Haggis gets a bad rap - I think because the name sounds like someone being sick. It's really just a sausage.
A good haggis is really tasty, and I highly recommend you try it. (you can also buy vegetarian haggis, if you don't like the idea of eating offal (though that's no different to _most_ sausages)
"Just create a really large nuclear drive to push the Earth away from the sun"
You know how much energy is required to lift a rocket out of Earth's gravity well? Lots. Now think about how much energy would be required to lift the Earth out of the Sun's gravity well (no, I haven't done the sums). You are talking, literally, about an astronomical amount of energy. (and that's ignoring the question of how you could possibly deliver that energy to the Earth without baking one side).
It would probably be orders of magnitude easier/cheaper to terraform Mars and relocate humanity.
I'm hoping that my comment is a "woosh" and that you're joking.
Indeed, I love the way we're sitting around the world, using our plethora of interconnected super-computers to discuss our lack of technological progress!
(though I'm sure some people are using smart phones or possibly even watches to post on/. these days..)
A 570-fold increase over 6 years is less than a 3-fold increase per year. This is fast (towards double Moore's Law), but then it's possible that an Nvidia engineer knows something about GPU research that we don't...
I'd say this is news, and it's remarkable, but it's not totally implausible.
I realise you meant that as a joke, but if the platform is Linux you'll actually be able to _use_ the hardware you buy -- sounds like a better spec to me!
It's always important to remember that everything that is now 'owned' was once communal, and that at some point in history someone put up a fence around some communal land and said: "This land that was once everyone's is now mine only." Property as a concept is arbitrary and synthetic (though that doesn't, in itself, make it a bad thing).
This is where I think something like squatters' rights comes into play. If someone owns some property, and they are tied so loosely to it that some else can eke out a living there for many years, then they don't in practise actually own it -- the squatter does. I think it's fair for the owner of neglected property to forfeit their right to it - they demonstrate their lack of use for it.
I'm not quite sure how this relates to digital and intellectual property, but to me neither of those really seem any more arbitrary or contrived than physical property..
One thing I've learnt as I've got older is that there are lots of smart people doing lots of good work; Most things are more complicated than they seem at first, and one shouldn't be too judgmental about that which one knows relatively little.
This is probably both simplistic and unoriginal, but I've been musing about this.
If I am listening to music, and turn my head, the relative direction of the sound (wrt my head) changes. I don't perceive this as the sound moving, because I have a model in my brain that describes my position in space, and knows that I've just turned my head. Similarly, my internal model of the world includes complex things like the way water behaves (children don't know that an apparently solid swimming pool will drown them) or glass breaks. I also have a model of my body that helps me: eg. the way I appear to others (this also allows me to recognise myself in a mirror or photo), that my right knee is weak and I need to protect it, etc. My model also covers aspects of my personality, and how to interact with other people. I can interact with different people in different ways (eg. the boys at the pub vs my priest), because I have an idea of expectation. This can be generic in the case of people I don't know, or specific for friends (you can have running jokes, or behavioural expectation with friends -- aka history). I can also analyse my personality (which amounts to meta-analysis of my mental model of myself), and the way I interact with other people (which amounts to analysing my model of someone else's model of myself)....
I think the recursive feed-back of this model is the source of consciousness.
I got the impression that he was trying to define "intelligence" as a super-set of what it is currently considered to mean.
In other words, I thought he was trying to define intelligence as the ability to survive a threat. If that's related back to what is generally understood by "intelligence" then we would say that human intelligence is the ability to "survive" an IQ test (I'm not saying IQ measures intelligence, I'm just using it for the sake of simplicity). The reason I think this, is that he goes on to mention simulation, and how a simulation-approach can be applied to every day events (kinda like saying that the universe is performing a computation, I guess), and that intelligence is the ability of an entity to survive a simulation -- which is just a series of events (eg IQ test) with constraints applied (eg. fill in answers, no cheating)..
Quite an interesting article, I think. Might check out his journal.
What you say is true - our lives have been massively improved through the use of technology.
In particular, our success at creating and using machines has been incredible.
We have been much less successful (particularly over longer time scales) at manipulating biological systems -- a quick glance at history (eg. DDT, thalidomide, cane toads, etc) suggests that a bit of caution and prudence might be in order. This is not to say that we should return to an agrarian society, but that we should treat powerful new advances with optimistic caution. With regard to fertilisers, pesticides and antibiotics in farming, I think we've had far too much optimism, and far too little caution.
From the actual paper about which the article was written*: "This review does not address contaminant content (such as herbicide, pesticide and fungicide residues) of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs"
To me, this seems a rather major flaw in the study, since that is such an important part organic food!
Interesting. As someone who has recently started buying a delivered vegetable box from a nearby farm, I have noticed a large difference between fresh organic produce, and standard supermarket fare. In particular, carrots and cucumbers are noticeably tastier and juicier (organic cucumbers are almost a fruit -- they're almost unrecognisable from those at the supermarket). Having said that, I can't discount the "tastes better because of price" theory as I haven't done a double-blind test.
I like being able to eat the carrot skins without worrying about pesticides though.
There is a difference between "no nutritional difference" and "no health benefits": sometimes the lack of a thing (ie. antibiotics in milk) can be healthier than the alternative.
Exactly. A video interface just isn't (in general) a sensible UI when you are walking around and interacting with the world. I think an audio user interface is what is needed -- but there's little consumer interest at the moment.
...and I think that's really shitty. It's like MS could use their strong OS position to force out all other browsers, search-engines and office suites, because they have a "vision" of how we should use the internet and word-processor.
Slashdot Mirror
French people don't need porn - they get laid.
Haggis gets a bad rap - I think because the name sounds like someone being sick. It's really just a sausage.
A good haggis is really tasty, and I highly recommend you try it.
(you can also buy vegetarian haggis, if you don't like the idea of eating offal (though that's no different to _most_ sausages)
*cough* loss-leader *cough*
I completely agree.
On a side note, I support the fascists because they make the trains run on time.
(probably sailing close to being a Godwin, I reckon ;-)
"Just create a really large nuclear drive to push the Earth away from the sun"
You know how much energy is required to lift a rocket out of Earth's gravity well? Lots.
Now think about how much energy would be required to lift the Earth out of the Sun's gravity well (no, I haven't done the sums). You are talking, literally, about an astronomical amount of energy.
(and that's ignoring the question of how you could possibly deliver that energy to the Earth without baking one side).
It would probably be orders of magnitude easier/cheaper to terraform Mars and relocate humanity.
I'm hoping that my comment is a "woosh" and that you're joking.
Indeed, I love the way we're sitting around the world, using our plethora of interconnected super-computers to discuss our lack of technological progress!
(though I'm sure some people are using smart phones or possibly even watches to post on /. these days..)
A 570-fold increase over 6 years is less than a 3-fold increase per year. This is fast (towards double Moore's Law), but then it's possible that an Nvidia engineer knows something about GPU research that we don't...
I'd say this is news, and it's remarkable, but it's not totally implausible.
I realise you meant that as a joke, but if the platform is Linux you'll actually be able to _use_ the hardware you buy -- sounds like a better spec to me!
It's always important to remember that everything that is now 'owned' was once communal, and that at some point in history someone put up a fence around some communal land and said: "This land that was once everyone's is now mine only." Property as a concept is arbitrary and synthetic (though that doesn't, in itself, make it a bad thing).
This is where I think something like squatters' rights comes into play. If someone owns some property, and they are tied so loosely to it that some else can eke out a living there for many years, then they don't in practise actually own it -- the squatter does. I think it's fair for the owner of neglected property to forfeit their right to it - they demonstrate their lack of use for it.
I'm not quite sure how this relates to digital and intellectual property, but to me neither of those really seem any more arbitrary or contrived than physical property..
Err.. I'm running vanilla Ubuntu 9.04 and Firefox, and I am not seeing this. I suspect this story is misleading.
"Software programmers are free thinkers."
Got any evidence for that, or are you just stroking our egos?
One thing I've learnt as I've got older is that there are lots of smart people doing lots of good work; Most things are more complicated than they seem at first, and one shouldn't be too judgmental about that which one knows relatively little.
That's excellent - thanks for sharing :-)
This is probably both simplistic and unoriginal, but I've been musing about this.
If I am listening to music, and turn my head, the relative direction of the sound (wrt my head) changes. I don't perceive this as the sound moving, because I have a model in my brain that describes my position in space, and knows that I've just turned my head.
Similarly, my internal model of the world includes complex things like the way water behaves (children don't know that an apparently solid swimming pool will drown them) or glass breaks. I also have a model of my body that helps me: eg. the way I appear to others (this also allows me to recognise myself in a mirror or photo), that my right knee is weak and I need to protect it, etc.
My model also covers aspects of my personality, and how to interact with other people. I can interact with different people in different ways (eg. the boys at the pub vs my priest), because I have an idea of expectation. This can be generic in the case of people I don't know, or specific for friends (you can have running jokes, or behavioural expectation with friends -- aka history).
I can also analyse my personality (which amounts to meta-analysis of my mental model of myself), and the way I interact with other people (which amounts to analysing my model of someone else's model of myself)....
I think the recursive feed-back of this model is the source of consciousness.
"it will never let its users to get it up the ass."
;-)
Did you just link to the same conversation in which you're posting?
I got the impression that he was trying to define "intelligence" as a super-set of what it is currently considered to mean.
In other words, I thought he was trying to define intelligence as the ability to survive a threat. If that's related back to what is generally understood by "intelligence" then we would say that human intelligence is the ability to "survive" an IQ test (I'm not saying IQ measures intelligence, I'm just using it for the sake of simplicity). The reason I think this, is that he goes on to mention simulation, and how a simulation-approach can be applied to every day events (kinda like saying that the universe is performing a computation, I guess), and that intelligence is the ability of an entity to survive a simulation -- which is just a series of events (eg IQ test) with constraints applied (eg. fill in answers, no cheating)..
Quite an interesting article, I think. Might check out his journal.
What you say is true - our lives have been massively improved through the use of technology.
In particular, our success at creating and using machines has been incredible.
We have been much less successful (particularly over longer time scales) at manipulating biological systems -- a quick glance at history (eg. DDT, thalidomide, cane toads, etc) suggests that a bit of caution and prudence might be in order. This is not to say that we should return to an agrarian society, but that we should treat powerful new advances with optimistic caution. With regard to fertilisers, pesticides and antibiotics in farming, I think we've had far too much optimism, and far too little caution.
Spewing forth opinion and vitriol without any attempt at substantiation of claims is not insightful.
From the actual paper about which the article was written*:
"This review does not address contaminant content (such as herbicide, pesticide and fungicide residues) of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs"
To me, this seems a rather major flaw in the study, since that is such an important part organic food!
*pdf paper can be found on this page:
http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2009/jul/organic
Interesting. As someone who has recently started buying a delivered vegetable box from a nearby farm, I have noticed a large difference between fresh organic produce, and standard supermarket fare. In particular, carrots and cucumbers are noticeably tastier and juicier (organic cucumbers are almost a fruit -- they're almost unrecognisable from those at the supermarket). Having said that, I can't discount the "tastes better because of price" theory as I haven't done a double-blind test.
I like being able to eat the carrot skins without worrying about pesticides though.
There is a difference between "no nutritional difference" and "no health benefits": sometimes the lack of a thing (ie. antibiotics in milk) can be healthier than the alternative.
Exactly. A video interface just isn't (in general) a sensible UI when you are walking around and interacting with the world. I think an audio user interface is what is needed -- but there's little consumer interest at the moment.
And, as has been pointed out here repeatedly whenever comments such as this are made, it's not necessarily the same people espousing both opinions.
While it would certainly be more internally-consistent if everyone here had the same world-view, it would make it a bit less interesting.
...and I think that's really shitty. It's like MS could use their strong OS position to force out all other browsers, search-engines and office suites, because they have a "vision" of how we should use the internet and word-processor.
Atheists shut up?!? C'mon... ;-)
(I say this as an atheist)