing protein replication error.