Oh hell yes they can afford!
If they can't come up with the cash to pay you, I'm sure the World Bank or IMF would be willing to put a third-world nation $100 Billion further in debt (that number is so large because we have to account for politician's bribes.) As long as every person above you is getting a cut off the top (larger than yours, of course) they could care less what you're doing there, I'm sure. ---
I usually go to Oakdale 20 or Oakdale 16 (out towards my hometown...) but Mall of America is the only spot w/ midnight showings (or at least, closest to the East Metro). ---
Well, don't get me wrong. I liked the movie. No, it wasn't exactly what I expected, and I'm not overly familiar with "Eastern" films or common themes of such, but I didn't go to this movie expecting a sci-fi thriller or a blockbuster either (thank God I didn't get surprised in that area...) but my criticism of the movie was meant more in the mechanics than the story. The plot is mediocre, much better than the common hollywood flop (ie. there actually is a plot) but not up to par with something so involved like pulp fiction (not the best example, perhaps, but the movie is complicated enough to make the point.)
Regardless, FF: The Spirits Within is groundbreaking and fantastic to watch. Even though I got raped at the theater (Mall of America charges $8.75!!!) I'll still buy this on DVD later. It also makes me salivate, thinking about what is to come (assuming Square, at the very least, breaks even on this.) ---
I'm sorry, but Aki is not Spacey nor Lemmon. This is a fantastic movie for the animation/CG. Taking it superficially as a cinematographical work, it doesn't cut it. As has been stated, you can't make up for true human emotion. The acting is not there either. I know from your previous postings that you thoroughly enjoyed the movie, as did my younger brother. He, as well as you, I assume, are avid RPG players and can involve and indulge yourself in the story of the game/movie. This makes it difficult to review the acting/plot in the big pic. My brother couldn't tell a truly good movie from another blockbuster if his life depended on it, but that's fine. I'd almost wish I could be that way; then I'd be entertained much more than I am when I go to a movie. But I still watch objectively.
I didn't go into this movie with high hopes, because I knew this is the first real attempt at CG acting and it was inevitable that it would fall short of realism, but that's okay. It's the biggest step in the right direction I've seen in a long time. Since Star Wars, perhaps. ---
Dear God, what kind of hell is Belgium?
(Heh, reminds me of that Far Side: [In Hell] "Man! The coffee's even cold here. They've thought of everything!" Only cold coffee would be better than no coffee. ---
Same here. Not only for the implied geek/1337 factor, but it's an excuse to buy more equipment! "Dear, this rack looks awfully empty with that lonely gateway/server/RAID computer. I think we should find a companion!" ---
My guess is that it's cheaper to float your actors with special effects than to send them up and shoot them in real zero gravity.
Yeah, it might be cheaper, but I'm guessing the novelty of the whole thing will get a few movies made, if one does. I would have to wonder if the US would sponsor the actor's trip to the ISS or if it would have to be sponsored by Russia or France or somewhere... ---
You miss the point of my posting. The question is not whether or not I can physically open the program I want. Had you read the article, you would know that the issue was with MS software not allowing the Kodak software to set itself to the default handle for their cameras. This is flat out wrong.
To go along with your point, I am totally capable of using the Kodak software, and even totally capable of changing it to the default handler by hand. My mother, father, most likely yours as well, and most other typical end-users would take two minutes just to find the right dialog to change the setting.
MS can feel free to provide me with a default, sure. I probably won't install it anyway, but for typical end-users...but when I install Kodak imaging software to interface with my digital camera, I expect that software to pop up. ---
Half these problems are with other software, not Microsoft, and you miss my point completely. Yes, MS is not perfect. Did I ever say they were? Uh, no, I'm not stupid.
You have all these complaints about MS software, about advanced features not working, but other software doesn't even attempt some of them.
REGARDLESS, MS removes the choice of the best product, at least partially. I don't defend MS, but I won't blindly shoot them down either. ---
The problem with this, is sometimes M$ manages to put out the best product, regardless of whether it's stolen from someone else or not. GNU/Linux is awesome and I run it half the time, but there are simple things that it can't come close to. Things like the clipboard? I can copy something from IE and paste it into Word and it's formatted the same way, be it a table or whatever. Just to name one thing. There are many others too, but I'm not here to nitpick Linux. My point is for some things, M$ deserves some credit. But either way, I should not be forced to use IE for a web browser, or their photo software for my camera. For that, I must (must, by choice) use inferior products, which just pisses me off. ---
There is a certain amount of productivity that is gained from that fancy-ass $400, 96-way pivoting chair. It's this thing that corporate types base their purchasing decisions on, called ROI (return on investment). It's been shown in studies that if you spend X dollars on a 21" monitor, you gain Y dollars in gained productivity over a year.
To a point, you will gain a certain amount of productivity by a nicer office (and you impress clients, should they visit you). But above and beyond the basic comfort level, you won't gain much. ---
Seriously, this kind of corporate BS pisses me off. I'm not a huge anti-corporation hippy or anything, but why doesn't MICROS~1 just say "You must abide by our monopolistic tactics and use only what we say you can use if you want to use XYZ software. Pretty soon you'll see "You may not use this software if you have not brushed your teeth today." =P
But honestly, how can they get away with this? Even if most people running GNU/Linux won't be developing for M$ platforms, I should still be able to use whatever software I want (and that I paid for) however I feel. If I want to wipe my ass with the Win98 "Getting Started" booklet, I should be able to without fear of line 3,465,098,492 of the EULA, reading "Thou shalt not wipe thine arse with any M$ product."
Bullshit like this makes me want to turn off my computer, change majors from computer science and major in history and teach high school kids how to be anti-disestablishmentarianisticated and anti-corporate and paranoid and similar all-important skills learned from our crazy history teachers. ---
The "registering" is submitting your name to be notified once they start selling the subscription service, so to my knowledge, the price isn't yet announced. ---
It's a subscription-only service, and you'll be provided a binder with a little documentation with each (roughly quarterly) DVD. So, if worse comes to worse and you lose one, you either have the last one, or you just have to wait a maximum of three months for the next! ---
For work I use the three-letter abreviation for a month and the four number year, both offset by a certain number of months/years with mixed caps and the pass is changed monthly so it's relatively decent, I think.
An example for June of 2001 being "aPr19(9" or apr1999 with the caps, the scheme being two months and two years ago. (Obviously not the one I use...) I've also split the month abreviation before, something like "jU19%7Ly" would be july 1957, for another example. ---
Hmmm...in respones to being asked "what is the proof that the human [brain] does not operate by 'blind adherence to rules'": "We simply don't know enough yet to say for definite, but the fact that it has both a changing topology and is analog would indicate it doesn't work in the same manner as a Turing machine,"
Why can a computer or AI (or a rule-set, as you're referring to Cyc) be dynamically changing? In fact, it must be, if it is learning anything. Once the rule-set hits a critical mass, it would theoretically be able to completely remove the need for data-entry of facts and learn new data by interaction with programmers (but we'll see what happens in that respect, with Cyc...)
You say the dynamic/analog nature of the human brain indicates that our brain is more than a rule-set. The fact that you (or anyone else) do not know this for sure works against your argument as much as it does for it. It is very possible that the human brain is just a complex rule-set.
I pose this question, which you skirted a bit in your last posting: What will it take for true AI? If a computer has a huge algorithm to make a certain decision for some arbitrary problem, and it can come to the same solution that I could, why is that not artificially intelligent? How do you define intelligence versus artificial intelligence (theoretically or practically)? ---
"Klein spends hours inculcating the system with such abstract concepts as "belief"--a difficult notion for a computer program to grasp, possibly because it has more to do with point of view than with anything true or false about the real world."...So Cyc doesn't believe in belief? How does that work, and would he explode in a War-Games-like scenario of self-destruction were he posed this question? ---
Slashdot Mirror
Oh hell yes they can afford!
If they can't come up with the cash to pay you, I'm sure the World Bank or IMF would be willing to put a third-world nation $100 Billion further in debt (that number is so large because we have to account for politician's bribes.) As long as every person above you is getting a cut off the top (larger than yours, of course) they could care less what you're doing there, I'm sure.
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I usually go to Oakdale 20 or Oakdale 16 (out towards my hometown...) but Mall of America is the only spot w/ midnight showings (or at least, closest to the East Metro).
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Regardless, FF: The Spirits Within is groundbreaking and fantastic to watch. Even though I got raped at the theater (Mall of America charges $8.75!!!) I'll still buy this on DVD later. It also makes me salivate, thinking about what is to come (assuming Square, at the very least, breaks even on this.)
---
I didn't go into this movie with high hopes, because I knew this is the first real attempt at CG acting and it was inevitable that it would fall short of realism, but that's okay. It's the biggest step in the right direction I've seen in a long time. Since Star Wars, perhaps.
---
Dear God, what kind of hell is Belgium?
(Heh, reminds me of that Far Side: [In Hell] "Man! The coffee's even cold here. They've thought of everything!" Only cold coffee would be better than no coffee.
---
Same here. Not only for the implied geek/1337 factor, but it's an excuse to buy more equipment! "Dear, this rack looks awfully empty with that lonely gateway/server/RAID computer. I think we should find a companion!"
---
ISS: International Space Station
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Yeah, it might be cheaper, but I'm guessing the novelty of the whole thing will get a few movies made, if one does. I would have to wonder if the US would sponsor the actor's trip to the ISS or if it would have to be sponsored by Russia or France or somewhere...
---
To go along with your point, I am totally capable of using the Kodak software, and even totally capable of changing it to the default handler by hand. My mother, father, most likely yours as well, and most other typical end-users would take two minutes just to find the right dialog to change the setting.
MS can feel free to provide me with a default, sure. I probably won't install it anyway, but for typical end-users...but when I install Kodak imaging software to interface with my digital camera, I expect that software to pop up.
---
You have all these complaints about MS software, about advanced features not working, but other software doesn't even attempt some of them.
REGARDLESS, MS removes the choice of the best product, at least partially. I don't defend MS, but I won't blindly shoot them down either.
---
Agreed 99%. However, Office already is dangerously bloated. I haven't used XP yet, but if it isn't prohibitively big, I'm betting XP 2.0 will be.
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The problem with this, is sometimes M$ manages to put out the best product, regardless of whether it's stolen from someone else or not. GNU/Linux is awesome and I run it half the time, but there are simple things that it can't come close to. Things like the clipboard? I can copy something from IE and paste it into Word and it's formatted the same way, be it a table or whatever. Just to name one thing. There are many others too, but I'm not here to nitpick Linux. My point is for some things, M$ deserves some credit. But either way, I should not be forced to use IE for a web browser, or their photo software for my camera. For that, I must (must, by choice) use inferior products, which just pisses me off.
---
What's the problem with a short attention span?? Oh wait, there's more to the comment. I'd just moved on. hrm...
---
There is a certain amount of productivity that is gained from that fancy-ass $400, 96-way pivoting chair. It's this thing that corporate types base their purchasing decisions on, called ROI (return on investment). It's been shown in studies that if you spend X dollars on a 21" monitor, you gain Y dollars in gained productivity over a year.
To a point, you will gain a certain amount of productivity by a nicer office (and you impress clients, should they visit you). But above and beyond the basic comfort level, you won't gain much.
---
But honestly, how can they get away with this? Even if most people running GNU/Linux won't be developing for M$ platforms, I should still be able to use whatever software I want (and that I paid for) however I feel. If I want to wipe my ass with the Win98 "Getting Started" booklet, I should be able to without fear of line 3,465,098,492 of the EULA, reading "Thou shalt not wipe thine arse with any M$ product."
Bullshit like this makes me want to turn off my computer, change majors from computer science and major in history and teach high school kids how to be anti-disestablishmentarianisticated and anti-corporate and paranoid and similar all-important skills learned from our crazy history teachers.
---
You can view the status of stories you submittied in your personal page. There's no way (that I've seen) to review a list of submitted stories.
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Funny...last definition of recursion I heard was a function that passed a new value to an instance of itself.
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So is this why michael is disliked around /.???
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The "registering" is submitting your name to be notified once they start selling the subscription service, so to my knowledge, the price isn't yet announced.
---
It's a subscription-only service, and you'll be provided a binder with a little documentation with each (roughly quarterly) DVD. So, if worse comes to worse and you lose one, you either have the last one, or you just have to wait a maximum of three months for the next!
---
An example for June of 2001 being "aPr19(9" or apr1999 with the caps, the scheme being two months and two years ago. (Obviously not the one I use...) I've also split the month abreviation before, something like "jU19%7Ly" would be july 1957, for another example.
---
Damn...just used the last mod point i had today...
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"We simply don't know enough yet to say for definite, but the fact that it has both a changing topology and is analog would indicate it doesn't work in the same manner as a Turing machine,"
Why can a computer or AI (or a rule-set, as you're referring to Cyc) be dynamically changing? In fact, it must be, if it is learning anything. Once the rule-set hits a critical mass, it would theoretically be able to completely remove the need for data-entry of facts and learn new data by interaction with programmers (but we'll see what happens in that respect, with Cyc...)
You say the dynamic/analog nature of the human brain indicates that our brain is more than a rule-set. The fact that you (or anyone else) do not know this for sure works against your argument as much as it does for it. It is very possible that the human brain is just a complex rule-set.
I pose this question, which you skirted a bit in your last posting: What will it take for true AI? If a computer has a huge algorithm to make a certain decision for some arbitrary problem, and it can come to the same solution that I could, why is that not artificially intelligent? How do you define intelligence versus artificial intelligence (theoretically or practically)?
---
"Klein spends hours inculcating the system with such abstract concepts as "belief"--a difficult notion for a computer program to grasp, possibly because it has more to do with point of view than with anything true or false about the real world." ...So Cyc doesn't believe in belief? How does that work, and would he explode in a War-Games-like scenario of self-destruction were he posed this question?
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The cables are still there with these; this isn't a laptop. Just thought that should be kept in mind...
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