People can try, then what happens is the language morphs because politicians start dicking with semantics to support their policies. We're not 'terrorizing citizens' we are 'strategically suppressing anarchists' or 'overthrowing a totalitarian state'. Thing is, terrorists probably don't see themselves as terrorist and once they are defined as such, they'll just relabel what they're doing to justify their motives. Take for instance torture. In the US we don't torture, we just use alternative interrogation techniques. It's this kind of word-dickery that makes attempts demonizing through quantitative classification laughable.
The problem isn't really the amount of data but rather a clear definition of when data is coming from a real terrorist or not. In natural language processing, it's fairly straightforward to say that some words in a certain context fall under a part-of-speech tag 10% of the time; well the math can be a little tricky. In mining for 'terrorist' your results can be hindered by ambiguity, subterfuge, or context. For ambiguity, I could tell a friend over the phone that he has to bomb a building at 5:00 AM to unlock the 72 virgins in a game. For subterfuge, real terrorists may agree on a series of benign trigger phrases that wouldn't even show up on a terrorist data-classifier of any sort. For context, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist; that is, maybe the actions of what, say the US military, does would register as terrorist activities when stripped of all it's context. So no, it's not really feasible to detect terrorists purely with data because it is heavily context sensitive and subjective.
Wouldn't this be an ideal opportunity to test out the theory of using a satellite's gravity to tow an asteroid away? Well, it's too late now, but I'm sure the research would be useful if we ever wanted to have a greater chance of avoiding potential disasters.
You also forgot to note, that because of it's abnormally high density, this region of space has an unusually strong gravity field. This can be observed by noticing that our tax money flows in and never comes out. Sure, there is such a thing as hawking radiation, in which energy leaks out, but that is only composed of lost hopes and shattered dreams veiled behind transparent promises.
It's a funny and interesting trade-off when you mention making it so Joe-Six pack can't copy the media. In order to make that possible, company X has to distribute their product on hardware that isn't typically available. Nintendo is particularly good at this in that they stuck with cartridges for the longest time, put out their GameCube games on CDs that weren't regular sized, distribute Wii games on dvd (I believe). I think most companies don't go this route because either they eliminate a certain portion of their customer base or building the infrastructure (like distributing consoles and regulating physical media) can be daunting. Ironically, it's not entirely the user's fault but the developer's for choosing the largest customer base by using the easiest to distribute methods. By maximizing profits without considering the other issues, they kinda shoot themselves in the foot. I think the people at Stardock have it right though: figure out who will pay for your game, make them as satisfied with their purchase as possible, and ignore the rest. Ultimately, people who pay will get what they want and people who don't pay will live with what's available (like DRM encrusted software).
That brings up the other point, why do they feel their way of life is in danger? It could be politicians playing it up for votes, it could be changing social economics beyond anyones control, it could be pure paranoia, and it could be that people in the cities and scientific community actually attack them. I think its a combination of all those factors, but i also think one of the largest factors is the fact that Secular atheists do actively attack the religious beliefs of others.
I'll probably state a few obvious things here, but please bear with me
I believe that religion serves as a security blanket for one of the greatest fears of all: death. Most religions preach that life is not simply extinguished when the body fails but continues on in some form or another. Now, the concept of an afterlife is also coupled with a reward/punishment system that hinges on the faith that such-and-such dogma is true. Now, if something comes along and describes that does not fit into the faithful's existing framework it has the potential to alter their belief, which, as was just stated, is fundamental to their reward/continued existence. This is what prevents most believers from having a rational dialog, as even broaching the subject implies death (in the afterlife). In turn, this makes those who believe in different frameworks (other faiths, atheists, scientists, etc) frustrated, because there is no room for argument.
Now, in terms of a solution, having armchair intellectuals decry people as stupid is about as far as we are going to get because everyone has or should have the right to believe what they will. As for setting up an academic curricula, I think the governing scholastic bodies should go back to the basics and reexamine the definition and purpose of academia. Is it meant to expand our viewpoints or teach us how things function. I think it's both and if creationism is taught from the perspective of the former and not the latter, I really don't have any qualms about it. The reason I don't have any qualms, and can hear many of you calling me stupid already, is that we should guard against intolerance and censorship of thought, lest we too fall into the state where others cannot have a two-way dialog with us.
Some projects require resources no matter how you look at it: e.g. labs, connections with other intelligent people, test subjects, etc. Unless you are rich or have a project that requires minimal resources, you may have a hard time doing all of the research and commercializing all of the work on your own. Now if you can do such a thing, kudos to you; but, these grants (and that is what they are) are probably meant for grand projects that bring together specialists across many different fields. What I'm curious about is how their process will differ from what the government already does in terms of funding such projects. Will google be equally rigorous in validating the work that comes out of this, or are they just looking for the next gadget to earn them millions?
It seems interesting, so I'll just have to wait and see how it pans out.
Maybe luck is a matter of perspective. Consider that I may find a 100$ on the sidewalk. To a rich person, that's pocket change, and their version of lucky would be investing in some venture that sees 200% growth. I think this man is lucky relative to his circumstances.
Well a good example of something that has HUGE surface area over a relatively minimal space are the villi in a mammals intestinal tract. You have bumps upon bumps upon bumps which greatly increase the surface area while allowing the organ to remain relatively compact and efficient at absorbing microscopic chemicals. The kid could have adopted a similar nano-tech geometry by placing curve upon curve, thus adding a dimension and greatly increasing the active surface area for absorbing sunlight. This is one of the reasons I was initially curious about the 3d shape the kid used that was so revolutionary. The 3d may not have applied to how the object was shaped but rather how the molecules were organized, or indeed shaped, to improve efficiency. But once again, shoddy journalism only tells us enough to know nothing. : /
Yes, the LHC is Slashdot's secret tool to slashdot the world. Imagine it, billions of electrical impulses, triggered by readers clicking to RTFA, will collide in the intertubes to create a blackhole bigger that goatse that will swallow us all. It'll be the biggest DOS attack EVER!
Maybe they just need a way to (meta)moderate the questions based on views and whether it's been solved or not. They should also have a filter for stupid homework questions, e.g. How to check if the given string is palindrome? Also, questions should have a 'solved' or 'pending' tag like a bugs section instead of 'answers', which is simply a chain of replies. This way they could bury the more naive attempts at solving homework and get to the more difficult and interesting problems like writing drivers for linux : ).
Ya, but then we have a bunch of pesky speeding laws with some gray area in between. In the area where I live, the speed limit on a freeway may be 65 mph. The real speed at which traffic travels is 70-75 mph. Most drivers have discovered that this is the maximum speed you can go at before getting a ticket at traffic cops. This causes a rather annoying situation in which one person is going at the speed limit (or slightly higher) and another person wants to drive at the 'real' limit, and passes them on the right. Ultimately, some traffic laws are there not out of some sense of logic but to help police get a little more money for the state.
I actually find the phone more disruptive than email because it has the ringing nag-factor. I tend to use email (and slashdot commenting) as a mini-break between mental tasks. The main difference is that when I get mentally fatigued I tend to do something non-productive anyways. Sure some technologies can be a serious distraction for the obsessive compulsives among us, but are people's performance really that great after working 4-8 hours straight with no break. I actually find these articles a little annoying in that they assume the human is an automaton from which you have to extract maximum efficiency to get anything worthwhile done.
Slashdot has died and risen. That means the Apocalypse is almost upon us! Put on your tin-foil hats and cower, for the second coming of Steve Jobs is at hand!
Yes, they found out slashdot was one of the worst malicious sites out there, as it periodically issued random DDOS attacks to other sites hosting content of scientific import. Once the shlashdot-reading chrome developers discover this, they'll take it off the blacklist (as they too need a daily helping of slashdot) but it'll be layered in warnings and throttled to all-hell. Unfortunately, this will cause paradox leading to the Apocalypse as google will slashdot slashdot just to make the internet work and Chrome function normally. The lucky few will be raptured to Apple, where they will spend the rest eternity amidst pretty, hermetically sealed plastic and user friendly software.
Slashdot Mirror
People can try, then what happens is the language morphs because politicians start dicking with semantics to support their policies. We're not 'terrorizing citizens' we are 'strategically suppressing anarchists' or 'overthrowing a totalitarian state'. Thing is, terrorists probably don't see themselves as terrorist and once they are defined as such, they'll just relabel what they're doing to justify their motives. Take for instance torture. In the US we don't torture, we just use alternative interrogation techniques. It's this kind of word-dickery that makes attempts demonizing through quantitative classification laughable.
The problem isn't really the amount of data but rather a clear definition of when data is coming from a real terrorist or not. In natural language processing, it's fairly straightforward to say that some words in a certain context fall under a part-of-speech tag 10% of the time; well the math can be a little tricky. In mining for 'terrorist' your results can be hindered by ambiguity, subterfuge, or context. For ambiguity, I could tell a friend over the phone that he has to bomb a building at 5:00 AM to unlock the 72 virgins in a game. For subterfuge, real terrorists may agree on a series of benign trigger phrases that wouldn't even show up on a terrorist data-classifier of any sort. For context, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist; that is, maybe the actions of what, say the US military, does would register as terrorist activities when stripped of all it's context. So no, it's not really feasible to detect terrorists purely with data because it is heavily context sensitive and subjective.
Wouldn't this be an ideal opportunity to test out the theory of using a satellite's gravity to tow an asteroid away? Well, it's too late now, but I'm sure the research would be useful if we ever wanted to have a greater chance of avoiding potential disasters.
You also forgot to note, that because of it's abnormally high density, this region of space has an unusually strong gravity field. This can be observed by noticing that our tax money flows in and never comes out. Sure, there is such a thing as hawking radiation, in which energy leaks out, but that is only composed of lost hopes and shattered dreams veiled behind transparent promises.
I have a linux laptop that I tote with me. I generally like to power-down when moving place-to-place to reduce HD damage if I jostle it too much.
I did! I just stuck it in the fridge so I could share with friends and family later. Enjoy!
It's a funny and interesting trade-off when you mention making it so Joe-Six pack can't copy the media. In order to make that possible, company X has to distribute their product on hardware that isn't typically available. Nintendo is particularly good at this in that they stuck with cartridges for the longest time, put out their GameCube games on CDs that weren't regular sized, distribute Wii games on dvd (I believe). I think most companies don't go this route because either they eliminate a certain portion of their customer base or building the infrastructure (like distributing consoles and regulating physical media) can be daunting. Ironically, it's not entirely the user's fault but the developer's for choosing the largest customer base by using the easiest to distribute methods. By maximizing profits without considering the other issues, they kinda shoot themselves in the foot. I think the people at Stardock have it right though: figure out who will pay for your game, make them as satisfied with their purchase as possible, and ignore the rest. Ultimately, people who pay will get what they want and people who don't pay will live with what's available (like DRM encrusted software).
That brings up the other point, why do they feel their way of life is in danger? It could be politicians playing it up for votes, it could be changing social economics beyond anyones control, it could be pure paranoia, and it could be that people in the cities and scientific community actually attack them. I think its a combination of all those factors, but i also think one of the largest factors is the fact that Secular atheists do actively attack the religious beliefs of others.
I'll probably state a few obvious things here, but please bear with me
I believe that religion serves as a security blanket for one of the greatest fears of all: death. Most religions preach that life is not simply extinguished when the body fails but continues on in some form or another. Now, the concept of an afterlife is also coupled with a reward/punishment system that hinges on the faith that such-and-such dogma is true. Now, if something comes along and describes that does not fit into the faithful's existing framework it has the potential to alter their belief, which, as was just stated, is fundamental to their reward/continued existence. This is what prevents most believers from having a rational dialog, as even broaching the subject implies death (in the afterlife). In turn, this makes those who believe in different frameworks (other faiths, atheists, scientists, etc) frustrated, because there is no room for argument.
Now, in terms of a solution, having armchair intellectuals decry people as stupid is about as far as we are going to get because everyone has or should have the right to believe what they will. As for setting up an academic curricula, I think the governing scholastic bodies should go back to the basics and reexamine the definition and purpose of academia. Is it meant to expand our viewpoints or teach us how things function. I think it's both and if creationism is taught from the perspective of the former and not the latter, I really don't have any qualms about it. The reason I don't have any qualms, and can hear many of you calling me stupid already, is that we should guard against intolerance and censorship of thought, lest we too fall into the state where others cannot have a two-way dialog with us.
Some projects require resources no matter how you look at it: e.g. labs, connections with other intelligent people, test subjects, etc. Unless you are rich or have a project that requires minimal resources, you may have a hard time doing all of the research and commercializing all of the work on your own. Now if you can do such a thing, kudos to you; but, these grants (and that is what they are) are probably meant for grand projects that bring together specialists across many different fields. What I'm curious about is how their process will differ from what the government already does in terms of funding such projects. Will google be equally rigorous in validating the work that comes out of this, or are they just looking for the next gadget to earn them millions? It seems interesting, so I'll just have to wait and see how it pans out.
Maybe luck is a matter of perspective. Consider that I may find a 100$ on the sidewalk. To a rich person, that's pocket change, and their version of lucky would be investing in some venture that sees 200% growth. I think this man is lucky relative to his circumstances.
Well, everyone accept for New York County Lawyer. Anti-*iaa lawyers kicks ass.
Well a good example of something that has HUGE surface area over a relatively minimal space are the villi in a mammals intestinal tract. You have bumps upon bumps upon bumps which greatly increase the surface area while allowing the organ to remain relatively compact and efficient at absorbing microscopic chemicals. The kid could have adopted a similar nano-tech geometry by placing curve upon curve, thus adding a dimension and greatly increasing the active surface area for absorbing sunlight. This is one of the reasons I was initially curious about the 3d shape the kid used that was so revolutionary. The 3d may not have applied to how the object was shaped but rather how the molecules were organized, or indeed shaped, to improve efficiency. But once again, shoddy journalism only tells us enough to know nothing. : /
Yes, the LHC is Slashdot's secret tool to slashdot the world. Imagine it, billions of electrical impulses, triggered by readers clicking to RTFA, will collide in the intertubes to create a blackhole bigger that goatse that will swallow us all. It'll be the biggest DOS attack EVER!
So does anyone know what 3d shape he used to achieve a 500x efficiency gain? I would RTFA but it appears to have been slashdotted.
Hmmm your link is down which naturally means that the FBI and Secret Service like to read slashdot too.
Maybe they just need a way to (meta)moderate the questions based on views and whether it's been solved or not. They should also have a filter for stupid homework questions, e.g. How to check if the given string is palindrome? Also, questions should have a 'solved' or 'pending' tag like a bugs section instead of 'answers', which is simply a chain of replies. This way they could bury the more naive attempts at solving homework and get to the more difficult and interesting problems like writing drivers for linux : ).
It looks like it's free ... and the layout is a bit ugly.
Ya, but then we have a bunch of pesky speeding laws with some gray area in between. In the area where I live, the speed limit on a freeway may be 65 mph. The real speed at which traffic travels is 70-75 mph. Most drivers have discovered that this is the maximum speed you can go at before getting a ticket at traffic cops. This causes a rather annoying situation in which one person is going at the speed limit (or slightly higher) and another person wants to drive at the 'real' limit, and passes them on the right. Ultimately, some traffic laws are there not out of some sense of logic but to help police get a little more money for the state.
I actually find the phone more disruptive than email because it has the ringing nag-factor. I tend to use email (and slashdot commenting) as a mini-break between mental tasks. The main difference is that when I get mentally fatigued I tend to do something non-productive anyways. Sure some technologies can be a serious distraction for the obsessive compulsives among us, but are people's performance really that great after working 4-8 hours straight with no break. I actually find these articles a little annoying in that they assume the human is an automaton from which you have to extract maximum efficiency to get anything worthwhile done.
I'm waiting for Gruesome Gru.
That way, when X crashes to a black terminal I can say, "O noes, by desktop has been eaten by a Gru"
Stop hogging all the internet, you're clogging my intertubes!
In the gutter? That's where mine always is :).
Now what your going to see is terrorist do random movements to confuse the detection of the sand worms... erm space satellites.
*Shuffle, step, step, walk, stop, step, run, skip.*
They'll then use thumpers, or lights+fan behind curtain to draw out the infamous satellite and harpoon it, so they can ride it to jihad.
Slashdot has died and risen. That means the Apocalypse is almost upon us! Put on your tin-foil hats and cower, for the second coming of Steve Jobs is at hand!
Yes, they found out slashdot was one of the worst malicious sites out there, as it periodically issued random DDOS attacks to other sites hosting content of scientific import. Once the shlashdot-reading chrome developers discover this, they'll take it off the blacklist (as they too need a daily helping of slashdot) but it'll be layered in warnings and throttled to all-hell. Unfortunately, this will cause paradox leading to the Apocalypse as google will slashdot slashdot just to make the internet work and Chrome function normally. The lucky few will be raptured to Apple, where they will spend the rest eternity amidst pretty, hermetically sealed plastic and user friendly software.