And sometimes, it makes them active again. Given time, there is a high probability that this capacity would have re-evolved, assuming that there is a selective advantage.
BTW, current estimates are more like 100 billion neurons and upwards of 300-500 trillion synaptic connections.
However, numbers aside, the human brain is not merely a complex collection of neurons and interconnected synapses. Complexity is only one very basic factor, another, more critical, factor is organization. We don't even know where to start in the organization of these artificial neural networks to emulate a human brain.
WARNING! COMPUTER ANALOGY: It's not the number and density of interconnected transistors that make a Xeon, it's the organization.
My MacBook battery running Mac OS X typically last twice as long as my HP battery running XP. If the hardware is "essentially the same", then I would say that it's not inconceivable that the OS is a factor.
In your list of "identifiable numbers" you include street address, license plate number, and credit card number. I share all of these with my wife and kids. Occasionally I have house guests who share my address and I may even loan them my car. So technically, none of these are examples of personally identifiable information.
Dawkins is very influential and a great public speaker, but as a scientist, I find him very lacking.
I actually believe that Dawkin's "anti-God" message has done more harm to evolutionary theory than any of his other contributions have done to help it. If you want to promote an idea, why would you arbitrarily and unnecessarily alienate a large part of your audience?
However, Dawkin's atheism aside, some of his "scientific" arguments are really very poor.
Another trick is to take a sentence or song lyric and use only the first character from each word, but then tack on some numbers and special characters. For instance using the sentence above, generate a password that looks like this:
Iaptuusap&+0
If you chose a sentence or lyric that has meaning for you, you probably don't need to write it down at all, but if you absolutely had to write something down you could write:
"I advise people to use unusual sentences as passwords and add nothing"
You won't forget it, but it's not obvious that it's your password cheat.
Alternatively, choose something that you already have on your wall, like that Dilbert cartoon and use the text from one of the panels...
You missed my point. I'm not saying great technical people make great managers. What I'm saying is what differentiates a good manager from a great manager of technical people is keeping up your technical skills.
The best managers are those that remain technically savvy.
Switching to a management route doesn't mean you have to stop using your brain... even though a lot of managers seem to do just that... dare to be different.
As an individual contributor, your impact is merely your own contribution. As a strong technical leader, you amplify the contribution of every member of your team, which is a much greater impact.
Seriously, folks. When are you ever going to learn. Seems like every week I read one of these stories about computers reading thoughts...
There's a major misconception about what these technologies do. It **IS** thought control, but that isn't the same thing as reading thoughts. No one is amazed if I move a cursor by pushing my finger against a joystick. These new brain interfaces are just a new kind of joystick with a different physical interface technology. Similar interface technologies have been demonstrated with galvanic skin response, but no one would argue that we're reading your thoughts through wires attached to your fingers...
This isn't to say the technologies aren't cool and advanced. They can allow hands-free control for situations where an operator needs both hands or where an individual may not have use of their hands due to various handicaps. However, these technologies can in no way read thoughts for one very simple reason. Before we can build a technology to read thoughts, we first have to understand how thoughts are represented, organized, and integrated into conscious 'streams' in the brain. We ain't there yet!
Holy Cow! The volumes that these people are drinking! 4 liters a day? 10 liters a day? Reminds me of studies with lab rats and artificial sweeteners. You pump too much of anything into your system... bad stuff will happen.
Personally, my cola consumption is zero. I never touch the stuff.I prefer water and unsweetened tea... oh, and beer, of course!
Some might argue that not only is it in the rights of your ISP to deny you service for copyright infringement, since it is stated in your terms of service agreement, it is their responsibility. I doubt that the ISPs are going to hire a "police force", but I can see them responding to multiple complaints from MPAA and RIAA. Let's be honest, if you continue to violate copyrights after three warnings, getting exiled from your ISP is pretty soft punishment... and don't try to play the "unprotected wireless network" game, because after your first warning, you should be able to figure out how to secure your LAN...
Not necessarily. I'm one of those Mac fanbois who routinely pays 10X as much money for my machines (hey, if we're going to play the exaggeration game, play to win). Yet, since about 1985 I've almost always used higher functionality mice than what shipped with my Mac. I say "almost" because I did enjoy a MightyMouse at first, but in the long run I find Logitech mice and trackballs much more capable and reliable.
Isn't this the same argument Windows fanbois employ to explain the "apparent" safety of the Mac OS? i.e. if you have the lowest marketshare then no one is out there deploying exploits in your general direction.......?
However, I have a Mac that is still running and is useful after 11 years. Apple computers are very reliable. I've owned more than a dozen and only had one hardware problem and as far as uptime, they can't be beat. My Mac never, ever, ever crashes... ever!
Get three Mac Minis. Use two for day-to-day use, keep the other on the same network and use it as a backup storage system. Then **IF** you ever have a hardware failure, you can just swap one out.
You won't find a more reliable solution for that kind of money.
In the never ending battle between those that say Macs cost more than PCs and those who disagree, never has there been a more telling story than today. There are two contenders out there trying to compete with the MacBook Air. If you look at the features, performance, weight, bundled software, just about any parameter - but especially price, Adamo and Envy are nowhere equal in value to the MacBook Air.
So you have to ask yourself, when you do all of those other price comparisons, like the PC you bought from Walmart or the PC you built from scratch at Fryes - are you really doing a fair comparison? I think not. Maybe you really do get what you pay for...
Anyone who refers to the Mac "one button mouse" limitation is confused. I've been using multi-button mice on my Macs since about 1986. The Mac OS supports multi-button mice, out of the box. In fact, most Macs that ship with mice today, ship with a MightyMouse which is a three button mouse with a scroll ball (like a wheel but in 2 dimensions). The MightyMouse is a pretty cool tool, but it doesn't compete with my Logitech laser mouse with 6 buttons and a pivoting wheel...
Seriously, if you're going to bash, catch up so that your complaints seem a little less, well retarded...;-)
> Instruction sets are basically a language or communication protocol and these should not be copyrightable
Do you mean "should not" as in "it doesn't seem right to you" or as in "as recognized in the courts"?
Most instruction sets are considered key components of their respective computer architectures. As such, you will typically see copyright notices attached to them.
You may not think this is right, but the court of public opinion, is not the one that counts...
Re:You can't win if you don't play
on
Linked In Or Out?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Be discretionary. Don't invite people to link with you or accepts invitations from others if you don't know and respect them. Don't endorse people unless you personally would jump through hoops to hire them yourself. LinkedIn can be either a great tool or a social networking farce - you can control which way you want it to go.
> Obviously you didn't read Tegmarks actual paper then.
True, I have not read it... but I'm not trying to refute Tegmark's claim about the limits of quantum computation - I'm pointing out that in the article he's talking specifically about quantum computation and Penrose specifically states that he is not suggesting quantum computation.
You say:
> A single interaction is enough to destroy coherence. That's a fact.
What is your definition of an interaction? Would, say, a photon reflecting off a mirror be an interaction? Entangled photons are 'bounced' around all the time without destroying coherence. It's only when one of the entangled photons is measured (observed) that they decohere. And guess what, I've heard that it happens at temperatures hundreds of degrees above zero Kelvin... shocking, I know!
> Low density, low temperature (few collisions), and in general, few > degress of freedom. Every example of quantum entanglement and > otherwise 'macroscopic' quantum phenomenon (e.g. superfluid helium > and other Bose-Einstein condensates) fall into those categories.
Well, I could cite you chapter and verse from "Shadows Of The Mind" (specifically section 7.5) which discusses these precise points in detail... or suggest that you look into the concept of Frohlich Coherence, but you seem quite sure of your facts. Instead I'll just point out that some pretty smart people tend to disagree with your facts...
No. Once the wavefunction collapses, it collapses for all observers. Otherwise, different observers would observe different events and reality, as we know it, would not be as we know it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's Apple's fault that the battery life on my HP laptop running XP is less than half the battery life of my MacBook running OS X???
And sometimes, it makes them active again.
Given time, there is a high probability that this capacity would have re-evolved, assuming that there is a selective advantage.
BTW, current estimates are more like 100 billion neurons and upwards of 300-500 trillion synaptic connections.
However, numbers aside, the human brain is not merely a complex collection of neurons and interconnected synapses. Complexity is only one very basic factor, another, more critical, factor is organization. We don't even know where to start in the organization of these artificial neural networks to emulate a human brain.
WARNING! COMPUTER ANALOGY: It's not the number and density of interconnected transistors that make a Xeon, it's the organization.
My MacBook battery running Mac OS X typically last twice as long as my HP battery running XP. If the hardware is "essentially the same", then I would say that it's not inconceivable that the OS is a factor.
Oops! Of course, I meant over a million square kilometers of missing ice...
More than a million square meters of missing ice and they needed previously classified 1 meter resolution spy photos to observe???
In your list of "identifiable numbers" you include street address, license plate number, and credit card number. I share all of these with my wife and kids. Occasionally I have house guests who share my address and I may even loan them my car. So technically, none of these are examples of personally identifiable information.
Dawkins is very influential and a great public speaker, but as a scientist, I find him very lacking.
I actually believe that Dawkin's "anti-God" message has done more harm to evolutionary theory than any of his other contributions have done to help it. If you want to promote an idea, why would you arbitrarily and unnecessarily alienate a large part of your audience?
However, Dawkin's atheism aside, some of his "scientific" arguments are really very poor.
There are a lot better authors on the subject.
Another trick is to take a sentence or song lyric and use only the first character from each word, but then tack on some numbers and special characters. For instance using the sentence above, generate a password that looks like this:
Iaptuusap&+0
If you chose a sentence or lyric that has meaning for you, you probably don't need to write it down at all, but if you absolutely had to write something down you could write:
"I advise people to use unusual sentences as passwords and add nothing"
You won't forget it, but it's not obvious that it's your password cheat.
Alternatively, choose something that you already have on your wall, like that Dilbert cartoon and use the text from one of the panels...
You missed my point. I'm not saying great technical people make great managers. What I'm saying is what differentiates a good manager from a great manager of technical people is keeping up your technical skills.
The best managers are those that remain technically savvy.
Switching to a management route doesn't mean you have to stop using your brain... even though a lot of managers seem to do just that... dare to be different.
As an individual contributor, your impact is merely your own contribution. As a strong technical leader, you amplify the contribution of every member of your team, which is a much greater impact.
Seriously, folks. When are you ever going to learn. Seems like every week I read one of these stories about computers reading thoughts...
There's a major misconception about what these technologies do. It **IS** thought control, but that isn't the same thing as reading thoughts. No one is amazed if I move a cursor by pushing my finger against a joystick. These new brain interfaces are just a new kind of joystick with a different physical interface technology. Similar interface technologies have been demonstrated with galvanic skin response, but no one would argue that we're reading your thoughts through wires attached to your fingers...
This isn't to say the technologies aren't cool and advanced. They can allow hands-free control for situations where an operator needs both hands or where an individual may not have use of their hands due to various handicaps. However, these technologies can in no way read thoughts for one very simple reason. Before we can build a technology to read thoughts, we first have to understand how thoughts are represented, organized, and integrated into conscious 'streams' in the brain. We ain't there yet!
Holy Cow! The volumes that these people are drinking! 4 liters a day? 10 liters a day? Reminds me of studies with lab rats and artificial sweeteners. You pump too much of anything into your system... bad stuff will happen.
Personally, my cola consumption is zero. I never touch the stuff.I prefer water and unsweetened tea... oh, and beer, of course!
Some might argue that not only is it in the rights of your ISP to deny you service for copyright infringement, since it is stated in your terms of service agreement, it is their responsibility. I doubt that the ISPs are going to hire a "police force", but I can see them responding to multiple complaints from MPAA and RIAA. Let's be honest, if you continue to violate copyrights after three warnings, getting exiled from your ISP is pretty soft punishment... and don't try to play the "unprotected wireless network" game, because after your first warning, you should be able to figure out how to secure your LAN...
Not necessarily. I'm one of those Mac fanbois who routinely pays 10X as much money for my machines (hey, if we're going to play the exaggeration game, play to win). Yet, since about 1985 I've almost always used higher functionality mice than what shipped with my Mac. I say "almost" because I did enjoy a MightyMouse at first, but in the long run I find Logitech mice and trackballs much more capable and reliable.
... the feeling I've stepped in this crap before.
Isn't this the same argument Windows fanbois employ to explain the "apparent" safety of the Mac OS? i.e. if you have the lowest marketshare then no one is out there deploying exploits in your general direction.......?
However, I have a Mac that is still running and is useful after 11 years. Apple computers are very reliable. I've owned more than a dozen and only had one hardware problem and as far as uptime, they can't be beat. My Mac never, ever, ever crashes... ever!
Get three Mac Minis. Use two for day-to-day use, keep the other on the same network and use it as a backup storage system. Then **IF** you ever have a hardware failure, you can just swap one out.
You won't find a more reliable solution for that kind of money.
In the never ending battle between those that say Macs cost more than PCs and those who disagree, never has there been a more telling story than today. There are two contenders out there trying to compete with the MacBook Air. If you look at the features, performance, weight, bundled software, just about any parameter - but especially price, Adamo and Envy are nowhere equal in value to the MacBook Air.
So you have to ask yourself, when you do all of those other price comparisons, like the PC you bought from Walmart or the PC you built from scratch at Fryes - are you really doing a fair comparison? I think not. Maybe you really do get what you pay for...
> no retarded one-button mouse
Anyone who refers to the Mac "one button mouse" limitation is confused. I've been using multi-button mice on my Macs since about 1986. The Mac OS supports multi-button mice, out of the box. In fact, most Macs that ship with mice today, ship with a MightyMouse which is a three button mouse with a scroll ball (like a wheel but in 2 dimensions). The MightyMouse is a pretty cool tool, but it doesn't compete with my Logitech laser mouse with 6 buttons and a pivoting wheel...
Seriously, if you're going to bash, catch up so that your complaints seem a little less, well retarded... ;-)
I, for one, do not plan to attend the parade, now that I know it's all a misguided sham...
> Instruction sets are basically a language or communication protocol and these should not be copyrightable
Do you mean "should not" as in "it doesn't seem right to you" or as in "as recognized in the courts"?
Most instruction sets are considered key components of their respective computer architectures. As such, you will typically see copyright notices attached to them.
You may not think this is right, but the court of public opinion, is not the one that counts...
How does IE 8 stack up against Safari 4.0? [grin]
Be discretionary. Don't invite people to link with you or accepts invitations from others if you don't know and respect them. Don't endorse people unless you personally would jump through hoops to hire them yourself. LinkedIn can be either a great tool or a social networking farce - you can control which way you want it to go.
> Obviously you didn't read Tegmarks actual paper then.
True, I have not read it... but I'm not trying to refute Tegmark's claim about the limits of quantum computation - I'm pointing out that in the article he's talking specifically about quantum computation and Penrose specifically states that he is not suggesting quantum computation.
You say:
> A single interaction is enough to destroy coherence. That's a fact.
What is your definition of an interaction? Would, say, a photon reflecting off a mirror be an interaction? Entangled photons are 'bounced' around all the time without destroying coherence. It's only when one of the entangled photons is measured (observed) that they decohere. And guess what, I've heard that it happens at temperatures hundreds of degrees above zero Kelvin... shocking, I know!
> Low density, low temperature (few collisions), and in general, few
> degress of freedom. Every example of quantum entanglement and
> otherwise 'macroscopic' quantum phenomenon (e.g. superfluid helium
> and other Bose-Einstein condensates) fall into those categories.
Well, I could cite you chapter and verse from "Shadows Of The Mind" (specifically section 7.5) which discusses these precise points in detail... or suggest that you look into the concept of Frohlich Coherence, but you seem quite sure of your facts. Instead I'll just point out that some pretty smart people tend to disagree with your facts...
> don't tell me we don't have a clue.
Dude. You're taking this way too personal.
No. Once the wavefunction collapses, it collapses for all observers. Otherwise, different observers would observe different events and reality, as we know it, would not be as we know it.