Birds are smart. Parrots especially so. So this comes as no surprise to me, who lives out in the sticks and observes many kinds of bird going about their daily lives, several species of parrot included. Clearly bird intelligence is a reality to anyone who has actually bothered to observe them, but equally clearly it's an intelligence quite different from ours. This might seem obvious but it seems that one of the central paradigms of biology since the renaissance is that "intelligence" must mean human intelligence, and anything else is not worthy of the name. Indeed, I have seen it repeated quite often that birds and other animals cannot be conscious and are some kind of automata. This is obviously baloney! Ask any cat or dog owner.
Until science can accept that intelligence is a sliding scale and comes in degrees, we are unlikely to make much progress, it seems to me. There is no "sudden breakthrough" to consciousness once brains reach a certain size, birds are as conscious as they need to be to be a bird. Likewise cats and dogs.
Here are some amazing feats I've observed in birds: A gull hovering at about 30-40 ft above the ground in a high wind above heavy traffic (the flight control alone this involves is pretty impressive) but the bird is scanning the ground - a noisy field of gravelled tarmac and moving cars - and can pick out among this noisy field a dot of matter on the ground that it knows to be edible. Consider the image processing task this is - we cannot even begin to write a program to do this, let alone "know" that the one dot among millions is edible. The bird will then swoop down among the traffic and pick up the morsel without breaking a sweat.
Australian Magpies in a colony in my garden regularly communicate among themselves with different sounds. These sounds have definite and distinct meanings; they understand them, we do not. One one occasion a particular squawk from the nesting tree brought a sudden urgent rush of Magpies from all over the area flying in to assist - it was obvious from the very direct and unusually effortful flying that this was an emergency. I have no idea what was up, but they did! Not only intelligent but socially organised and with a meaningful language.
I have made many similar observations in passing. When you consider that the human genome is not as large as we thought, and the higher birds' genome is not much smaller, it seems to me that science has a lot of rethinking to do on the subject of brain size and intelligence. And surely the time has come to drop the arrogance of assuming trhe superiority of human intelligence - simple observation will give you plenty of data that refutes this hypothesis. Thus the parrot in the article is really fairly unexceptional - the difference here is that somebody has thought it worthwhile (spuriously in my opinion) to teach it to use its brain in a way it probably doesn't bother to or need to in nature. That its brain is capable of this tends to show me that what birds do with their brains in nature must be equally impressive, and a darn sight more useful for the bird. Contrary to the popular myth, our brains are not 3/4 unused - they are 100% used (well, perhaps not in some of us). And that goes for every living creature too - evolution gives us all exactly the brain we need to survive in the environment we live in.
As fast as a Ferrari? If the motor can turn at 2,500 rpm and this is driving the wheel directly, assuming a typical car wheel size of about 15" diameter, this gives just under 112 mph. While not slow by any means, and perfectly in line with current car performance, it's somewhat short of Ferrari speeds.
Mere hyperbole. It's a shame, because it's impressive without having to resort to that, but having done so, it makes it seem LESS impressive when you do the maths.
iPods store the music totally openly in the directory structure. You can download the music from any file browser that can see the disk - like the command line on OS X for example. It's hardly rocket science.
Methinks the parochial nature of Americans needs to be considered before posting new items. If it doesn't happen in my state, or at a pinch, any of the US States, I don't need to know what it is, don't care what it is, and will certainly not lift a finger to do the 5 seconds research it takes to find out. In fact nothing in the outside world matters one iota, so why are people posting this?????!!!!
WHY? Why always Gates trumpeting some new innovation to the press who swallow it down hook line and sinker? Besides the fact that is already mentioned - if your computer isn't reliable, then why let the same company put their insights and innovation into your car? - why does Gates get so much press on this crap?
Perhaps it's because it's BILLY who has the RDF - so effective that unlike the other one, NOBODY can see through it?
Oh get off your high horse. This is exactly the sort of black-and-white thinking I'm talking about. There are degrees of crime you know, and simply labelling all "sex offenders" as evil is completely unhelpful - attaching the label "evil" to anything is a denial of any form of understanding. Of course many sex crimes are terrible crimes that I wouldn't wish on anyone, but equally there are many really quite harmless crimes that do not warrant the witch-burner mentality.
I dread to think what would happen if I lived my childhood all over again starting now. There are events that occurred to me that society would not only not tolerate, but would actually multiply up into something that would cause more harm than the original event. I feel sorry for kids of today - as much as anything it is society's attitude which is inflicting the damage. In my case I was lucky enough that what happened to me was really no big deal, and I quickly got it into perspective and it didn't bother me then nor does it bother me now. No, I'm not talking about rape or other serious sexual assault, but I am talking about the sort of thing I see people get hounded and villified for today that 30 years ago was just no big deal. And it isn't a big deal, so let's stop treating the issue as black and white. It isn't.
And by the way, your comment is EXACTLY what people said about witches in the 17th century, so you make my point admirably.
His name is Douglas Adams, not Douglas Adam. Therefore the insanity that belongs to Adams is Adams's insanity, not Adam's, or even Adams', though the latter case is also considered permissable since it's a proper noun.
This English grammar refresher brought to you at no charge.
Not only Spotlight, but about 10 years ago I was heavily involved in a company that developed a Mac application which included a major feature called "Automator". The product has been steadily updated and runs on OS X and is still for sale. I'm not sure if it was ever actually tradmarked, but since its job is to graphically link together actions into a flowchart-like diagram, then execute them, and it runs on Mac, you would have thought they would have known it existed!
What a specious argument or six. Boeing couldn't have built the thing 40 years ago for all sorts of reasons. Even leaving aside the technology, at that time it wasn't clear that a plane even as large as the 747 would be commercially viable. They took a gamble, it paid off, they were right. Same with Airbus now - the need for a larger aircraft isn't proven yet, but they are betting that their gamble will pay off too. Things change. Just because it wasn't done 40 years ago doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done now. Also, the technology wasn't available to build an A380 40 years ago. It really wasn't. The A380 isn't just a bigger 747. By that argument, we should have skipped all that silly mucking about with the biplanes and canvas and string and just built a 737 in the first place. Saved ourselves a lot of time and money. Air travel is now ubiquitous and affordable. In the 60s it was still the reserve of those who could afford it. Indeed the 747 was not just responding to that change, it helped bring it about. Maybe the A380 will have a similar effect - I for one would love to see cheaper long-haul flights (living in Australia but having family in the UK as I do)
Airports will not have to be remodelled for the A380. Its design was even changed early on so that it would fit within the standard "box" of an airport parking stand. This required the design of a new high-efficiency wing so that it could get the lift it needed with less wingspan. The result is one of the most efficient wings ever produced, certainly on this scale. Take-off and landing distances are much the same as the 747, no runway mods needed. As for the passenger ramps, most stands have two ramps per plane, as used on the 747, one at the front, one at the back. They can easily use these one above, one below, though for efficiency, you're probably right that more would be ideal. But not necessary. The size is not that huge - transporting through the streets is one thing - a 747 on a truck would be a pretty awkward load too. A C-5 can operate out of any international airport.
Fuel efficiency. Substantially better than a 747. Fuel use per passenger mile is on a par with a family car with 4 passengers - which is much better than most cars, which usually only carry the driver. This is actually a relatively eco-friendly plane, in those terms. I'd rather see one of these than two 747s to do a given job, so until we all take personal responsibility for the planet and stop flying altogether, it's a good option.
Every part of your agument is wrong or uninformed, hence, it sounds like you're trolling to me. OK, I bit. I agree on one thing though, let's give it a chance and see how many are flying in 20 years. If all those analysts and experts and highly intelligent engineers at Airbus HAVE got it wrong (NOT bloody likely, indeed) then, well, we can say, OK, that guy ebvfwfwtff on Slashdot was right after all, why didn't we listen to HIM? D'oh!
This predates Scott Adams by decades. And by the way, what's the man's job? If you're going to misquote a joke, at least tell all of it. (Answer: man's job is to feed the dog).
While $1.80 is in line with the prices charged elsewhere, based on the actual exchange rate, it does FEEL too high nevertheless. Wages and the overall cost of living in Australia is lower than e.g. UK and US, so the affordability of iTunes is that much poorer. Something like $1.30 - $1.50 would seem right.
No, you look forward to a replacement for Adobe's PDF Reader
I totally agree. But this announcement could well fix this. If Adobe feels threatened by Metro and then realises it's really just down to resistance to the bloatware, it could well spur them to make a much leaner, faster PDF reader. Call it "Preview for Windows"... well, perhaps.
When an OS X app crashes, the user is offered the opportunity to send the entire crash log to Apple. This includes a stack trace of every thread, as well as some other handy system info. Frankly, I'm sure Apple couldn't care less what happened when Macromedia Bloatware 8.3 Pro fell over, but the option is there. I wonder what they do with all the reports?
In Apple's case, the default option is NOT to send it, but if the user does, they get to preview the exact file that gets sent, as well as the opportunity to append their own comments. I don't see it as an invasion of privacy in this form, though I do think it must generate so much noise for Apple that the reports serve little purpose. By the sound of it the MS "black box" intends to be mor edetailed than this, so I don't know if this is a fair comparison.
You can obtain the original broadcast radio series on CD. I can't spot the first CD, but here's the second at Amazon.
There is also a box set collectors edition, which I have, which is the original radio series plus an interview disc with DNA. In my opintion, the original radio series is the unsurpassed canonical version, but I like the books and the original TV series too. Pity about the film.
We do not consume 200W/m^2 over the whole planet's surface, AFAIK. If we are, then we are doomed, as that's all there is. WE haven't found a way to harvest it directly - yet. That's where research is needed. Plants have evolved a very efficient way of harvesting it, though not in a form that suits US very well, but maybe a modification of the photosynthesis mechanism could yield electricity directly. I don't know, but it seems to be considered a very esoteric area of research, when in fact it could be in the long run the only viable solution to the predicament we've out ourselves in. If funds are diverted into it I'm sure it will yield results, and it's got better prospects than using those funds just to dig up more oil - which after all are only stored plant reserves, and very finite ones atthat.
If true, then we are stuffed. This is the only way energy ever arrives on this planet (the tiny amount of radioactivity ignored, and assuming we can't tap into the heat of the core). Oil reserves are only stored solar energy, once they are gone, the only energy input we have is solar. Wind energy is also solar energy.
On the bright side, I don't think the statement is actually true. Plants have evolved a very efficient way to utilise solar energy, which averages out to 200 watts per square metre over the entire surface of the planet. If we can't find a way to live within those sorts of limits then we're just not trying.
Back in my day, truckers were just about the main demographic keeping the printed porn industry alive, at least as far as one could tell from a) the pin-ups in the backs of their cabs, b) the fact that truckstops seemed to stock a hell of a lot more of it than the average newsagent, and c) the number of stories from truckers published in the letters pages (allegedly).
If truckers want to not get internet porn at truckstops, they can take a very simple measure - don't look for it!. I think for many that could be like asking them to stop breathing. What's next, forcing them to eat salads instead of bacon, sausage and egg on fried bread?
Slashdot Mirror
Birds are smart. Parrots especially so. So this comes as no surprise to me, who lives out in the sticks and observes many kinds of bird going about their daily lives, several species of parrot included. Clearly bird intelligence is a reality to anyone who has actually bothered to observe them, but equally clearly it's an intelligence quite different from ours. This might seem obvious but it seems that one of the central paradigms of biology since the renaissance is that "intelligence" must mean human intelligence, and anything else is not worthy of the name. Indeed, I have seen it repeated quite often that birds and other animals cannot be conscious and are some kind of automata. This is obviously baloney! Ask any cat or dog owner.
Until science can accept that intelligence is a sliding scale and comes in degrees, we are unlikely to make much progress, it seems to me. There is no "sudden breakthrough" to consciousness once brains reach a certain size, birds are as conscious as they need to be to be a bird. Likewise cats and dogs.
Here are some amazing feats I've observed in birds: A gull hovering at about 30-40 ft above the ground in a high wind above heavy traffic (the flight control alone this involves is pretty impressive) but the bird is scanning the ground - a noisy field of gravelled tarmac and moving cars - and can pick out among this noisy field a dot of matter on the ground that it knows to be edible. Consider the image processing task this is - we cannot even begin to write a program to do this, let alone "know" that the one dot among millions is edible. The bird will then swoop down among the traffic and pick up the morsel without breaking a sweat.
Australian Magpies in a colony in my garden regularly communicate among themselves with different sounds. These sounds have definite and distinct meanings; they understand them, we do not. One one occasion a particular squawk from the nesting tree brought a sudden urgent rush of Magpies from all over the area flying in to assist - it was obvious from the very direct and unusually effortful flying that this was an emergency. I have no idea what was up, but they did! Not only intelligent but socially organised and with a meaningful language.
I have made many similar observations in passing. When you consider that the human genome is not as large as we thought, and the higher birds' genome is not much smaller, it seems to me that science has a lot of rethinking to do on the subject of brain size and intelligence. And surely the time has come to drop the arrogance of assuming trhe superiority of human intelligence - simple observation will give you plenty of data that refutes this hypothesis. Thus the parrot in the article is really fairly unexceptional - the difference here is that somebody has thought it worthwhile (spuriously in my opinion) to teach it to use its brain in a way it probably doesn't bother to or need to in nature. That its brain is capable of this tends to show me that what birds do with their brains in nature must be equally impressive, and a darn sight more useful for the bird. Contrary to the popular myth, our brains are not 3/4 unused - they are 100% used (well, perhaps not in some of us). And that goes for every living creature too - evolution gives us all exactly the brain we need to survive in the environment we live in.
As fast as a Ferrari? If the motor can turn at 2,500 rpm and this is driving the wheel directly, assuming a typical car wheel size of about 15" diameter, this gives just under 112 mph. While not slow by any means, and perfectly in line with current car performance, it's somewhat short of Ferrari speeds. Mere hyperbole. It's a shame, because it's impressive without having to resort to that, but having done so, it makes it seem LESS impressive when you do the maths.
iPods store the music totally openly in the directory structure. You can download the music from any file browser that can see the disk - like the command line on OS X for example. It's hardly rocket science.
Methinks the parochial nature of Americans needs to be considered before posting new items. If it doesn't happen in my state, or at a pinch, any of the US States, I don't need to know what it is, don't care what it is, and will certainly not lift a finger to do the 5 seconds research it takes to find out. In fact nothing in the outside world matters one iota, so why are people posting this?????!!!!
No doubt a Slashdot story about it will be published by the time 10.4.2 is available....
WHY? Why always Gates trumpeting some new innovation to the press who swallow it down hook line and sinker? Besides the fact that is already mentioned - if your computer isn't reliable, then why let the same company put their insights and innovation into your car? - why does Gates get so much press on this crap?
Perhaps it's because it's BILLY who has the RDF - so effective that unlike the other one, NOBODY can see through it?
Oh get off your high horse. This is exactly the sort of black-and-white thinking I'm talking about. There are degrees of crime you know, and simply labelling all "sex offenders" as evil is completely unhelpful - attaching the label "evil" to anything is a denial of any form of understanding. Of course many sex crimes are terrible crimes that I wouldn't wish on anyone, but equally there are many really quite harmless crimes that do not warrant the witch-burner mentality.
I dread to think what would happen if I lived my childhood all over again starting now. There are events that occurred to me that society would not only not tolerate, but would actually multiply up into something that would cause more harm than the original event. I feel sorry for kids of today - as much as anything it is society's attitude which is inflicting the damage. In my case I was lucky enough that what happened to me was really no big deal, and I quickly got it into perspective and it didn't bother me then nor does it bother me now. No, I'm not talking about rape or other serious sexual assault, but I am talking about the sort of thing I see people get hounded and villified for today that 30 years ago was just no big deal. And it isn't a big deal, so let's stop treating the issue as black and white. It isn't.
And by the way, your comment is EXACTLY what people said about witches in the 17th century, so you make my point admirably.
... a good mix of Adam's insanity...
His name is Douglas Adams, not Douglas Adam. Therefore the insanity that belongs to Adams is Adams's insanity, not Adam's, or even Adams', though the latter case is also considered permissable since it's a proper noun.
This English grammar refresher brought to you at no charge.
1605: Drown them, drown them! 2005: Tag them, tag them!
Not only Spotlight, but about 10 years ago I was heavily involved in a company that developed a Mac application which included a major feature called "Automator". The product has been steadily updated and runs on OS X and is still for sale. I'm not sure if it was ever actually tradmarked, but since its job is to graphically link together actions into a flowchart-like diagram, then execute them, and it runs on Mac, you would have thought they would have known it existed!
What a specious argument or six. Boeing couldn't have built the thing 40 years ago for all sorts of reasons. Even leaving aside the technology, at that time it wasn't clear that a plane even as large as the 747 would be commercially viable. They took a gamble, it paid off, they were right. Same with Airbus now - the need for a larger aircraft isn't proven yet, but they are betting that their gamble will pay off too. Things change. Just because it wasn't done 40 years ago doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done now. Also, the technology wasn't available to build an A380 40 years ago. It really wasn't. The A380 isn't just a bigger 747. By that argument, we should have skipped all that silly mucking about with the biplanes and canvas and string and just built a 737 in the first place. Saved ourselves a lot of time and money. Air travel is now ubiquitous and affordable. In the 60s it was still the reserve of those who could afford it. Indeed the 747 was not just responding to that change, it helped bring it about. Maybe the A380 will have a similar effect - I for one would love to see cheaper long-haul flights (living in Australia but having family in the UK as I do)
Airports will not have to be remodelled for the A380. Its design was even changed early on so that it would fit within the standard "box" of an airport parking stand. This required the design of a new high-efficiency wing so that it could get the lift it needed with less wingspan. The result is one of the most efficient wings ever produced, certainly on this scale. Take-off and landing distances are much the same as the 747, no runway mods needed. As for the passenger ramps, most stands have two ramps per plane, as used on the 747, one at the front, one at the back. They can easily use these one above, one below, though for efficiency, you're probably right that more would be ideal. But not necessary. The size is not that huge - transporting through the streets is one thing - a 747 on a truck would be a pretty awkward load too. A C-5 can operate out of any international airport.
Fuel efficiency. Substantially better than a 747. Fuel use per passenger mile is on a par with a family car with 4 passengers - which is much better than most cars, which usually only carry the driver. This is actually a relatively eco-friendly plane, in those terms. I'd rather see one of these than two 747s to do a given job, so until we all take personal responsibility for the planet and stop flying altogether, it's a good option.
Every part of your agument is wrong or uninformed, hence, it sounds like you're trolling to me. OK, I bit. I agree on one thing though, let's give it a chance and see how many are flying in 20 years. If all those analysts and experts and highly intelligent engineers at Airbus HAVE got it wrong (NOT bloody likely, indeed) then, well, we can say, OK, that guy ebvfwfwtff on Slashdot was right after all, why didn't we listen to HIM? D'oh!
This predates Scott Adams by decades. And by the way, what's the man's job? If you're going to misquote a joke, at least tell all of it. (Answer: man's job is to feed the dog).
You could have at least tried to make it less obvious.
It's a bit longer (73m vs. 66m) than the Spruce Goose, but has quite a bit less wingspan (80m vs. 98m).
Agree 100%. You'll notice I didn't say INSTEAD of a comment - I meant AS WELL AS.
While $1.80 is in line with the prices charged elsewhere, based on the actual exchange rate, it does FEEL too high nevertheless. Wages and the overall cost of living in Australia is lower than e.g. UK and US, so the affordability of iTunes is that much poorer. Something like $1.30 - $1.50 would seem right.
No, you look forward to a replacement for Adobe's PDF Reader
I totally agree. But this announcement could well fix this. If Adobe feels threatened by Metro and then realises it's really just down to resistance to the bloatware, it could well spur them to make a much leaner, faster PDF reader. Call it "Preview for Windows"... well, perhaps.
Here's a great opportunity to make this much more self-documenting:
When an OS X app crashes, the user is offered the opportunity to send the entire crash log to Apple. This includes a stack trace of every thread, as well as some other handy system info. Frankly, I'm sure Apple couldn't care less what happened when Macromedia Bloatware 8.3 Pro fell over, but the option is there. I wonder what they do with all the reports?
In Apple's case, the default option is NOT to send it, but if the user does, they get to preview the exact file that gets sent, as well as the opportunity to append their own comments. I don't see it as an invasion of privacy in this form, though I do think it must generate so much noise for Apple that the reports serve little purpose. By the sound of it the MS "black box" intends to be mor edetailed than this, so I don't know if this is a fair comparison.
Here's the collectors box-set CD edition. By the way, it's TWO extra CDs, as well as the COMPLETE radio series from the original master tapes.
You can obtain the original broadcast radio series on CD. I can't spot the first CD, but here's the second at Amazon.
There is also a box set collectors edition, which I have, which is the original radio series plus an interview disc with DNA. In my opintion, the original radio series is the unsurpassed canonical version, but I like the books and the original TV series too. Pity about the film.
...without having to keep an index...
But you do have an index, it's in your head. Computers are supposed to free your brain up, not fill it with more stuff.
We do not consume 200W/m^2 over the whole planet's surface, AFAIK. If we are, then we are doomed, as that's all there is. WE haven't found a way to harvest it directly - yet. That's where research is needed. Plants have evolved a very efficient way of harvesting it, though not in a form that suits US very well, but maybe a modification of the photosynthesis mechanism could yield electricity directly. I don't know, but it seems to be considered a very esoteric area of research, when in fact it could be in the long run the only viable solution to the predicament we've out ourselves in. If funds are diverted into it I'm sure it will yield results, and it's got better prospects than using those funds just to dig up more oil - which after all are only stored plant reserves, and very finite ones atthat.
Solar just dose not produce enough energy
If true, then we are stuffed. This is the only way energy ever arrives on this planet (the tiny amount of radioactivity ignored, and assuming we can't tap into the heat of the core). Oil reserves are only stored solar energy, once they are gone, the only energy input we have is solar. Wind energy is also solar energy.
On the bright side, I don't think the statement is actually true. Plants have evolved a very efficient way to utilise solar energy, which averages out to 200 watts per square metre over the entire surface of the planet. If we can't find a way to live within those sorts of limits then we're just not trying.
Back in my day, truckers were just about the main demographic keeping the printed porn industry alive, at least as far as one could tell from a) the pin-ups in the backs of their cabs, b) the fact that truckstops seemed to stock a hell of a lot more of it than the average newsagent, and c) the number of stories from truckers published in the letters pages (allegedly).
If truckers want to not get internet porn at truckstops, they can take a very simple measure - don't look for it!. I think for many that could be like asking them to stop breathing. What's next, forcing them to eat salads instead of bacon, sausage and egg on fried bread?