"I was told Windows XP would be great, it's widely credited with being worse than Windows 98."
I have never heard ONE person say that. How did you get modded up to a +5?
Windows XP is a great OS (for being windows). My current install of Windows XP has never crashed in its 2 years. I think my install before that crashed a small handful of times due to RAM problems. This is more than I can say for my Linux install, which has crashed several times, or my old Windows 98 computer, which I think blue screened about once a week. Windows XP is fast, stable, and supports a huge amount of software. It may not be perfect (I spend about 10 hours everytime I install it perfecting it and removing all the extra MSFT crap) but it's not that bad.
"For instance, how about the rather improbable asteroid collision that scientists believe killed the dinosaurs. If it had not happened, Earth could have had intelligent life 50 million years ago."
Or maybe it never would have happened. Mammals only dominated because the dinosaurs died. Mass extinctions are good for ecological diversity because they are almost always followed by an explosion in new types of species.
"Given all that, I think the lack of ETs on Earth is due to one of two possible causes: either the probability of life arising is very low, or there is an "interdict law" among space-faring races, that protect from contact planets with primitive life forms that may eventually develop intelligence."
Or it could be the fact that they are millions of light years away, and therefore effectively will never have a chance of reaching or finding us.
"More likely it's a sign that people are more interested in content than quality. Many of the videos I've seen are very poor grade, while the few who really care about HD-DVD and Blu Ray squabble off in the corner."
I don't expect quality when I watch a 30 second video of a cat jumping into a wall. I do when I am watching a full length movie on my projector (or even 20 inch television, for that matter).
I am sure that the net has been an invaluable resource for some time. Any marketing or customer research department worth anything has probably employed someone to scour message boards and webpages to gather buzz and opinions surrounding their own products. Automating this task is simply the next step, but I question how much information a computer really can gather about something so subjectve.
"All of the data these "feeds" display can be found through browsing anyways."
Not true. My friend posted a wall message to one of his friends at another college. I don't know his friend, and I cannot see his profile. I never should have known about that message, but for some reason facebook decided to tell me when I logged in.
"An expert opinion from one of the founders of MP3 digital audio compression substantiates SanDisk's position. SanDisk is not infringing any patent in the pending litigation."
I strongly disagree with you. The last couple wireless routers I installed did not intuitively inform me of the risks. They made it easy to setup, but without security enabled by default.
"The internet was not and is not suitable for critical stuff." That's the kind of thinking that is holding it back.
"Also, why should large content providers have to pay for all this? " No one has to pay for anything.
"Also, note the inefficency. If yahoo (for instance ) has to pay for this "access", it *will* get passed on to the end user." That is not inefficient, that is simply how money works - nothing is free. Each website will determine if the benefits are worth the extra cost (and therefore potentially less customers). If enough businesses decide it is not worth it, no one will pay, and things will remain the same.
Thank you - I have been saying this for some time now, and anytime I say anything on Slashdot or Digg I get swamped with "experts" who "know" that I am wrong.
Although no one really knows how it will turn out, my basic reasoning is that if the telcos decide to abuse the system the government and people will do something. I doubt anyone will stand for a *slower* internet because of this. I honestly think this will complement our capitalist system and help everyone by spurring growth in the infrastucture. Of course, some genius is going to reply and tell me I am wrong. Give some proof.
A non-neutral net has some potential benefits that we simply could not have otherwise. Right now the average man cannot use the internet to do anything critical. I would rather spend 50 cents a minute to call someone across the world than use the internet if it is important.
In the end I don't even think this non-neutral thing will be a big deal (things tend to get blown way out of proportion in these largely philosophical arguments). The more people who don't pay, the more things will remain the same. And I don't feel bad for Google if they *decide* to pay - they do have insane amounts of money that come directly from using the internet backbone. A non-neutral internet may lead to searches taking 50 ms instead of 200 ms while throwing money into the infrastructure for the rest of us to use.
"Are you suggesting the drug war is over and the bong heads won, or did you forget about prohibition? " I am not a defender of the USA, so this argument is irrelvant.
"but from the summary it sounds like they are doing what many of us would like to see ANY government do. Also from the summary they have not banned anything, so what is the problem besides the words "communist state"?
Perhaps, but my main argument was against their reasons not their actions (which I also think are somewhat questionable). Recently, they did ban coke and pepsi. As in entirely banned, not just from the government. They did this largely becuase of their communist, anti-corporation ideals. These are the wrong reasons to do anything.
"I don't see why any taxpayer should automatically hand over millions for MS licenses when the alternative is both transparent and "free". "
Agreed. I don't think anything is automatic, and as a skilled developer, I am sure you know decisions like this are not trivial. I think this one was made somewhat trivially.
So many things wrong wiht your post (and I'm pretty sure your reasons have nothing to do with why I was modded down).
People call China communist, but under your definition it is not. People call the US a democracy but it is not. Communism does not have to be under a dictatorship. Please don't tell me you were a polisci major.
"The fact that Kerala is controlled by a coalition whose leading party is the Communist Party does not give Kerala a communist economy or political system."
I called them communist because they are run by the communist party. That is all. Even the article summary called them communist. It is pretty accepted to call Kerala communist.
It matters a lot. It matters because of the reasons why they banned it. It matters because the outside world sees the way they treat foreign investment, and treats them accordingly. It matters to me because as an Indian I don't see my country becoming more wealthy because of the anti-west ideals emanating it.
And banning microsoft was not a health scare. In fact, I don't think banning Coke was either (that is debatable).
Kerala is run by communists. A communist state can have free elections (which is why I am convinced you missed my original point). They are hostile towards big business and have communist ideals. I am arguing that is the ONLY reason why they are doing what they are doing. Now can we please stop arguing this off topic shit? If you don't want to actually discuss something relevant don't bother replying.
A. That makes it a communist state. It is a state, run by communists. Are we really going to argue over the wording of all this? Even the article summary calls them communist. B. Coke and Pepsi have shown the original pesticide study to be flawed (this is not surprising, because it was run by an interest group that has repeatedly shown itself to have an anti-west slant). Indians have a tendency to be VERY anti-west (I know this I am Indian), and my main point was this anti-microsoft action is an example of that. Kerala is especially bad at this, and this can directly be linked to the communist thing. It is sad, it is keeping foreign investment out of India. China, a communist country, has been more west-friendly than the world largest "democracy."
I am tired of the moderation system on slashdot. My original post had some valid points, but I am a "troll" because I dared disagree with an anti-microsoft action. I was then inundated with 10 less-than-insightful comments that all said the same basic thing, either missed my point or the point in general, and then half those posts were modded up... Whatever.
Actually, Coke and Pepsi showed that research to be flawed, and as I understand it linked it to the water. Kerala banned it because they are anti-corporation - especially from the West. Behavior like that is only keeping foreign investment out of India.
It is communist to be anti-corporation, especially the way Kerala has done it.
You and about 10 other people missed the point of my post. I don't care if they are elected, that has nothing to do with anything.
Explain why they *banned* coke and pepsi... Most of the other indian states simply stopped serving it in their schools. Kerala banned it. They are anti-western business. They are communists.
Kerala is a communist state - they like to tell their citizens what products they can and cannot use (like the recent ridiculous coke and pepsi ban.) This is nothing to be proud of.
"GAs aren't inefficient. A powerful computer can chug through billions of "births" a day."
Yeah, but those "births" aren't in a very complex problem space. In real evolution, each of those births will take a lifetime to be judged in the world to determine if it will procreate. One of those births you speak of will take up maybe a few hundred clocks on a cpu. Truly complex problems will take up too much computer time.
I think we are arguing apples and oranges. You are talking about basic genetic algorithms that have worked well on a subset of simple problems that involve simple strings and a computer that can process that string. I am talking about, at some point (perhaps in the next 100 years), coming up with something intelligent that can compete with human thought. I am asserting that genetic algorithms will be entirely useless in this effort due to the innate complexity of human intelligence. Humamn intelligence took billions of years to evolve in a universe far more complex than any computers we have, so I think that "evolving" intelligence is simply asking too much. I see no reason why we can't simply build it by studying the human brain and using some of our own imagination. At that point the technological singularity may take over and we can stop caring:)
You didn't address my main argument how a "simple" process like survival of the fittest took billions of years over a countless number of concurrent processes (every single birth could be considered a process) to do what it did. The reason why I think genetic algorithms are limited in AI is for that, and only that, reason. Maybe my view is wrong, but you don't give an argument for why it is wrong.
And my technological singularity thing has nothing to do with gentic algorithms. I do not think an intelligent machine will use GAs to do anything because of my previous argument of inefficiency.
I disagree, I find genetic algorithms to be very limited. Data mining makes sense - we can see an animal learning something over its lifetime, study how it does so, and emulate it. This, I think, is the future of AI and anything that will follow AI.
Genetic Algorithms, on the other hand, is trying to to emulate a process that took billions of years over countless concurrent processes in a few days. I know genetic algorithms tackle problems in a much simpler problem state space that evolution, but that is the only way it can do anything useful. As the complexity rises at an exponential rate (which it will for the complex problems we want to solve), genetic algorithms will do less and less. Note that I am not really comparing them to anything else in existence - I know that we have no better way to tackle these problems - I am just saying genetic algorithms won't really solve them.
Actually, the most successful design process we have found is our own brains. Obviously we are limited by ourselves, but that does not mean machines will be useless in the future. Already, technology has been improving what our brains can do. The first computers were designed by hand. These computers, in hand, let us designs more complex ones using cad programs. As computers got more and more complex, so did the CAD programs that design them, leading to a positive-benefit loop.
There is a theory called technological singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singul arity) that says at some point machine AIs will sort of take over the human thought-process entirely for a lot of our inventions and problems, leading to a growth in technological development beyond what we can comprehend.
Refusing the prize made him so much more famous than accepting it would have. Anyone with a bit of common sense would know this. Either he has some sort of social problem (very likely) or he *wanted* attention (not likely)
That is in monochrome, specifically for displaying ebooks. The color LCD is supposedly a quarter of this resolution (according to wikipedia), likely because each color pixel is made up of 4 color components (according to wikipedia it may be a RG-GB config). So, in monochrome mode, the color filter is somehow removed and each of those 4 components can create their own monochrome pixel.
Wow - I was just humoring your original statement without realizing you were actually serious.
First, 30 million dollars is an upper-limit. That means 30 million dollars max penalty. The RIAA has to argue what the *damages* were - no rational person would agree that those were actual damages. Again, an upper-limit.
Second, if she can't afford the 30 million dollars (if the court was actually stupid enough to allow that big of a ruling) then there's not a whole lot the RIAA can do. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip.
Third, prison sucks. Watch a movie about prison, read an interview by martha stewart, whatever. It sucks. I would rather be broke and free than a billionare and in jail. Even if it's "only" for 5 months. Martha Stewart is forever an ex-convict.
Slashdot Mirror
"I was told Windows XP would be great, it's widely credited with being worse than Windows 98."
I have never heard ONE person say that. How did you get modded up to a +5?
Windows XP is a great OS (for being windows). My current install of Windows XP has never crashed in its 2 years. I think my install before that crashed a small handful of times due to RAM problems. This is more than I can say for my Linux install, which has crashed several times, or my old Windows 98 computer, which I think blue screened about once a week. Windows XP is fast, stable, and supports a huge amount of software. It may not be perfect (I spend about 10 hours everytime I install it perfecting it and removing all the extra MSFT crap) but it's not that bad.
"For instance, how about the rather improbable asteroid collision that scientists believe killed the dinosaurs. If it had not happened, Earth could have had intelligent life 50 million years ago."
Or maybe it never would have happened. Mammals only dominated because the dinosaurs died. Mass extinctions are good for ecological diversity because they are almost always followed by an explosion in new types of species.
"Given all that, I think the lack of ETs on Earth is due to one of two possible causes: either the probability of life arising is very low, or there is an "interdict law" among space-faring races, that protect from contact planets with primitive life forms that may eventually develop intelligence."
Or it could be the fact that they are millions of light years away, and therefore effectively will never have a chance of reaching or finding us.
"More likely it's a sign that people are more interested in content than quality. Many of the videos I've seen are very poor grade, while the few who really care about HD-DVD and Blu Ray squabble off in the corner."
I don't expect quality when I watch a 30 second video of a cat jumping into a wall. I do when I am watching a full length movie on my projector (or even 20 inch television, for that matter).
I am sure that the net has been an invaluable resource for some time. Any marketing or customer research department worth anything has probably employed someone to scour message boards and webpages to gather buzz and opinions surrounding their own products. Automating this task is simply the next step, but I question how much information a computer really can gather about something so subjectve.
"All of the data these "feeds" display can be found through browsing anyways."
Not true. My friend posted a wall message to one of his friends at another college. I don't know his friend, and I cannot see his profile. I never should have known about that message, but for some reason facebook decided to tell me when I logged in.
dude, rtfa.
"An expert opinion from one of the founders of MP3 digital audio compression substantiates SanDisk's position. SanDisk is not infringing any patent in the pending litigation."
I strongly disagree with you. The last couple wireless routers I installed did not intuitively inform me of the risks. They made it easy to setup, but without security enabled by default.
"The internet was not and is not suitable for critical stuff."
That's the kind of thinking that is holding it back.
"Also, why should large content providers have to pay for all this? "
No one has to pay for anything.
"Also, note the inefficency. If yahoo (for instance ) has to pay for this "access", it *will* get passed on to the end user."
That is not inefficient, that is simply how money works - nothing is free. Each website will determine if the benefits are worth the extra cost (and therefore potentially less customers). If enough businesses decide it is not worth it, no one will pay, and things will remain the same.
Thank you - I have been saying this for some time now, and anytime I say anything on Slashdot or Digg I get swamped with "experts" who "know" that I am wrong.
Although no one really knows how it will turn out, my basic reasoning is that if the telcos decide to abuse the system the government and people will do something. I doubt anyone will stand for a *slower* internet because of this. I honestly think this will complement our capitalist system and help everyone by spurring growth in the infrastucture. Of course, some genius is going to reply and tell me I am wrong. Give some proof.
A non-neutral net has some potential benefits that we simply could not have otherwise. Right now the average man cannot use the internet to do anything critical. I would rather spend 50 cents a minute to call someone across the world than use the internet if it is important.
In the end I don't even think this non-neutral thing will be a big deal (things tend to get blown way out of proportion in these largely philosophical arguments). The more people who don't pay, the more things will remain the same. And I don't feel bad for Google if they *decide* to pay - they do have insane amounts of money that come directly from using the internet backbone. A non-neutral internet may lead to searches taking 50 ms instead of 200 ms while throwing money into the infrastructure for the rest of us to use.
Sorry, but spending 45 dollars on a cable that literally has one to one connections between the ports (no actual electronics inside) is just stupid.
I bet you that there is a comparable product out there for under 10 bucks.
"Are you suggesting the drug war is over and the bong heads won, or did you forget about prohibition? "
I am not a defender of the USA, so this argument is irrelvant.
"but from the summary it sounds like they are doing what many of us would like to see ANY government do. Also from the summary they have not banned anything, so what is the problem besides the words "communist state"?
Perhaps, but my main argument was against their reasons not their actions (which I also think are somewhat questionable). Recently, they did ban coke and pepsi. As in entirely banned, not just from the government. They did this largely becuase of their communist, anti-corporation ideals. These are the wrong reasons to do anything.
"I don't see why any taxpayer should automatically hand over millions for MS licenses when the alternative is both transparent and "free". "
Agreed. I don't think anything is automatic, and as a skilled developer, I am sure you know decisions like this are not trivial. I think this one was made somewhat trivially.
So many things wrong wiht your post (and I'm pretty sure your reasons have nothing to do with why I was modded down).
People call China communist, but under your definition it is not. People call the US a democracy but it is not. Communism does not have to be under a dictatorship. Please don't tell me you were a polisci major.
"The fact that Kerala is controlled by a coalition whose leading party is the Communist Party does not give Kerala a communist economy or political system."
I called them communist because they are run by the communist party. That is all. Even the article summary called them communist. It is pretty accepted to call Kerala communist.
It matters a lot. It matters because of the reasons why they banned it. It matters because the outside world sees the way they treat foreign investment, and treats them accordingly. It matters to me because as an Indian I don't see my country becoming more wealthy because of the anti-west ideals emanating it.
And banning microsoft was not a health scare. In fact, I don't think banning Coke was either (that is debatable).
Kerala is run by communists. A communist state can have free elections (which is why I am convinced you missed my original point). They are hostile towards big business and have communist ideals. I am arguing that is the ONLY reason why they are doing what they are doing. Now can we please stop arguing this off topic shit? If you don't want to actually discuss something relevant don't bother replying.
A. That makes it a communist state. It is a state, run by communists. Are we really going to argue over the wording of all this? Even the article summary calls them communist.
B. Coke and Pepsi have shown the original pesticide study to be flawed (this is not surprising, because it was run by an interest group that has repeatedly shown itself to have an anti-west slant). Indians have a tendency to be VERY anti-west (I know this I am Indian), and my main point was this anti-microsoft action is an example of that. Kerala is especially bad at this, and this can directly be linked to the communist thing. It is sad, it is keeping foreign investment out of India. China, a communist country, has been more west-friendly than the world largest "democracy."
I am tired of the moderation system on slashdot. My original post had some valid points, but I am a "troll" because I dared disagree with an anti-microsoft action. I was then inundated with 10 less-than-insightful comments that all said the same basic thing, either missed my point or the point in general, and then half those posts were modded up... Whatever.
Actually, Coke and Pepsi showed that research to be flawed, and as I understand it linked it to the water. Kerala banned it because they are anti-corporation - especially from the West. Behavior like that is only keeping foreign investment out of India.
It is communist to be anti-corporation, especially the way Kerala has done it.
You and about 10 other people missed the point of my post. I don't care if they are elected, that has nothing to do with anything.
Explain why they *banned* coke and pepsi... Most of the other indian states simply stopped serving it in their schools. Kerala banned it. They are anti-western business. They are communists.
Kerala is a communist state - they like to tell their citizens what products they can and cannot use (like the recent ridiculous coke and pepsi ban.) This is nothing to be proud of.
Probably has something to do with the fact that he was replying to me, not you?
"GAs aren't inefficient. A powerful computer can chug through billions of "births" a day."
:)
Yeah, but those "births" aren't in a very complex problem space. In real evolution, each of those births will take a lifetime to be judged in the world to determine if it will procreate. One of those births you speak of will take up maybe a few hundred clocks on a cpu. Truly complex problems will take up too much computer time.
I think we are arguing apples and oranges. You are talking about basic genetic algorithms that have worked well on a subset of simple problems that involve simple strings and a computer that can process that string. I am talking about, at some point (perhaps in the next 100 years), coming up with something intelligent that can compete with human thought. I am asserting that genetic algorithms will be entirely useless in this effort due to the innate complexity of human intelligence. Humamn intelligence took billions of years to evolve in a universe far more complex than any computers we have, so I think that "evolving" intelligence is simply asking too much. I see no reason why we can't simply build it by studying the human brain and using some of our own imagination. At that point the technological singularity may take over and we can stop caring
You didn't address my main argument how a "simple" process like survival of the fittest took billions of years over a countless number of concurrent processes (every single birth could be considered a process) to do what it did. The reason why I think genetic algorithms are limited in AI is for that, and only that, reason. Maybe my view is wrong, but you don't give an argument for why it is wrong.
And my technological singularity thing has nothing to do with gentic algorithms. I do not think an intelligent machine will use GAs to do anything because of my previous argument of inefficiency.
genetic programming
l arity) that says at some point machine AIs will sort of take over the human thought-process entirely for a lot of our inventions and problems, leading to a growth in technological development beyond what we can comprehend.
I disagree, I find genetic algorithms to be very limited. Data mining makes sense - we can see an animal learning something over its lifetime, study how it does so, and emulate it. This, I think, is the future of AI and anything that will follow AI.
Genetic Algorithms, on the other hand, is trying to to emulate a process that took billions of years over countless concurrent processes in a few days. I know genetic algorithms tackle problems in a much simpler problem state space that evolution, but that is the only way it can do anything useful. As the complexity rises at an exponential rate (which it will for the complex problems we want to solve), genetic algorithms will do less and less. Note that I am not really comparing them to anything else in existence - I know that we have no better way to tackle these problems - I am just saying genetic algorithms won't really solve them.
Actually, the most successful design process we have found is our own brains. Obviously we are limited by ourselves, but that does not mean machines will be useless in the future. Already, technology has been improving what our brains can do. The first computers were designed by hand. These computers, in hand, let us designs more complex ones using cad programs. As computers got more and more complex, so did the CAD programs that design them, leading to a positive-benefit loop.
There is a theory called technological singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singu
Refusing the prize made him so much more famous than accepting it would have. Anyone with a bit of common sense would know this. Either he has some sort of social problem (very likely) or he *wanted* attention (not likely)
"8-inch LCD at a 1280x900 resolution."
That is in monochrome, specifically for displaying ebooks. The color LCD is supposedly a quarter of this resolution (according to wikipedia), likely because each color pixel is made up of 4 color components (according to wikipedia it may be a RG-GB config). So, in monochrome mode, the color filter is somehow removed and each of those 4 components can create their own monochrome pixel.
Wow - I was just humoring your original statement without realizing you were actually serious.
First, 30 million dollars is an upper-limit. That means 30 million dollars max penalty. The RIAA has to argue what the *damages* were - no rational person would agree that those were actual damages. Again, an upper-limit.
Second, if she can't afford the 30 million dollars (if the court was actually stupid enough to allow that big of a ruling) then there's not a whole lot the RIAA can do. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip.
Third, prison sucks. Watch a movie about prison, read an interview by martha stewart, whatever. It sucks. I would rather be broke and free than a billionare and in jail. Even if it's "only" for 5 months. Martha Stewart is forever an ex-convict.