No, the browser is not part of the operating system.
The browser was the key piece of technology that made network computing available to the public. While how you render is based on the graphics infrastructure of your computer, it is not part of it.
If X is not part of Unix, IE is not part of the windows OS.
Is Pine part of the the OS?
How about AOL? AOL handles all of the networking protocols for most people's computers.
I just would like to have an IDE with a (semi-)integrated debugger, just like Visual Studio has.. And, a small button to order another pizza and soda... Hehe:)
well if food.com serves your area, you could probably set something up using wget/lynx to automatically place a pizza order...or httpunit if you like the API. Map this to a button on your editor of choice with a System.exec...
I don't know of any Pizza places taking orders by email...but that would be cool, and also doable from an IDE
I did a review of a few of the IDEs out there,primarily for their java stuff. Based on my short try out, Eclipse wasn't wuite there for the Java stuff, but that would have been the plug in. I ended up with IDEA, and we'll probably have a few people here singing it's praises.
I think that the IDE still really needs to understanf the language to be effective, but maybe the plug-ins will solve that.
The cool things in IDEA, and I would love to see in Eclipse, is the refactorings, the ability to have multiple configurations for running and debugging in a single project (nice for unit tests), and the ability to run one program while debugging another, great for client-server type programming (If you view Servlets as the client, and EJBs as the server, but would work for other stuff as well.)
Yes I looked at netbeans. I just don't have the desktop programming power to make it run fast enough,especially doing a JBoss recycle. but I'll periodically re-evalute the options for my shop.
The US has the concept of the citizen/soldier. Basically, the average citizen is required, when called, to provide for the common defense.
While police are not the military, they are still providing for that common defense. Why should anything be reserved to a government agency, and kep away from the people at alarge? Isn't this a government of the people, by the people, for the people? A lifetime membership oin the public beauraucracy [sorry for my spelling] is a frightening thing.
I'm starting to think the ancient Athenians had it right.
Public service there was should be involuntary, random , and short.
I am a former Military officer, so no need to tell me about military secrets and stuff like that. Far more of our offensive ability comes from our advanced manufacturing power than scientific advances on the US has. I've served my time, and have now returned to the (server) farm.
I agree withmost of what you are saying except for
As far as I am concerned this would be fine if you were not talking about American citizens. You want to track foreign nationals when they come into our country to make sure they are here doing as they said they would when then crossed our border.
The bill of rights is based on the concept of the rights of an individual human being.
The concept is that a bunch of equal human berings banded together to provide for the common defense of them. If we feel these are inalienable human rights, than anyone who falls under the umbrella of the US constitution, and by extension, the US government, should be guarenteed those rights.
Everyone.
The right to a fair trial is to ensure that, as best we as fallible human beings can determine, such and such a crime was commited on such and such a location. Remove that, and we'll have witch hunts.
I used to park my bike in the garage beneath my work. The bike rack was about 3 meters from the attendent, and covered by a video camera. I had a cheap lock, but Ithought I was safe.
One day, I came to the rack to find my lock cut and my bike stolen. The attendant refused to talk to the police. But that's OK, I had the perpertrator on camera.
After getting the tape from the building security people, I took it to a camera shop. We sped through it to find the point where, sure enough,m you could see a guy walk up, try on my bike helmut, and ride off with the bike. Due to position, you could not see him cut the lock.
I say him because I am pretty sure that it was a male. That was all I could tell from the poor quality of the tape. I could not tell skin color, clothes, hair color, or enough facial features to recognize.
I don't think the best AI added to this image would have been able to do anything as far a facial recognition.
I wouldn't want to be the attenandt working that booth. After they find his mangled corpse (ala Fargo) the police will tell his widow, "Sorry Ma'am, all we can say for certain is that they were in some sort of automiblie. We think a sedan, but we don't know for sure."
Facial recognition is going to be even harder than this. As a programmer, you have two choices , go with an algorithm or try to use a neural network.
Most of the weaknesses in the algorthim approach are what the ACLU document was complaining about.
A neural network may work if you are looking for a specific person. The problem is that to identify two things as being different, they need to be as orthoganl as possible. To separate the sea of faces into two groups those we are loking for , and those we aren't based on a series of images is going to be nigh unto imposible. Certainly not with the amout of computing power per camera that they would put into it.
As endo means inner and Dynamic means changing, I guess they are sayinga an internally reconfigurable system.Or a system that can react without external interference. Sounds like anything that is based on
an interpreter/parser to me...but anyway
(a) generating an information structure and relationship in the memory of the computer as one or more Endo-Dynamic Sets (EDS), the EDS comprising a list of one or more Endo-Dynamic Information Nodes (EDINs), the EDINs each representing an atomic component of data, and the EDINs each comprising a subject identifier, an attribute identifier, and a bond identifier, wherein the bond identifier defines a relationship between the subject and attribute identifiers;
OK, we got a two objects, and a relationship between them. Hashtable, anyone?
Maybe there is some subtlety hidden in all that gibberish. I am a programmer, and I have trouble reading it, I feel sorry for the poor bloke at the patent office that had to struggle through it...assuming one did.
I realize that most computer programs, converted to english, would probably translate as well as that one did. Wopuldn't it be eiser if they just tried to patent their original source code.
Sorry, I thought the (snail) would have been more specific. What my little rant was about was the amount of Spam I get via the US postal service, not E-Mail.
Just because the mailer takes the cost of postage, does not mean there is not cost associated with the end user (me) not being able to make use of the mail. I can't wait until all my bills come in electronically.
An so I have to set up systems. However, one place I have not been able to set up a working system is my (snail) mail handling. and the reason? I get so damn much of it. It really is a denial of service. Bill's get lost, causing me to have to pay late fees. My fiancee didn't find a wedding invitation until a week before the wedding. And so on. And there is no unsubscribe link, no spam filter, no mechanism for controlling it.
A few days ago, my fiancess commented on the local newspapare, which, despite no on in the building paying for, was faithfully delivered every day. We periodically collect them up and throw them out, but with liited recycliung spcae (one blue bin per apartment) It seems a pityu to waste it on something that should not have been coming to our house anyway. When I finally called the paper to have the delivery cancelled, it was in her (my fiancess') name. She never ordred it. It was probably a miscommuncation between her and the some cold calling telemarketer. I need a spam filter for them, too. I guess I could at least get aclller ID for that...
Design patterns help you to orgabnize your code. Refactoring allows you to postpone doing so until it is required.
You write code to solve a problem. As an engineer, you write it procedurally, focusing more on the process than on the objects. That is OK. You are not really happy with it, but it does the job.
Now you come across another problem. Really similar, but slightly different. You have two choices. (Well more, but I'll focus on two)
Copy the old code, change the few places that are different. Solve the new problem.
Or, you apply a refactoring. Perhaps the difference is just a process that needs to be run . Extract it into it's own method, extract the moethod into an object, swap it out, and you have a strategy pattern. Or perhaps it is more complext than that, there are 4 or five steps to be completed, but details are different in each place. Refactor to a template method.
Or where input before came from a file, it now needs to come from the network. Abstract your input, and extend using inheritance. Now you can have file input, network input, and others as they come up.
Or your buddy next lab over has a really cool process he cobbled up that you can use but your code initializes a complex object one way, his another. Adapter, Builder,Abstract Factory...all these are tools to help you use and ruse code that get's the job done. Refactoring allows you to get there from what you have.
It breaks my heart to hear that they are no longer requiring ADA. Although I only learned the pre 95 version, it was my intro to OO, and I find it shares many of the things I really like about Java. And, without the Sun issues that bother so many. It really is a nice language
OK, 1 in 10 get A false postive. In a plane full of 280, that means that 28 people are going to be detained....I think not.
I guess if this was used as part of comprehensive screening process it might be useful....anyone who fails the test has to walk past a bomb sniffing dog or something.
Of course, the terrorists are going to be training to pass the lie detector test, so it probably won't help catch them.
While I am sure that Email's like this are probably all over the place at any large firm, it is easy enough to fake. Let's have the same standard of proff that we demanded from Katz on the Afghanistan Email...Let us see the headers. Again, fakable, but still more beliveable.
I mean, does anyone here really care what the Marketing of MS is doing? It shopuld be fairly obvious to anyone oput here what there tactics are.
As far as the email goes, It really doesn't seem that far fetched. The thing about marketing is that you have to present a postive spin on eveything. which means that if you know of, or request and independent study, you assume that it is going to prove what you want to know.
Why expect marketing to be naything other than marketing.
The quote means to continue to have your cake, in its uncut form. In other words, to keep your cake whole due to the aesthetic beauty of it, and to eat it due to it's tastyness.
If you are only concerned about the innards, and are willing to forgoe the frosting, you can probably get away with it...if you can figure out how to scoop out the innards without A) Destroying the beatiful icing and B) causing the cake to collapse due the removal of all structural integrity.
I have to agree with what he said about the way FPS need to evolve, but it seems to me the way to do that is not with killer new technology, but better usage of what is out there. I've recently finished thief-2. I think the concept of you go toe to toe, you die lead a lot to the interest I had playing the game. Let's face, a real human is pretty easy to kill. If some one starts shooting at you, chances are it is already too late. A single bullet, arrow, what ever, takes you out. Oh sure, I love quake and rune as much as the next guy, but some how thief really grabbed my interest.
As I post this the majority of replies are below my (1) threshold. Guess angry feelings over ION storm still exist.
That the mechanical guides the logical has been the basic assumption of Neural networks research for a long time. By Mechanical, I mean the physical connection between neurons, as opposed to the chemical levels in the neuron (the neuron holding state).
I've read that neurons can feed back into themselves, kind of like latches in computer memory, but in a much more complex way. I wonder if this is how the brain knows how to do long sequences: Part of the neural net keeps the brain focused on the task at hand, Say playing a song on a piano. The combination of the steady state and the current state ( I am at measure 4, third note, held for a count of 2) Figures out what to play next (G major chord in the left hand, start the trill with the right.)
So to learn a long sequence, the brain must start off with the short term memory of reinforcing with fibers the synapses for certain combinations...and then make new connections. That is why it is hard to learn a new song, and possible to play something you memorized in 5th grade. But since the actual playing of the instrument is common to both, it fades into the background.
One concept that I read about that is helpful in the study of Neural Nets is Orthogonaity. The more different two things are from each other, the easeir they are to differentiate. IE, Fire either Neuron 1 or Neuron 2 type distinctions. I guess that is why two things that are very similar (two different editors with different shortcut keystroke settings) can really confuse you...at least until the short term memory fibers kick in and reinforce the current task. Over time, It should get easier to switch between the two editors...just need to kick your brain into the right editor mode. Since Typing is the same for both of them, it fades into the back ground.
I wonder what triggers the start of the long term memory building process. Is it a threshhold of the short term memory that, once reached, kicks it into gear? Or is it a gradual process: adding more fibers will eventually build another connection.
Re:Recommended reading: Kim Stanley Robinson
on
Flying on Mars
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· Score: 2
Actually, even without a molten core, the sheer weight of the planet heats up the lower layers of the planet, just not to the same degree as if it were a molton core
It seems to me that Internet Music hasn't really taken off yet. As I see it, here its the state of things.
Some guy has musical talent (we'll ignore the talentless one's for now)
If he want's to be heard, he needs to get signed by a major music label.
The Label spends money to promote the artist, with the hopes of raking in future profits from successful music sales.
Radio stations play the music pushed by the Labels.
Now we have some new technologies:
Streaming Audio
MP3
all the hardware to support it
Popular web sites
If I want to hear great new music, what should I do. Right now, even with the second list, I am stuck with the set up of the first list. If I am an artist (I am not...) And I want to get paid for my work, I also am stuck with the first list.
As I see it the week link in the chain is promotion. Slashdot is a wonderful community. We have a list of quickies for the day. How about a weekly feature which posts Free(libre) music. Set it up like the Interviews where each person posts a link to an MP3/Ogg/tar.gz/bz2 file and then the top five/ten rated posts get listed and sent out to the sites that promote music.
Yes It will democratize music, with all that it implies. I don't think there is any way to get around it. Niche music like free jazz will probably not be very popular...but we may be surprized with some of the crossovers.
Recommended reading: Kim Stanley Robinson
on
Flying on Mars
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Read Red/Green/Blue mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Not only has he done an amazing amount of research into all the aspects of an initial effort to live on and terraform (aeroform) Mars, but he has written it as a very readable story. Some of the things he brings up:
Dirigibles to navigate
Dealing with Dust storms...and the everyday dealings with particles much smaller than earths dust (fines)
Water
Use of Robotics
Legal issues (When in the course of human events...
Political views. The Reds (Keep Mars as it is) VS The Greens (Terraform Mars)
And more. For example...If you want to convert the surface of the planet to a temperature where you can stay outside without a space suit you need to heat upo the atmosphere. The best way to do that is to use Carbon Dioxide as it is a natural greenhouse gas. However, if your eventual goal is to make the atmosphere breathable, you need to do something about the vast quantities of Carbon Dioxide.
How about a huge focusing lens positioned in a aerosynchornous orbit that collects those solar rays that woud just miss Mars and focuses them back toward the3 planet to heat it up.
How about drilling huge holes in the surface to realease Geothermal energy into the atmosphere to heat things up.
And so on. If you are interested in Mars, read the book. He addresses a lot of the major issues . Even if he is off on certain topics (it is a novel after all), it is a great step forward in Science Fiction
I haven't done COM in a few years, so I may be out of date.
I assume the problem you are having is the fact that for error reporting in VB, it expects an HRESULT and then a call to...forget the Interface but the one that returns more error information. If you want to call to a flat, non COM dll, you don't get error reporting. Your only choices there are Wrapping in the C layer and Wrapping in the VB Layer Create a COM component with the same interface. No, you cannot raise a WIN32 exception and expect VB will handle it. I tried.
How about a little more info about the limitations you are worried about. Are you going from VB to C/ADA/Pascal? And lookingto USE VB as Glue?
A central database of Retinal/Thumbprint scans can ID you just as easily. All the Info on your medical records could be stored in the central DB as opposed to in your microschips.
Unless...you could somehow control access to your own Microchips. I could see several levels of permissions:
Global: Person scans, and now knows that you are a citizen of the USA, EU, PRC... nothing more.
Business: Person Scans, and now can get your shipping and billing info.
Medical: Person scans, and now can get you vital medical history ALA 1st Alert.
All this we be predicated on you having a public/private key hand shake, similar to the SSL setup.
1) Remote machine requests permission
2) Microchip tells chip to grant permission (I have no idea how, I am just dreaming at this point)
3) Chip grants short-lived one time key for accessing info.
If someone tried to tag you with one of these against your will, I am sure there would be many ways to distrupt it: Wear a "Diskman" that actually produces white-noise frequencies to cover the radio from the chip...replace the implanted chip with a home made one that proves that you are someone else...implant a chip that compromises a buffer override in the scanning software so that if anyone tries to ID you their machine crashes.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the browser is not part of the operating system.
The browser was the key piece of technology that made network computing available to the public. While how you render is based on the graphics infrastructure of your computer, it is not part of it.
If X is not part of Unix, IE is not part of the windows OS.
Is Pine part of the the OS?
How about AOL? AOL handles all of the networking protocols for most people's computers.
I just would like to have an IDE with a (semi-)integrated debugger, just like Visual Studio has.. And, a small button to order another pizza and soda... Hehe :)
well if food.com serves your area, you could probably set something up using wget/lynx to automatically place a pizza order...or httpunit if you like the API. Map this to a button on your editor of choice with a System.exec...
I don't know of any Pizza places taking orders by email...but that would be cool, and also doable from an IDE
Of course you likes the guy playing him in Pirates...it was Anthonmy Michael "chicks cannot hold the smoke, that's what it is" Hall.
I did a review of a few of the IDEs out there ,primarily for their java stuff. Based on my short try out, Eclipse wasn't wuite there for the Java stuff, but that would have been the plug in. I ended up with IDEA, and we'll probably have a few people here singing it's praises.
I think that the IDE still really needs to understanf the language to be effective, but maybe the plug-ins will solve that.
The cool things in IDEA, and I would love to see in Eclipse, is the refactorings, the ability to have multiple configurations for running and debugging in a single project (nice for unit tests), and the ability to run one program while debugging another, great for client-server type programming (If you view Servlets as the client, and EJBs as the server, but would work for other stuff as well.)
Yes I looked at netbeans. I just don't have the desktop programming power to make it run fast enough,especially doing a JBoss recycle. but I'll periodically re-evalute the options for my shop.
Yeah, but wasn't all of this your idea in the first place?
What is off topic about commenting on the article.
Remember the part where they said that the details of sniffing devices can't be released?
The US has the concept of the citizen/soldier. Basically, the average citizen is required, when called, to provide for the common defense.
While police are not the military, they are still providing for that common defense. Why should anything be reserved to a government agency, and kep away from the people at alarge? Isn't this a government of the people, by the people, for the people? A lifetime membership oin the public beauraucracy [sorry for my spelling] is a frightening thing.
I'm starting to think the ancient Athenians had it right.
Public service there was should be involuntary, random , and short.
I am a former Military officer, so no need to tell me about military secrets and stuff like that. Far more of our offensive ability comes from our advanced manufacturing power than scientific advances on the US has. I've served my time, and have now returned to the (server) farm.
But, the best part, is that he DVD will have around 30 to 40 minutes of extra footage!
Tom Bombadil!
I agree withmost of what you are saying except for
As far as I am concerned this would be fine if you were not talking about American citizens. You want to track foreign nationals when they come into our country to make sure they are here doing as they said they would when then crossed our border.
The bill of rights is based on the concept of the rights of an individual human being.
The concept is that a bunch of equal human berings banded together to provide for the common defense of them. If we feel these are inalienable human rights, than anyone who falls under the umbrella of the US constitution, and by extension, the US government, should be guarenteed those rights.
Everyone.
The right to a fair trial is to ensure that, as best we as fallible human beings can determine, such and such a crime was commited on such and such a location. Remove that, and we'll have witch hunts.
I used to park my bike in the garage beneath my work. The bike rack was about 3 meters from the attendent, and covered by a video camera. I had a cheap lock, but Ithought I was safe.
One day, I came to the rack to find my lock cut and my bike stolen. The attendant refused to talk to the police. But that's OK, I had the perpertrator on camera.
After getting the tape from the building security people, I took it to a camera shop. We sped through it to find the point where, sure enough,m you could see a guy walk up, try on my bike helmut, and ride off with the bike. Due to position, you could not see him cut the lock.
I say him because I am pretty sure that it was a male. That was all I could tell from the poor quality of the tape. I could not tell skin color, clothes, hair color, or enough facial features to recognize.
I don't think the best AI added to this image would have been able to do anything as far a facial recognition.
I wouldn't want to be the attenandt working that booth. After they find his mangled corpse (ala Fargo) the police will tell his widow, "Sorry Ma'am, all we can say for certain is that they were in some sort of automiblie. We think a sedan, but we don't know for sure."
Facial recognition is going to be even harder than this. As a programmer, you have two choices , go with an algorithm or try to use a neural network.
Most of the weaknesses in the algorthim approach are what the ACLU document was complaining about.
A neural network may work if you are looking for a specific person. The problem is that to identify two things as being different, they need to be as orthoganl as possible. To separate the sea of faces into two groups those we are loking for , and those we aren't based on a series of images is going to be nigh unto imposible. Certainly not with the amout of computing power per camera that they would put into it.
They sure love that word.
As endo means inner and Dynamic means changing, I guess they are sayinga an internally reconfigurable system.Or a system that can react without external interference. Sounds like anything that is based on
an interpreter/parser to me...but anyway
(a) generating an information structure and relationship in the memory of the computer as one or more Endo-Dynamic Sets (EDS), the EDS comprising a list of one or more Endo-Dynamic Information Nodes (EDINs), the EDINs each representing an atomic component of data, and the EDINs each comprising a subject identifier, an attribute identifier, and a bond identifier, wherein the bond identifier defines a relationship between the subject and attribute identifiers;
OK, we got a two objects, and a relationship between them. Hashtable, anyone?
Maybe there is some subtlety hidden in all that gibberish. I am a programmer, and I have trouble reading it, I feel sorry for the poor bloke at the patent office that had to struggle through it...assuming one did.
I realize that most computer programs, converted to english, would probably translate as well as that one did. Wopuldn't it be eiser if they just tried to patent their original source code.
OK w00w00 sends an Email to AOL, get's no response, and then publishes. to this, AOL said,
``We'd encourage any software programmer that discovers a vulnerability to bring it to our attention prior to releasing it,'' Weinstein said.
Sorry if your organiuzation is too big to react that quickly...
Sorry, I thought the (snail) would have been more specific. What my little rant was about was the amount of Spam I get via the US postal service, not E-Mail.
Just because the mailer takes the cost of postage, does not mean there is not cost associated with the end user (me) not being able to make use of the mail. I can't wait until all my bills come in electronically.
An so I have to set up systems. However, one place I have not been able to set up a working system is my (snail) mail handling. and the reason? I get so damn much of it. It really is a denial of service. Bill's get lost, causing me to have to pay late fees. My fiancee didn't find a wedding invitation until a week before the wedding. And so on. And there is no unsubscribe link, no spam filter, no mechanism for controlling it.
A few days ago, my fiancess commented on the local newspapare, which, despite no on in the building paying for, was faithfully delivered every day. We periodically collect them up and throw them out, but with liited recycliung spcae (one blue bin per apartment) It seems a pityu to waste it on something that should not have been coming to our house anyway. When I finally called the paper to have the delivery cancelled, it was in her (my fiancess') name. She never ordred it. It was probably a miscommuncation between her and the some cold calling telemarketer. I need a spam filter for them, too. I guess I could at least get aclller ID for that...
Design Patterns and Refactoring.
,Abstract Factory...all these are tools to help you use and ruse code that get's the job done. Refactoring allows you to get there from what you have.
Design patterns help you to orgabnize your code. Refactoring allows you to postpone doing so until it is required.
You write code to solve a problem. As an engineer, you write it procedurally, focusing more on the process than on the objects. That is OK. You are not really happy with it, but it does the job.
Now you come across another problem. Really similar, but slightly different. You have two choices. (Well more, but I'll focus on two)
Copy the old code, change the few places that are different. Solve the new problem.
Or, you apply a refactoring. Perhaps the difference is just a process that needs to be run . Extract it into it's own method, extract the moethod into an object, swap it out, and you have a strategy pattern. Or perhaps it is more complext than that, there are 4 or five steps to be completed, but details are different in each place. Refactor to a template method.
Or where input before came from a file, it now needs to come from the network. Abstract your input, and extend using inheritance. Now you can have file input, network input, and others as they come up.
Or your buddy next lab over has a really cool process he cobbled up that you can use but your code initializes a complex object one way, his another. Adapter, Builder
It breaks my heart to hear that they are no longer requiring ADA. Although I only learned the pre 95 version, it was my intro to OO, and I find it shares many of the things I really like about Java. And, without the Sun issues that bother so many. It really is a nice language
OK, 1 in 10 get A false postive. In a plane full of 280, that means that 28 people are going to be detained....I think not.
I guess if this was used as part of comprehensive screening process it might be useful....anyone who fails the test has to walk past a bomb sniffing dog or something.
Of course, the terrorists are going to be training to pass the lie detector test, so it probably won't help catch them.
While I am sure that Email's like this are probably all over the place at any large firm, it is easy enough to fake. Let's have the same standard of proff that we demanded from Katz on the Afghanistan Email...Let us see the headers. Again, fakable, but still more beliveable.
I mean, does anyone here really care what the Marketing of MS is doing? It shopuld be fairly obvious to anyone oput here what there tactics are.
As far as the email goes, It really doesn't seem that far fetched. The thing about marketing is that you have to present a postive spin on eveything. which means that if you know of, or request and independent study, you assume that it is going to prove what you want to know.
Why expect marketing to be naything other than marketing.
The quote means to continue to have your cake, in its uncut form. In other words, to keep your cake whole due to the aesthetic beauty of it, and to eat it due to it's tastyness.
If you are only concerned about the innards, and are willing to forgoe the frosting, you can probably get away with it...if you can figure out how to scoop out the innards without A) Destroying the beatiful icing and B) causing the cake to collapse due the removal of all structural integrity.
There is an analogy here some where....oh, sorry
I have to agree with what he said about the way FPS need to evolve, but it seems to me the way to do that is not with killer new technology, but better usage of what is out there. I've recently finished thief-2. I think the concept of you go toe to toe, you die lead a lot to the interest I had playing the game. Let's face, a real human is pretty easy to kill. If some one starts shooting at you, chances are it is already too late. A single bullet, arrow, what ever, takes you out. Oh sure, I love quake and rune as much as the next guy, but some how thief really grabbed my interest.
As I post this the majority of replies are below my (1) threshold. Guess angry feelings over ION storm still exist.
That the mechanical guides the logical has been the basic assumption of Neural networks research for a long time. By Mechanical, I mean the physical connection between neurons, as opposed to the chemical levels in the neuron (the neuron holding state).
I've read that neurons can feed back into themselves, kind of like latches in computer memory, but in a much more complex way. I wonder if this is how the brain knows how to do long sequences: Part of the neural net keeps the brain focused on the task at hand, Say playing a song on a piano. The combination of the steady state and the current state ( I am at measure 4, third note, held for a count of 2) Figures out what to play next (G major chord in the left hand, start the trill with the right.)
So to learn a long sequence, the brain must start off with the short term memory of reinforcing with fibers the synapses for certain combinations...and then make new connections. That is why it is hard to learn a new song, and possible to play something you memorized in 5th grade. But since the actual playing of the instrument is common to both, it fades into the background.
One concept that I read about that is helpful in the study of Neural Nets is Orthogonaity. The more different two things are from each other, the easeir they are to differentiate. IE, Fire either Neuron 1 or Neuron 2 type distinctions. I guess that is why two things that are very similar (two different editors with different shortcut keystroke settings) can really confuse you...at least until the short term memory fibers kick in and reinforce the current task. Over time, It should get easier to switch between the two editors...just need to kick your brain into the right editor mode. Since Typing is the same for both of them, it fades into the back ground.
I wonder what triggers the start of the long term memory building process. Is it a threshhold of the short term memory that, once reached, kicks it into gear? Or is it a gradual process: adding more fibers will eventually build another connection.
Actually, even without a molten core, the sheer weight of the planet heats up the lower layers of the planet, just not to the same degree as if it were a molton core
Now we have some new technologies:
If I want to hear great new music, what should I do. Right now, even with the second list, I am stuck with the set up of the first list. If I am an artist (I am not...) And I want to get paid for my work, I also am stuck with the first list.
As I see it the week link in the chain is promotion. Slashdot is a wonderful community. We have a list of quickies for the day. How about a weekly feature which posts Free(libre) music. Set it up like the Interviews where each person posts a link to an MP3/Ogg/tar.gz/bz2 file and then the top five/ten rated posts get listed and sent out to the sites that promote music.
Yes It will democratize music, with all that it implies. I don't think there is any way to get around it. Niche music like free jazz will probably not be very popular...but we may be surprized with some of the crossovers.
And more. For example...If you want to convert the surface of the planet to a temperature where you can stay outside without a space suit you need to heat upo the atmosphere. The best way to do that is to use Carbon Dioxide as it is a natural greenhouse gas. However, if your eventual goal is to make the atmosphere breathable, you need to do something about the vast quantities of Carbon Dioxide.
How about a huge focusing lens positioned in a aerosynchornous orbit that collects those solar rays that woud just miss Mars and focuses them back toward the3 planet to heat it up.
How about drilling huge holes in the surface to realease Geothermal energy into the atmosphere to heat things up.
And so on. If you are interested in Mars, read the book. He addresses a lot of the major issues . Even if he is off on certain topics (it is a novel after all), it is a great step forward in Science Fiction
I haven't done COM in a few years, so I may be out of date.
...forget the Interface but the one that returns more error information. If you want to call to a flat, non COM dll, you don't get error reporting. Your only choices there are Wrapping in the C layer and Wrapping in the VB Layer Create a COM component with the same interface. No, you cannot raise a WIN32 exception and expect VB will handle it. I tried.
I assume the problem you are having is the fact that for error reporting in VB, it expects an HRESULT and then a call to
How about a little more info about the limitations you are worried about. Are you going from VB to C/ADA/Pascal? And lookingto USE VB as Glue?
What would be the benefit?
... nothing more.
A central database of Retinal/Thumbprint scans can ID you just as easily. All the Info on your medical records could be stored in the central DB as opposed to in your microschips.
Unless...you could somehow control access to your own Microchips. I could see several levels of permissions:
Global: Person scans, and now knows that you are a citizen of the USA, EU, PRC
Business: Person Scans, and now can get your shipping and billing info.
Medical: Person scans, and now can get you vital medical history ALA 1st Alert.
All this we be predicated on you having a public/private key hand shake, similar to the SSL setup.
1) Remote machine requests permission
2) Microchip tells chip to grant permission (I have no idea how, I am just dreaming at this point)
3) Chip grants short-lived one time key for accessing info.
If someone tried to tag you with one of these against your will, I am sure there would be many ways to distrupt it: Wear a "Diskman" that actually produces white-noise frequencies to cover the radio from the chip...replace the implanted chip with a home made one that proves that you are someone else...implant a chip that compromises a buffer override in the scanning software so that if anyone tries to ID you their machine crashes.
In other words, business as usuall