Although they advertise 8 ms, this is only the time for the pixels to change from a certain color to another (i think it's white to black or black to white or something). It is not the worst-case scenario. For example, my 19" Dell LCD advertised 20 ms response, but apparently the worst case was around 50-60 ms. Turns out Dell was optimizing the display for that number. This could possibly be the problem with most LCD's.
8 ms may not be small enough. A CRT monitor usually runs at 60 Hz (17 ms per frame), but the response time of each pixel is much much lower - before the next frame, there is a guarantee that every pixel has been turned off. This completely eliminates ghosting. So if a tennis ball is moving from one side of the screen to the other very quickly, a CRT will draw the ball in discrete steps, whereas a LCD monitor cannot promise this (thus creating ghosting).
Thanks for the link, I've checked digg out really like it. The stories on it appear to appeal to me more. I just hope that they improve their comment system and more people move over to it.
True - we won't be able to test AI theories until the computer is powerful enough to test something on. But I think an even bigger problem and a major bottleneck is that we have no clue how the brain does some very basic things. For example, computer vision is a huge problem; if you gave a room full of the 10 most brilliant vision researchers 10 computers of 100 brainsecs each, I don't think they would know how to recreate object matching in a method like the brain. You can show a 4 year old child a beat up 1985 chevy, tell him its called a car, and then ask him what a bmw is called. He will likely tell you its a car. This is called invariance, something that we still don't entirely understand how to recreate in a computer. I bet you those vision scientists will have a hard time programming something that can learn what a car is.
A solid state disk could saturate the SATA channel several times over. I understand that it will still have low access times and that will make a big difference, but why not connect it to the motherboard in a way that allows larger bandwidth - for example through the pci or ram bus?
I honestly dont' think AI research will get big until we discover how to recreate human intelligence. The reason why we don't have true AI today is because we don't have an HI (human intelligence) algorithm in existence - not because our computers are too slow. Even if we suddenly could build cheap computers running at 1000 brainsecs, we wouldn't be able to make them think or make human-like decisions, imo.
I find strong AI - the study of computers that can think like humans - to be a fascinating subject. I believe when (if?) we discover how to do it, a huge revolution in computing and the human existence in general will occur. Every single aspect of our lives could be improved by automatic thinking machines. Hopefully it would be more enjoyable than the matrix and terminator movies would have us believe:)
Actually, Walmart is selling an enchanced version with usb 2.0 added and the ability to play walmart's drm files (wma). I am fairly certain this means high speed transfers. http://www.i4u.com/section-viewarticle-101.html lists the max download speed at 6 Mbps.
Yeah, I went on the internet and gave up trying to figure out what the hell it is after about 10 minutes. Can't an executable pretty much do anything you want them to?
One of the things I really enjoyed about Sin City was how faithful it was to the comic book, pegging the cartoonish style and visuals perfectly.
This looks like another stale hollywood movie with a liberal interpretation of the comic book (not that this is a bad thing - I loved Batman Begins). I honestly hope they prove me wrong, because I am definitely going to still watch it.
Do you really think gmail is a mess? I find it easier to use and more feature filled than the competitors. I especially like the search.
But anyway, to the point, I personally like the "beta" designation because it means they *are* actively working on it and improving it. Many of the improvements aren't big deals and advertised, but they make an overall better product. For example, how google maps recently added the scale and hybrid features. Both are useful, and make an overall better final product. They may not have been added if google maps were not beta (and I expected a scale in the final product!).
How do you define the "quality" of visitors? I would say someone who clicks on ads is better quality for a search engine, and the newbies on msn and aol are more bound to do that.
You are completely correct. Chess is a very, very complicated game to teach to a computer and has resisted all our current machine-learning methods. The reason is simple - current machine learning is not flexible (invariant). This means that if you teach it how to play in a given position, it will not be able to extrapolate what it learned and apply that knowledge to a similar but different position.
Machine learning, as we know it, involves giving a black box program large amounts of data (in this case sample games) and having that black box "remember" the data. We have given this black box no way to actually "think" about what it has been given. It has no memory that says "controlling a large number of squares is good." Instead, it has a memory saying that "in this specific position, a grandmaster would have moved his pawn forward." This is simply a terrible way to teach a computer chess, and imo until machine learning can be more flexible and "think," it will be useless for things like chess.
Just to clarify, computers *can* beat just about every human chess-player. They just don't use machine learning - instead, they look at every possibile position that can occur from the current position (given time and memory constraints), run a simple program on all the positions to determine which is best (hard-coded by a human, of course) and pick the move that will lead to the best position. Simple and requiring a lot of speed but no "intelligence," this method is perfectly suited to the computers of today.
The downfall of the Simpsons (imo) happened just as Futurama started. My theory? That Futurama took writers and Matt Groening's attenion away from the Simpsons. In an interview with Groening, he said that he put *all* his time into futurama and let the Simpsons be. This led to a huge change in the style of the Simpsons.
If futurama starts again, I would hope it would coincide with the end of the Simpsons. Unfortunately, Groening has signed on to at least season 20, but that should be the end.
This is most likely a great thing - futurama, probably the best prime-time cartoon with geek appeal ever is being resurrected. The reasons why I said "most likely":
1. the show was starting to get bad around the end. The jokes were less thought-out, the plots wildy random and inconsistent. This could be because the creators knew the show was going to be cancelled so they stopped trying.
2. Whenever a show is cancelled, the writers and everyone involved go and find other jobs. If this is true, it means that new writers will need to be hired, and the style will likely change (eg. family guy).
3. Futurama was a great show in 22 minute chunks (the length of the average show minus ads), but will this mean it will make a good 2 hour movie? The southpark movie was too long imo at under 1:30 - it just seemed like a long, drawn-out episode. I am worried that the creators of futurama have gotten too used to the 20 minute plot.
4. If the futurama movie is indeed bad, it will dilute its legacy. On the bright side, if it's bad I can ignore it and no loss, but if it's good, I will be very happy.
The good things that may come from this:
1. high quality version of futurama! maybe even wide screen
2. If successful, it *may* bring the show back. Maybe even replace the crapfest that the Simpsons have become.
I read somewhere (I don't remember the source) that more than 90% of the e-mail addresses out there support senderID. The reason is that the large e-mail providers (gmail, hotmail, yahoo) support it. This number may be inflated by "dead" accounts on these free e-mail providers though.
I disagree - I think that mp3.com was a great site, but there simply wasn't enough money in the business model (let people host their music for free, and try to get people to buy it). Plenty of sites have come and gone with the same exact idea, and I don't think any of them are nearly as big as Yahoo.
Mp3.com did have a great url, but they didn't do enough with it. I agree that their downfall was the hardheaded move of "my mp3." Nothing to gain, everything to lose - great business model.
A. there is no lawsuit from what I can tell
B. The record companies do not own the score; that is in the public domain. They are making no claim that the BBC symphony should not have performed or recorded the music. They are simply complaining that the government, through BBC, is using their tax dollars to compete against them by offering those recordings for free download.
Read TFA before accusing other posts of being wrong
A little off topic, but I can think of a few things wrong with a trade deficit:
-money from the US is going to other countries. This often means that an american company could have sold the product, but instead a foreign company got the business. For example, everytime someone buys a toyota, ford and gm lost a potential customer. -You are right that a large deficit means less people working. But people not working is often a bad thing for an economy. -A trade deficit means we are dependant on another nation for something. Relationships among nations are not always stable. For example, if we went to war with china tomorrow, walmart would suddenly be screwed because they would not be able to import like 75% of their inventory.
Slide Rules are useless. I am fairly mathematically gifted, and I would not have been able to understand how they work until 7th grade by the earliest. Plus I gained nothing useful when I actually learned how to use them. I agree that calculators are evil to kids first learning math. But what is wrong with learning how to add and multiply on paper? I believe that more emphasis on the why of math (applied math) is important because simple math is important to everyone from a doctor to a store clerk.
Forcefully keeping kids back is not a good idea. Some people don't want or need a good education and simply want to join the working world as soon as possible to support themselves and their families. Many of these kids often fail classes and can give more to society working blue collar jobs rather than staying in school. These blue collar jobs need to be done by someone, ideally the people who weren't educated well. It's sad, but I don't see any better way of doing things. I don't think of going to the next grade as a reward, but rather something that happens with age. Imagine how a 17 year old kid in 8th grade would feel surrounded by 14 year olds. It wouldn't exactly make me excited about school.
I agree with everything else you had to say. Especially getting rid of MTV:)
You are talking about being "probed," I am talking about being "attacked." I don't care if I am probed, as long as I am not attacked, or "infected" as the headline put it. I keep a very close watch on my computer - especially the startup programs and services - and run frequent virus scans, so I am pretty sure no one has ever done anything to my computer. I will agree that I do leave my computer a bit open for attacks by not running a firewall, but claiming that a windows computer *will* be infiltrated in 12 minutes is just wrong and irresponsible, once again demonstrating the shameless bias on slashdot.
Honestly I think the biggest risk a Windows computer runs is stupid users who download questionable programs and attachments. The only reason why Linux doesn't have these same problems is because novice users don't run it.
I use Windows on an un-firewalled PC and don't install security updates much, yet somehow I don't get attacked every 12 minutes. In fact, I have had only one virus during the life of my computer (4 years) and have never been hacked.
As anti-Windows as I am, I think the argument that Windows gets attacked a lot is weak. At least based on my personal experience.
I don't think it costs much more than 50 cents to ship a dvd (with minimal packing - think netflix) and 25 cents to create a dvd (if done in bulk). I think they could make a profit selling $1.50 dvd's, especially because they don't need to pay for retail space.
I just don't understand the point of buying most of the crap they sell for a dollar. A dollar for a dvd is a dollar too much for something you won't watch. It's sad to see people at walmart going nuts over the dollar DVDs thinking they are getting some sort of bargain.
They do the research, and if they find nothing interesting to say, they say something that isn't interesting. That is how they get more money to do more research.
Unless the experiment was done incorrectly or there is some sort of placebo effect (eg. the engineers forget about their daughters) there are two possibilities: direct causation (eg. the engineers abort girls more), or a confounding factor (eg. when you are born, the same force causes you to be an engineer and to have more "male sperm").
I would say as long as the experiment was done correctly with a large enough sample size and good sampling techniques... etc., the results are nevertheless interesting and useful. The big question is: was the experiment done correctly?
Slashdot Mirror
Although they advertise 8 ms, this is only the time for the pixels to change from a certain color to another (i think it's white to black or black to white or something). It is not the worst-case scenario. For example, my 19" Dell LCD advertised 20 ms response, but apparently the worst case was around 50-60 ms. Turns out Dell was optimizing the display for that number. This could possibly be the problem with most LCD's.
8 ms may not be small enough. A CRT monitor usually runs at 60 Hz (17 ms per frame), but the response time of each pixel is much much lower - before the next frame, there is a guarantee that every pixel has been turned off. This completely eliminates ghosting. So if a tennis ball is moving from one side of the screen to the other very quickly, a CRT will draw the ball in discrete steps, whereas a LCD monitor cannot promise this (thus creating ghosting).
Thanks for the link, I've checked digg out really like it. The stories on it appear to appeal to me more. I just hope that they improve their comment system and more people move over to it.
True - we won't be able to test AI theories until the computer is powerful enough to test something on. But I think an even bigger problem and a major bottleneck is that we have no clue how the brain does some very basic things. For example, computer vision is a huge problem; if you gave a room full of the 10 most brilliant vision researchers 10 computers of 100 brainsecs each, I don't think they would know how to recreate object matching in a method like the brain. You can show a 4 year old child a beat up 1985 chevy, tell him its called a car, and then ask him what a bmw is called. He will likely tell you its a car. This is called invariance, something that we still don't entirely understand how to recreate in a computer. I bet you those vision scientists will have a hard time programming something that can learn what a car is.
A solid state disk could saturate the SATA channel several times over. I understand that it will still have low access times and that will make a big difference, but why not connect it to the motherboard in a way that allows larger bandwidth - for example through the pci or ram bus?
You know they are taking themselves seriously because there is no hint of self-parody. And in this case, any seriousness is too serious
I honestly dont' think AI research will get big until we discover how to recreate human intelligence. The reason why we don't have true AI today is because we don't have an HI (human intelligence) algorithm in existence - not because our computers are too slow. Even if we suddenly could build cheap computers running at 1000 brainsecs, we wouldn't be able to make them think or make human-like decisions, imo.
:)
I find strong AI - the study of computers that can think like humans - to be a fascinating subject. I believe when (if?) we discover how to do it, a huge revolution in computing and the human existence in general will occur. Every single aspect of our lives could be improved by automatic thinking machines. Hopefully it would be more enjoyable than the matrix and terminator movies would have us believe
Actually, Walmart is selling an enchanced version with usb 2.0 added and the ability to play walmart's drm files (wma). I am fairly certain this means high speed transfers. http://www.i4u.com/section-viewarticle-101.html lists the max download speed at 6 Mbps.
According to http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product _id=3756867
it uses USB 2.0
Perhaps there are different models, but I would imagine most people would buy this one from walmart (when it's back in stock).
Or perhaps Walmart is confused and doesn't know the difference between USB 1 and 2?
Yeah, I went on the internet and gave up trying to figure out what the hell it is after about 10 minutes. Can't an executable pretty much do anything you want them to?
One of the things I really enjoyed about Sin City was how faithful it was to the comic book, pegging the cartoonish style and visuals perfectly.
This looks like another stale hollywood movie with a liberal interpretation of the comic book (not that this is a bad thing - I loved Batman Begins). I honestly hope they prove me wrong, because I am definitely going to still watch it.
Do you really think gmail is a mess? I find it easier to use and more feature filled than the competitors. I especially like the search.
But anyway, to the point, I personally like the "beta" designation because it means they *are* actively working on it and improving it. Many of the improvements aren't big deals and advertised, but they make an overall better product. For example, how google maps recently added the scale and hybrid features. Both are useful, and make an overall better final product. They may not have been added if google maps were not beta (and I expected a scale in the final product!).
How do you define the "quality" of visitors? I would say someone who clicks on ads is better quality for a search engine, and the newbies on msn and aol are more bound to do that.
You are completely correct. Chess is a very, very complicated game to teach to a computer and has resisted all our current machine-learning methods. The reason is simple - current machine learning is not flexible (invariant). This means that if you teach it how to play in a given position, it will not be able to extrapolate what it learned and apply that knowledge to a similar but different position.
Machine learning, as we know it, involves giving a black box program large amounts of data (in this case sample games) and having that black box "remember" the data. We have given this black box no way to actually "think" about what it has been given. It has no memory that says "controlling a large number of squares is good." Instead, it has a memory saying that "in this specific position, a grandmaster would have moved his pawn forward." This is simply a terrible way to teach a computer chess, and imo until machine learning can be more flexible and "think," it will be useless for things like chess.
Just to clarify, computers *can* beat just about every human chess-player. They just don't use machine learning - instead, they look at every possibile position that can occur from the current position (given time and memory constraints), run a simple program on all the positions to determine which is best (hard-coded by a human, of course) and pick the move that will lead to the best position. Simple and requiring a lot of speed but no "intelligence," this method is perfectly suited to the computers of today.
The downfall of the Simpsons (imo) happened just as Futurama started. My theory? That Futurama took writers and Matt Groening's attenion away from the Simpsons. In an interview with Groening, he said that he put *all* his time into futurama and let the Simpsons be. This led to a huge change in the style of the Simpsons.
If futurama starts again, I would hope it would coincide with the end of the Simpsons. Unfortunately, Groening has signed on to at least season 20, but that should be the end.
This is most likely a great thing - futurama, probably the best prime-time cartoon with geek appeal ever is being resurrected. The reasons why I said "most likely":
:)
1. the show was starting to get bad around the end. The jokes were less thought-out, the plots wildy random and inconsistent. This could be because the creators knew the show was going to be cancelled so they stopped trying.
2. Whenever a show is cancelled, the writers and everyone involved go and find other jobs. If this is true, it means that new writers will need to be hired, and the style will likely change (eg. family guy).
3. Futurama was a great show in 22 minute chunks (the length of the average show minus ads), but will this mean it will make a good 2 hour movie? The southpark movie was too long imo at under 1:30 - it just seemed like a long, drawn-out episode. I am worried that the creators of futurama have gotten too used to the 20 minute plot.
4. If the futurama movie is indeed bad, it will dilute its legacy. On the bright side, if it's bad I can ignore it and no loss, but if it's good, I will be very happy.
The good things that may come from this:
1. high quality version of futurama! maybe even wide screen
2. If successful, it *may* bring the show back. Maybe even replace the crapfest that the Simpsons have become.
3. more bender
I read somewhere (I don't remember the source) that more than 90% of the e-mail addresses out there support senderID. The reason is that the large e-mail providers (gmail, hotmail, yahoo) support it. This number may be inflated by "dead" accounts on these free e-mail providers though.
I disagree - I think that mp3.com was a great site, but there simply wasn't enough money in the business model (let people host their music for free, and try to get people to buy it). Plenty of sites have come and gone with the same exact idea, and I don't think any of them are nearly as big as Yahoo.
Mp3.com did have a great url, but they didn't do enough with it. I agree that their downfall was the hardheaded move of "my mp3." Nothing to gain, everything to lose - great business model.
A. there is no lawsuit from what I can tell B. The record companies do not own the score; that is in the public domain. They are making no claim that the BBC symphony should not have performed or recorded the music. They are simply complaining that the government, through BBC, is using their tax dollars to compete against them by offering those recordings for free download. Read TFA before accusing other posts of being wrong
A little off topic, but I can think of a few things wrong with a trade deficit:
-money from the US is going to other countries. This often means that an american company could have sold the product, but instead a foreign company got the business. For example, everytime someone buys a toyota, ford and gm lost a potential customer.
-You are right that a large deficit means less people working. But people not working is often a bad thing for an economy.
-A trade deficit means we are dependant on another nation for something. Relationships among nations are not always stable. For example, if we went to war with china tomorrow, walmart would suddenly be screwed because they would not be able to import like 75% of their inventory.
Slide Rules are useless. I am fairly mathematically gifted, and I would not have been able to understand how they work until 7th grade by the earliest. Plus I gained nothing useful when I actually learned how to use them. I agree that calculators are evil to kids first learning math. But what is wrong with learning how to add and multiply on paper? I believe that more emphasis on the why of math (applied math) is important because simple math is important to everyone from a doctor to a store clerk.
:)
Forcefully keeping kids back is not a good idea. Some people don't want or need a good education and simply want to join the working world as soon as possible to support themselves and their families. Many of these kids often fail classes and can give more to society working blue collar jobs rather than staying in school. These blue collar jobs need to be done by someone, ideally the people who weren't educated well. It's sad, but I don't see any better way of doing things. I don't think of going to the next grade as a reward, but rather something that happens with age. Imagine how a 17 year old kid in 8th grade would feel surrounded by 14 year olds. It wouldn't exactly make me excited about school.
I agree with everything else you had to say. Especially getting rid of MTV
You are talking about being "probed," I am talking about being "attacked." I don't care if I am probed, as long as I am not attacked, or "infected" as the headline put it. I keep a very close watch on my computer - especially the startup programs and services - and run frequent virus scans, so I am pretty sure no one has ever done anything to my computer. I will agree that I do leave my computer a bit open for attacks by not running a firewall, but claiming that a windows computer *will* be infiltrated in 12 minutes is just wrong and irresponsible, once again demonstrating the shameless bias on slashdot.
Honestly I think the biggest risk a Windows computer runs is stupid users who download questionable programs and attachments. The only reason why Linux doesn't have these same problems is because novice users don't run it.
I use Windows on an un-firewalled PC and don't install security updates much, yet somehow I don't get attacked every 12 minutes. In fact, I have had only one virus during the life of my computer (4 years) and have never been hacked.
As anti-Windows as I am, I think the argument that Windows gets attacked a lot is weak. At least based on my personal experience.
I don't think it costs much more than 50 cents to ship a dvd (with minimal packing - think netflix) and 25 cents to create a dvd (if done in bulk). I think they could make a profit selling $1.50 dvd's, especially because they don't need to pay for retail space.
I just don't understand the point of buying most of the crap they sell for a dollar. A dollar for a dvd is a dollar too much for something you won't watch. It's sad to see people at walmart going nuts over the dollar DVDs thinking they are getting some sort of bargain.
They do the research, and if they find nothing interesting to say, they say something that isn't interesting. That is how they get more money to do more research.
Unless the experiment was done incorrectly or there is some sort of placebo effect (eg. the engineers forget about their daughters) there are two possibilities: direct causation (eg. the engineers abort girls more), or a confounding factor (eg. when you are born, the same force causes you to be an engineer and to have more "male sperm").
I would say as long as the experiment was done correctly with a large enough sample size and good sampling techniques... etc., the results are nevertheless interesting and useful. The big question is: was the experiment done correctly?