Another nice analogue: your body is not the same body it was 15 years ago. You think of it as the same body, only grown a bit (in length or width, depending on your age). But in fact all of the atoms that made up your body 20 years ago have all been replaced by other atoms. Our body is not really a static object, it's more like a very slow wave.
(I read it like this in Richared Dawkin's The God Desulion, but he got it somewhere else again, can't remember where)
The mind, conscience, personality, is perhaps a similar phenomenon. It's not a thing that can be pointed out somewhere in our brain, but it's a recurring pattern of thoughts and actions, emerging from the mechanics of our brain and the experiences therein.
Exactly! Drugs can temporarily remove the psychological effects of a problem, but not the cause. If you keep using the drug, you either get addicted to the drug or you will need more and more and suffer more side effects. Or you stop using the drug and fall back into your depression, possibly deeper.
Same goes for recreational use of nicotine, marijuana, alcohol and other drugs: of course a high is therapeutic after a shitty day. But if your work or whatever you do every day isn't satisfying, and need to fix your life. Drugs won't solve the problem.
Unfortunately, fixing people's lives is much more difficult and expensive than giving them drugs.
I do not dispute that compression and AI are related, from an information-theoretic perspective. I've done quite a bit of pondering and tinkering with the AI=prediction=compression approach myself. However, I doubt that this research will help AI much further. An true universal AI would be able to do a good job of compressing some data, and compression is a very fundamental problem. Solve this fundamental problem, and perhaps you will have a useful result for a universal AI. However, compressing text is just a very small subset of the fundamental problem. An algorithm that is good at compressing text is not necessarily similar to or helpful for building a universal AI. I don't think paq8hp12 brings us closer to a universal AI.
You're trying to be funny, but it seems a fair statement to me, if you're not using MS products.
I can safely say the MS EULA does not apply to me, because I'm not using any products licensed under the MS EULA. Of course, MS is saying exactly the same thing: GPLv3 does not apply to us, because we do not distribute (via any partner) any products licensed under GPLv3. Perfectly sound statement. Of course, it gets a bit more complicated when Novell starts distributing GPLv3 code. I can only assume MS will stop giving out Linux support certificates.
One of the problems with software patents is that is relatively easy to come up with patentable ideas. It's easy to present a common construct in a convoluted way such that it looks new and inventive, or to present a trivial combination of prior art in such a way that it looks like a completely new idea. Software, algorithms, are a formalization of an idea, and one idea can be formalized in many ways. Also, algorithms are generic, they can be used for different applications. That's why it's easy to present an idea as new. Perhaps many patent applications actually believe they've come up with something new when in fact they have reinvented the wheel. Also, it's difficult to classify software and algorithms. To recognize prior art, you have to be an expert in computer science, to recognize the algorithm in a different form AND an expert in the field of the application to understand the terminology used.
Maybe, I should just write a trivial parent generator: it combines well known algorithms and describes the result using terminology from some random field of application. I'll use it to generate several million patentable ideas and I'll put them on-line. A software patent reviewer googleing the keywords of the parent application on his desk, might just find one of my documents describing exactly the same invention?
Some people do get fits of laughter, or similar spasmic reactions.
I've experimented with laughing gas some years ago. We filled balloons from N20 capsules via a whipped cream nozzle. Then we inhaled and exhaled into the balloons a couple a times. A couple of times I myself found myself repeating a short sound and movement over and over again, like when you're laughing, or stuttering. However, it felt different, much more spasmic and uncontrolled, yet strangely fun. We always made people sit down because when you take the gas, you have no control whatsoever. You simply fall down.
If these bullets have the same effect, then they would be effective in knocking you down for a minute (not more).
However, I think it's unlikely the bullet will have the same effect. First, the dosis. We used two canisters of N20 per balloon (16g) and we breathed all of it directly. If these bullets release the gas in the air, then they'll need to put a lot of gas in these bullets, under high pressure. Also, it's an explosive gas. Add heat and fire from the gun... sounds pretty lethal to me. Now, perhaps if the bullets inject the gas somehow... but then, why not just use a more powerful drug?
Also, I believe some of the effect is due to oxigen deprivation. The pure gas temporarily disables the intake of oxigen through the lungs. I doubt the bullet has the same effect.
Still, you cannot know what data is being sent, it might be encrypted or encoded in a not obvious way. Figuring out what is being sent is pretty much impossible unless you know what you are looking for.
Very speculative article. Author claims all kinds of information is gathered by Microsoft, but does not specify what exactly. Sound like FUD to me. Anyhow, how does he know? Because of the closed-source nature of their products, there's nothing stopping MS from getting any information they want from your computer. Also, such claims are hard to verify or debunk, so nothing's stopping anti-MS fud-spreading bloggers and journalists.
So, if you are concerned about privacy, use an open source product that you trust, or if you don't trust it, (have someone) look at the source code.
NTT engineer Shiro Ozawa, who developed the system, envisages various applications. "You would be able to take the hand, or gently pat the head, of your beloved grandchild who lives far away from you," he says. My god, how stupid is that? Can't they come up with some serious applications?
No, probably not. The usefulness of this kind of tech is actually quite low. First all, they don't specify what kind of 3D display they use, but from the picture it looks like they using a simple LCD, and presumably shutter glasses. Makes sense, because it's the cheapest 3D solution, but not ideal 3D display technology. It means for example, if you move your head, the 3D image will deform and the tactile feedback will no longer correspond with the image exactly.
So don't use this one for virtual surgery!
Still, it's cute they try to bring this kind of tech to hobbyists. I wonder what it costs.
The hard part is speeding up your average desktop application which, I guarantee you, is not spending the majority of its time doing matrix multiplies. Your average desktop application doesn't need speeding up. If it runs slow, it's because it's programmed inefficiently, using a ton of memory, swapping data in and out of core. Shoot the developer.
The only place where speedup is needed is in scientific computing. Of course, scientists already use mass parallel machines (grid computing etc) and they are already designing their algorithms for parallel execution.
And gamers of course want fast graphics, for which they have GPUs, which are specialized parallel hardware. And for small parallelize-able calculations need in desktop apps, there's MMX and similar extensions.
So really, I don't see the need for this 'new' technology. Except that I, as a computer scientist and hobbyist would love to have a cheap parallel machine at home to play with.
What we do need is better programmers.
But wait, there's one thing: low frequency, high bandwidth processors are much more power-efficient that the current gigahertz toasters. Once we have better programmers, it might be a good idea to switch to mass-parallel designs, to save energy.
I'm most concerned about burning fossil fuel, not the drilling or the heaps of plastic waste. Of course drilling for oil is bad for the environment too, locally, and there's the landfills of waste. But I'm more concerned (and many with me) about the global effects of burning fossil fuel.
A fuel shortage is a good thing, because if there was more of the stuff, it would be cheaper, and we'd burn more of it. Anyhow, there's only a fuel shortage because we love to burn so much of it. Or make it into plastic bags, packaging material and other throw-aways. There's plenty if we are sensible about it.
In theory, we could reduce the use of fossil fuel using this technology, but I have a feeling that will not be the net effect.
So we have more oil to burn. Great. Okay, it's perhaps better than burning plastics directly, with all the contaminants like chloride, fluoride, heavy metals, in it. But it will add to our CO^2 production. At least garbage that is stored properly will not add to the global warming problem. If this microwave process is economically viable, oil prices will go down, and that unfortunately means we'll just burn more.
This idea is labeled as recycling and therefore good. But this is not the kind of recycling we need. It's not clean energy. We need alternative fuels and reusable non-polluting products.
They measure their tethered towers in feet? They cannot be serious about science. Geostationary orbit is at 36000 KM. Who builds a spacecraft to go to 118110236 ft? Yuck.
Open source is good for mankind, in general, but that doesn't mean that developers should not be payed for their work. Developers should be well payed for their work and the resulting code should be released as open source. To make this happen, developers should be hired by a company or the community.
That some business models are not compatible with open source is besides the point.
A typical capitalist business model, when applied to software (or, in general, information), does not make sense. These models assume copying is as expensive as creating a new product. For software this is not true, copying software is cheap. It's illegal, in case of non-open source software, but that is an artificial limitation that is ultimately impossible to maintain. Eventually, for software and other types of copyable artifacts, capitalist business models will disappear. And with them unfair intellectual property laws.
And having an internet voting system will only make it easier to pressure people to vote a certain way, because you can't see from an electronic vote if a gun was pointed at the voters head.
There is no news coverage by traditional media (papers, tv) of demonstrative acts on the internet. Right now, the best way to make yourself heard is still organising something in the streets. The internet is only helpful to get people to sign petitions and to organise live demonstrations. Of course, politicians are still going to ignore you. A confrontation with the police is really a good thing, because more people will sympathise with you.
Defending myself is hard because this is civil court, not criminal court. This means that I don't get a free lawyer, and that the burden for proof is much lower. IANAL and I do not live the USA, so I may be wrong about this, but I believe that in most civil trials, including those in the USA, it is very common that if the defendant wins, then the plaintiff must pay for the cost of the defense.
This is completely trivial, and any programmer could easily come up with this idea, if the application he is working on happens to needs to store objects in several sequences. I would not be surprised if thousands of computer programs use this structure but don't actually have a name for it. It's just a bunch of pointers after all.
Luckely, the data structure descibed by the patent has very limited use. A more generic version would allow any number of pointers per item, and is typically called a graph. Still it is a terrible shame that the US patent office grants such patents.
So, the USPTO, who's task it is to ensure that patents and trademarks are properly upheld, are now suddenly concerned about national security and our children?
Who is the author of the report?
by Jon W. Dudas, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property? What does that involve? Duh! Helping ones greedy friends in the MAFIAA fight their War on Freedom. Pretty obvious Mr. Dudas!
Our economy has gone from world-leading to "service-based" in just a few decades, and our only hope of exporting something that people might want to buy is in movies, music and software. So you (the US entertainment industry) are trying to sell a service (information) as if it is a material product. Ofcourse it doesn't work!
Music, movies, software, are all copyable artifacts, like information, and information wants to be free. It's no use trying to stop people from copying it, so you can't sell copies. Instead, let the consumer pay you to produce (release) a freely copyable artifact. Sell the service, not the (copyable) artifact.
It's a bit tricky how to implement this with a lot of consumers (hundreds of thousands) paying a small amount (couple of dollars) for a huge production (millions of dollars) that they make or may not like (Hollywood), in advance. But i'm sure it can be done. It's a matter of trust and openness.
Unfortunately, the industry (RIAA, MPAA etc) are not creating an atmosphere of trust and openness.
No, these scientist have determined that the amount of bouncing up and down a child does in a week is not related to the weight of the child. This is interprerpreted in the article (by the journalist or is this from the scientists themselves?) as: sports in schools does not prevent obesity in children. That's a pretty big leap. My guess is that children who spend more energy eat more. Children who move more probably spend more energy, or spend less on other things, perhaps sleep more. All in all, this research tells us nothing. Terminate it.
I agree with the parent: software engineering and computer science are different diciplines.
CS studies theoretical and hard practical problems, comes up with new theory and constructs for use by software engineers and designers. The latter solve relatively easy practical problems and use the theory and algorithms that CS has produced. CS is closely related to mathematics, but typically studies discreet problems and logical constructs. SE is a much more practical field that procudes large pieces of software, requiring software development tools and methods, many man hours and management. Computer scientists produce typically small programs that demonstrate a particular algorithm works and produces theoretically predicted results. SE tools and methods can be used but are not essential.
It would be a good thing to have different schools for the different diciplines. That way, students who like working out theoretical problems, choose for CS. They'll propbably end up in an academic career or corporate research facility. Students who want to work on practical problems and just produce software should choose SE.
Ofcourse there is some overlap in the curriculum, e.g. both software engineers and computer scientists need programming skills. But these days, almost every scientist, in any field, needs programming skills. It's just a skill many people need, like a basic grasp of mathematics.
In fact, here in The Netherlands, we have a distiction in universities: some are called 'higher school' (hoge school), others 'university'. The first provide SE education, at a high level, but aimed at practical skills. They turn out good software engineers and software designers. Universities provide CS studies, but the curriculum contains both practical and more academic courses. The universities turn out scientists, but also software engineers and designers. Arguably, the engineers with a higher school education are actually better prepared for the job that the university people, as they have less theoretical baggage and more practical skills.
Slashdot Mirror
Another nice analogue: your body is not the same body it was 15 years ago. You think of it as the same body, only grown a bit (in length or width, depending on your age). But in fact all of the atoms that made up your body 20 years ago have all been replaced by other atoms. Our body is not really a static object, it's more like a very slow wave.
(I read it like this in Richared Dawkin's The God Desulion, but he got it somewhere else again, can't remember where)
The mind, conscience, personality, is perhaps a similar phenomenon. It's not a thing that can be pointed out somewhere in our brain, but it's a recurring pattern of thoughts and actions, emerging from the mechanics of our brain and the experiences therein.
Exactly! Drugs can temporarily remove the psychological effects of a problem, but not the cause. If you keep using the drug, you either get addicted to the drug or you will need more and more and suffer more side effects. Or you stop using the drug and fall back into your depression, possibly deeper.
Same goes for recreational use of nicotine, marijuana, alcohol and other drugs: of course a high is therapeutic after a shitty day. But if your work or whatever you do every day isn't satisfying, and need to fix your life. Drugs won't solve the problem.
Unfortunately, fixing people's lives is much more difficult and expensive than giving them drugs.
I do not dispute that compression and AI are related, from an information-theoretic perspective. I've done quite a bit of pondering and tinkering with the AI=prediction=compression approach myself. However, I doubt that this research will help AI much further. An true universal AI would be able to do a good job of compressing some data, and compression is a very fundamental problem. Solve this fundamental problem, and perhaps you will have a useful result for a universal AI. However, compressing text is just a very small subset of the fundamental problem. An algorithm that is good at compressing text is not necessarily similar to or helpful for building a universal AI. I don't think paq8hp12 brings us closer to a universal AI.
You're trying to be funny, but it seems a fair statement to me, if you're not using MS products.
I can safely say the MS EULA does not apply to me, because I'm not using any products licensed under the MS EULA.
Of course, MS is saying exactly the same thing: GPLv3 does not apply to us, because we do not distribute (via any partner) any products licensed under GPLv3. Perfectly sound statement. Of course, it gets a bit more complicated when Novell starts distributing GPLv3 code. I can only assume MS will stop giving out Linux support certificates.
One of the problems with software patents is that is relatively easy to come up with patentable ideas. It's easy to present a common construct in a convoluted way such that it looks new and inventive, or to present a trivial combination of prior art in such a way that it looks like a completely new idea. Software, algorithms, are a formalization of an idea, and one idea can be formalized in many ways. Also, algorithms are generic, they can be used for different applications. That's why it's easy to present an idea as new. Perhaps many patent applications actually believe they've come up with something new when in fact they have reinvented the wheel. Also, it's difficult to classify software and algorithms. To recognize prior art, you have to be an expert in computer science, to recognize the algorithm in a different form AND an expert in the field of the application to understand the terminology used.
Maybe, I should just write a trivial parent generator: it combines well known algorithms and describes the result using terminology from some random field of application. I'll use it to generate several million patentable ideas and I'll put them on-line. A software patent reviewer googleing the keywords of the parent application on his desk, might just find one of my documents describing exactly the same invention?
Nah... I can't be bothered.
Some people do get fits of laughter, or similar spasmic reactions.
I've experimented with laughing gas some years ago. We filled balloons from N20 capsules via a whipped cream nozzle. Then we inhaled and exhaled into the balloons a couple a times. A couple of times I myself found myself repeating a short sound and movement over and over again, like when you're laughing, or stuttering. However, it felt different, much more spasmic and uncontrolled, yet strangely fun. We always made people sit down because when you take the gas, you have no control whatsoever. You simply fall down.
If these bullets have the same effect, then they would be effective in knocking you down for a minute (not more).
However, I think it's unlikely the bullet will have the same effect. First, the dosis. We used two canisters of N20 per balloon (16g) and we breathed all of it directly. If these bullets release the gas in the air, then they'll need to put a lot of gas in these bullets, under high pressure. Also, it's an explosive gas. Add heat and fire from the gun... sounds pretty lethal to me. Now, perhaps if the bullets inject the gas somehow... but then, why not just use a more powerful drug?
Also, I believe some of the effect is due to oxigen deprivation. The pure gas temporarily disables the intake of oxigen through the lungs. I doubt the bullet has the same effect.
Still, you cannot know what data is being sent, it might be encrypted or encoded in a not obvious way. Figuring out what is being sent is pretty much impossible unless you know what you are looking for.
Very speculative article. Author claims all kinds of information is gathered by Microsoft, but does not
specify what exactly. Sound like FUD to me. Anyhow, how does he know? Because of the closed-source nature
of their products, there's nothing stopping MS from getting any information they want from your computer.
Also, such claims are hard to verify or debunk, so nothing's stopping anti-MS fud-spreading bloggers
and journalists.
So, if you are concerned about privacy, use an open source product that you trust, or if you don't trust it,
(have someone) look at the source code.
No, probably not. The usefulness of this kind of tech is actually quite low. First all, they don't specify what kind of 3D display they use, but from the picture it looks like they using a simple LCD, and presumably shutter glasses. Makes sense, because it's the cheapest 3D solution, but not ideal 3D display technology. It means for example, if you move your head, the 3D image will deform and the tactile feedback will no longer correspond with the image exactly.
So don't use this one for virtual surgery!
Still, it's cute they try to bring this kind of tech to hobbyists. I wonder what it costs.
The only place where speedup is needed is in scientific computing. Of course, scientists already use mass parallel machines (grid computing etc) and they are already designing their algorithms for parallel execution.
And gamers of course want fast graphics, for which they have GPUs, which are specialized parallel hardware. And for small parallelize-able calculations need in desktop apps, there's MMX and similar extensions.
So really, I don't see the need for this 'new' technology. Except that I, as a computer scientist and hobbyist would love to have a cheap parallel machine at home to play with.
What we do need is better programmers.
But wait, there's one thing: low frequency, high bandwidth processors are much more power-efficient that the current gigahertz toasters. Once we have better programmers, it might be a good idea to switch to mass-parallel designs, to save energy.
I'm most concerned about burning fossil fuel, not the drilling or the heaps of plastic waste. Of course drilling for oil is bad for the environment too, locally, and there's the landfills of waste. But I'm more concerned (and many with me) about the global effects of burning fossil fuel.
A fuel shortage is a good thing, because if there was more of the stuff, it would be cheaper, and we'd burn more of it. Anyhow, there's only a fuel shortage because we love to burn so much of it. Or make it into plastic bags, packaging material and other throw-aways. There's plenty if we are sensible about it.
In theory, we could reduce the use of fossil fuel using this technology, but I have a feeling that will not be the net effect.
So we have more oil to burn. Great. Okay, it's perhaps better than burning plastics directly, with all the contaminants like chloride, fluoride, heavy metals, in it. But it will add to our CO^2 production. At least garbage that is stored properly will not add to the global warming problem. If this microwave process is economically viable, oil prices will go down, and that unfortunately means we'll just burn more.
This idea is labeled as recycling and therefore good. But this is not the kind of recycling we need. It's not clean energy. We need alternative fuels and reusable non-polluting products.
They measure their tethered towers in feet? They cannot be serious about science. Geostationary orbit is at 36000 KM. Who builds a spacecraft to go to 118110236 ft? Yuck.
ergo, this is not science.
Open source is good for mankind, in general, but that doesn't mean that developers should not be payed for their work.
Developers should be well payed for their work and the resulting code should be released as open source. To make this happen,
developers should be hired by a company or the community.
That some business models are not compatible with open source is besides the point.
A typical capitalist business model, when applied to software (or, in general, information), does not make sense. These models assume copying is as expensive as creating a new product. For software this is not true, copying software is cheap. It's illegal, in case of non-open source software, but that is an artificial limitation that is ultimately impossible to maintain.
Eventually, for software and other types of copyable artifacts, capitalist business models will disappear. And with them unfair intellectual property laws.
duh!
And having an internet voting system will only make it easier to pressure people to vote a certain way, because you can't see from an electronic vote if a gun was pointed at the voters head.
There is no news coverage by traditional media (papers, tv) of demonstrative acts on the internet. Right now, the best way to make yourself heard is still organising something in the streets. The internet is only helpful to get people to sign petitions and to organise live demonstrations. Of course, politicians are still going to ignore you. A confrontation with the police is really a good thing, because more people will sympathise with you.
So, if you are innocent, fight!
This is completely trivial, and any programmer could easily come up with this idea, if the application he is working on happens to needs to store objects in several sequences. I would not be surprised if thousands of computer programs use this structure but don't actually have a name for it. It's just a bunch of pointers after all.
Luckely, the data structure descibed by the patent has very limited use. A more generic version would allow any number of pointers per item, and is typically called a graph. Still it is a terrible shame that the US patent office grants such patents.
Who is the author of the report? by Jon W. Dudas,
Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States
Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property? What does that involve? Duh! Helping ones greedy friends in the MAFIAA fight their War on Freedom. Pretty obvious Mr. Dudas!
Music, movies, software, are all copyable artifacts, like information, and information wants to be free. It's no use trying to stop people from copying it, so you can't sell copies. Instead, let the consumer pay you to produce (release) a freely copyable artifact. Sell the service, not the (copyable) artifact.
It's a bit tricky how to implement this with a lot of consumers (hundreds of thousands) paying a small amount (couple of dollars) for a huge production (millions of dollars) that they make or may not like (Hollywood), in advance. But i'm sure it can be done. It's a matter of trust and openness.
Unfortunately, the industry (RIAA, MPAA etc) are not creating an atmosphere of trust and openness.
No, these scientist have determined that the amount of bouncing up and down a child does in a week is not related to the weight of the child. This is interprerpreted in the article (by the journalist or is this from the scientists themselves?) as: sports in schools does not prevent obesity in children. That's a pretty big leap.
My guess is that children who spend more energy eat more. Children who move more probably spend more energy, or spend less on other things, perhaps sleep more.
All in all, this research tells us nothing.
Terminate it.
what does that solve? Virusses run perfectly well on a VM too.
I agree with the parent: software engineering and computer science are different diciplines.
CS studies theoretical and hard practical problems, comes up with new theory and constructs for use by software engineers and designers. The latter solve relatively easy practical problems and use the theory and algorithms that CS has produced. CS is closely related to mathematics, but typically studies discreet problems and logical constructs. SE is a much more practical field that procudes large pieces of software, requiring software development tools and methods, many man hours and management.
Computer scientists produce typically small programs that demonstrate a particular algorithm works and produces theoretically predicted results. SE tools and methods can be used but are not essential.
It would be a good thing to have different schools for the different diciplines.
That way, students who like working out theoretical problems, choose for CS. They'll propbably end up in an academic career or corporate research facility. Students who want to work on practical problems and just produce software should choose SE.
Ofcourse there is some overlap in the curriculum, e.g. both software engineers and computer scientists need programming skills. But these days, almost every scientist, in any field, needs programming skills.
It's just a skill many people need, like a basic grasp of mathematics.
In fact, here in The Netherlands, we have a distiction in universities: some are called 'higher school' (hoge school), others 'university'. The first provide SE education, at a high level, but aimed at practical skills. They turn out good software engineers and software designers. Universities provide CS studies, but the curriculum contains both practical and more academic courses. The universities turn out scientists, but also software engineers and designers. Arguably, the engineers with a higher school education are actually better prepared for the job that the university people, as they have less theoretical baggage and more practical skills.