I'm going to have to agree, this is one of those products that is kind of doomed to end up on an infomercial. You have to be incredibly lazy or just plain physically incapable for this to be useful at all, how much time are you actually saving yourself if you have to get the robot out and the ladder every time you want to clean your gutters? The only way I could see a product like this being useful is if it would just automatically keep your gutters clean.
The article isn't even titled properly, the technique that spore uses is not procedural programming, it's procedural generation, which is a completely different concept
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
I do computer repair for a bunch of people that live around me, several of them are older people and the majority of these older couples use dial-up access. In my experience, dial-up isn't the same as it was way back in the day before broadband, the speeds are 'actually' at 56k, and sometimes the provider can actually make these speeds faster with accelleration utilites. As a matter of fact the only point in time that any of my clients had complained that their speeds were too slow was when I advised them to get windows updates. Normal web browsing, email and the like are served extremely well by dial-up today, in my opinion.
the point of child pornography laws is to prevent the exploitation of minors, in the US minors are considered anyone under the age of 18. it's not like anyone cares what sexually excites you, if you are aroused by girls who look like they are 12, then as long as they are actually 18 then you're not corrupting anyone (by law). it is very nessecary to keep these laws in place because young people are easily influenced by those who are older, so much so that it can be considered a form of abuse when you involve them in sexual acts, clothed or unclothed.
google earth is just a program that aggregates a ton of information. All of this information is easily accessibly via other avenues. So just talking to google about this problem doesn't do anything at all really, if a terrorist is even slightly resourceful and can type "sattelite imagery" into google search, he can have instant access to the same pictures google earth provides. there really is no point to having these "talks".
Here is a possible sequence of events that I can forsee:
1. Google indexes all the books in the world.
2. People are able to find these books online.
3. Authors begin to give the rights to distribute their works through google, google takes a cut of each purchase. (this will probably yeild a better deal for the authours given the enourmous market and subsequently small profit margin per sale that google can get away with)
4. Publishers no longer are needed.
Granted, this process could take many years.
I think that bringing these lawsuits up against google may be the only way to keep publishers running.
While the two products may resemble each other, this is analagous to saying the PC is really a duplicate product of the typewriter and that the PC is not really an innovative product because the typewriter came before it. Ok, nobody is denying that the two products have a similar look or are capable of doing the same types of things, but the approach taken is so drastically different that saying that apple is lacking in innovation by producing the iPod is ridiculous. The key difference in the product is that they have taken something that was previously an analog interface and without making any changes to our physical interaction with it, converted it to a digital controller to meet the same end.
The article makes the insinuation that 'PS3's Cell CPU uses "in-order" processing' making real time AI impossible, however the system specs for the PS3 released by sony indicate that they have 7, yes SEVEN parallel processors running on this guy. What is he talking about?
While setting the compass position off kilter, or slightly ebbing the coordinates of the plane may be annoying, these malfunctions are in no way 'unsafe' to the operation of the airplane, and are easy to correct. I'm not claiming that the cell phones don't do anything, I'm just saying that they aren't going to do anything seriously harmful to the plane or its occupants.
I've been talking to my dad about this (who's degree is in electrical engineering but has worked for 20+ years as a commercial airline pilot) and he says that there is no documented situation, ever, where a cell phone has caused unsafe interference with the navigation equipment onboard the plane. The interference that these devices cause is an interference with signals that are already coming from outside the craft, there is no possibility of creating such a garbage signal that it would cause the plane to crash or otherwise malfunction. If this were the case then it would be quite easy for someone to dupe the navigation signals from the ground and incite some sort of catastrophe onboard, there are many failsafes in place to keep this from happening.
It's suicide because there is such a large portion of their users who fileshare, and who will be motivated to look elsewhere for internet access if they are denied the ability to do so. I suppose that if filesharers were removed altogether from any service provider then the quality of service for the rest of their customers would be increased, but from a corporate standpoint I don't think they really care about the quality of service as much as the user does, they just want the most users subscribing to the service they provide to maximize profits. If a large enough portion of these subscribers were removed, I would place my bets that many high speed providers would go under or discontinue service because of the loss in revenue.
It's suicide for broadband suppliers to try weeding out filesharers, unless the contracts become federally mandated I doubt anyone would sign them. I know I sure as hell would find another subscriber who hadn't signed the damn thing immediately, if my provider were to abide by it.
You don't really even have to work your ass off to get a degree from a community college. I would say that the rigor of the courses at most of these places is comparable to classes that you would encounter your junior year at an average high school.
Furthermore, even if you were to loan the (relatively) measly 2k per year that it takes to pay the full tuiton at most community colleges, you're statistically probable to make at least twice that much more every year after graduating. If you intelligently apply your degree then your returns will be much greater than that even.
the mere fact that google would house your information makes no assumption that they have any ability to read it. Providing some sort of remote storage along with a one time key associated with each user makes it feasible that only you (the user) would have the ability to access this information. Furthermore, there is no reason that the relatively small amounts of sensitive information (credit card numbers, social security #s and the like) can't be stored locally on your thin client.
I for one am a strong advocate of this idea, because it completely eradicates the majority of issues that arise with using local software.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to have to agree, this is one of those products that is kind of doomed to end up on an infomercial. You have to be incredibly lazy or just plain physically incapable for this to be useful at all, how much time are you actually saving yourself if you have to get the robot out and the ladder every time you want to clean your gutters? The only way I could see a product like this being useful is if it would just automatically keep your gutters clean.
The article isn't even titled properly, the technique that spore uses is not procedural programming, it's procedural generation, which is a completely different concept http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
I do computer repair for a bunch of people that live around me, several of them are older people and the majority of these older couples use dial-up access. In my experience, dial-up isn't the same as it was way back in the day before broadband, the speeds are 'actually' at 56k, and sometimes the provider can actually make these speeds faster with accelleration utilites. As a matter of fact the only point in time that any of my clients had complained that their speeds were too slow was when I advised them to get windows updates. Normal web browsing, email and the like are served extremely well by dial-up today, in my opinion.
the point of child pornography laws is to prevent the exploitation of minors, in the US minors are considered anyone under the age of 18. it's not like anyone cares what sexually excites you, if you are aroused by girls who look like they are 12, then as long as they are actually 18 then you're not corrupting anyone (by law). it is very nessecary to keep these laws in place because young people are easily influenced by those who are older, so much so that it can be considered a form of abuse when you involve them in sexual acts, clothed or unclothed.
google earth is just a program that aggregates a ton of information. All of this information is easily accessibly via other avenues. So just talking to google about this problem doesn't do anything at all really, if a terrorist is even slightly resourceful and can type "sattelite imagery" into google search, he can have instant access to the same pictures google earth provides. there really is no point to having these "talks".
Here is a possible sequence of events that I can forsee:
1. Google indexes all the books in the world.
2. People are able to find these books online.
3. Authors begin to give the rights to distribute their works through google, google takes a cut of each purchase. (this will probably yeild a better deal for the authours given the enourmous market and subsequently small profit margin per sale that google can get away with)
4. Publishers no longer are needed.
Granted, this process could take many years.
I think that bringing these lawsuits up against google may be the only way to keep publishers running.
While the two products may resemble each other, this is analagous to saying the PC is really a duplicate product of the typewriter and that the PC is not really an innovative product because the typewriter came before it. Ok, nobody is denying that the two products have a similar look or are capable of doing the same types of things, but the approach taken is so drastically different that saying that apple is lacking in innovation by producing the iPod is ridiculous. The key difference in the product is that they have taken something that was previously an analog interface and without making any changes to our physical interaction with it, converted it to a digital controller to meet the same end.
The article makes the insinuation that 'PS3's Cell CPU uses "in-order" processing' making real time AI impossible, however the system specs for the PS3 released by sony indicate that they have 7, yes SEVEN parallel processors running on this guy. What is he talking about?
While setting the compass position off kilter, or slightly ebbing the coordinates of the plane may be annoying, these malfunctions are in no way 'unsafe' to the operation of the airplane, and are easy to correct. I'm not claiming that the cell phones don't do anything, I'm just saying that they aren't going to do anything seriously harmful to the plane or its occupants.
I've been talking to my dad about this (who's degree is in electrical engineering but has worked for 20+ years as a commercial airline pilot) and he says that there is no documented situation, ever, where a cell phone has caused unsafe interference with the navigation equipment onboard the plane. The interference that these devices cause is an interference with signals that are already coming from outside the craft, there is no possibility of creating such a garbage signal that it would cause the plane to crash or otherwise malfunction. If this were the case then it would be quite easy for someone to dupe the navigation signals from the ground and incite some sort of catastrophe onboard, there are many failsafes in place to keep this from happening.
It's suicide because there is such a large portion of their users who fileshare, and who will be motivated to look elsewhere for internet access if they are denied the ability to do so. I suppose that if filesharers were removed altogether from any service provider then the quality of service for the rest of their customers would be increased, but from a corporate standpoint I don't think they really care about the quality of service as much as the user does, they just want the most users subscribing to the service they provide to maximize profits. If a large enough portion of these subscribers were removed, I would place my bets that many high speed providers would go under or discontinue service because of the loss in revenue.
It's suicide for broadband suppliers to try weeding out filesharers, unless the contracts become federally mandated I doubt anyone would sign them. I know I sure as hell would find another subscriber who hadn't signed the damn thing immediately, if my provider were to abide by it.
For many players, the sims has already met total annihilation.
You don't really even have to work your ass off to get a degree from a community college. I would say that the rigor of the courses at most of these places is comparable to classes that you would encounter your junior year at an average high school. Furthermore, even if you were to loan the (relatively) measly 2k per year that it takes to pay the full tuiton at most community colleges, you're statistically probable to make at least twice that much more every year after graduating. If you intelligently apply your degree then your returns will be much greater than that even.
the mere fact that google would house your information makes no assumption that they have any ability to read it. Providing some sort of remote storage along with a one time key associated with each user makes it feasible that only you (the user) would have the ability to access this information. Furthermore, there is no reason that the relatively small amounts of sensitive information (credit card numbers, social security #s and the like) can't be stored locally on your thin client. I for one am a strong advocate of this idea, because it completely eradicates the majority of issues that arise with using local software.