Why didn't analog neural nets become more popular? I thought that since you could use stuff like op-amps as "approximate" analog multiplication devices, you could pack a massive number of neurons onto a single piece of silicon (using today's silicon manufacturing techniques), Certainly a lot more efficently then building a digital multiplier per neuron...
Changing the subject suddenly, about how many small processors (like the 8-bit processors described in the above article) or perhaps like Z80s, plus memory, could you put on a single chip using modern manufacturing techniques? (And how fast could you make them go?)
Would anybody know how to take advantage of such a beast?
The particular companies/individuals that I was complaining about are those which just build a portfolio of dumb patents/trademarks, then go around suing people who won't give them money to license their so-called IP. These people/companies could care less whether they irritate a consumer - they just want to be parasites on the backs of people/organizations who are actually USING the idea to do something productive.
Even for those companies that ARE selling products which you can "choose" not to buy, 1) the fact that they're trying to use intimidation to prevent competition against their product indicates that they are probably so short-sighted in viewpoint that they won't be able to make the connection between their legal behavior & their loss in sales unless slapped upside the head with the massive 2x4 of public hatred, and 2) the whole point of the patent system is to provide temporary monopolies, which means that you may NOT be able to find another company which provides that kind of product (or any other company which does it going to be paying licensing fees to the 1st anyway).
I don't particularly agree with the current idea of patents, anyway - if two companies/individuals perform all of the proper R&D to create a particular idea, and one just happens to file the patent a little earlier than the other, then the other company/individual is SOL. I think that if you do the R&D, you should be allowed to reap the fruits of that labor. If it can be proven that you stole the ideas from somebody else, THEN they can throw the book at you.
Too bad you can't inflict penalties on companies that do dumb things like trademark names which are pretty obviously either public domain or closely associated with other companies/organizations, or patent things which have lots of prior art floating around.
I wonder if somebody could make the legal argument that doing such dumb things cause a lot of people/companies to waste legal & financial resources to counter the bogus trademark/patent, and that the trademark/patent filer is liable for that amount (like a class action lawsuit against a company for causing "damage" to the class frivilously).
Of course, what's really needed is a BTTH (Boot To The Head) for the people in the Patent Office who keep approving these things & for the Congresscritters who futzed around with the laws enough to make this kind of situation a big bonanza for companies that like to litigate their way to profits.
> What frustrates me even more is that it all wouldn't make the least bit of difference. If a child/young adolescent wants to lay their hands on porn (or whatever) they shall get it, one way or another. And according to me sex, nudity, etc. hasn't done anyone any harm...(most of us are born thanks to sex;-) ). The same goes for violence. I have never in my life had the urge to smash someone's skull after watching a particulary violent movie. >
While I do agree that constant exposure to violence isn't really likely to make an adult more likely to be violent (unless they've got some kind of mental problem), I do agree with the desensitization theory - the constant exposure to violence (real or fictional) does make us more accepting about violence occurring outside of our immediate lives (or possibly w/in our lives, since it seems more "normal"). This makes it less likely for us to do anything about a gradually-increasing environment of violence.
I do think that such messages DO affect the viewpoints of children who, in the absence of parental guidance, use media messages to establish a context for what's "wrong" & "right". (Please note the lack of parental guidance!) Heck, I can even tell the gut-level influence on myself of all the vigilante/martial arts/action movies that I've seen, even though I intellectually know that if everyone were to act like the heros & heroines in those movies, we'd pretty quickly descend into a total breakdown of social order.
I don't really care about sexual messages, except where it encourages irresponsible behavior (resulting in unwanted pregnancy or STDs, etc), or is mixed with violence (rape, date-rape, etc).
I think the US media & public attitude has gotten really screwed up, where sexual behavior is vociferously condemned, but widespread violence in movies is glorified (i.e., terrorists killing people left & right, only solution to kill all the terrorists!, friend/family killed, go kill all the bad guys, etc).
Anyway, trying to enforce morality from the top down will just do what it's always done - drive the "deviant" behavior to the underground. The more strict the enforcement, the more the resentment will grow. Too strict, and the pressure will be relieved by anger & violence.
The only sustainable way that a society can enforce morality is to instill respect for society's "rules" while its children are growing up - and make sure that those "rules" are WORTHY of respect when its children grow up enough to look at them critically.
Why did they have to go through the cradle/workstation/infrared-tower setup?
Why didn't they control the tanks directly from the PalmPilot infra-red ports?
Were these PalmPilots the ones w/o infra-red ports, or did the infra-red ports not have enough range for the tanks to pick up?
Actually, what was the point of having the Palmpilots in there in the first place, if the workstations were there anyway?
Scripts to secure standard distributions?
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 1
Are there scripts available which you can run on "stock install" distributions like Red Hat which will automatically modify configuration files to get rid of & shutdown "unnecessary" services?
I realize that the proper place to do this is in the distribution, but until that happens, it seems to me that there are enough people who have performed these procedures so often that it might be possible for them to put a little script together that could be given to a newbie who has barely got the distribution installed so you don't have to go running over to their house in the middle of the night when they call you up asking "why somebody else is using my system?".
(I know, replying to your own message is tacky...so call me a bad boy & spank me!:)
Anyway, I guess to get a estimate on this, how much does it cost a TV/cable channel for their programming & equipment RIGHT NOW (ignoring the issue of whether the programming they're getting is worth what they're paying:)? Then, how many people would you expect to subscribe to an advertiser-less channel. (I'm sure the equipment cost will be related to the number of subscribers. Perhaps there will be an economies-of-scale effect, however.)
This should give us a ballpark figure of how much each person would expect to pay in subscription fees.
I've seen many repeated comments that TV/cable stations would never allow any kind of technology which would allow consumers to skip over ads, because the ads comprise their sole revenue stream.
How much would it cost for a TV/cable station to run a advertising-free service (or maybe a service with very limited avertising)? How much would people be willing to pay to subscribe to such a service?
I don't mind a bunch of protocols & APIs being stored in the same place where everyone can find them & work on them, but instead of recreating the all-in-1 browser that everyone else has already done (with varying degrees of success), I'd like to see all the Mozilla work componentized (heh - I love corrupting the English language by "verbizing" nouns:) so that other projects can use them.
The HTML/XML rendering engine would be a prime example - it should be possible for other applications to "instantiate" a rendering object, provide it with a window & a string stream or file, and viola! the application is xML enabled!
Other interesting components might be active/passive FTP/HTTP download components (multithreaded downloads given a URL), components which handle the POP3/IMAP/SMTP protocols for you, a Java Virtual engine, etc.
Anyway, if the Mozilla project provides a central repository for all these kinds of components, then I'm all for it. The all-in-1 browser should just be a testbed for all the components - other people might put the components together in different ways to make browsers which look different (kind of like skins, I guess).
If the all-in-1 browser is all the Mozilla project is trying to create, then I lose a great deal of interest.
Wow, that was an impressive reply...I'm still wondering why more people don't talk about this!
Anyway, a couple more thoughts:
1. As far as interface is concerned, it might be efficient to just have a few check boxes or radio buttons on each comment to allow a user to rate all desired articles on a page at once (they'd still have to hit some other kind of button to submit all the ratings, I guess).
2. A small bit of uncertainty is good, to keep people from getting totally locked into only being aware of certain kinds of messages.
3. It would definitely be interesting to see a statistical analysis of the different "classes" of filters which end up developing due to collection of filtering data. Perhaps there could be a academic study examining the correlations between the real individuals & the "filter" specs which were created?
4. The rating could be performed on handles and/or messages (including Anonymous Cowards!). It would be interesting to see if the generated filters would divide the handles into "people who are interested in serious discussions" and "people who just want to be a pain-in-the-ass":)
I'm sure this subject is ripe for a long, really detailed discussion. Aside from yourself, most of the people on the board don't seem too interested in talking about it though.
I also get the impression that CmdrTaco has invested so many resources into the moderation system that a major implementation change like this is not likely to be pursued.
I wonder if there would be a way to define a collaborative filtering system like this that could use the existing moderation infrastructure?
That's funny - I didn't even realize that such a series ever existed when I picked my nick.
Actually, although the scenario I put together sounds like a parody/comedy, it doesn't necessary HAVE to be - I was thinking more along the lines of: crew of "average" beings (rather than the cream-of-the-crop which all StarFleet personnel supposedly are), somehow scraped together the resources to get their own starship (perhaps they own it communally and they're always trying to scrape together enough credits to make the mortgage payment).
They might not get along too well with each other, but they're all stuck with each other because of the financial obligations. They're always looking for the "big score", and willing to take a few chances (both physically & legally) to get it.
Anyway, there's lots of opportunities with a setup like that. I just get tired of seeing series where the main characters are always some kind of "elite", and they save the universe every other week. I'd like to see something where you stick a bunch of people like myself & my friends, with all the slovenly, neurotic & irrational behaviors we have, & put them into a science-fiction situation somewhere (hopefully, they have a chance to survive:)
On the funny side, you could have their weapons system running on Windows 30001 "damnit, another BSOD - hit ctrl-alt-del fast, we need those weapons!"
Actually, that would probably make your system slower, since that would keep app. code which might benefit from the cache from being stored.
Still, it might be an interesting idea if processors allowed the operating system to "lock" certain bits of memory in the cache, in case there were some services which got used infrequently but needed low latencies (real-time services, etc).
I haven't seen this suggestion yet - would there be a way to use the concept of collaborative filtering?
For instance, everyone who had a handle could pick which articles they liked or disliked (or maybe by authors:). Then the system would compare that data against what other people had liked or disliked, and then prioritize/score other articles that it thought you might like based on the correlations with other users (like the "What's Related" or Alexis service).
Dunno what the precise algorithm is. It might be too much additional load on/., and it may end up "Balkanizing" all the comments (you'd tend to only see those Web pages which you agree with).
I thought it might be a slightly different approach than the pure moderation system.
What *I'd* love to see is a series in the Star Trek universe, but *NOT* on one of those damn annoying goody-two-shoes Starfleet ships.
Maybe something like a run-down merchant/smuggler vessel working on the fringes of the Federation territory, with a really small crew, perhaps with a Klingon female commander (just think of the possibilities!) and a drunk engineer!
You could have the crew be severely dysfunctional, the ship falling apart half the time & a lot of shows would be about 1) survival, 2) getting themselves out of whatever scrape they got themselves into (which might be the same as #1:)
Slashdot Mirror
Why didn't analog neural nets become more popular? I thought that since you could use stuff like op-amps as "approximate" analog multiplication devices, you could pack a massive number of neurons onto a single piece of silicon (using today's silicon manufacturing techniques), Certainly a lot more efficently then building a digital multiplier per neuron...
Changing the subject suddenly, about how many small processors (like the 8-bit processors described in the above article) or perhaps like Z80s, plus memory, could you put on a single chip using modern manufacturing techniques? (And how fast could you make them go?)
Would anybody know how to take advantage of such a beast?
I don't think this helps, directly.
The particular companies/individuals that I was complaining about are those which just build a portfolio of dumb patents/trademarks, then go around suing people who won't give them money to license their so-called IP. These people/companies could care less whether they irritate a consumer - they just want to be parasites on the backs of people/organizations who are actually USING the idea to do something productive.
Even for those companies that ARE selling products which you can "choose" not to buy, 1) the fact that they're trying to use intimidation to prevent competition against their product indicates that they are probably so short-sighted in viewpoint that they won't be able to make the connection between their legal behavior & their loss in sales unless slapped upside the head with the massive 2x4 of public hatred, and 2) the whole point of the patent system is to provide temporary monopolies, which means that you may NOT be able to find another company which provides that kind of product (or any other company which does it going to be paying licensing fees to the 1st anyway).
I don't particularly agree with the current idea of patents, anyway - if two companies/individuals perform all of the proper R&D to create a particular idea, and one just happens to file the patent a little earlier than the other, then the other company/individual is SOL. I think that if you do the R&D, you should be allowed to reap the fruits of that labor. If it can be proven that you stole the ideas from somebody else, THEN they can throw the book at you.
Too bad you can't inflict penalties on companies that do dumb things like trademark names which are pretty obviously either public domain or closely associated with other companies/organizations, or patent things which have lots of prior art floating around.
I wonder if somebody could make the legal argument that doing such dumb things cause a lot of people/companies to waste legal & financial resources to counter the bogus trademark/patent, and that the trademark/patent filer is liable for that amount (like a class action lawsuit against a company for causing "damage" to the class frivilously).
Of course, what's really needed is a BTTH (Boot To The Head) for the people in the Patent Office who keep approving these things & for the Congresscritters who futzed around with the laws enough to make this kind of situation a big bonanza for companies that like to litigate their way to profits.
> What frustrates me even more is that it all wouldn't make the least bit of difference. If a child/young adolescent wants to lay their hands on porn (or whatever) they shall get it, one way or another. And according to me sex, nudity, etc. hasn't done anyone any harm...(most of us are born thanks to sex ;-) ). The same goes for violence. I have never in my life had the urge to smash someone's skull after watching a particulary violent movie. >
While I do agree that constant exposure to violence isn't really likely to make an adult more likely to be violent (unless they've got some kind of mental problem), I do agree with the desensitization theory - the constant exposure to violence (real or fictional) does make us more accepting about violence occurring outside of our immediate lives (or possibly w/in our lives, since it seems more "normal"). This makes it less likely for us to do anything about a gradually-increasing environment of violence.
I do think that such messages DO affect the viewpoints of children who, in the absence of parental guidance, use media messages to establish a context for what's "wrong" & "right". (Please note the lack of parental guidance!) Heck, I can even tell the gut-level influence on myself of all the vigilante/martial arts/action movies that I've seen, even though I intellectually know that if everyone were to act like the heros & heroines in those movies, we'd pretty quickly descend into a total breakdown of social order.
I don't really care about sexual messages, except where it encourages irresponsible behavior (resulting in unwanted pregnancy or STDs, etc), or is mixed with violence (rape, date-rape, etc).
I think the US media & public attitude has gotten really screwed up, where sexual behavior is vociferously condemned, but widespread violence in movies is glorified (i.e., terrorists killing people left & right, only solution to kill all the terrorists!, friend/family killed, go kill all the bad guys, etc).
Anyway, trying to enforce morality from the top down will just do what it's always done - drive the "deviant" behavior to the underground. The more strict the enforcement, the more the resentment will grow. Too strict, and the pressure will be relieved by anger & violence.
The only sustainable way that a society can enforce morality is to instill respect for society's "rules" while its children are growing up - and make sure that those "rules" are WORTHY of respect when its children grow up enough to look at them critically.
Why did they have to go through the cradle/workstation/infrared-tower setup?
Why didn't they control the tanks directly from the PalmPilot infra-red ports?
Were these PalmPilots the ones w/o infra-red ports, or did the infra-red ports not have enough range for the tanks to pick up?
Actually, what was the point of having the Palmpilots in there in the first place, if the workstations were there anyway?
Are there scripts available which you can run on "stock install" distributions like Red Hat which will automatically modify configuration files to get rid of & shutdown "unnecessary" services?
I realize that the proper place to do this is in the distribution, but until that happens, it seems to me that there are enough people who have performed these procedures so often that it might be possible for them to put a little script together that could be given to a newbie who has barely got the distribution installed so you don't have to go running over to their house in the middle of the night when they call you up asking "why somebody else is using my system?".
(I know, replying to your own message is tacky...so call me a bad boy & spank me! :)
:)? Then, how many people would you expect to subscribe to an advertiser-less channel. (I'm sure the equipment cost will be related to the number of subscribers. Perhaps there will be an economies-of-scale effect, however.)
Anyway, I guess to get a estimate on this, how much does it cost a TV/cable channel for their programming & equipment RIGHT NOW (ignoring the issue of whether the programming they're getting is worth what they're paying
This should give us a ballpark figure of how much each person would expect to pay in subscription fees.
I've seen many repeated comments that TV/cable stations would never allow any kind of technology which would allow consumers to skip over ads, because the ads comprise their sole revenue stream.
How much would it cost for a TV/cable station to run a advertising-free service (or maybe a service with very limited avertising)? How much would people be willing to pay to subscribe to such a service?
I don't mind a bunch of protocols & APIs being stored in the same place where everyone can find them & work on them, but instead of recreating the all-in-1 browser that everyone else has already done (with varying degrees of success), I'd like to see all the Mozilla work componentized (heh - I love corrupting the English language by "verbizing" nouns :) so that other projects can use them.
The HTML/XML rendering engine would be a prime example - it should be possible for other applications to "instantiate" a rendering object, provide it with a window & a string stream or file, and viola! the application is xML enabled!
Other interesting components might be active/passive FTP/HTTP download components (multithreaded downloads given a URL), components which handle the POP3/IMAP/SMTP protocols for you, a Java Virtual engine, etc.
Anyway, if the Mozilla project provides a central repository for all these kinds of components, then I'm all for it. The all-in-1 browser should just be a testbed for all the components - other people might put the components together in different ways to make browsers which look different (kind of like skins, I guess).
If the all-in-1 browser is all the Mozilla project is trying to create, then I lose a great deal of interest.
Wow, that was an impressive reply...I'm still wondering why more people don't talk about this!
:)
Anyway, a couple more thoughts:
1. As far as interface is concerned, it might be efficient to just have a few check boxes or radio buttons on each comment to allow a user to rate all desired articles on a page at once (they'd still have to hit some other kind of button to submit all the ratings, I guess).
2. A small bit of uncertainty is good, to keep people from getting totally locked into only being aware of certain kinds of messages.
3. It would definitely be interesting to see a statistical analysis of the different "classes" of filters which end up developing due to collection of filtering data. Perhaps there could be a academic study examining the correlations between the real individuals & the "filter" specs which were created?
4. The rating could be performed on handles and/or messages (including Anonymous Cowards!). It would be interesting to see if the generated filters would divide the handles into "people who are interested in serious discussions" and "people who just want to be a pain-in-the-ass"
I'm sure this subject is ripe for a long, really detailed discussion. Aside from yourself, most of the people on the board don't seem too interested in talking about it though.
I also get the impression that CmdrTaco has invested so many resources into the moderation system that a major implementation change like this is not likely to be pursued.
I wonder if there would be a way to define a collaborative filtering system like this that could use the existing moderation infrastructure?
That's funny - I didn't even realize that such a series ever existed when I picked my nick.
:)
Actually, although the scenario I put together sounds like a parody/comedy, it doesn't necessary HAVE to be - I was thinking more along the lines of: crew of "average" beings (rather than the cream-of-the-crop which all StarFleet personnel supposedly are), somehow scraped together the resources to get their own starship (perhaps they own it communally and they're always trying to scrape together enough credits to make the mortgage payment).
They might not get along too well with each other, but they're all stuck with each other because of the financial obligations. They're always looking for the "big score", and willing to take a few chances (both physically & legally) to get it.
Anyway, there's lots of opportunities with a setup like that. I just get tired of seeing series where the main characters are always some kind of "elite", and they save the universe every other week. I'd like to see something where you stick a bunch of people like myself & my friends, with all the slovenly, neurotic & irrational behaviors we have, & put them into a science-fiction situation somewhere (hopefully, they have a chance to survive
On the funny side, you could have their weapons system running on Windows 30001 "damnit, another BSOD - hit ctrl-alt-del fast, we need those weapons!"
Actually, that would probably make your system slower, since that would keep app. code which might benefit from the cache from being stored.
Still, it might be an interesting idea if processors allowed the operating system to "lock" certain bits of memory in the cache, in case there were some services which got used infrequently but needed low latencies (real-time services, etc).
I haven't seen this suggestion yet - would there be a way to use the concept of collaborative filtering?
:). Then the system would compare that data against what other people had liked or disliked, and then prioritize/score other articles that it thought you might like based on the correlations with other users (like the "What's Related" or Alexis service).
/., and it may end up "Balkanizing" all the comments (you'd tend to only see those Web pages which you agree with).
For instance, everyone who had a handle could pick which articles they liked or disliked (or maybe by authors
Dunno what the precise algorithm is. It might be too much additional load on
I thought it might be a slightly different approach than the pure moderation system.
What *I'd* love to see is a series in the Star Trek universe, but *NOT* on one of those damn annoying goody-two-shoes Starfleet ships.
:)
Maybe something like a run-down merchant/smuggler vessel working on the fringes of the Federation territory, with a really small crew, perhaps with a Klingon female commander (just think of the possibilities!) and a drunk engineer!
You could have the crew be severely dysfunctional, the ship falling apart half the time & a lot of shows would be about 1) survival, 2) getting themselves out of whatever scrape they got themselves into (which might be the same as #1