With some luck, the furnace will stay there. But you still need fuel and there's less than 95% yield for mass unfortunately. Plus add another 30kg to provide a safe ride home.
Re:the glass was of even higher quality than theor
on
Glass In Spaaaaace
·
· Score: 1
Just ride them down the Space Elevator. Most of the elevator traffic would go up only, so no problem here?
1- sand requires way less gentle treatment than electronics or humans. Means lesser costs of the rocket. And taking the furnace would cost, but that's one-time expense. 2- yes, from some asteroid. Easy. 3- launch from surface of asteroid - $50. 4- 5ft of hyper-high-quality lenses, nanooptics, etc may be well worth several $mln. 5- fill a rocket with bubblewrap or you'll end up with a lander full of glass shards. 6- profit.
You'll never catch a Rails dude tying his shoes. That's why they tend to stumble on the shoelaces rather often. "I want effects, and I want them fast. So what if it breaks in 1 out of 20 cases, it's good enough for me".
If the british fire extinguisher manufacturer doesn't have some serious worldwide recognition, then they are protected in their field of work. That means, Mozilla Foundation won't be able to legally produce fire extinguishers, safety/emergency equipment, probably some other gadgets that are considered the same domain as fire extinguishers, but as long as it's software, they can be granted that trademark. In the field of software. Which won't stop anyone from producing Firefox brand birthsday cakes, or Firefox hunter ammo of course. Just no software.
Not a fuckin chance. - MSIE is so tangled in the bowels of Windows that it's impossible to remove it. Too many things depend on it. - Firefox is Open Source. Microsoft would give a hand and a leg to keep the public from ever learning such thing exists. People use FF, think "Cool, and why is it free?", then they learn about other open source stuff, decide to try it out, learn about the evils of commercial software, and then Microsoft starts to really lose market share. So Microsoft tries to protect your Joe Average from open source products at all cost. - Microsoft would never admit their product sucked so badly that it had to be replaced with competition. (even if they actually do this, see WinNT) - The legal obstacles and risks of integrating a Free Software component into a proprietary system are rather high. Not impossible, but it's walking on a thin ice.
Metamoderating "troll" unfair, but you definitely over-simplified. Actually text messaging people you don't know is considered rude in Europe - because they have to pay to answer. So, say, you ask a stranger a question, and they must spend money (call you back or send you SMS) just to answer YOUR question. You just call strangers. Always. But true, there is less commitment. On the receiving side. And not because "it's not personal" (which is false, voice comes and goes, "I never said that", SMS stays as long as you want.) but because you can read it later (say, you're busy, no need for "I can't talk now.", because you can re-read any given part, or pause reading anytime ("sorry, someone disturbed, what did you say?") because there's no ambiguity in passing data ("Could you spell it?" "Did you say ONE or NINE?"), because you can keep it for later use with, say, addresses ("Hold on a moment, I'll find something to write"), and because it's less intrusive ("Hold on a moment, I got a call"). If Sending SMS is technically harder than calling. But receiving it requires way less attention - commitment to the caller - than a phone call. A memo vs a conference.
For Profs. Liebowitz and Margolis, both observations cast doubt on the Dvorak keyboard's superiority. And once that example crumbles, they suggest, some of the larger conclusions of path dependence also must be called into question.
The pair also take aim at the VHS-Beta story. VHS won that battle, they say, because it could tape for twice as long, something consumers clearly wanted. Similarly, they note that DOS computers caught on because they were markedly less expensive than Apple's.
Bullshit. Third player of that time, Grundig, could record 8 hours of video, 2 sides x 4h, and the quality of the image was vastly superior to VHS. In times when DOS took over, there were far superior and way cheaper Amiga computers on the scene. And what they try undermining reliablity of the Dvorak vs QWERTY advantage study, not truth behind "designed to be slow" story. Maybe Dvorak isn't THAT much superior to QWERTY, but that doesn't mean QWERTY wasn't designed to be slow.
Dvorak sucks if you're not American.
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Not because it was made with usage of characters in ENGLISH on mind. Okay, that is a problem, say, if you are a Finn and the vovels + k make up 80% of your language. But in many countries the frequency is at least similar to English. The problem is support. Keymaps with "native" characters. On install you see a whole list of keymaps for different countries, but all of them are variants of QWERTY, be it QWERTZ, AZERTY or similar. A non-US Dvorak is a rare. At one time I thought about switching. In Polish we have a bunch of extra characters that are laid out in pretty obvious manner - all are derivatives of some english characters and pressing the alt+original character produces the extra one, alt+o=ó etc. Pretty simple? Yes, and could be easily ported to Dvorak. But it wasn't. I'm left out in the cold, no Dvorak-PL for me.
Bad questions or inability to answer them? There are plainly bad questions and plainly terrible customers who are clueless but act informed. But there are clueless customers who know they are clueless and seek your help. In this case they don't know what are the questions they should ask, but formula "What questions should I ask about this", or "Tell me all I should know about this" is not one commonly acceptable, so they start with just such questions like the girl presented.
Suggested route:
Spy: Which gaming system is the best to buy for my boyfriend?
Clerk: PS2 and Xbox, depending on what type of games he likes to play. [Launches into enthusiastic speech on the merits of each system.] [wrong. Customer gets lost at once. The right, and expected answer is: "Depends on what your boyfriend wants to do with it." followed with a series of questions mapping capablities of the available models into real life applications. With a series of answers you know the answer and you can say "this" model has most of what you'd need.
Spy: Which is the most powerful? No need for such a question after that. It wouldn't happen.
Spy: What about the GameCube? You give answer, which of its capablities didn't match the list.
Spy: Does it play movies? Yes, from DVD.
Spy: My boyfriend said something about progressive scan? Whazzat? Just a marketing buzzword. If you want, I can go into all the messy technical details, but it really doesn't matter that much.
Spy: What about the handhelds? Would you recommend buying a DS or waiting for the PSP?* Again, what do you want to use it for?
Spy: My boyfriend says more polygons are better. What are those? Something like horsepower in a car. Ability to display lots and lots of things, fast. But there's much more to a good console than polygon count.
Spy: Do any of these hook to a PC? Answer. Though this probably wouldn't happen after initial question - connectivity with PC should be one of them.
Spy: What about sports games? Which is the best for them? Depends on your, or your boyfriend's taste. We have... I personally like...
Spy: Do I need anything besides the system and a couple of games? Just a TV set. [yes, you don't know HOW clueless the customer is, but don't make it sound rude] - but if you intend to..., then you will need... (play together with your boyfriend - get a second controller)
Spy: When are the new systems coming out? Give estimate dates. This way she may return and buy them later, at that date. Say rather later than early because it's better to sell the console a month after it arrived, than say "sorry, not yet, try in a month".
Spy: So are the prices of these systems ever going to come down?
Spy: Is the GameCube just for kids? Shouldn't happen, but just answer.
Spy: Does Nintendo make games for the other systems? AFAIK, no. (if it looks the customer DOES have some clue after all, you can mention emulation)
Spy: Can you surf the Web on any of these systems? Guide towards "what do you need" series of questions.
Spy: Is that that football hockey game? Explain.
Spy: [Picks up Manhunt.] Is this game good? I don't know, I didn't play it.
but seriously, how big are the differences in the firmware, between, say 1.50 and 1.51? If it differs by a 2nd minor version, how much does it differ from the previous one, and how hard does it make to hack it, once you have the previous one hacked?
1: languages shouldn't be a problem, that is (hopefully) not completely split up throughout the source code is it?
You'd be surprised. Very surprised. Things are far more screwed up than you'd think. An article on development of a new OS release would come in handy, but putting things shortly, somewhere between 60 and 80% down the way with the development of the new OS, the code is branched into "local versions" which are independently developed by corresponding local Microsoft divisions. Bugfixes, features etc are usually shared, but only "usually", and the final code base varies wildly. There's no simple way to "translate" a version of Windows, or port features from one to the other. That's why each language has separate service pack and the service packs for them show up at wildly varying intervals - each team has to roll their own. That's why e.g. people in Poland used german version of WinNT instead of polish one on mission-critical positions - because it's more stable. There's way more to "local versions" than plain "local language files". The design is consistent thorough the system, but the code behind it may be completely different, even if it's not really localization-related.
So okay, no touching the server. With fixing - if they can't fix it, roll out a ghost image. No putting up with "but I have all my work there!" shit. They have the backup software, they should have made backups. There's no way you could make them on 30 computers (likely Windows) in 5 minutes. And if one employee gets changed every month, you'd better start looking for a new job NOW. With the extra admin responsiblity you won't stay longer than 3 months anyway.
It's to be a... secure... object oriented... scripting language... and command shell... backwards-compatibile with DOS command line... providing total control over all features of the OS... better than anything else out there... for Windows...
I don't see how the Hell can freeze over within next 3-5 years.
- User's are not allowed to touch the server If you break it, you fix it. Workstations are either locked down, or managed 100% by the user 100% managed by the user. Workstations/Server are quality hardware. A fleet of 30 computer can have 1 non-HDD failure in 3 years. HDD failures are worse. They are. Users handle simple fixes themselves, you just provide backup hardware. Workstations are identical equipment No, but if you have something non-standard in your workstation and it breaks, you replace it yourself. You create a standard image and use Symantec Ghost (or equiv) to roll out You do. Or leave it to the users. You roll out a clean image if anything goes wrong with software and it takes longer than 15mins to fix You do. Or leave it to the users. (put a standarised ghost image on the server, or on a publicly available CD.)
Techies (Programmers, Hardware, Engineers) tend to mess around with their computers They are also less likely to call for help and more likely to succesfully fix things they break. - Maintaining Programs (new, upgrades, etc)- Security updates Download, announce, make available, everyone installs on their own. High user churn In a team of 30? Management who do not see the value of doing it right from the word go Request raise for each such "saving". Development servers tend to break every other day. It's the developer's job to create an easily recoverable development environment for risky applications, not the sysadmin's. And always have this line ready: "I'm getting $50 a month extra for doing this all, what do you expect?"
Depends on your current work load (how much is 1% of it?), on how well you do your job, on how much is left to the users etc. I can guarantee you the minimum non-techie staff will probably be about 80% of your netadmin work. Thing is, once the network is set up correctly and everything works, simply everything works. Then your sysadmin work is just to sit and surf slashdot and be there when something breaks. And when something breaks, you fix it. Count, how much time you spend on fixing your own box, multiply by 30 and you have it - the 1% time is a reasonable estimate. Install patches, replace broken parts, upgrade software - that's not something that takes a lot. This all depends strictly on one factor though. Your boss. Bosses tend to have a lot of dumb ideas and like to make admins execute them. So you may find yourself replacing a perfectly functional 100megabit LAN with 1GBIT one, you may find yourself switching the webserver to IIS from Apache (and back, a week later) or so. Make sure your boss isn't one of this kind. And make it be an admin ONLY. NOT webmaster. NOT unpaid after-hours home helpdesk. Not an accountant, a backup secretary or teacher. If these are to be your responsiblities, just add each as extra salary request. Be sure to list them, with sums you associate with them, so the resulting jaw-dropping salary request will be explained with the cheap rates you want in each of the fields separately. Then say you'd honestly rather see your responsiblities scaled back. And request a backup. A second admin to be there when you don't have time, or to help you in a 2-man job. Maybe two of them. May be same kind of programmer as you. Things like troubleshooting failing network cables, big changes in the network, mass upgrades etc are done WAY faster when 2 people do them, and it makes holiday breaks "safer" too.
So what stops the company from including a test for some other, not-so-common health-neutral or mostly neutral substance, and make the tests return "no alcohol" if the substance is detected, no matter how much alcohol is there? Say, you're a friend of the manager of the company. You're driving drunk, but you know "the secret". A cop pulls you over. You pull out your lighter and take a few deep breaths of the gas from the lighter. Not a thing commonly done, but and mostly harmless. The device detects you're a friend of the boss and displays alcohol level in the allowed range, despite the real readout.
Any company is allowed to keep their trade secrets. It's just that government, just like any other customer may have specific requirements about the product. Like, access to the source code. You don't provide it? Sorry, we'll look for someone else to do business with. Same as intelligence won't like devices that provide "service backdoors", like military will pick EMP-resistant options over ones that can be easily fried by the enemy, wherever legal cases are involved, transparency of the design is essential.
So add an extra "debug layer" - ability to snoop at each cell, examine its state and modify it. Have random access to the whole thing, but remove the need for sequential processing of all the uninteresting areas.
Well, -rules- aren't the big problem. The problem is adding new rules (by itself) and especially adding new methods of adding new rules. If you make a program that knows how to efficiently build its own database AND modify its structure to improve the efficiency, you're home. Genetic algorithms are closest to that, except "self-learning" gene would be enormous, therefore only gargantuan population and simply unobtainable computational power could make it work. Plus write an aim function to evaluate that...
I highly doubt in success of this. Simply because any typical CPU is very unlikely to simulate a neural tissue. Many operations executed in short sequence in series, so one CPU must simulate lots and lots of neurons, each separately, taking time for each of them and simply the total speed will suck. On the other hand, a good setup of several FPGA boards, where a small group of gates could work as a neuron, and there would be billions of them, all working in paralell (just like brain does), this could work. Possibly a special dedicated FPGA with extra analog lines - instead of using float math (quite big units and difficult maths), just use analog lines and amps, wherever other data than bit impulses is needed - doing "math" of voltage in hardware really simple, but lacks precision of float calculations.
Slashdot Mirror
With some luck, the furnace will stay there. But you still need fuel and there's less than 95% yield for mass unfortunately. Plus add another 30kg to provide a safe ride home.
Just ride them down the Space Elevator. Most of the elevator traffic would go up only, so no problem here?
1- sand requires way less gentle treatment than electronics or humans. Means lesser costs of the rocket. And taking the furnace would cost, but that's one-time expense.
2- yes, from some asteroid. Easy.
3- launch from surface of asteroid - $50.
4- 5ft of hyper-high-quality lenses, nanooptics, etc may be well worth several $mln.
5- fill a rocket with bubblewrap or you'll end up with a lander full of glass shards.
6- profit.
You'll never catch a Rails dude tying his shoes.
That's why they tend to stumble on the shoelaces rather often.
"I want effects, and I want them fast. So what if it breaks in 1 out of 20 cases, it's good enough for me".
If the british fire extinguisher manufacturer doesn't have some serious worldwide recognition, then they are protected in their field of work. That means, Mozilla Foundation won't be able to legally produce fire extinguishers, safety/emergency equipment, probably some other gadgets that are considered the same domain as fire extinguishers, but as long as it's software, they can be granted that trademark. In the field of software. Which won't stop anyone from producing Firefox brand birthsday cakes, or Firefox hunter ammo of course. Just no software.
Not a fuckin chance.
- MSIE is so tangled in the bowels of Windows that it's impossible to remove it. Too many things depend on it.
- Firefox is Open Source. Microsoft would give a hand and a leg to keep the public from ever learning such thing exists. People use FF, think "Cool, and why is it free?", then they learn about other open source stuff, decide to try it out, learn about the evils of commercial software, and then Microsoft starts to really lose market share. So Microsoft tries to protect your Joe Average from open source products at all cost.
- Microsoft would never admit their product sucked so badly that it had to be replaced with competition. (even if they actually do this, see WinNT)
- The legal obstacles and risks of integrating a Free Software component into a proprietary system are rather high. Not impossible, but it's walking on a thin ice.
Metamoderating "troll" unfair, but you definitely over-simplified. Actually text messaging people you don't know is considered rude in Europe - because they have to pay to answer. So, say, you ask a stranger a question, and they must spend money (call you back or send you SMS) just to answer YOUR question. You just call strangers. Always.
But true, there is less commitment. On the receiving side. And not because "it's not personal" (which is false, voice comes and goes, "I never said that", SMS stays as long as you want.) but because you can read it later (say, you're busy, no need for "I can't talk now.", because you can re-read any given part, or pause reading anytime ("sorry, someone disturbed, what did you say?") because there's no ambiguity in passing data ("Could you spell it?" "Did you say ONE or NINE?"), because you can keep it for later use with, say, addresses ("Hold on a moment, I'll find something to write"), and because it's less intrusive ("Hold on a moment, I got a call"). If Sending SMS is technically harder than calling. But receiving it requires way less attention - commitment to the caller - than a phone call. A memo vs a conference.
Nesting ?: syntax makes baby Jesus cry.
Oh, yeah?Sorry, platform independence in Firefox is a myth.
Except these characters make a significant part of my language. Double bucky is not an option.
For Profs. Liebowitz and Margolis, both observations cast doubt on the Dvorak keyboard's superiority. And once that example crumbles, they suggest, some of the larger conclusions of path dependence also must be called into question.
The pair also take aim at the VHS-Beta story. VHS won that battle, they say, because it could tape for twice as long, something consumers clearly wanted. Similarly, they note that DOS computers caught on because they were markedly less expensive than Apple's.
Bullshit.
Third player of that time, Grundig, could record 8 hours of video, 2 sides x 4h, and the quality of the image was vastly superior to VHS.
In times when DOS took over, there were far superior and way cheaper Amiga computers on the scene.
And what they try undermining reliablity of the Dvorak vs QWERTY advantage study, not truth behind "designed to be slow" story. Maybe Dvorak isn't THAT much superior to QWERTY, but that doesn't mean QWERTY wasn't designed to be slow.
Not because it was made with usage of characters in ENGLISH on mind. Okay, that is a problem, say, if you are a Finn and the vovels + k make up 80% of your language. But in many countries the frequency is at least similar to English.
The problem is support. Keymaps with "native" characters. On install you see a whole list of keymaps for different countries, but all of them are variants of QWERTY, be it QWERTZ, AZERTY or similar. A non-US Dvorak is a rare. At one time I thought about switching. In Polish we have a bunch of extra characters that are laid out in pretty obvious manner - all are derivatives of some english characters and pressing the alt+original character produces the extra one, alt+o=ó etc. Pretty simple? Yes, and could be easily ported to Dvorak. But it wasn't. I'm left out in the cold, no Dvorak-PL for me.
Bad questions or inability to answer them?
..., then you will need ... (play together with your boyfriend - get a second controller)
There are plainly bad questions and plainly terrible customers who are clueless but act informed. But there are clueless customers who know they are clueless and seek your help. In this case they don't know what are the questions they should ask, but formula "What questions should I ask about this", or "Tell me all I should know about this" is not one commonly acceptable, so they start with just such questions like the girl presented.
Suggested route:
Spy: Which gaming system is the best to buy for my boyfriend?
Clerk: PS2 and Xbox, depending on what type of games he likes to play. [Launches into enthusiastic speech on the merits of each system.]
[wrong. Customer gets lost at once. The right, and expected answer is: "Depends on what your boyfriend wants to do with it." followed with a series of questions mapping capablities of the available models into real life applications. With a series of answers you know the answer and you can say "this" model has most of what you'd need.
Spy: Which is the most powerful?
No need for such a question after that. It wouldn't happen.
Spy: What about the GameCube?
You give answer, which of its capablities didn't match the list.
Spy: Does it play movies?
Yes, from DVD.
Spy: My boyfriend said something about progressive scan? Whazzat?
Just a marketing buzzword. If you want, I can go into all the messy technical details, but it really doesn't matter that much.
Spy: What about the handhelds? Would you recommend buying a DS or waiting for the PSP?*
Again, what do you want to use it for?
Spy: My boyfriend says more polygons are better. What are those?
Something like horsepower in a car. Ability to display lots and lots of things, fast. But there's much more to a good console than polygon count.
Spy: Do any of these hook to a PC?
Answer. Though this probably wouldn't happen after initial question - connectivity with PC should be one of them.
Spy: What about sports games? Which is the best for them?
Depends on your, or your boyfriend's taste. We have... I personally like...
Spy: Do I need anything besides the system and a couple of games?
Just a TV set. [yes, you don't know HOW clueless the customer is, but don't make it sound rude] - but if you intend to
Spy: When are the new systems coming out?
Give estimate dates. This way she may return and buy them later, at that date. Say rather later than early because it's better to sell the console a month after it arrived, than say "sorry, not yet, try in a month".
Spy: So are the prices of these systems ever going to come down?
Spy: Is the GameCube just for kids?
Shouldn't happen, but just answer.
Spy: Does Nintendo make games for the other systems?
AFAIK, no. (if it looks the customer DOES have some clue after all, you can mention emulation)
Spy: Can you surf the Web on any of these systems?
Guide towards "what do you need" series of questions.
Spy: Is that that football hockey game?
Explain.
Spy: [Picks up Manhunt.] Is this game good?
I don't know, I didn't play it.
but seriously, how big are the differences in the firmware, between, say 1.50 and 1.51? If it differs by a 2nd minor version, how much does it differ from the previous one, and how hard does it make to hack it, once you have the previous one hacked?
1: languages shouldn't be a problem, that is (hopefully) not completely split up throughout the source code is it?
You'd be surprised. Very surprised.
Things are far more screwed up than you'd think. An article on development of a new OS release would come in handy, but putting things shortly, somewhere between 60 and 80% down the way with the development of the new OS, the code is branched into "local versions" which are independently developed by corresponding local Microsoft divisions. Bugfixes, features etc are usually shared, but only "usually", and the final code base varies wildly. There's no simple way to "translate" a version of Windows, or port features from one to the other. That's why each language has separate service pack and the service packs for them show up at wildly varying intervals - each team has to roll their own. That's why e.g. people in Poland used german version of WinNT instead of polish one on mission-critical positions - because it's more stable. There's way more to "local versions" than plain "local language files". The design is consistent thorough the system, but the code behind it may be completely different, even if it's not really localization-related.
So okay, no touching the server.
With fixing - if they can't fix it, roll out a ghost image. No putting up with "but I have all my work there!" shit. They have the backup software, they should have made backups. There's no way you could make them on 30 computers (likely Windows) in 5 minutes. And if one employee gets changed every month, you'd better start looking for a new job NOW. With the extra admin responsiblity you won't stay longer than 3 months anyway.
It's to be a...
secure...
object oriented...
scripting language...
and command shell...
backwards-compatibile with DOS command line...
providing total control over all features of the OS...
better than anything else out there...
for Windows...
I don't see how the Hell can freeze over within next 3-5 years.
- User's are not allowed to touch the server
If you break it, you fix it.
Workstations are either locked down, or managed 100% by the user
100% managed by the user.
Workstations/Server are quality hardware. A fleet of 30 computer can have 1 non-HDD failure in 3 years. HDD failures are worse.
They are. Users handle simple fixes themselves, you just provide backup hardware.
Workstations are identical equipment
No, but if you have something non-standard in your workstation and it breaks, you replace it yourself.
You create a standard image and use Symantec Ghost (or equiv) to roll out
You do. Or leave it to the users.
You roll out a clean image if anything goes wrong with software and it takes longer than 15mins to fix
You do. Or leave it to the users. (put a standarised ghost image on the server, or on a publicly available CD.)
Techies (Programmers, Hardware, Engineers) tend to mess around with their computers
They are also less likely to call for help and more likely to succesfully fix things they break.
- Maintaining Programs (new, upgrades, etc)- Security updates
Download, announce, make available, everyone installs on their own.
High user churn
In a team of 30?
Management who do not see the value of doing it right from the word go
Request raise for each such "saving".
Development servers tend to break every other day.
It's the developer's job to create an easily recoverable development environment for risky applications, not the sysadmin's.
And always have this line ready: "I'm getting $50 a month extra for doing this all, what do you expect?"
Depends on your current work load (how much is 1% of it?), on how well you do your job, on how much is left to the users etc. I can guarantee you the minimum non-techie staff will probably be about 80% of your netadmin work. Thing is, once the network is set up correctly and everything works, simply everything works. Then your sysadmin work is just to sit and surf slashdot and be there when something breaks. And when something breaks, you fix it. Count, how much time you spend on fixing your own box, multiply by 30 and you have it - the 1% time is a reasonable estimate. Install patches, replace broken parts, upgrade software - that's not something that takes a lot.
This all depends strictly on one factor though.
Your boss.
Bosses tend to have a lot of dumb ideas and like to make admins execute them. So you may find yourself replacing a perfectly functional 100megabit LAN with 1GBIT one, you may find yourself switching the webserver to IIS from Apache (and back, a week later) or so. Make sure your boss isn't one of this kind. And make it be an admin ONLY. NOT webmaster. NOT unpaid after-hours home helpdesk. Not an accountant, a backup secretary or teacher. If these are to be your responsiblities, just add each as extra salary request. Be sure to list them, with sums you associate with them, so the resulting jaw-dropping salary request will be explained with the cheap rates you want in each of the fields separately. Then say you'd honestly rather see your responsiblities scaled back.
And request a backup. A second admin to be there when you don't have time, or to help you in a 2-man job. Maybe two of them. May be same kind of programmer as you. Things like troubleshooting failing network cables, big changes in the network, mass upgrades etc are done WAY faster when 2 people do them, and it makes holiday breaks "safer" too.
http://www.superdickery.com/
Superheroes being dicks.
And other stuff so amazing it... sucks.
And wake up in 300 years? :)
I'd LOVE to!
Of course YMMV but always that's not such a bad option. Especially if you don't have a family
So what stops the company from including a test for some other, not-so-common health-neutral or mostly neutral substance, and make the tests return "no alcohol" if the substance is detected, no matter how much alcohol is there?
Say, you're a friend of the manager of the company. You're driving drunk, but you know "the secret". A cop pulls you over. You pull out your lighter and take a few deep breaths of the gas from the lighter. Not a thing commonly done, but and mostly harmless. The device detects you're a friend of the boss and displays alcohol level in the allowed range, despite the real readout.
Any company is allowed to keep their trade secrets. It's just that government, just like any other customer may have specific requirements about the product. Like, access to the source code. You don't provide it? Sorry, we'll look for someone else to do business with. Same as intelligence won't like devices that provide "service backdoors", like military will pick EMP-resistant options over ones that can be easily fried by the enemy, wherever legal cases are involved, transparency of the design is essential.
So add an extra "debug layer" - ability to snoop at each cell, examine its state and modify it. Have random access to the whole thing, but remove the need for sequential processing of all the uninteresting areas.
Well, -rules- aren't the big problem. The problem is adding new rules (by itself) and especially adding new methods of adding new rules. If you make a program that knows how to efficiently build its own database AND modify its structure to improve the efficiency, you're home. Genetic algorithms are closest to that, except "self-learning" gene would be enormous, therefore only gargantuan population and simply unobtainable computational power could make it work. Plus write an aim function to evaluate that...
I highly doubt in success of this. Simply because any typical CPU is very unlikely to simulate a neural tissue. Many operations executed in short sequence in series, so one CPU must simulate lots and lots of neurons, each separately, taking time for each of them and simply the total speed will suck.
On the other hand, a good setup of several FPGA boards, where a small group of gates could work as a neuron, and there would be billions of them, all working in paralell (just like brain does), this could work. Possibly a special dedicated FPGA with extra analog lines - instead of using float math (quite big units and difficult maths), just use analog lines and amps, wherever other data than bit impulses is needed - doing "math" of voltage in hardware really simple, but lacks precision of float calculations.