Politics. Pandering to the idiot vote. For Astrology believers, the 'downgrading' of Pluto was a slap in the face, provoking those feelings of religious outrage which politicians love to exploit. Millions and millions of voters in New Mexico have some sort of belief in Astrology, ranging from slight interest to passionate conviction. Many of those votes have just been guaranteed to those legislators responsible for this bill.
Being enlightened slashdotters, most of us have little appreciation for how stupid people really are. I am here to say that yes, they are that stupid.
A truly sentient software program is mere child's play compared to the awesome potential of this guy. As the hybrid clone of Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, Jeff Hawkins is destined to become one of the leading minds of the 21st century.
NASA just needs to classify it under the War on Terra.
Re:7 centuries isn't feasible for humans
on
Interstellar Ark
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· Score: 1
I just realized I said "variant" instead of "version," but since the latter is even closer to the connotation of "slightly different but understandable," my point is unchanged.
Re:7 centuries isn't feasible for humans
on
Interstellar Ark
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· Score: 1
Erm, have you actually read Canterbury Tales? It's not accessible via footnotes in same the way Hamlet is. That's why most people read a translation of Canterbury Tales.
That aside, it appears that your response only demonstrates my point. My qualm was with word "variant," which has the connotation of being slightly different but understandable, and this is not the case.
Your other comments are just silly pedantry. Since I mentioned present-day English in one sentence, I was obviously referring to present-day (Modern) English in the next sentence; the mention of 450 years was a hint. The distinction between Middle English and Chaucerian English is also pedantry in this context.
If modern written Chinese would be incomprehensible to those living 100 years ago, then it is not simply a variant, is it?
Re:7 centuries isn't feasible for humans
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
Actually, that is a misconception. Even 500 years ago Latin was all but a dead language. It was only used in Catholic religious ceremonies and by the elite upper class (and then as a snobbish affectation). Most people spoke older versions of the languages we know now.
Excluding those with a degree in Chaucerian English, no modern English speaker can make much sense of the "English" spoken 500 years ago. Your comments are potentially misleading, for while Middle English is a "version" of present-day English, it is nonetheless a version we are unable to understand without a considerable amount of study. Realistically, English is only about 450 years old, being one of the youngest languages around.
This is obviously the fabled city which contains the space-time portal to Mars. But if I were them I'd keep it secret: for one thing, just think of pranks you could pull with Spirit and Opportunity.
I don't want to sound dismissive of the entire lecture since I have not yet read it, but I'd like to give my first impression from the portion you quoted.
Though he spoke in 2004, he's talking about a preliminary experiment that was done ten years ago. One highlighted part says, "...what I found was that what our magnificent robotic vehicles can do in an entire day on Mars, these guys could do in about 30-45 seconds." Sounds good to me. Even that is still a big win for robotics (as opposed to humans) when you factor in the extraordinary expense which humans require.
Imagine the same experiment with modern-day (or post-modern-day) equipment and software, using the virtual-reality type approach I suggested above. I would be bold enough to say that we could push it to 4 minutes: that is, it would take 4 minutes for a human to do what would take an entire day for the robot to do. Good. Maybe next time it will be 5 minutes, then 7 minutes, and so on. Fifteen years down the road we perfect tactile response in the virtual reality gloves, allowing us to push that time to 15 minutes.
Doesn't that sound like a better route than focusing all our efforts on sending an earth-like environment to mars (with humans in it) which must be maintained near perfectly on its own for years on end? Keep in mind that although I've been speaking in hypotheticals, it is still hypothetical that a human could even get to mars (e.g., high-Z particles).
This will likely dash the hopes of those with a romantic outlook on space exploration, but for the foreseeable future robots will be able to explore space faster, cheaper, and better.
The complications with sending humans into space are all too obvious and too many to list here. In short, humans need to be packed inside an "earth simulation" wherever they go (air, food, water, exercise, sleep, protection from high-energy particles, etc). All that expense with very little, if anything, in return (from a scientific standpoint).
The advances in robotics and computers in the next ten years will convince you. Just to mention one feasible scenario off the top of my head, a robot on mars can record a highly detailed 3D model of its environment and send it to earth, where humans can get inside a computer simulation from the robot's point of view. The obvious issue is time lag, which is handled partly by the robot's "autonomous" mode and partly by a person sending commands via recording his actions in the virtual-reality simulation. This is already being done on a less sophisticated level.
Sending humans into space will not help us to discover warp drive technology. Robotics and computers are advancing at a good pace, while our knowledge of the fundamental laws of physics has been relatively stagnant. Barring some tremendous breakthrough in physics (like the discovery of a bug in the implementation of meatspace), humans will be confined to near-earth orbit for a long, long, time.
Consider a meteorologist who is a sincere member of the the Flat Earth Society. Occasionally during his presentations he'll mutter an interjection such as, "According to this satellite photo --- yeah right, like there are 'satellites' which are in 'orbit' --- we see clouds moving northward..."
Now, do we "censor" this individual? Is that really the right word? Because global warming is close to being on par with the "Round Earth" theory. Furthermore, the future of mankind more than possibly depends on achieving public consensus on this issue. One could even say that we have a moral obligation to oppose such disinformation.
Re:Genuine question about perl vs ruby
on
Lisp and Ruby
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· Score: 1
Hmmmm, some slashdotters like to reply to imaginary arguments. What made you think I had no real reason? What made you think the others I mentioned had no real reason? My disclaimers were simply meant to express that I didn't have time to get into it (and those reasons would undoubtedly be mentioned on this forum anyway).
Re:Genuine question about perl vs ruby
on
Lisp and Ruby
·
· Score: 1
Without getting into details, and without providing any reasons whatsoever, I'll make the totally unsubstantiated claim that the vast majority of perl programmers who pick up ruby never go back to perl (willingly, anyway). This was my experience. I'd be interested to see a real poll on this.
Of course there is at least one obvious reason, which is that Japanese people are cool.
I agree with your point... What I did take issue with is your implication that your "conscience" gives you any measure of superiority...
So after all this, I finally discover that your posts were never meant to have any relevance to the point I was making. Instead, they have been about your imagination of my personal character. What a waste of time.
I want preemptively reply to a post which I know is coming. Someone is going to quote me saying "drive by the church" and call me a hypocrite.
However there is a difference. I freely admit that I haven't done anything about global warming. From an operational standpoint, you could say that I don't give a flying fuck. But I'm concerned that I don't give a flying fuck. It worries me.
It's bad enough that most people don't seem give a flying fuck. But Rapture-believers actually have a *reason* not to give a flying fuck. They don't even give a flying fuck about the fact that they don't give a flying fuck. But on top of that, driving a Hummer... that's like a big "fuck everything, I don't give a flying fuck, and I'm lovin' it".
The reminds me of last Sunday when happened to drive by the church that my family attended when I was a kid. (I haven't attended in my adulthood years; I never bought into the whole religion thing, but that is a different story.)
To get to the point, there was a Hummer parked in front of the church during the service. It made me realize that I have a different set of moral standards than that person with the Hummer. I don't know what it will take to push the moral zeitgeist along to include crimes against posterity. Perhaps the Pope or someone could put forth a modern moral position with regard to global warming, but I'm sure he's too old to understand the gravity of the situation.
Sam Harris often talks about how 44% of the American people believe Jesus is coming back in their lifetime or their children's lifetime (or something like that). I don't know what it will take to convince these people that it's not true. Even if Jesus is indeed coming back, it would be necessary to assume that he wasn't. It is clear to me that the Second Coming is merely a license to not give a flying fuck.
Hey Apple --- Stevie-boy --- get off your ass and push compatibility
testing. NOW.
I understand that bundling the OS and the hardware together eliminates
a whole category of problems. Supporting the wide variety of existing
PC hardware will certainly not be a breeze, but it's a finite problem
and it's do-able. And jeez, just think of the payoff.
Suppose that, oh, for the sake of argument, folks aren't going to like
Vista. Now, what if you gave them an OS X install disk for their new
Dell? C'mon, you know this is the Right Thing for Apple to do. You
may be closer than you think. Take that extra step.
Incidentally, game developers (I speak for myself and all others I
know) HATE DirectX and LOVE OpenGL. Putting aside DirectX
entrenchment for a moment, and that a game company should have
invested in properly abstracting the rendering subsystem in the first
place, it is widely (universally?) true that developers prefer OpenGL.
Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in book revenue or the people who laugh at him on/. all day
I believe the line is,
"Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him."
Thus we have:
The fool = Ken Brown
The fool who follows him = the Slashdot reader
BTW this scene has the funniest blunder in the movie (other than the stormtrooper hitting his head). After saying this, Alec Guinness tries to get up, can't, then awkwardly nods "good scene" to the others. As in, "I'm going to pretend the scene ended before I got up, even though I clearly tried to get up but failed to do so."
Here's a recent and very striking example of fitting data to preconceived notions: zepplin backwards (flash link).
As with all of these things, the trick is that you're shown the message while listening to it, and you tend to make it fit. It's even more convincing after a few listens -- it really sounds like, "There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan." Almost poetic.
So, rings? They have the scientific method backwards. If, say, a meterologist was looking through some satellite photos happened to notice
some rings, that is one thing. But some dude looking for rings in satellite photos is totally different.
Slashdot Mirror
Politics. Pandering to the idiot vote. For Astrology believers, the 'downgrading' of Pluto was a slap in the face, provoking those feelings of religious outrage which politicians love to exploit. Millions and millions of voters in New Mexico have some sort of belief in Astrology, ranging from slight interest to passionate conviction. Many of those votes have just been guaranteed to those legislators responsible for this bill.
Being enlightened slashdotters, most of us have little appreciation for how stupid people really are. I am here to say that yes, they are that stupid.
A truly sentient software program is mere child's play compared to the awesome potential of this guy. As the hybrid clone of Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, Jeff Hawkins is destined to become one of the leading minds of the 21st century.
NASA just needs to classify it under the War on Terra.
I just realized I said "variant" instead of "version," but since the latter is even closer to the connotation of "slightly different but understandable," my point is unchanged.
Erm, have you actually read Canterbury Tales? It's not accessible via footnotes in same the way Hamlet is. That's why most people read a translation of Canterbury Tales.
That aside, it appears that your response only demonstrates my point. My qualm was with word "variant," which has the connotation of being slightly different but understandable, and this is not the case.
Your other comments are just silly pedantry. Since I mentioned present-day English in one sentence, I was obviously referring to present-day (Modern) English in the next sentence; the mention of 450 years was a hint. The distinction between Middle English and Chaucerian English is also pedantry in this context.
If modern written Chinese would be incomprehensible to those living 100 years ago, then it is not simply a variant, is it?
Excluding those with a degree in Chaucerian English, no modern English speaker can make much sense of the "English" spoken 500 years ago. Your comments are potentially misleading, for while Middle English is a "version" of present-day English, it is nonetheless a version we are unable to understand without a considerable amount of study. Realistically, English is only about 450 years old, being one of the youngest languages around.
This is obviously the fabled city which contains the space-time portal to Mars. But if I were them I'd keep it secret: for one thing, just think of pranks you could pull with Spirit and Opportunity.
I don't want to sound dismissive of the entire lecture since I have not yet read it, but I'd like to give my first impression from the portion you quoted.
Though he spoke in 2004, he's talking about a preliminary experiment that was done ten years ago. One highlighted part says, "...what I found was that what our magnificent robotic vehicles can do in an entire day on Mars, these guys could do in about 30-45 seconds." Sounds good to me. Even that is still a big win for robotics (as opposed to humans) when you factor in the extraordinary expense which humans require.
Imagine the same experiment with modern-day (or post-modern-day) equipment and software, using the virtual-reality type approach I suggested above. I would be bold enough to say that we could push it to 4 minutes: that is, it would take 4 minutes for a human to do what would take an entire day for the robot to do. Good. Maybe next time it will be 5 minutes, then 7 minutes, and so on. Fifteen years down the road we perfect tactile response in the virtual reality gloves, allowing us to push that time to 15 minutes.
Doesn't that sound like a better route than focusing all our efforts on sending an earth-like environment to mars (with humans in it) which must be maintained near perfectly on its own for years on end? Keep in mind that although I've been speaking in hypotheticals, it is still hypothetical that a human could even get to mars (e.g., high-Z particles).
This will likely dash the hopes of those with a romantic outlook on space exploration, but for the foreseeable future robots will be able to explore space faster, cheaper, and better.
The complications with sending humans into space are all too obvious and too many to list here. In short, humans need to be packed inside an "earth simulation" wherever they go (air, food, water, exercise, sleep, protection from high-energy particles, etc). All that expense with very little, if anything, in return (from a scientific standpoint).
The advances in robotics and computers in the next ten years will convince you. Just to mention one feasible scenario off the top of my head, a robot on mars can record a highly detailed 3D model of its environment and send it to earth, where humans can get inside a computer simulation from the robot's point of view. The obvious issue is time lag, which is handled partly by the robot's "autonomous" mode and partly by a person sending commands via recording his actions in the virtual-reality simulation. This is already being done on a less sophisticated level.
Sending humans into space will not help us to discover warp drive technology. Robotics and computers are advancing at a good pace, while our knowledge of the fundamental laws of physics has been relatively stagnant. Barring some tremendous breakthrough in physics (like the discovery of a bug in the implementation of meatspace), humans will be confined to near-earth orbit for a long, long, time.
While some may be concerned about the mass exodus of an entire Indian state to Foss, on behalf of the people of Oklahoma I say welcome!
Consider a meteorologist who is a sincere member of the the Flat Earth Society. Occasionally during his presentations he'll mutter an interjection such as, "According to this satellite photo --- yeah right, like there are 'satellites' which are in 'orbit' --- we see clouds moving northward..."
Now, do we "censor" this individual? Is that really the right word? Because global warming is close to being on par with the "Round Earth" theory. Furthermore, the future of mankind more than possibly depends on achieving public consensus on this issue. One could even say that we have a moral obligation to oppose such disinformation.
Wasn't this technology perfected ten years ago?
Hmmmm, some slashdotters like to reply to imaginary arguments. What made you think I had no real reason? What made you think the others I mentioned had no real reason? My disclaimers were simply meant to express that I didn't have time to get into it (and those reasons would undoubtedly be mentioned on this forum anyway).
Without getting into details, and without providing any reasons whatsoever, I'll make the totally unsubstantiated claim that the vast majority of perl programmers who pick up ruby never go back to perl (willingly, anyway). This was my experience. I'd be interested to see a real poll on this.
Of course there is at least one obvious reason, which is that Japanese people are cool.
So after all this, I finally discover that your posts were never meant to have any relevance to the point I was making. Instead, they have been about your imagination of my personal character. What a waste of time.
Ad hominem.
Having a conscience means one is examine the situation rationally and respond to change.
Without a conscience, there is no examination, no action, and no possibility for change.
There is a technical term for someone who has no conscience. You know what it is, right?
And yes, I am willing to take a stand: it is immoral to seek shelter behind self-serving beliefs which remove our conscience.
No doubt you will again ignore the point and simply proceed ad hominem once more. Label me what you will; my point stands on its own.
Obviously the post is meant to be ironic, however it's about a serious topic.
But while not getting the point, you in fact highlighted the exact point I was making. Now that's ironic!
Yes, I have a conscience about global warming. My post was about how religious belief has taken away the conscience of some folks.
Conscience makes all the difference in the world.
I want preemptively reply to a post which I know is coming. Someone is going to quote me saying "drive by the church" and call me a hypocrite.
... that's like a big "fuck everything, I don't give a flying fuck, and I'm lovin' it".
However there is a difference. I freely admit that I haven't done anything about global warming. From an operational standpoint, you could say that I don't give a flying fuck. But I'm concerned that I don't give a flying fuck. It worries me.
It's bad enough that most people don't seem give a flying fuck. But Rapture-believers actually have a *reason* not to give a flying fuck. They don't even give a flying fuck about the fact that they don't give a flying fuck. But on top of that, driving a Hummer
The reminds me of last Sunday when happened to drive by the church that my family attended when I was a kid. (I haven't attended in my adulthood years; I never bought into the whole religion thing, but that is a different story.)
To get to the point, there was a Hummer parked in front of the church during the service. It made me realize that I have a different set of moral standards than that person with the Hummer. I don't know what it will take to push the moral zeitgeist along to include crimes against posterity. Perhaps the Pope or someone could put forth a modern moral position with regard to global warming, but I'm sure he's too old to understand the gravity of the situation.
Sam Harris often talks about how 44% of the American people believe Jesus is coming back in their lifetime or their children's lifetime (or something like that). I don't know what it will take to convince these people that it's not true. Even if Jesus is indeed coming back, it would be necessary to assume that he wasn't. It is clear to me that the Second Coming is merely a license to not give a flying fuck.
Hey Apple --- Stevie-boy --- get off your ass and push compatibility testing. NOW.
I understand that bundling the OS and the hardware together eliminates a whole category of problems. Supporting the wide variety of existing PC hardware will certainly not be a breeze, but it's a finite problem and it's do-able. And jeez, just think of the payoff.
Suppose that, oh, for the sake of argument, folks aren't going to like Vista. Now, what if you gave them an OS X install disk for their new Dell? C'mon, you know this is the Right Thing for Apple to do. You may be closer than you think. Take that extra step.
Incidentally, game developers (I speak for myself and all others I know) HATE DirectX and LOVE OpenGL. Putting aside DirectX entrenchment for a moment, and that a game company should have invested in properly abstracting the rendering subsystem in the first place, it is widely (universally?) true that developers prefer OpenGL.
I believe the line is,
"Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him."
Thus we have:
The fool = Ken Brown
The fool who follows him = the Slashdot reader
BTW this scene has the funniest blunder in the movie (other than the stormtrooper hitting his head). After saying this, Alec Guinness tries to get up, can't, then awkwardly nods "good scene" to the others. As in, "I'm going to pretend the scene ended before I got up, even though I clearly tried to get up but failed to do so."
Are these photos with black outlines really any different than the evidence Colin Powell presented to the U.N.?
As with all of these things, the trick is that you're shown the message while listening to it, and you tend to make it fit. It's even more convincing after a few listens -- it really sounds like, "There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan." Almost poetic.
So, rings? They have the scientific method backwards. If, say, a meterologist was looking through some satellite photos happened to notice some rings, that is one thing. But some dude looking for rings in satellite photos is totally different.
C'mon, installing Crossover Office isn't THAT hard.
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