"In 1000 years, the languages will be unrecognisable" - based on what? Historians don't have many problems reading texts from a 1000 years ago, or 2000 for that matter.
Didn't Google's first plan to make money, selling search engines, fail rather badly? They only came up with their wildly succesful business model based on advertising after the first one failed. Note they still do sell search appliances, but it is a tiny percentage of their revenue.
Which would be a decent argument if both companies did only exist in the US. Both have large subsidiary companies that are very much European companies, even if they are wholly owned by the US parent companies. Same thing applies when European companies have operations in the USA - those local subsidiaries are incorporated in the USA even though the shareholding is held by the parent company.
I've long suspected that a lot, possibly most, of people who use Oracle as their database server are in no way using its high-end features. They could actually use a much cheaper database - possibly even a free one. Of course, some people really do use all the fancy features of Oracle's database server - but in my experience that is relatively rare (even in very large enterprises).
Just like any other software project - not just open-source ones. Commercial software vendors end-of-life products all the time. At least with an open-source project you still have access to the source.
There didn't used to be any hard and fast rules. Certainly when I did my CS degree in the 80's it was pretty common to have lecturers who didn't have CS degrees as they were old enough to have been around before CS degrees started!
I was shocked when I started working in academia how most people did anything they could to avoid dealing with students. Of course, when you are a student you make the mistake of assuming that universities are there for the benefit of students - when at best they are regarded by most academics as a pool of potential slaves/grad students to assist with their own careers. Inevitably, after a few years I was behaving in exatly the same way.
Politics is circular - the actions once in power of the extreme right and the extreme left are identical. The only difference has been the lies they tell in order to get into power.
Indeed, what about those who had CDOs on super senior debt that they thought was risk free and that they were effectively getting money for nothing? Reminds me a lot of Lloyd's Names and how they felt entitled to receive income for doing nothing and were very unhappy when the associated commitments were actually called in.
The only possible explanation that I can think of is based on simply following the money - who expects to gain from this? Simple: the big IT service vendors that have been getting a stream of huge IT projects from the public sector. Our politicians are a fairly gullible lot and typically have no experience of being given the hard sell before they get into office - no wonder the poor fools fall for it when the nice man in the expensive suit offers to solve their problems on a time and materials basis. Now that they have sucked the public purse dry they need fresh victims and they don't want willing customers so they need their friends in power to inflict massive IT projects on the private sector.
Well said! I grew up in a fishing port in Scotland and a lot of people I went to school with became fishermen. When I was at University one of my schoolfriends invited me away on the trawler he worked on - OMFG. A few days of life on a fishing boat in the North Sea (in summer!) and I was a wreck - sea-sick, sleep deprived, terrified.... Your average crew member on a fishing boat doesn't make a lot of money and they work harder than just about anyone I know (with the exception of the front line folks in the armed forces).
Yeah, we are in a similar position. Both my wife and I had out first degrees paid for by the state here in the UK (the literally cost us nothing) we both do pretty well. My wife retrained as a lawyer and we paid for that ourselves. At various points we have had private health care but gave it up because the NHS care available to us was excellent (again this is our own personal experience - just about every contact I've had with the NHS has been good). Our kids go to private school - but that's a choice we made even though we both went to state schools. My only real regret is that all state schools can't be as good as private schools (some are - but not in the area where we live which is dominated by private schools).
I've written a few pretty big cheques to the tax man - but I've also voted for an actual Socialist party (no not New Labour). I'd like others to get the fair range of assistance that we did - that is what "Socialism" means to me.
Indeed, I can remember working with one chap who was incredibly gifted in one area of technology but also capable of making truly awful decisions in other technical areas. So was he smart of not? His supreme arrogance meant that he didn't see that he had any weaknesses - which made him a total liability in my book.
The problem with the careful saving route is that it benefits the kids of the savers (or the local dog/cat home) rather than the savers themselves. I've known a few people who had a lot of money in the bank but led what seemed like a miserable lifestyle - literally counting every penny, eating the cheapest food, never going anywhere or doing anything because that would cost money. So the trick would be to save money without losing the habit of actually spending it at some point. On the other hand, people I know who made money by building and selling companies seem to have a pretty good time as they worked hard for years, took risks, and now believe they deserve the benefits.
What point is there in having money if you never do anything with it?
It was reading Drew McDermott's "A Critique of Pure Reason" that pretty much killed my interest in "traditional" symbolic AI - this was after a few years working in the area growing increasingly cynical about the whole subject (this was in the early 90s). I completely agree about your point about creating systems that display general intelligence - I'm sure we will have these some day but I don't believe that they will be direct descendants of any of the current set of AI techniques (although such systems could well have subsytems built using these techniques).
Personally, I suspect we will have to reverse engineer general intelligence by ever finer investigations of the human brain in operation. Fortunately I don't think the DMCA applies.
I'm not of a fan of McNamara, or LeMay, but there was a terrible logic to what they were doing - make their attacks as efficient as possible so that the war would end as quickly as possible. However, later applications of the same kind of "logic" saw people like LeMay actually trying to start WWIII using the reasing that it was going to happen at some point so it should happen while the "good" guys had the upper hand.
That's the kind of logic that gives me nightmares.
What are these "UK libel laws" you refer to? In Scotland our libel laws (and a lot of other laws) are completely different from those of our friends in the south. Have a look at http://medialibel.org/libel/other.html
Slashdot Mirror
"In 1000 years, the languages will be unrecognisable" - based on what? Historians don't have many problems reading texts from a 1000 years ago, or 2000 for that matter.
Please tell me this is a TROLL.
Didn't Google's first plan to make money, selling search engines, fail rather badly? They only came up with their wildly succesful business model based on advertising after the first one failed. Note they still do sell search appliances, but it is a tiny percentage of their revenue.
Didn't the Nazis declare war on the USA, not the other way round?
Which would be a decent argument if both companies did only exist in the US. Both have large subsidiary companies that are very much European companies, even if they are wholly owned by the US parent companies. Same thing applies when European companies have operations in the USA - those local subsidiaries are incorporated in the USA even though the shareholding is held by the parent company.
I've long suspected that a lot, possibly most, of people who use Oracle as their database server are in no way using its high-end features. They could actually use a much cheaper database - possibly even a free one. Of course, some people really do use all the fancy features of Oracle's database server - but in my experience that is relatively rare (even in very large enterprises).
Just like any other software project - not just open-source ones. Commercial software vendors end-of-life products all the time. At least with an open-source project you still have access to the source.
There didn't used to be any hard and fast rules. Certainly when I did my CS degree in the 80's it was pretty common to have lecturers who didn't have CS degrees as they were old enough to have been around before CS degrees started!
I was shocked when I started working in academia how most people did anything they could to avoid dealing with students. Of course, when you are a student you make the mistake of assuming that universities are there for the benefit of students - when at best they are regarded by most academics as a pool of potential slaves/grad students to assist with their own careers. Inevitably, after a few years I was behaving in exatly the same way.
More like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space
Politics is circular - the actions once in power of the extreme right and the extreme left are identical. The only difference has been the lies they tell in order to get into power.
You do realise that the UK has such a law?
Indeed, what about those who had CDOs on super senior debt that they thought was risk free and that they were effectively getting money for nothing? Reminds me a lot of Lloyd's Names and how they felt entitled to receive income for doing nothing and were very unhappy when the associated commitments were actually called in.
The only possible explanation that I can think of is based on simply following the money - who expects to gain from this? Simple: the big IT service vendors that have been getting a stream of huge IT projects from the public sector. Our politicians are a fairly gullible lot and typically have no experience of being given the hard sell before they get into office - no wonder the poor fools fall for it when the nice man in the expensive suit offers to solve their problems on a time and materials basis. Now that they have sucked the public purse dry they need fresh victims and they don't want willing customers so they need their friends in power to inflict massive IT projects on the private sector.
Well said! I grew up in a fishing port in Scotland and a lot of people I went to school with became fishermen. When I was at University one of my schoolfriends invited me away on the trawler he worked on - OMFG. A few days of life on a fishing boat in the North Sea (in summer!) and I was a wreck - sea-sick, sleep deprived, terrified.... Your average crew member on a fishing boat doesn't make a lot of money and they work harder than just about anyone I know (with the exception of the front line folks in the armed forces).
I've written a few pretty big cheques to the tax man - but I've also voted for an actual Socialist party (no not New Labour). I'd like others to get the fair range of assistance that we did - that is what "Socialism" means to me.
Indeed, I can remember working with one chap who was incredibly gifted in one area of technology but also capable of making truly awful decisions in other technical areas. So was he smart of not? His supreme arrogance meant that he didn't see that he had any weaknesses - which made him a total liability in my book.
What point is there in having money if you never do anything with it?
It was reading Drew McDermott's "A Critique of Pure Reason" that pretty much killed my interest in "traditional" symbolic AI - this was after a few years working in the area growing increasingly cynical about the whole subject (this was in the early 90s). I completely agree about your point about creating systems that display general intelligence - I'm sure we will have these some day but I don't believe that they will be direct descendants of any of the current set of AI techniques (although such systems could well have subsytems built using these techniques).
Personally, I suspect we will have to reverse engineer general intelligence by ever finer investigations of the human brain in operation. Fortunately I don't think the DMCA applies.
The Head of Risk at HBOS was sacked because he had the nerve to report what was actually going on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7882119.stm
Don't be silly, we have always been at war with Eastasia.
That's the kind of logic that gives me nightmares.
You believe that the United States doesn't have an aristocracy?
What are these "UK libel laws" you refer to? In Scotland our libel laws (and a lot of other laws) are completely different from those of our friends in the south. Have a look at http://medialibel.org/libel/other.html
Constitutions, like contracts, do not need to be written. I suggest you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom