Think of it as a very complicated voice recognition algorithm. Everyone's voice is different and there are many different langauges.
But language has evolved to be transmitted in an external representation from one person to another; it's its grape of being, as they say in France.
I really don't think it's all that different. I believe the most difficult aspect of this will be reading somebodys subconsious mind.If I'm thinking of something specific like "wow that girl is really good looking" most likely literally thinking the words in my head. Emotions also could be taught by monitoring other parts of the body. If I'm nervous maybe my heart rate and body temperature increase. I think it will be very possible to communicate directly with another person without using sight or sound in the not so distance future.
I believe the tricky part will be when I'm reading a book or driving and I begin to do the task unconsciously. Like when you're reading a book and suddenly it's more like you're dreaming then reading. I think that will be significantly harder to "encode" so to speak.
from the article: "Such brain activity does not require the use of any nerves or muscles, so people with stroke or spinal cord injuries could use the cap effectively."
i wonder now would it be possible to do the reverse...
for example, would it be possible to adapt the technology to allow blind people to see?
it'd be cool (but kinda scary) if that worked.
It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I suspect it is significantly more complicated to reverse the process. I believe the longer a person goes without using that portion of their brain the more likely it is rewired for another task.
So what exactly goes through the person's mind when they are moving the cursor. Do they just think "Left" and "Right" etc. Or do they simply have to look in the direction they want the cursor to go? It'd be interesting to try it out. It would bring me one step closer to utilizing the power of the force.
I would assume these thoughts would be somewhat unique and require each person to train the device. For example the screen would show a mouse moving to the left and record your thoughts. Then maybe say think about moving the mouse to the left and record that. Do it a few hundred different ways and now we know what you're thinking about when you want the mouse to move left.
and then being able to interpret these electrical signals into meaningful thoughts. Keep in mind that since every mind is different, the electrical signals in one brain that signify a certain thought -- let's say something simple such as "I like cheese." can be fairly different from one person to the next because of the way the synapses are linked and pulse their electrochemical signals to make up said thought.
Alright, let's say an organ exists to pickup these signals. Think of it as a very complicated voice recognition algorithm. Everyone's voice is different and there are many different langauges. Early apps would force you to spend significant amounts of time training the program to your voice. As we learn more and more about the brain I'd assume we'd find more common elements, reducing the complexity of understanding any given person's thoughts.
It seems every slashdot article that mentions primates, assumes that all/. readers believe in the theory of evolution. I'm not a bible-belt church nazi, but I also don't believe that apes and man share a common ancestor. I think the article summary should reflect the fact that evolution is only a theory.
Hey I don't blame you! I don't want to have anything in common with those damn dirty apes either!
It'd be intersting to know what percentage of Slashdot users are left handed, my guess is it's more than the population average.
I am a righty (for the most part) but my mother and my two brothers are left handed. For many things I prefer to use my left my left such as hitting/shooting in baseball/hockey. Throwing however I'm much more accurate and powerful with my right hand. However when it comes to kicking my left foot is again much more powerful and accurate than my right. When I arm wrestle something of equal strength in my right hand I generally with crush them with my left. As far as writing goes I'm pretty bad with both hands but the left is generally not going to be legible.
My wife and I have 8 embryos in cryogenic storage, left over from when we did IVF (our twins are now 2.5, and it was worth every penny that's still on our charge cards). We pay a yearly fee to maintain that storage, but after a period of time, once we're sure we don't want to have any more kids, we'd love to donate those embryos for research rather than have them destroyed.
Interesting.. if the process of IVF is "ok" and generally there is left over embryos that are just destroyed after the parents decide they've had enough children why not give the option of allowing the parents to decide?
I don't know any numbers off hand but would the number of embryos in storage that are not used be enough to keep the stem cell research going?
I'm not sure why Steam is often mentioned as some sort of possible salvation for independent gaming. I mean, online-delivered content has been available for many independent games
Say I write a little puzzle tetris clone and it becomes somewhat popular (say 100,000 downloads). Say my game is at most 10megs to download. Now the amount of bandwidth to support this game could very likely be hosted on my dsl/cable modem for $40 a month.
HL2 is somewhere around what 3.2gigs compressed? The amount of bandwidth required for even 100,000 downloads would most likely offset the benefits of an online release. Using steam (modded bittorrent) system valve can offer it's product via internet download at an insanely small cost to them (I'd make a guess that steam costs a few hundred a month to maintain and only because HL2/CS:Source is such an insanely popular game).
Now, suddenly an independent developer can distribute his rather large game via a bittorrent file reducing the distrubition costs to almost nothing.
For the larger gaming companies suddendly to be a successful game you don't need to sell a million copies but maybe 100,000 to see a profit. Then mabye less money is required to be put into marketing a game to help ensure it hits those big numbers and more money can be put into actually developing a great game that is fun to play.
In grade school he had memorized 52 decks of shuffled cards in some insane short period of time. The teacher would ask him what the 12th card of the 17 deck was... and he would start listing them forward and backward from there.
How long was he able to retain this information? If I asked him wha thte 17th card was say hour, day, week or year later would he know?
Doesn't SLI work by rendering basically every other line (or half the screen) for each card and then combining them? Is there any work being done with more complex situations?
Like ok card 1 you render this building, card 2 you render this tree. Ok done card 1? Now go ahead and render that scary monster! Card 2 get your ass in gear and finish rendering that tree! Now combining all these completed elements would be much more complex than just merging pixel data but I think for significantly more complex geometry it would be the way to go.
We are getting better 3D enviroments with alot more detail but it seems like we're just hacking our way thru. For example (and I forget what the actual term is) but I saw a tech demo for the Unreal 2 engine where they take original high poly models and create a special texture that allows the lighting to produce the acurate depth. Sure you get amazing visuals but other things suffer. Like accurate collision detection or just a ball bouncing off the wall. It's simply not mathmatically possible to accurately simulate how the ball would react in these situations.
Isn't it possible that by the contract with Vivendi, they're forced to do this? I mean they really couldn't care less for the steam downloads, so either they really want to hurt Vivendi, or else its Vivendi mandating the CD check requirement..
I would assume Vivendi would NOT want the check on the disc because it's an annoyance and when people learn of it would be that much more likely to purchase it via steam.
I would want to believe valve is not evil and they didn't purposely force the cd check to get more sales via steam. I dunno the entire issue about Vivendi and Valve fighting over steam. Steam in itself is a great great idea with lots of benefits to the users but I think valve didn't quite hit the mark with it. I do believe the next game they do will be a steam only release.
The game does not require the CD in the computer to play.
If you purchased the retail version at your local software dealer then yes it requires a HL2 cd in the drive when you startup the game but a steam purchased copy does not. Very annoying because you still have to login to steam to play the damn thing. So far I'm pretty sure if you have an active internet connection you must login to steam to play even the single player version. Now, I'm on a cable modem so typing in a PW to play a game isn't a huge deal but forcing me to have the CD in at the same time just plain annoys me.
Re:amazing programing in 256k, and no serious bugs
on
Apollo 12 at 35
·
· Score: 1
256K Hah! The Apollo landing module had 2K of RAM and 36K of ROM. Now that's tight!
Poor bastards had no room left for Pr0n!
You can make a wheel out of coat hangers, and make the spokes out of rubber bands stretched between the rim and the hub Then you support the wheel on a horizontal axle so it looks like a ferris wheel and shine an incandescent lamp on one side so that it gets hotter than the other side. The rubber bands contract as they heat and expand as they cool and the wheel turns. It's cool.
So we could use this material to generate energy from heat.
>>"log in with your account and just DL any game you have purchased already." >>Which means what if you are using a 56k modem? You get to play the game in a few days time?
If you want to bring your CDs to a friends house and play you just install it and use your steam login to activate it on that machine.
>>As for offline play, if you bought the boxed game then yes you do have to be online to play single player.
Valve states you must login once to activate the game for single player offline play. After that if you're not connected to the net it will still work. However if it detects a net connection it does popup a steam login.
I have very mixed feelings on steam. It's a great idea and has alot of potential but it also creates alot of headaches. In time I think we'll see a very nice xbox live style system where you can't cheat, you can easily find servers to play on and your friends you want to play with. It's a very ambitious project so give valve alittle slack and let them tweak it.
Ok, I dislike Bush and Kerry equally.. But that's not why I choose not to vote. I personally think the entire system needs to be completely restructured. We make a big fuss about voting for a few months every 4 years and then we ignore it. We vote for a person who we believe will represent us best. Well that's the problem right there.. Why not represent your views all the time?!
Get rid of all politions!! We don't need them anymore. We live in an age where our techology allows us to communicate with the entire country instantly! Why don't we remove our current system and replace it with one we have direct control over? That would be a real democracy.
Ok, so you say well the money we'd spend on all this equipment would be astronomical? Well, we're not paying minimun wage to represent us! Also we already have the internet accessiable to virtually everyone. If you don't have it in your home you can go to your public library, a friend or neighbor's home who does have access.
I propose we setup a system of 3 levels (district, state and national) where any person of age 16 or above can simply post (must like slashdot) an idea on eithe rthe district, state or national level. Everyone can simply read this idea and decide if it should advanced to the next stage. After X amount of approval it becomes a topic of it's own where for/against topics can be generated on an open forum for dicussion. After X amount of time has passed the forum is closed and a final vote takes place.
Alright, it sounds insane, I mean who has time for all this? Well, I would must rather spend my time having a direct effect on things than watching a stupid presidential debate on TV.
I say we make it more valuable than Gold and Plantium and people will start making large medallions and covering their teeth with it. Pretty soon all the nuclear waste will be used for Bling Bling and we won't have a storage problem anymore!
It's one thing to trust a computer to do your taxes, it's quite another to trust one to hurl you down the street at 80 mph without killing you.
It's much easier to drive 80mph and not kill yourself than it is to do your taxes! Tax related deaths happen 4:1 times more than auto accidents each year!
Slashdot Mirror
The anesthetic is on the inside.
:)
Don't put it on inside out.. No matter how good you are in bed you just can't cut it when she's all numb
Once again. Why?
You're a half empty kinda person aren't ya.
I donate to the human fund, and I also skip gifts and instead donate to the human fund!
You celebrate festives too huh?
Think of it as a very complicated voice recognition algorithm. Everyone's voice is different and there are many different langauges.
But language has evolved to be transmitted in an external representation from one person to another; it's its grape of being, as they say in France.
I really don't think it's all that different. I believe the most difficult aspect of this will be reading somebodys subconsious mind.If I'm thinking of something specific like "wow that girl is really good looking" most likely literally thinking the words in my head. Emotions also could be taught by monitoring other parts of the body. If I'm nervous maybe my heart rate and body temperature increase. I think it will be very possible to communicate directly with another person without using sight or sound in the not so distance future.
I believe the tricky part will be when I'm reading a book or driving and I begin to do the task unconsciously. Like when you're reading a book and suddenly it's more like you're dreaming then reading. I think that will be significantly harder to "encode" so to speak.
from the article: "Such brain activity does not require the use of any nerves or muscles, so people with stroke or spinal cord injuries could use the cap effectively."
i wonder now would it be possible to do the reverse...
for example, would it be possible to adapt the technology to allow blind people to see?
it'd be cool (but kinda scary) if that worked.
It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. I suspect it is significantly more complicated to reverse the process. I believe the longer a person goes without using that portion of their brain the more likely it is rewired for another task.
So what exactly goes through the person's mind when they are moving the cursor. Do they just think "Left" and "Right" etc. Or do they simply have to look in the direction they want the cursor to go? It'd be interesting to try it out. It would bring me one step closer to utilizing the power of the force. I would assume these thoughts would be somewhat unique and require each person to train the device. For example the screen would show a mouse moving to the left and record your thoughts. Then maybe say think about moving the mouse to the left and record that. Do it a few hundred different ways and now we know what you're thinking about when you want the mouse to move left.
and then being able to interpret these electrical signals into meaningful thoughts. Keep in mind that since every mind is different, the electrical signals in one brain that signify a certain thought -- let's say something simple such as "I like cheese." can be fairly different from one person to the next because of the way the synapses are linked and pulse their electrochemical signals to make up said thought.
Alright, let's say an organ exists to pickup these signals. Think of it as a very complicated voice recognition algorithm. Everyone's voice is different and there are many different langauges. Early apps would force you to spend significant amounts of time training the program to your voice. As we learn more and more about the brain I'd assume we'd find more common elements, reducing the complexity of understanding any given person's thoughts.
Nonsense! A CTO understands
10 goto work
20 profit
30 goto 10
as they also understand
10 don't goto work
20 profit
30 goto 10
It seems every slashdot article that mentions primates, assumes that all /. readers believe in the theory of evolution. I'm not a bible-belt church nazi, but I also don't believe that apes and man share a common ancestor. I think the article summary should reflect the fact that evolution is only a theory.
Hey I don't blame you! I don't want to have anything in common with those damn dirty apes either!
Let the masturbation jokes begin!!!
:)
If you jerkoff online you're gonna be switch becuase you're much more accurate with your mouse that way. Just makes sense
It'd be intersting to know what percentage of Slashdot users are left handed, my guess is it's more than the population average.
I am a righty (for the most part) but my mother and my two brothers are left handed. For many things I prefer to use my left my left such as hitting/shooting in baseball/hockey. Throwing however I'm much more accurate and powerful with my right hand. However when it comes to kicking my left foot is again much more powerful and accurate than my right. When I arm wrestle something of equal strength in my right hand I generally with crush them with my left. As far as writing goes I'm pretty bad with both hands but the left is generally not going to be legible.
My wife and I have 8 embryos in cryogenic storage, left over from when we did IVF (our twins are now 2.5, and it was worth every penny that's still on our charge cards). We pay a yearly fee to maintain that storage, but after a period of time, once we're sure we don't want to have any more kids, we'd love to donate those embryos for research rather than have them destroyed.
Interesting.. if the process of IVF is "ok" and generally there is left over embryos that are just destroyed after the parents decide they've had enough children why not give the option of allowing the parents to decide?
I don't know any numbers off hand but would the number of embryos in storage that are not used be enough to keep the stem cell research going?
I'm not sure why Steam is often mentioned as some sort of possible salvation for independent gaming. I mean, online-delivered content has been available for many independent games
Say I write a little puzzle tetris clone and it becomes somewhat popular (say 100,000 downloads). Say my game is at most 10megs to download. Now the amount of bandwidth to support this game could very likely be hosted on my dsl/cable modem for $40 a month.
HL2 is somewhere around what 3.2gigs compressed? The amount of bandwidth required for even 100,000 downloads would most likely offset the benefits of an online release. Using steam (modded bittorrent) system valve can offer it's product via internet download at an insanely small cost to them (I'd make a guess that steam costs a few hundred a month to maintain and only because HL2/CS:Source is such an insanely popular game).
Now, suddenly an independent developer can distribute his rather large game via a bittorrent file reducing the distrubition costs to almost nothing.
For the larger gaming companies suddendly to be a successful game you don't need to sell a million copies but maybe 100,000 to see a profit. Then mabye less money is required to be put into marketing a game to help ensure it hits those big numbers and more money can be put into actually developing a great game that is fun to play.
In grade school he had memorized 52 decks of shuffled cards in some insane short period of time. The teacher would ask him what the 12th card of the 17 deck was... and he would start listing them forward and backward from there.
How long was he able to retain this information? If I asked him wha thte 17th card was say hour, day, week or year later would he know?
Doesn't SLI work by rendering basically every other line (or half the screen) for each card and then combining them? Is there any work being done with more complex situations?
Like ok card 1 you render this building, card 2 you render this tree. Ok done card 1? Now go ahead and render that scary monster! Card 2 get your ass in gear and finish rendering that tree! Now combining all these completed elements would be much more complex than just merging pixel data but I think for significantly more complex geometry it would be the way to go.
We are getting better 3D enviroments with alot more detail but it seems like we're just hacking our way thru. For example (and I forget what the actual term is) but I saw a tech demo for the Unreal 2 engine where they take original high poly models and create a special texture that allows the lighting to produce the acurate depth. Sure you get amazing visuals but other things suffer. Like accurate collision detection or just a ball bouncing off the wall. It's simply not mathmatically possible to accurately simulate how the ball would react in these situations.
While their next game might be Steam only, Half-life 3 is currently under contract with VU.
Heh, poor Valve. They get to go thru this whole pile of crap again and so do the gamers.
Isn't it possible that by the contract with Vivendi, they're forced to do this? I mean they really couldn't care less for the steam downloads, so either they really want to hurt Vivendi, or else its Vivendi mandating the CD check requirement.. I would assume Vivendi would NOT want the check on the disc because it's an annoyance and when people learn of it would be that much more likely to purchase it via steam. I would want to believe valve is not evil and they didn't purposely force the cd check to get more sales via steam. I dunno the entire issue about Vivendi and Valve fighting over steam. Steam in itself is a great great idea with lots of benefits to the users but I think valve didn't quite hit the mark with it. I do believe the next game they do will be a steam only release.
The game does not require the CD in the computer to play.
If you purchased the retail version at your local software dealer then yes it requires a HL2 cd in the drive when you startup the game but a steam purchased copy does not. Very annoying because you still have to login to steam to play the damn thing. So far I'm pretty sure if you have an active internet connection you must login to steam to play even the single player version. Now, I'm on a cable modem so typing in a PW to play a game isn't a huge deal but forcing me to have the CD in at the same time just plain annoys me.
256K Hah! The Apollo landing module had 2K of RAM and 36K of ROM. Now that's tight! Poor bastards had no room left for Pr0n!
You can make a wheel out of coat hangers, and make the spokes out of rubber bands stretched between the rim and the hub Then you support the wheel on a horizontal axle so it looks like a ferris wheel and shine an incandescent lamp on one side so that it gets hotter than the other side. The rubber bands contract as they heat and expand as they cool and the wheel turns. It's cool.
So we could use this material to generate energy from heat.
>>"log in with your account and just DL any game you have purchased already."
>>Which means what if you are using a 56k modem? You get to play the game in a few days time?
If you want to bring your CDs to a friends house and play you just install it and use your steam login to activate it on that machine.
>>As for offline play, if you bought the boxed game then yes you do have to be online to play single player.
Valve states you must login once to activate the game for single player offline play. After that if you're not connected to the net it will still work. However if it detects a net connection it does popup a steam login.
I have very mixed feelings on steam. It's a great idea and has alot of potential but it also creates alot of headaches. In time I think we'll see a very nice xbox live style system where you can't cheat, you can easily find servers to play on and your friends you want to play with. It's a very ambitious project so give valve alittle slack and let them tweak it.
Yes, I am aware I have the spelling and grammatical skills of an 8 year old. Does that really make me a bad person? :)
Ok, I dislike Bush and Kerry equally.. But that's not why I choose not to vote. I personally think the entire system needs to be completely restructured. We make a big fuss about voting for a few months every 4 years and then we ignore it. We vote for a person who we believe will represent us best. Well that's the problem right there.. Why not represent your views all the time?!
Get rid of all politions!! We don't need them anymore. We live in an age where our techology allows us to communicate with the entire country instantly! Why don't we remove our current system and replace it with one we have direct control over? That would be a real democracy.
Ok, so you say well the money we'd spend on all this equipment would be astronomical? Well, we're not paying minimun wage to represent us! Also we already have the internet accessiable to virtually everyone. If you don't have it in your home you can go to your public library, a friend or neighbor's home who does have access.
I propose we setup a system of 3 levels (district, state and national) where any person of age 16 or above can simply post (must like slashdot) an idea on eithe rthe district, state or national level. Everyone can simply read this idea and decide if it should advanced to the next stage. After X amount of approval it becomes a topic of it's own where for/against topics can be generated on an open forum for dicussion. After X amount of time has passed the forum is closed and a final vote takes place.
Alright, it sounds insane, I mean who has time for all this? Well, I would must rather spend my time having a direct effect on things than watching a stupid presidential debate on TV.
I say we make it more valuable than Gold and Plantium and people will start making large medallions and covering their teeth with it. Pretty soon all the nuclear waste will be used for Bling Bling and we won't have a storage problem anymore!
It's one thing to trust a computer to do your taxes, it's quite another to trust one to hurl you down the street at 80 mph without killing you.
It's much easier to drive 80mph and not kill yourself than it is to do your taxes! Tax related deaths happen 4:1 times more than auto accidents each year!