While I agree that props go to Mark Cuban and that carbon offsets are ludicrous, I didn't really lose respect for Page and Brin. They didn't make the statement personally, a Google spokeswoman did, and a Google spokeswoman wouldn't dare be blunt about something like this. Besides, I'm sure Page and Brin have been harassed by green nuts in the past. Their wealth and fame would make them irresistible targets to all sorts of nut-jobs. If they can't use a small part of their vast fortune to keep nut-jobs from harassing them so they can enjoy their lives, is it really worth it? I'm not wealthy or famous, so the only nut-job harassing me is my wife (who seems crazier than most, but maybe it just seems that way to me), but I imagine the first thing I would do with wealth would be to keep people like her from bugging me constantly so I can enjoy my life.
Did you note that they specified variable bit rate? In this case, I'll bet it had more to do with the timing and flow of the packets and bytes than with the actual content of the bytes. When there's a pause in a person's speech, there is a pause in the network traffic. Imagine someone trying to send morse code through an encrypted voice channel. Someone watching a bandwidth graph that had a high enough frequency would know exactly what coded message you sent regardless of the compression or encryption algorithm used (as long as the compression is variable bit rate). Due to the way voice data is compressed, increases or decreases in traffic could imply certain changes in tone, pitch, volume, inflection, etc. Tracked at a very high frequency, changes in the flow of bytes could give plenty of clues as to what is being said whether the traffic is encrypted or not. In general, encryption algorithms don't change the number or flow of bytes, just the content of the bytes.
I agree that it's weird, and I don't remember noticing it with other web apps we've worked on. My co-worker is the primary front-end developer (I do most of the back-end work), and he has gotten very fancy with CSS. I have wondered if it's something specific he's doing that is exploiting a specific problem in Chrome. The main page loads fine, but the images on the page come up very slowly one at a time. On our menu bar, the images show up in order from left to right, and it's very obvious. As I mentioned, all other browsers reload instantly.
Chrome is my favorite browser, but it is still slow in some ways. While testing a web app I'm writing, if I hit F5 (Refresh), it takes several seconds for it to reload the page and all its images (even with all content is coming from localhost). Every other browser I test with handles the refresh almost instantly. Sure Chrome runs the JavaScript faster after it downloads it, but something is wrong with the way it manages downloads.
Today: "Super aEgis 2, an automated gun turret that can detect and lock onto human targets from kilometers away, day or night and in any weather conditions, and deliver some heavy firepower."
Tomorrow: "Super XXXXX, an automated gun turret that can detect and lock onto Super aEgis 2 targets from kilometers away, day or night and in any weather conditions, and deliver some heavy firepower."
The first part of that statement is true, but the second part is not. Of course it will hurt the ones involved in the decision making who were responsible. The execs at the top will start by losing revenue-based bonuses. I imagine many will be fired and replaced if profits turn into losses. They'll also have a hard time getting such a high-level job elsewhere if they were tied to this disaster. In addition, most of them are vested heavily in BP stocks and stock options, which will drop significantly in value. Many will be stuck in mansions that they can no longer afford and can't sell because they're underwater. The downside is that it will hurt a lot of lower-level employees a lot more because BP will be forced to lay off workers, but you can't say it wouldn't hurt the ones responsible.
I'm pretty sure that would earn you a very thorough body cavity search. One problem with giving security agents of any kind too much power is that many of them really enjoy abusing it when you piss them off. Besides, it's not like any of the TSA employees you would encounter at the airport made any of these decisions or have the power to change them. I actually pity the guys who have to watch the scanners and do the body searches. I wouldn't want to have to do it.
1) Don't give her an admin account. If she's using XP or higher, give her a "guest" account. She won't be able to install anything, but that's a good thing the next time she clicks on a trojan or visits a web site that tries to silently install something. She'll still get viruses, but if they can't break out of her user folder, they can be cleaned off by simply logging on as the administrator and renaming her user folder (so you can move her documents and favorites to the new user folder after it's created). This won't stop every virus, but it has worked perfectly so far with my wife's PC. I even gave her the admin password so she can install things when she needs to, but she doesn't know how to actually log in as the admin.
2) Windows Home Server. If you have the extra machine and disk space, it can back up your entire hard drive and track changes daily. If you get a virus, you can roll the entire system back to any previous date. I have a co-worker who set this up at home and for some of his relatives, and he swears by it.
I can beat that. I can erase everything in the frame in less than 40ms.
Actually, this is really cool. They could generate hype for it by posting a demo on the web of Episode I with Jar Jar erased. They might be able to stave off Lucas's lawyers by calling it a parody, although in this case it would be more like the original was a parody.
I agree, but not all the parents in the troop were willing to do that. Most were, but a few argued very strongly against doing anything "against the rules". And it wasn't just the insurance company, it was the whole cub scouts organization (who was listening to the insurance company). We just decided to leave, but we take the kids camping every now and then and ask the other parents in the troop if they want to come along (not as a scouting activity). It's no wonder we're seeing articles now about the boy scouts offering a merit badge for video games. They have to add new activities to make room for the things the insurance company won't allow anymore.
Thanks for the great reply. I hope you continue to do well when you're off it.
I did not mean to imply that the drug was bad or that it did not have valid uses, just that the potential for over-prescribing it to children is there, especially if the media touts it as a new wonder drug for "helping" children. Between the media hype, schools trying to find new ways to keep children in line, drug companies pressuring doctors to prescribe new drugs, and parents willing to try anything to control their kids, IMO a lot of children have been prescribed drugs that they don't really need.
Unfortunately, we now live in a world where kids are hardly allowed to play anything at all because the insurance companies won't cover it. I tried joining the cub scouts with my son last year, but we weren't allowed to take the kids camping, let them climb trees, etc. All of the most fun activities were forbidden by the insurance company, and what was left wasn't worth staying for. The same is true at our kids' school, and even our church (which has a playground that the kids are no longer allowed to play on). It is no surprise to me when my kids don't want to do anything but watch videos, surf the Internet, and play video games.
OTOH, it wouldn't surprise me if the media decided to tout it as a wonder drug for children and teens so that later they could turn around and report on its abuses. Two media circuses for the price of one.
"as well as the brain activity triggered by video game cues"
To me, that sounds like it reduces the pleasure/satisfaction received from playing the game, which would naturally reduce the chance of psychological addiction. That's a good point about the seizures, but the way you worded the risk makes it sound extremely low. I imagine trials will be tentative at first, but could pick up in popularity relatively quickly.
A drug that reduces both depression and the pleasure received from playing video games? How long before it becomes the most over-prescribed drug for teens and children? Maybe they'll even combine it with Ritalin to knock out that pesky daydreaming in class. There are way too many parents out there willing to try anything to help manage their kids (without actually spending time with them).
I agree this sounds awkward. But if you noticed, one guy was moving his head from side to side (which allows you to move your eyes while still looking directly at the screen). And having an action perform when you blink would be horrible. Could you imagine trying to keep your eyes from blinking until crucial moments, and what your eyes would feel like after an hour of that?
Wow, you really did your homework on that one. I mean, I've never even visited Wikileaks before today, and I found these links in less than 30 seconds. The only people "locked in on the US" here are the US media, who have another circus when new US government documents are posted in Wikileaks. So basically you blame this guy for the US media's reaction to some US whistle-blower publishing something on his web site, which strikes me as more than a little sheep-ish.
If there really are fewer documents from these countries, it's because being a whistle-blower in one of those countries is a good way to commit suicide. Actually, it may be an excruciatingly painful way to do it, but I think you get the picture.
I don't think the guy in charge of Wikileaks is a journalist, either. I think he's in it for the fame, and for the money that generally comes with it. But that doesn't make your statements any less ridiculous.
It's the McReactor. While I do agree we need to start heading in a direction like this, security concerns are pretty high surrounding anything involving nuclear material. While the business aspects may point to cheaper nuclear power with McReactors, the costs of securing a bunch of small nuclear reactors would be significant IMO. Maybe we could start a pilot project where the first ones are built on military bases? While each reactor would still need its own security, having it in an already secured area would help.
If we're having a hard time getting relatively simple AI image recognition tasks like this to work, the ability to make an AI doctor for a cell phone is a very very very long way away.
I agree. All that's needed for precipitation to start is for enough tiny water droplets or ice crystals to collide with each other to make them heavy enough to fall. If the cloud is heavy enough (i.e. close to some saturation point), those drops will bump into others, causing a chain reaction that can go on until the cloud gets too light to sustain the chain reaction. It seems obvious to me that a commercial airliner flying through a cloud at 500+ MPH could start that chain reaction. Whether it actually causes precipitation to reach the ground depends on the cloud and the conditions beneath it, not on the plane.
I disagree in one respect. If you enjoy killing small animals, you don't need anything to push you over the edge. You're already on the wrong side of it, and all it may take to awaken violent urges is for a potential victim to walk by. I think most of us agree that violent video games won't create violent tendencies in someone who doesn't have them, which makes it a question of whether violent media can make a person more likely to discover latent violent tendencies in themselves, and/or less likely to suppress them once discovered.
IMO the only form of violent media that has a significant impact is the sensationalized news outlets. Kids playing violent video games know it's fantasy, so it doesn't affect them. When my son and I try to kill each other in a FPS game, our attitudes and comments are no different than when we're competing against each other at an outdoor sport like soccer. OTOH kids watching/reading the news know it's real, and they are much more strongly affected by it. I don't want my kids to be completely sheltered, but I don't want them exposed to the "shock and awe" the news outlets try to inspire to keep viewers hooked, and I sure as hell don't want them to become desensitized when it comes to hearing about real-life violence.
How did you measure that without high-precision timers? Write a loop to call a function 10 million times to see that it takes 1 second? Assuming you have a 2GHz processor, that would put the function call/return overhead at about 200 clock cycles, which is only a little high, and it was not what I was seeing when I ran it. Would you mind posting the code you used to determine the speed?
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I would think that Page and Brin used their own personal money for the trip, not Google's.
While I agree that props go to Mark Cuban and that carbon offsets are ludicrous, I didn't really lose respect for Page and Brin. They didn't make the statement personally, a Google spokeswoman did, and a Google spokeswoman wouldn't dare be blunt about something like this. Besides, I'm sure Page and Brin have been harassed by green nuts in the past. Their wealth and fame would make them irresistible targets to all sorts of nut-jobs. If they can't use a small part of their vast fortune to keep nut-jobs from harassing them so they can enjoy their lives, is it really worth it? I'm not wealthy or famous, so the only nut-job harassing me is my wife (who seems crazier than most, but maybe it just seems that way to me), but I imagine the first thing I would do with wealth would be to keep people like her from bugging me constantly so I can enjoy my life.
Did you note that they specified variable bit rate? In this case, I'll bet it had more to do with the timing and flow of the packets and bytes than with the actual content of the bytes. When there's a pause in a person's speech, there is a pause in the network traffic. Imagine someone trying to send morse code through an encrypted voice channel. Someone watching a bandwidth graph that had a high enough frequency would know exactly what coded message you sent regardless of the compression or encryption algorithm used (as long as the compression is variable bit rate). Due to the way voice data is compressed, increases or decreases in traffic could imply certain changes in tone, pitch, volume, inflection, etc. Tracked at a very high frequency, changes in the flow of bytes could give plenty of clues as to what is being said whether the traffic is encrypted or not. In general, encryption algorithms don't change the number or flow of bytes, just the content of the bytes.
I agree that it's weird, and I don't remember noticing it with other web apps we've worked on. My co-worker is the primary front-end developer (I do most of the back-end work), and he has gotten very fancy with CSS. I have wondered if it's something specific he's doing that is exploiting a specific problem in Chrome. The main page loads fine, but the images on the page come up very slowly one at a time. On our menu bar, the images show up in order from left to right, and it's very obvious. As I mentioned, all other browsers reload instantly.
Chrome is my favorite browser, but it is still slow in some ways. While testing a web app I'm writing, if I hit F5 (Refresh), it takes several seconds for it to reload the page and all its images (even with all content is coming from localhost). Every other browser I test with handles the refresh almost instantly. Sure Chrome runs the JavaScript faster after it downloads it, but something is wrong with the way it manages downloads.
Neither does anyone else. Nuclear fusion is not a chemical reaction. It fuses two atoms together to create a different type of atom.
Today:
"Super aEgis 2, an automated gun turret that can detect and lock onto human targets from kilometers away, day or night and in any weather conditions, and deliver some heavy firepower."
Tomorrow:
"Super XXXXX, an automated gun turret that can detect and lock onto Super aEgis 2 targets from kilometers away, day or night and in any weather conditions, and deliver some heavy firepower."
It's better than giving them millions of dollars in salary and annual bonuses and keeping them on.
The first part of that statement is true, but the second part is not. Of course it will hurt the ones involved in the decision making who were responsible. The execs at the top will start by losing revenue-based bonuses. I imagine many will be fired and replaced if profits turn into losses. They'll also have a hard time getting such a high-level job elsewhere if they were tied to this disaster. In addition, most of them are vested heavily in BP stocks and stock options, which will drop significantly in value. Many will be stuck in mansions that they can no longer afford and can't sell because they're underwater. The downside is that it will hurt a lot of lower-level employees a lot more because BP will be forced to lay off workers, but you can't say it wouldn't hurt the ones responsible.
I'm pretty sure that would earn you a very thorough body cavity search. One problem with giving security agents of any kind too much power is that many of them really enjoy abusing it when you piss them off. Besides, it's not like any of the TSA employees you would encounter at the airport made any of these decisions or have the power to change them. I actually pity the guys who have to watch the scanners and do the body searches. I wouldn't want to have to do it.
Here are a few options:
1) Don't give her an admin account. If she's using XP or higher, give her a "guest" account. She won't be able to install anything, but that's a good thing the next time she clicks on a trojan or visits a web site that tries to silently install something. She'll still get viruses, but if they can't break out of her user folder, they can be cleaned off by simply logging on as the administrator and renaming her user folder (so you can move her documents and favorites to the new user folder after it's created). This won't stop every virus, but it has worked perfectly so far with my wife's PC. I even gave her the admin password so she can install things when she needs to, but she doesn't know how to actually log in as the admin.
2) Windows Home Server. If you have the extra machine and disk space, it can back up your entire hard drive and track changes daily. If you get a virus, you can roll the entire system back to any previous date. I have a co-worker who set this up at home and for some of his relatives, and he swears by it.
I can beat that. I can erase everything in the frame in less than 40ms.
Actually, this is really cool. They could generate hype for it by posting a demo on the web of Episode I with Jar Jar erased. They might be able to stave off Lucas's lawyers by calling it a parody, although in this case it would be more like the original was a parody.
I agree, but not all the parents in the troop were willing to do that. Most were, but a few argued very strongly against doing anything "against the rules". And it wasn't just the insurance company, it was the whole cub scouts organization (who was listening to the insurance company). We just decided to leave, but we take the kids camping every now and then and ask the other parents in the troop if they want to come along (not as a scouting activity). It's no wonder we're seeing articles now about the boy scouts offering a merit badge for video games. They have to add new activities to make room for the things the insurance company won't allow anymore.
Thanks for the great reply. I hope you continue to do well when you're off it.
I did not mean to imply that the drug was bad or that it did not have valid uses, just that the potential for over-prescribing it to children is there, especially if the media touts it as a new wonder drug for "helping" children. Between the media hype, schools trying to find new ways to keep children in line, drug companies pressuring doctors to prescribe new drugs, and parents willing to try anything to control their kids, IMO a lot of children have been prescribed drugs that they don't really need.
Unfortunately, we now live in a world where kids are hardly allowed to play anything at all because the insurance companies won't cover it. I tried joining the cub scouts with my son last year, but we weren't allowed to take the kids camping, let them climb trees, etc. All of the most fun activities were forbidden by the insurance company, and what was left wasn't worth staying for. The same is true at our kids' school, and even our church (which has a playground that the kids are no longer allowed to play on). It is no surprise to me when my kids don't want to do anything but watch videos, surf the Internet, and play video games.
OTOH, it wouldn't surprise me if the media decided to tout it as a wonder drug for children and teens so that later they could turn around and report on its abuses. Two media circuses for the price of one.
"as well as the brain activity triggered by video game cues"
To me, that sounds like it reduces the pleasure/satisfaction received from playing the game, which would naturally reduce the chance of psychological addiction. That's a good point about the seizures, but the way you worded the risk makes it sound extremely low. I imagine trials will be tentative at first, but could pick up in popularity relatively quickly.
A drug that reduces both depression and the pleasure received from playing video games? How long before it becomes the most over-prescribed drug for teens and children? Maybe they'll even combine it with Ritalin to knock out that pesky daydreaming in class. There are way too many parents out there willing to try anything to help manage their kids (without actually spending time with them).
I agree this sounds awkward. But if you noticed, one guy was moving his head from side to side (which allows you to move your eyes while still looking directly at the screen). And having an action perform when you blink would be horrible. Could you imagine trying to keep your eyes from blinking until crucial moments, and what your eyes would feel like after an hour of that?
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Countries
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Russia
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Cuba
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Venezuela
Wow, you really did your homework on that one. I mean, I've never even visited Wikileaks before today, and I found these links in less than 30 seconds. The only people "locked in on the US" here are the US media, who have another circus when new US government documents are posted in Wikileaks. So basically you blame this guy for the US media's reaction to some US whistle-blower publishing something on his web site, which strikes me as more than a little sheep-ish.
If there really are fewer documents from these countries, it's because being a whistle-blower in one of those countries is a good way to commit suicide. Actually, it may be an excruciatingly painful way to do it, but I think you get the picture.
I don't think the guy in charge of Wikileaks is a journalist, either. I think he's in it for the fame, and for the money that generally comes with it. But that doesn't make your statements any less ridiculous.
It's the McReactor. While I do agree we need to start heading in a direction like this, security concerns are pretty high surrounding anything involving nuclear material. While the business aspects may point to cheaper nuclear power with McReactors, the costs of securing a bunch of small nuclear reactors would be significant IMO. Maybe we could start a pilot project where the first ones are built on military bases? While each reactor would still need its own security, having it in an already secured area would help.
My wife needs a tool like this. She can never remember her passwords.
http://consumerist.com/2009/12/hp-face-tracking-camera-doesnt-track-black-faces.html
If we're having a hard time getting relatively simple AI image recognition tasks like this to work, the ability to make an AI doctor for a cell phone is a very very very long way away.
I agree. All that's needed for precipitation to start is for enough tiny water droplets or ice crystals to collide with each other to make them heavy enough to fall. If the cloud is heavy enough (i.e. close to some saturation point), those drops will bump into others, causing a chain reaction that can go on until the cloud gets too light to sustain the chain reaction. It seems obvious to me that a commercial airliner flying through a cloud at 500+ MPH could start that chain reaction. Whether it actually causes precipitation to reach the ground depends on the cloud and the conditions beneath it, not on the plane.
I disagree in one respect. If you enjoy killing small animals, you don't need anything to push you over the edge. You're already on the wrong side of it, and all it may take to awaken violent urges is for a potential victim to walk by. I think most of us agree that violent video games won't create violent tendencies in someone who doesn't have them, which makes it a question of whether violent media can make a person more likely to discover latent violent tendencies in themselves, and/or less likely to suppress them once discovered.
IMO the only form of violent media that has a significant impact is the sensationalized news outlets. Kids playing violent video games know it's fantasy, so it doesn't affect them. When my son and I try to kill each other in a FPS game, our attitudes and comments are no different than when we're competing against each other at an outdoor sport like soccer. OTOH kids watching/reading the news know it's real, and they are much more strongly affected by it. I don't want my kids to be completely sheltered, but I don't want them exposed to the "shock and awe" the news outlets try to inspire to keep viewers hooked, and I sure as hell don't want them to become desensitized when it comes to hearing about real-life violence.
How did you measure that without high-precision timers? Write a loop to call a function 10 million times to see that it takes 1 second? Assuming you have a 2GHz processor, that would put the function call/return overhead at about 200 clock cycles, which is only a little high, and it was not what I was seeing when I ran it. Would you mind posting the code you used to determine the speed?