Larry Niven's ringworld series addresses the effect of near immortality on society. Having a baby requires a government permit, which is only issued to exceptional individuals, or the very, very lucky...
...which results in genetically lucky people, who can slip through even the stickiest situations unscathed.
What are you talking about? Ringworld is a terrible novel. I don't see why it's so glorified... Niven can't write. From a literary standpoint, Ringworld sucks.
Sure, it may have some interesting ideas, but it also has some very stupid ideas (genetically lucky people), all tied together with a poorly-written excuse of a story. The plot is dry, far too predictable, and unoriginal.
Do yourself a favour and don't waste your time--there's much better hard sci-fi out there. Greg Bear, for instance. If you want readable sci-fi about future social systems, see his novels Eon or Slant.
Ooh, yes, such scary prospects. Perhaps eventually we can have stealth-DNA installed that morphs constantly to avoid detection.
But maybe that's not such a good idea... if you can't quite reach your beverage, you could suddenly evolve into a creature with far longer arms, but it would probably be quite incapable of drinking it.
...and that company's employees are also customers to thousands of other businesses, whose employees are in turn customers to thousands more. A theft in this system will inevitably affect hundreds of thousands of people and businesses alike, but the cycle of wealth continues unabated.
That just goes to show the complete artificiality of area and country codes, and the associated 'long-distance' rates. Why are Canada and the United States the same country code, yet calling in-between typically costs more? It's quite arbitrary, at least in North America, so I think that this fits with that general trend.
But remember, this is separate from your traditional phone network anyways, so they wouldn't even need to follow the standard American phone number format. It just makes adoption easier for their primary market.
Although this looks like a nice implementation, if you both have broadband connections already, why is this such a big deal? You can communicate with VoIP already. It's not like there's any shortage of software for that, and all you'd need is a cheap mic instead of a fancy $65 handset. And you can also add video, if you both had cameras. None of this is particularly new technology or anything.
If Linux wants to be a player in the business world, it's got to play by the rules...
I'd say that Linux has been breaking business rules more than anything. What businessperson would have expected that such a product would come out of (largely) unpaid volunteers?
I work in an office for Ford Motor Company and they have implemented a custom remote update tool called the Software Delivery System (SDS). There are a number of Windows98 workstations here, and every time one of them boots, SDS is queried for new updates, at which time they are applied if present.
Here is an overview of the software's capabilities:
The SDS Admin is the GUI interface for electronic software package(s) distribution. SDS eliminates the need to visit a workstation to install software. With SDS, software can be "delivered" over the LAN to the end-user workstations. Software can be delivered to a single user, a selected group of users (e.g. a particular department or building location), or to all users on the LAN, regardless of their department or location.
Once the software has been delivered, SDS generates reports showing who received a particular software package, who are waiting for it and who refused it. "Refused" means that the delivery failed, usually because the client did not meet the requirements for that particular software such as disk space, etc. Administrators can monitor the delivery process to a particular machine and determine reasons for failure of software delivery to any machine using the Audit feature. SDS keeps a record of who sent what software to which machine and when.
SDS Admin is supported on Windows 98/ 2000/NT Clients with drive mounts to NT & TAS Servers but not Windows 95 Clients. The client software, SDSClint, is supported on all current clients, including Win 95.
So, as you can see, this saves a lot of work with updates, and makes maintaining network integrity far more practical. But I suppose it's necessary on Ford Motor Company's scale.
"One of the great advantages of the statistical approach," Och explained, "is that most of the work goes into components that are language-independent. As long as you give me enough parallel data to train the system on, you can have a new system in a matter of days, if not hours."
This statistical method is probably the best approach to computerized translation. It seems to approximate how the human mind will translate a give sentence most efficiently. Language can get awfully complex, and individual words often have, at best, an ambiguous meaning when interpreted alone. One must take into account the context of that word to specify and refine its meaning. This obviously leads to a huge number of permutations to represent a huge variety of thoughts, but the relative size of this number is diminishing as computers become more powerful.
Therefore, instead of playing with messy grammars and sentence structures, we can simply have a catalogue of thoughts as represented by words, and correlate that catalogue with a different set of words to facilitate translation. This software would operate on a deeper level than it would if it operated with the words and symbols themselves. It would utilize a map of the deep structures of language, instead of a map of the less-meaningful words and grammars.
I really like this method, and while it may seem like a brute-force hack applied to translation, the simple fact that languages do not contain elegant patterns must be accepted. It also appears to be a most efficient method, as the simple comparisons involved would bring the speed of translation into realtime.
But people will never just let themselves die. That was the whole point of The Matrix!
Maybe we can look at Star Trek for a more optimistic model... once robots do most of the work, then there would be no need for monetary motivation and culture would change dramatically away from the individualistic capitalism and more towards a socialistic, wealthless society.
The usefulness of searchable notes really depends on the class. If you're inputting code, then it makes sense to use a computer. Though if it's a spoken lecture, I think that the process of note-taking, which involves attentive listening and interpretation, is more important than the note itself. They're good for review, but the majority of the advantage that note-taking creates should come more from the creation of the note than from that later review.
This makes sense, since a properly taken note will not be a word-for-word copy, but an interpretation of the lecture in such a way that it is both meaningful to you and ties in your existing knowledge. A full-fledged PC would most likely be distractive since you have to deal with formatting and everything. A tablet designed specifically for note-taking would have the advantages of both methods, though there are other solutions that seem more elegant, at least for now. Until tablets become more compact and ubiquitous, I think that I'll stick to my pen and paper note-taking.
...but laptops aren't yet as common in classes as one might think.
Nor should they be. If all you need a laptop for is to take notes, it becomes more of a hindrance than an advantage, especially in lectures on mathematics or lectures with many diagrams. You just can't quickly record mathematical symbols or graphical diagrams with a computer. Classroom use may become more justified when handwriting recognition software matures, but currently there is no good reason to bring a laptop to class.
Good note-taking has nothing to do with the medium on which the note is recorded, and recording everything said in lecture (which may be possible if you type faster than you write) is often not desirable. You need to filter what you hear and discern the important points from a lecture, not record a dictation. A simple notebook and pencil are perfectly sufficient.
Slashdot Mirror
But seriously... what would be the point of living if there was nothing left to learn?
Larry Niven's ringworld series addresses the effect of near immortality on society. Having a baby requires a government permit, which is only issued to exceptional individuals, or the very, very lucky...
...which results in genetically lucky people, who can slip through even the stickiest situations unscathed.
What a ridiculous book.
What are you talking about? Ringworld is a terrible novel. I don't see why it's so glorified... Niven can't write. From a literary standpoint, Ringworld sucks.
Sure, it may have some interesting ideas, but it also has some very stupid ideas (genetically lucky people), all tied together with a poorly-written excuse of a story. The plot is dry, far too predictable, and unoriginal.
Do yourself a favour and don't waste your time--there's much better hard sci-fi out there. Greg Bear, for instance. If you want readable sci-fi about future social systems, see his novels Eon or Slant.
It's not that it's virtual, but that it's arbitrary. Then the mind (and society) makes it real.
Why did the post above here get modded down??
It didn't. It was posted as an AC and starts with a score of 0.
legal issues?
how is portscanning illegal?
it may go against a TOS agreement, but illegal?
What do you mean? They obviously did it to protect their customers from getting the virus!
Yeah, that's the ticket...
Ooh, yes, such scary prospects. Perhaps eventually we can have stealth-DNA installed that morphs constantly to avoid detection.
But maybe that's not such a good idea... if you can't quite reach your beverage, you could suddenly evolve into a creature with far longer arms, but it would probably be quite incapable of drinking it.
There are more lights in one building like that than a square mile of low-density residential...
;)
Playing too much SimCity, I see.
They sky was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel...
O/T, but I love your sig.
...and that company's employees are also customers to thousands of other businesses, whose employees are in turn customers to thousands more. A theft in this system will inevitably affect hundreds of thousands of people and businesses alike, but the cycle of wealth continues unabated.
It's not that big a deal.
That just goes to show the complete artificiality of area and country codes, and the associated 'long-distance' rates. Why are Canada and the United States the same country code, yet calling in-between typically costs more? It's quite arbitrary, at least in North America, so I think that this fits with that general trend.
But remember, this is separate from your traditional phone network anyways, so they wouldn't even need to follow the standard American phone number format. It just makes adoption easier for their primary market.
Oh really? My bad. I thought that a computer was required. RTFA, I know, I know.
Although this looks like a nice implementation, if you both have broadband connections already, why is this such a big deal? You can communicate with VoIP already. It's not like there's any shortage of software for that, and all you'd need is a cheap mic instead of a fancy $65 handset. And you can also add video, if you both had cameras. None of this is particularly new technology or anything.
If Linux wants to be a player in the business world, it's got to play by the rules...
I'd say that Linux has been breaking business rules more than anything. What businessperson would have expected that such a product would come out of (largely) unpaid volunteers?
Here is an overview of the software's capabilities:So, as you can see, this saves a lot of work with updates, and makes maintaining network integrity far more practical. But I suppose it's necessary on Ford Motor Company's scale.
So a machine with human parents (meaning creators) must therefore be... human?
"One of the great advantages of the statistical approach," Och explained, "is that most of the work goes into components that are language-independent. As long as you give me enough parallel data to train the system on, you can have a new system in a matter of days, if not hours."
This statistical method is probably the best approach to computerized translation. It seems to approximate how the human mind will translate a give sentence most efficiently. Language can get awfully complex, and individual words often have, at best, an ambiguous meaning when interpreted alone. One must take into account the context of that word to specify and refine its meaning. This obviously leads to a huge number of permutations to represent a huge variety of thoughts, but the relative size of this number is diminishing as computers become more powerful.
Therefore, instead of playing with messy grammars and sentence structures, we can simply have a catalogue of thoughts as represented by words, and correlate that catalogue with a different set of words to facilitate translation. This software would operate on a deeper level than it would if it operated with the words and symbols themselves. It would utilize a map of the deep structures of language, instead of a map of the less-meaningful words and grammars.
I really like this method, and while it may seem like a brute-force hack applied to translation, the simple fact that languages do not contain elegant patterns must be accepted. It also appears to be a most efficient method, as the simple comparisons involved would bring the speed of translation into realtime.
Wow, it seems those JavaDrugs really do work!
...Kevin?
There's a very simple reason for that.
It's faster.
But people will never just let themselves die. That was the whole point of The Matrix!
Maybe we can look at Star Trek for a more optimistic model... once robots do most of the work, then there would be no need for monetary motivation and culture would change dramatically away from the individualistic capitalism and more towards a socialistic, wealthless society.
The usefulness of searchable notes really depends on the class. If you're inputting code, then it makes sense to use a computer. Though if it's a spoken lecture, I think that the process of note-taking, which involves attentive listening and interpretation, is more important than the note itself. They're good for review, but the majority of the advantage that note-taking creates should come more from the creation of the note than from that later review.
This makes sense, since a properly taken note will not be a word-for-word copy, but an interpretation of the lecture in such a way that it is both meaningful to you and ties in your existing knowledge. A full-fledged PC would most likely be distractive since you have to deal with formatting and everything. A tablet designed specifically for note-taking would have the advantages of both methods, though there are other solutions that seem more elegant, at least for now. Until tablets become more compact and ubiquitous, I think that I'll stick to my pen and paper note-taking.
...but laptops aren't yet as common in classes as one might think.
Nor should they be. If all you need a laptop for is to take notes, it becomes more of a hindrance than an advantage, especially in lectures on mathematics or lectures with many diagrams. You just can't quickly record mathematical symbols or graphical diagrams with a computer. Classroom use may become more justified when handwriting recognition software matures, but currently there is no good reason to bring a laptop to class.
Good note-taking has nothing to do with the medium on which the note is recorded, and recording everything said in lecture (which may be possible if you type faster than you write) is often not desirable. You need to filter what you hear and discern the important points from a lecture, not record a dictation. A simple notebook and pencil are perfectly sufficient.