The 17 servos in this robot use a LOT of battery. Add a wireless card to that and the joy of *using* this robot will only last a few minutes. Especially if that battery has to also power the remote video link. Its not big enough to carry lots of batteries.
The act of remotely controlling a robot is not new, nor is it proprietary. There are dozens of servo controllers on the market that can be controlled using simple serial commands. The clever home robotics hobbyist can buy all they need to replicate this robot in the good old US of A. There are some that are building their own.
http://www.sorobotics.org/dgates/samm.html
It may be cute, or cool to watch, but the gizmos inside it are ordinary, and can be replicated almost anywhere.
There is nothing to get excited about until robots are doing something useful for mankind in general. For example: yard work, harvesting crops, mining on other planets etc.
I don't care what people blog about, there is nothing in a blog that merits regulation or taxation. In the US, speech and its expression are free... period.
A blog, by definition, is not a public broadcasting medium. It is in the public, but is not a public source of information. Should a politically active person stand on a street corner and shout out their belief and political affiliation, it is not a public broadcast medium.
This is EXACTLY the kind of crap that artificially inflates the value of one political party above another in the eye of the public at large.
ALL, and I mean EVERY LAST ONE of them, all political messages should be broadcast freely to ALL Americans, young and old, till every American, of voting age or not, is sick to fscking death of them, and well informed on how each party, local or national, stands on every issue. When they abuse their rights to speak freely, there will come a time that it is no longer valuable to them to speak in public except in a morally appropriate manner.
The attempt to regulate even a small part of that process is both assinine and totally irreverant to your, and my, rights as citizens.
To do this among a small electorate (read not nationwide) only goes to ensure that only the people with money will get access to the public.... This is TOTAL BS
If you live in SF and this gets passed, I heartily recommend you leave there, pack your bags and go. I'd do that anyway... but especially if they pass this infringement of your rights to hear and be heard.
Interestingly, the Robosapien and variants of software to control it are a few of the intermediate steps necessary for humans in general to accept robots as and for what they are.
Currently, cute toys, or dangerous machines (like auto manufacturing) is about the limits of what is acceptable. Most people, even on/. don't really know what autonomous robotics is about. This is just how it is.
There have been studies that show that if a robot has a very realistic human face and features, it is viewed initially as disgusting or evil. There is an aclimatization time before humans get used to a machine that has such features. There is even a name for this reaction??
We, in general, are not yet ready to pay for something that might be described as a man-sized robosapien. Currently, the price of such would be in the 100s of thousands of dollars, if it were possible. Batteries just don't last long enough for that.
It is silly things like voice control of a toy that will help pay for and develop technologies that will lead to the grail of man sized Robosapiens, in-car AI, home care robots, hospital asset and stores management, and many other things that are just out of range right now.
We are not far from being able to replace the grocery stock boy (you can bet Walmart will be on the bleeding edge of that one) and several other things that are just begging for robotic labor. (sweeping parking lots, lawn care, etc.) There are a lot of efforts being made for farm machinery because it lowers the cost of production in areas where there aren't people waiting for the jobs.
Anyway, its good to see efforts being made outside of educational and governmental institutions, especially open source efforts.
Isn't this how many technologies make it to the consumer? Company A invents it, goes broke trying to sell it, then the big players buy it cheap and finally the rest of us get to use it?
Design for manufacture is an engineering process that I've learned a little bit about, but doing the math... 22 8hr work days in one average month means they can produce 75+ motherboards per work minute! That is something to think about.
Its always amazing to me to see the factory equipment, test benches look like stuff I've got in my garage half the time.
I might be talking out of my @ss, but the last few days I've been thinking that innovation and customer service have taken a rather bad beating by IP and patent infringement litigation.
If Novell really wants to do something besides take a dive in front of the world, they should take the talent that they do have, add a bit to it, and (as someone else almost stated) create a Linux distro that is not like the rest. A Linux that 'makes it easy' to put it anywhere in your network, run just about _anyone's_ applications, and has simple to use but well behaved patch management and update services.
They could also ship low cost versions of their distro that are tailored for specific applications such DVR, home-based firewall/proxy/mail_filter/u-name-it, game machine, etc...
I kind of hate to say this, but if my aunt Julie got a Novell CD in the mail, and it installed perfectly for her, let her get all her normal home user applications running with ease, they would increase their customer base.
All of the home users that I know of don't want to mess around with the OS on their $500 'Dude, your getting a whaaaa?' machines. They just want to turn it on, get their email, be able to figure out how to easily use their digital cameras, and do cool stuff on the Internet that they hear about from friends and neighbors.
If Novell really wants to be a 'playa' they need to make a user experience that beats windoze and AOhelL for ease of use, ease of adding features, and ease of keeping it secure from spam, spim, virii, and other malicious forms of those 'I don't know what it was, but now my computer doesn't seem to work very good' problems.
IMHO any OS that can build a 'tune-up' kit that my aunt Julie can use will be a bear in the marketplace.
Its not good enough to have a good OS, your product has to be part of a service, and it *MUST* be innovative and include the kind of customer service that people *WANT* to pay money for.
Yeah, I hack together my own machines, and for the most part I enjoy it... but I'm rare... the majority of people just want a computer that works when they turn it on... like their stereo or microwave oven.
They also want to do 'cool' stuff without having to be an MIT graduate (not that being a MIT graduate guarantees that you know how to do _anything_).
Well, the reason that RedHat got its customer base is because they more-or-less did these things for the corporate environment. With what is happening on the home desktop, SPAM litigation, the UN wanting to control the Internet... its all too much, the aunt Julie's of the world just want it to work as reliable as their toaster, and without the need of knowing someone in the neighborhood who is a computer genius.
If Novell can do that, they *WILL* garner sizable market share.... IMO.
Am I the only one that is seriously waiting for the socket in the back of my head so I can learn all sorts of things without any effort?
I don't think I'd want the control chips implanted... imagine yourself watching TV, all settled in, and just as the shower scene starts, you blink and suddenly you're watching the iron chef? or your garage door starts opening and closing repeatedly?
Got only knows what evil would happen if you got a 'head cold'... sneezing is bad enough, but when you sneeze and the dishwasher starts a rinse cycle, that's just out of hand.
?
I don't think that many people think that copyright holders don't deserve some credit and payola, I just think that mainstream North American industries believe they should get way more than the content is worth.
Hey, if a vinyl album cost $12, and a CD costs $15, someone is getting cheated, and we all know that cheating is wrong. If I don't want the jeweled CD case, or the funky CD label, or the funny case artwork... how much is the content really worth? How about letting me download it for $5?
The main point that MC is making is that P2P is not the criminal tool that its being made out to be. Criminals will break copyright law no matter what medium is available. The plain facts are that those instigating the litigation are the ones that are suffering because the general populace is no longer willing to pay over the top costs for content that has not increased in value since the 1600's. At least they claim they are suffering... this has yet to be proven, in court, in fact, in any way at all.
The articles mentioned, and MC's blog make some very good statements about copyright law, and how big business is working hard (using our dollars) to infringe on our rights to use technology.
The underlying theme is who gets the money, and how much, not that artist 'X' is being ripped off or that someone is claiming the content of artist 'X' as their own.
If you and 14 of your friends make a pact to each buy a CD and make copies for each other, then the basic cost of that CD for each of you is about $1.50... or 1/10th of the retail price. This is a breach of the law that cannot practically be prosecuted. Because of technology, the RIAA and others have the opportunity to pick on a small group of individuals who have blatently broken the law. The problem is that they are using this activity to try to bar you and I from using the technology that criminals used, simply because it could happen again.... this is *WAAAAY* wrong.
Remember also that they are not doing this to protect artists... they are doing this to protect their Italian sports cars, plastic surgery, $5 million homes, and all the other stuff that they have bought with the money that they stole from innocent people, ostensibly very young people.
With P2P and other technologies, some artists are finding that %100 of the dollars spent for content they created is being delivered to the artist, and not shared out to oh-so-many middlemen in 'the industry' who suck the value out of everything that the artists do (yes, that was a gratuitous and unfair indictment of several industries on a grand scale... and I'm smiling about it)
The argument, nay.. the fight, is about what technology we can or cannot use and why. MC is right on in this matter. If you want to bring copyrights into this, you also have to look at the value of what is being stolen. Stealing is only stealing when you deprive someone of their property? Someone has to prove that file sharing has hurt the music or motion picture industry before I will believe they are being ripped off by P2P users.
?? Can anyone prove this ????
Meanwhile, all of us have a duty to try to fight the copyright overlords and their hell-bent determination to deprive us of technology.... simply to line their own pockets.
Lets face it... the RIAA is representing people who have never decreased the cost of purchasing content, despite the fact that producing it has steadily decreased in cost over the years.
Now they are suing people because they are losing their ability to steal from the masses with impunity.
MC is *RIGHT* in his stance, but the RIAA and other deserve the sh*tstorm that they are in. They have been stealing from the masses and the artists for decades.
Digital media has changed the world of content distribution, and the RIAA and Hollywood need to face up to that and get their act straight. Stealing the content from them is not the answer, but if they want to stay in business, they will have to come up with a workable answer, and soon.
Just taking the argument to court does nothing for their cause (witness one SCO effort).
Personally, digital rights is taking the same phuqued up route that patents are going. There is more money spent on protection than there is on innovation and customer satisfaction. To me, I hope they are all undone by 'independants' as MC tried to explain.
Have you ever waited 15 minutes to avoid rush hour and spent 20 minutes less travel time to get to work?
By the time that NASA or anyone else launched nano-robots bound for Mars, the technology you read about today will be sooo '5 minutes ago' that it will seem rediculous.
When will our NASA type scifi inventors start thinking ahead?
Sending these robots to another planet is about as complex as trying to explore the Internet with an 8086 computer today.
Its all just hype to garner some money and backing. Real work of robots on other planets needs quite a bit more development, both in design methodologies and materials. When robotics and AI are spotting wanted criminals in the public via web cams, then you will have something to reliably send to another planet to do 'Lewis and Clarke' stuff.
Until then, we need to spend money on developing future robotics engineers instead of rocket fuel.
Just a reality check...
Cash it if you want.
SWEET! I had forgotten about that. Technically this isn't replicating a robot, but *VERY* close. I would bet that most/.-ers would be surprised at how complex LEGO creations can get. Thanks
I can't see that anyone else said it, but I'd suggest that people (you know who you are) go a couple of steps further than/.-ing the UN website(s). When its forcefully proven that the UN or any government has neither the technology or the ability to manage their own little corner of the Internet, all will see what a bastardized attempt at controlling our freedoms this really is.
Junkmail is part of owning a mailbox... spam is part of owning an inbox. Show me that you can get rid of junkmail (which has been around for decades) and I might trust you enough to let you demonstrate how you intend to get rid of spam.
So the UN thinks they can regulate something... well they have failed miserably at everything else, they might as well try for the Internet?
If the UN website was taken down, perhaps then the UN would make a resolution to be more informed before opening their 'good intentions' on the world.
If they prove his bad morals are because of D&D, then maybe they can link bad teeth or eyesight to some other source and my insurance will have to pay for corrective actions, after suing the appropriate game maker?
I have to say these are the GREATEST office toys ever! You have just given me an idea of what to do with my @#$%#$^%$^&$ fragged zip zap! Excellent idea...
The megabitty group on yahoo has all the know-how to do it too!
I can't find link to the thread now, but there are several Lego groups already talking of making LEGO robots that build Lego 'things' and it would only be a few more steps to get Lego robots to build parts for other Lego robots, and other Lego robots to assemble the parts. I'm pretty certain that its a probable event in the near future, given the 'coolness factor' of having built the first 'plastic' skynet:-)
Is it just me, or have other people noticed how the 'replicators' on SG1 look a lot like 'evolved' Lego robots?
Friday the 13th is supposedly when the Knights Templar were rounded up and arrested, in order to be tortured to death for daring to rival the church in stature and power.
That if the MS license leaves so many people with so many questions, then it is *NOT* open, and certainly not clear enough to warrant anyone applauding MS.
History shows that MS is willing to swap old problems for new problems, creating an endless loop of user licensing fees.
The revolution is coming, and MS is offering to let us eat cake?
The problem with AI is not simply being able to replicate or create neurons or neural networks, but to operate them in a way that mimics or exactly duplicates how the human brain uses them.
Extracting cogent data from video images/streams is being done already. The thing is that it is not being stored and analyzed in the way that human brains do. A security system with a truckload of ASIC/FPGA hardware will never 'remember' the blonde in the red Porsche tomorrow or next week. That intelligent vision system will store the details, sans emotion and personal perspective, so that when these same details are seen again, there is no recollection of the other details that are part, or would be part, of a human's memory of the images.
Every image processed (or sound heard by the blind) is associatively analyzed and stored with regard to all other states of the brain and memory at that moment. Like seeing a particular album cover can cause you to reminisce about the girl you were dating when it was first released? Every new memory becomes enmeshed in previous memories, and thus is not stored as simple analysis of the visual data.
AI is much more than simple neurons and networks. It is how data is analyzed, stored, and recalled. Think of how a PB&J can make you think of eating lunch in the 3rd grade one day, and cause you to remember your grandma's house the next time you have one?
Until AI scientists figure that one out, they will get nothing more than very different computing devices.
Any move in the industry to consolidate the myriad of distributions is slightly against the OS grain IMO, but OTOH, combining development efforts also increases functionality and user enjoyment. RedHat set a high benchmark. If all distributions were competing evenly with each other for part of MS marketshare, the collaboration they would bring to the marketplace would cause MS serious issue. This is something that I would like to see.
This is well said. Some day, hopefully soon, the world will realize that the IT department can't do everything that has a computer attached to it, and along with this, IT managers will quit assuming that they should be in charge of everything on the network!!
IT people would have no more idea what to do with HVAC controller errors than the DJ at your local radio station should know what to do with a RAID error.
I wish people would quit assuming that the network is more than just a service, like POTS lines etc. There are services offered over the network, but that doesn't mean the network provider has any clue about it. Network connectivity needs to be comoditized, not specialized and part of the desktop functionality.
No one will get any love calling up the local bell company and asking why their 56k modem won't work on the same line they are calling from. If the bldg service department puts devices on the network, its their problem, not the responsibility of IT.
Generally speaking, most IT departments have a *LONG* way to go before they can simply offer services and stop sweating when some server in the back room of a dark building stops working, but that is where they need to be.
It bugs me when an IT guy *WANTS* to be involved in the daily operations of the billing system? Who wants that hassle? Who wants to be yanked away from reading slashdot just because the A/C in building across town isn't working right?
"The whole idea of a desktop was first brought to mainstream by IBM"
Can you explain this? I thought Xerox and Digital Research were doing desktop functionality before windoze 1.x... and they were copying from Mac?
Slashdot Mirror
The 17 servos in this robot use a LOT of battery. Add a wireless card to that and the joy of *using* this robot will only last a few minutes. Especially if that battery has to also power the remote video link. Its not big enough to carry lots of batteries. The act of remotely controlling a robot is not new, nor is it proprietary. There are dozens of servo controllers on the market that can be controlled using simple serial commands. The clever home robotics hobbyist can buy all they need to replicate this robot in the good old US of A. There are some that are building their own. http://www.sorobotics.org/dgates/samm.html It may be cute, or cool to watch, but the gizmos inside it are ordinary, and can be replicated almost anywhere. There is nothing to get excited about until robots are doing something useful for mankind in general. For example: yard work, harvesting crops, mining on other planets etc.
I don't care what people blog about, there is nothing in a blog that merits regulation or taxation. In the US, speech and its expression are free... period.
A blog, by definition, is not a public broadcasting medium. It is in the public, but is not a public source of information. Should a politically active person stand on a street corner and shout out their belief and political affiliation, it is not a public broadcast medium.
This is EXACTLY the kind of crap that artificially inflates the value of one political party above another in the eye of the public at large.
ALL, and I mean EVERY LAST ONE of them, all political messages should be broadcast freely to ALL Americans, young and old, till every American, of voting age or not, is sick to fscking death of them, and well informed on how each party, local or national, stands on every issue. When they abuse their rights to speak freely, there will come a time that it is no longer valuable to them to speak in public except in a morally appropriate manner.
The attempt to regulate even a small part of that process is both assinine and totally irreverant to your, and my, rights as citizens.
To do this among a small electorate (read not nationwide) only goes to ensure that only the people with money will get access to the public.... This is TOTAL BS
If you live in SF and this gets passed, I heartily recommend you leave there, pack your bags and go. I'd do that anyway... but especially if they pass this infringement of your rights to hear and be heard.
Interestingly, the Robosapien and variants of software to control it are a few of the intermediate steps necessary for humans in general to accept robots as and for what they are.
/. don't really know what autonomous robotics is about. This is just how it is.
Currently, cute toys, or dangerous machines (like auto manufacturing) is about the limits of what is acceptable. Most people, even on
There have been studies that show that if a robot has a very realistic human face and features, it is viewed initially as disgusting or evil. There is an aclimatization time before humans get used to a machine that has such features. There is even a name for this reaction??
We, in general, are not yet ready to pay for something that might be described as a man-sized robosapien. Currently, the price of such would be in the 100s of thousands of dollars, if it were possible. Batteries just don't last long enough for that.
It is silly things like voice control of a toy that will help pay for and develop technologies that will lead to the grail of man sized Robosapiens, in-car AI, home care robots, hospital asset and stores management, and many other things that are just out of range right now.
We are not far from being able to replace the grocery stock boy (you can bet Walmart will be on the bleeding edge of that one) and several other things that are just begging for robotic labor. (sweeping parking lots, lawn care, etc.) There are a lot of efforts being made for farm machinery because it lowers the cost of production in areas where there aren't people waiting for the jobs.
Anyway, its good to see efforts being made outside of educational and governmental institutions, especially open source efforts.
Isn't this how many technologies make it to the consumer? Company A invents it, goes broke trying to sell it, then the big players buy it cheap and finally the rest of us get to use it?
Oh, except for that famed 50+ mpg engine....
The site lists a page titled "Developer Blogs" and on that page lists 2 hackers and zero developers....
I can't wait till my TV remote has linux running on it, then I can program it to watch crap TV while I'm not there
Design for manufacture is an engineering process that I've learned a little bit about, but doing the math... 22 8hr work days in one average month means they can produce 75+ motherboards per work minute! That is something to think about. Its always amazing to me to see the factory equipment, test benches look like stuff I've got in my garage half the time.
I might be talking out of my @ss, but the last few days I've been thinking that innovation and customer service have taken a rather bad beating by IP and patent infringement litigation.
If Novell really wants to do something besides take a dive in front of the world, they should take the talent that they do have, add a bit to it, and (as someone else almost stated) create a Linux distro that is not like the rest. A Linux that 'makes it easy' to put it anywhere in your network, run just about _anyone's_ applications, and has simple to use but well behaved patch management and update services.
They could also ship low cost versions of their distro that are tailored for specific applications such DVR, home-based firewall/proxy/mail_filter/u-name-it, game machine, etc...
I kind of hate to say this, but if my aunt Julie got a Novell CD in the mail, and it installed perfectly for her, let her get all her normal home user applications running with ease, they would increase their customer base.
All of the home users that I know of don't want to mess around with the OS on their $500 'Dude, your getting a whaaaa?' machines. They just want to turn it on, get their email, be able to figure out how to easily use their digital cameras, and do cool stuff on the Internet that they hear about from friends and neighbors.
If Novell really wants to be a 'playa' they need to make a user experience that beats windoze and AOhelL for ease of use, ease of adding features, and ease of keeping it secure from spam, spim, virii, and other malicious forms of those 'I don't know what it was, but now my computer doesn't seem to work very good' problems.
IMHO any OS that can build a 'tune-up' kit that my aunt Julie can use will be a bear in the marketplace.
Its not good enough to have a good OS, your product has to be part of a service, and it *MUST* be innovative and include the kind of customer service that people *WANT* to pay money for.
Yeah, I hack together my own machines, and for the most part I enjoy it... but I'm rare... the majority of people just want a computer that works when they turn it on... like their stereo or microwave oven.
They also want to do 'cool' stuff without having to be an MIT graduate (not that being a MIT graduate guarantees that you know how to do _anything_).
Well, the reason that RedHat got its customer base is because they more-or-less did these things for the corporate environment. With what is happening on the home desktop, SPAM litigation, the UN wanting to control the Internet... its all too much, the aunt Julie's of the world just want it to work as reliable as their toaster, and without the need of knowing someone in the neighborhood who is a computer genius.
If Novell can do that, they *WILL* garner sizable market share.... IMO.
Am I the only one that is seriously waiting for the socket in the back of my head so I can learn all sorts of things without any effort? I don't think I'd want the control chips implanted... imagine yourself watching TV, all settled in, and just as the shower scene starts, you blink and suddenly you're watching the iron chef? or your garage door starts opening and closing repeatedly? Got only knows what evil would happen if you got a 'head cold'... sneezing is bad enough, but when you sneeze and the dishwasher starts a rinse cycle, that's just out of hand. ?
I don't think that many people think that copyright holders don't deserve some credit and payola, I just think that mainstream North American industries believe they should get way more than the content is worth.
Hey, if a vinyl album cost $12, and a CD costs $15, someone is getting cheated, and we all know that cheating is wrong. If I don't want the jeweled CD case, or the funky CD label, or the funny case artwork... how much is the content really worth? How about letting me download it for $5?
The main point that MC is making is that P2P is not the criminal tool that its being made out to be. Criminals will break copyright law no matter what medium is available. The plain facts are that those instigating the litigation are the ones that are suffering because the general populace is no longer willing to pay over the top costs for content that has not increased in value since the 1600's. At least they claim they are suffering... this has yet to be proven, in court, in fact, in any way at all.
The articles mentioned, and MC's blog make some very good statements about copyright law, and how big business is working hard (using our dollars) to infringe on our rights to use technology.
The underlying theme is who gets the money, and how much, not that artist 'X' is being ripped off or that someone is claiming the content of artist 'X' as their own.
If you and 14 of your friends make a pact to each buy a CD and make copies for each other, then the basic cost of that CD for each of you is about $1.50... or 1/10th of the retail price. This is a breach of the law that cannot practically be prosecuted. Because of technology, the RIAA and others have the opportunity to pick on a small group of individuals who have blatently broken the law. The problem is that they are using this activity to try to bar you and I from using the technology that criminals used, simply because it could happen again.... this is *WAAAAY* wrong.
Remember also that they are not doing this to protect artists... they are doing this to protect their Italian sports cars, plastic surgery, $5 million homes, and all the other stuff that they have bought with the money that they stole from innocent people, ostensibly very young people.
With P2P and other technologies, some artists are finding that %100 of the dollars spent for content they created is being delivered to the artist, and not shared out to oh-so-many middlemen in 'the industry' who suck the value out of everything that the artists do (yes, that was a gratuitous and unfair indictment of several industries on a grand scale... and I'm smiling about it)
The argument, nay.. the fight, is about what technology we can or cannot use and why. MC is right on in this matter. If you want to bring copyrights into this, you also have to look at the value of what is being stolen. Stealing is only stealing when you deprive someone of their property? Someone has to prove that file sharing has hurt the music or motion picture industry before I will believe they are being ripped off by P2P users.
?? Can anyone prove this ????
Meanwhile, all of us have a duty to try to fight the copyright overlords and their hell-bent determination to deprive us of technology.... simply to line their own pockets.
Lets face it... the RIAA is representing people who have never decreased the cost of purchasing content, despite the fact that producing it has steadily decreased in cost over the years.
Now they are suing people because they are losing their ability to steal from the masses with impunity.
MC is *RIGHT* in his stance, but the RIAA and other deserve the sh*tstorm that they are in. They have been stealing from the masses and the artists for decades.
Digital media has changed the world of content distribution, and the RIAA and Hollywood need to face up to that and get their act straight. Stealing the content from them is not the answer, but if they want to stay in business, they will have to come up with a workable answer, and soon.
Just taking the argument to court does nothing for their cause (witness one SCO effort).
Personally, digital rights is taking the same phuqued up route that patents are going. There is more money spent on protection than there is on innovation and customer satisfaction. To me, I hope they are all undone by 'independants' as MC tried to explain.
Time for the big boys to get with the new game...
Have you ever waited 15 minutes to avoid rush hour and spent 20 minutes less travel time to get to work? By the time that NASA or anyone else launched nano-robots bound for Mars, the technology you read about today will be sooo '5 minutes ago' that it will seem rediculous. When will our NASA type scifi inventors start thinking ahead? Sending these robots to another planet is about as complex as trying to explore the Internet with an 8086 computer today. Its all just hype to garner some money and backing. Real work of robots on other planets needs quite a bit more development, both in design methodologies and materials. When robotics and AI are spotting wanted criminals in the public via web cams, then you will have something to reliably send to another planet to do 'Lewis and Clarke' stuff. Until then, we need to spend money on developing future robotics engineers instead of rocket fuel. Just a reality check... Cash it if you want.
SWEET! I had forgotten about that. Technically this isn't replicating a robot, but *VERY* close. I would bet that most /.-ers would be surprised at how complex LEGO creations can get. Thanks
I thought that was what lasic surgery, and breast augmentation was all about?
I can't see that anyone else said it, but I'd suggest that people (you know who you are) go a couple of steps further than /.-ing the UN website(s). When its forcefully proven that the UN or any government has neither the technology or the ability to manage their own little corner of the Internet, all will see what a bastardized attempt at controlling our freedoms this really is.
Junkmail is part of owning a mailbox... spam is part of owning an inbox. Show me that you can get rid of junkmail (which has been around for decades) and I might trust you enough to let you demonstrate how you intend to get rid of spam.
So the UN thinks they can regulate something... well they have failed miserably at everything else, they might as well try for the Internet?
If the UN website was taken down, perhaps then the UN would make a resolution to be more informed before opening their 'good intentions' on the world.
????
If they prove his bad morals are because of D&D, then maybe they can link bad teeth or eyesight to some other source and my insurance will have to pay for corrective actions, after suing the appropriate game maker?
I have to say these are the GREATEST office toys ever! You have just given me an idea of what to do with my @#$%#$^%$^&$ fragged zip zap! Excellent idea...
The megabitty group on yahoo has all the know-how to do it too!
I can't find link to the thread now, but there are several Lego groups already talking of making LEGO robots that build Lego 'things' and it would only be a few more steps to get Lego robots to build parts for other Lego robots, and other Lego robots to assemble the parts. I'm pretty certain that its a probable event in the near future, given the 'coolness factor' of having built the first 'plastic' skynet :-)
Is it just me, or have other people noticed how the 'replicators' on SG1 look a lot like 'evolved' Lego robots?
Friday the 13th is supposedly when the Knights Templar were rounded up and arrested, in order to be tortured to death for daring to rival the church in stature and power.
That if the MS license leaves so many people with so many questions, then it is *NOT* open, and certainly not clear enough to warrant anyone applauding MS.
History shows that MS is willing to swap old problems for new problems, creating an endless loop of user licensing fees.
The revolution is coming, and MS is offering to let us eat cake?
The problem with AI is not simply being able to replicate or create neurons or neural networks, but to operate them in a way that mimics or exactly duplicates how the human brain uses them.
Extracting cogent data from video images/streams is being done already. The thing is that it is not being stored and analyzed in the way that human brains do. A security system with a truckload of ASIC/FPGA hardware will never 'remember' the blonde in the red Porsche tomorrow or next week. That intelligent vision system will store the details, sans emotion and personal perspective, so that when these same details are seen again, there is no recollection of the other details that are part, or would be part, of a human's memory of the images.
Every image processed (or sound heard by the blind) is associatively analyzed and stored with regard to all other states of the brain and memory at that moment. Like seeing a particular album cover can cause you to reminisce about the girl you were dating when it was first released? Every new memory becomes enmeshed in previous memories, and thus is not stored as simple analysis of the visual data.
AI is much more than simple neurons and networks. It is how data is analyzed, stored, and recalled. Think of how a PB&J can make you think of eating lunch in the 3rd grade one day, and cause you to remember your grandma's house the next time you have one?
Until AI scientists figure that one out, they will get nothing more than very different computing devices.
But then, that's just MHO
Any move in the industry to consolidate the myriad of distributions is slightly against the OS grain IMO, but OTOH, combining development efforts also increases functionality and user enjoyment. RedHat set a high benchmark. If all distributions were competing evenly with each other for part of MS marketshare, the collaboration they would bring to the marketplace would cause MS serious issue. This is something that I would like to see.
This is well said. Some day, hopefully soon, the world will realize that the IT department can't do everything that has a computer attached to it, and along with this, IT managers will quit assuming that they should be in charge of everything on the network!!
IT people would have no more idea what to do with HVAC controller errors than the DJ at your local radio station should know what to do with a RAID error.
I wish people would quit assuming that the network is more than just a service, like POTS lines etc. There are services offered over the network, but that doesn't mean the network provider has any clue about it. Network connectivity needs to be comoditized, not specialized and part of the desktop functionality.
No one will get any love calling up the local bell company and asking why their 56k modem won't work on the same line they are calling from. If the bldg service department puts devices on the network, its their problem, not the responsibility of IT.
Generally speaking, most IT departments have a *LONG* way to go before they can simply offer services and stop sweating when some server in the back room of a dark building stops working, but that is where they need to be.
It bugs me when an IT guy *WANTS* to be involved in the daily operations of the billing system? Who wants that hassle? Who wants to be yanked away from reading slashdot just because the A/C in building across town isn't working right?
S
"The whole idea of a desktop was first brought to mainstream by IBM" Can you explain this? I thought Xerox and Digital Research were doing desktop functionality before windoze 1.x ... and they were copying from Mac?