Why would you need to rebuy it each time? Amazon's Kindle is multi-platform (annoyingly no Linux yet so I only have it on my Android phone), and even keeps the page you were last at synched across devices. It's not intended to lock you in to one device. And if you buy DRM free eBooks you can put them wherever you wish..
I keep my phone and laptop charged up as a matter of principal, the battery thing doesn't seem like an issue to me. e-ink devices also last weeks, don't tell me you can't keep that charged up..
Yep I guess we just think of things differently. I have something like 10GB of digital photos, and the only time I've printed any were as gifts, I've never actually printed any for myself..
I do like physical bookstores, it's easier when just browsing. I rarely read any more though. The only new books I'm guaranteed to read are ones by Pratchett:) That's why I bought his latest book as an eBook, to try to give the format a decent shot at me actually trying it out.. might start it tonight.
I know that supercomputers are useful things, but I suspect that whoever has the fastest does not matter too much. Having two smaller supercomputers would still be useful for example. I don't know much about it but I assume that you don't usually use the whole supercomputer for just one task - you probably are often running several at once?
I do IBM and the US should keep pushing forward, but saying they should do something simply because China is also doing it is the thing that is bothering me. As someone else pointed out though, it's all politics, and politicians are just the type of people that care about "keeping up with the Joneses" type thing, so it is a smart move on IBM's part..
Ah, I missed where you were using Google News rather than just Google. Still, 24 news articles is not 2.. it does sound like a bad joke, but I wouldn't be that shocked if it were true.
Supercomputers are cool, but I really don't care which country has the largest. It's a bit sad to be honest. How are China going to "eat [USA's] lunch" with a big supercomputer (which in supercomputing terms seems to just involve throwing more money at it to add in even more interconnects and processors - not exactly very innovative)? By beating them at Chess?
Two? There are over 4000 results for that search string, and the first page is all French news sites (apart from Slashdot, of course) covering this story..
The technology already exists for the ISP to resolve an IP address to a specific customer. How else would they be able to disable your access if you stop paying your internet bills?
I think it's more likely they identify their customers by their phone number, and they assign an IP address after they verify that they're a current paying customer. Broadband IP addresses are often assigned via DHCP and so will be fairly random. They would have to check their DHCP logs to tell which customer was using which IP at which time.
Maybe they actually do something reasonable like download the file themselves to make sure that the accused is actually breaking copyright. As someone pointed out just above, a torrent named "Aliens" could be anything. There's probably paperwork (and hopefully a nice fee too) to be done too to allow someone's address to be given out.
It is more likely that it can be done as an emergent system that develops intelligence from a rudimentary impulse to learn and apply knowledge. Some form of emotion-like responses would be useful to drive such a machine toward successful learning and use of its knowledge by creating the reward of "pleasure" when accomplishing a task and "sadness" for failing.
So, pretty much a neural network with an appropriate cost function?
Or any kind of algorithm that encourages the desired behaviour.. pretty simple to do. Like when I was making bots for CS before, I taught them to save little info points around a map about where they had previously died - next time around (and depending on how "brave" their personality type was and how many team mates they had around them), they might choose to sneak or camp once they got to that point, or toss a flashbang or grenade first and then charge in.. pretty simple implementation, but with nicely realistic results that would automatically have the bots learn appropriate behaviour for each map, and would result in the occasional grenade kill which was always fun to see:) Creating apparently advanced intelligent behaviour in certain types of domain is pretty easy to do just with a few simple rules. It's funny to see people talk about AIs that you've created, presuming that they have much more intelligent thought processes than they actually do, simply because their behaviours often appear to be rather intelligent. Even just adding a random component to any algorithm will make the results seem a lot more "human" as it gives the machine the capability to make mistakes or do unexpected things.
Often making a machine seem more like a human does not require making it more intelligent, it simply requires making it fallible.
volcano can kill people, but it makes no sense to hold the volcano responsible for doing so. It does not possess free will, and thus there's no entity there to blame.
Actually, God did it. That sadistic bastard, He was giggling when He told me.
Next, He's going to make frogs drop out of the sky onto a runway, causing a major loss of friction and a huge fiery fireball of frog scented death when the next 747 that lands.
Then buy the paperback and quit whining. Eventually eBooks will be cheaper than the paperbacks anyway, and if you really want a paper copy you could print it yourself. When they have flexible e-ink eBook readers I don't see why you'd want to print it anyway, beyond experiencing some form of nostalgia. Personally I read books so that I can get the content out of them and into my brain, not so that I can lovingly let my sweat absorb into the pages.
That and there is nothing like a real book, sitting on a real shelf.
I used to think that about CDs, but after I ripped them all I just found the CDs an annoying waste of space. Likewise the bottom of one of my cupboards is full of books that I need to put into storage somewhere, and the top of it and the shelf next to my bed are covered in books that I haven't got around to yet. If I could put them all onto one device, I would.
I've bought one eBook as an experiment so far to see how I enjoy it. I certainly won't miss not having the extra space if I get into them.
When you buy a book, you aren't paying so that you can have a physical object, you're buying for the story. Now I agree that eBooks should be cheaper than they are, but after a month or so I became totally at ease with buying MP3s instead of CDs. I keep backups, but even if I lost everything and the backup, I'd feel justified in torrenting all of my music to recover it.
Note that you can also check out eBooks from certain libraries these days. I think that is a great way to go if you read a lot.
I'm not sure if your lack of imagination is a blessing, or a curse. Just don't be running the engine at the time.. or actually, if you left the engine running and use the fuel port you could get some nice suction going..
Seconded. It's pretty impressive considering how much of a place paper books have had in most people's lives, and throughout history, I certainly didn't expect eBook penetration to be so high anytime soon!
I bought an eBook as a test on Android recently, then was pretty annoyed to find out there's no official Linux Kindle client, and the Windows version doesn't even work in WINE.. come on Amazon, you can do better than that. I don't want to read the whole of the book on a 5" screen..!
That personal info is pretty useless to advertisers if you're blocking their ads. And if you actually leave the ads on, wouldn't you want them to at least be relevant..?
There are a couple problems with that... The typical agenda that surrounds arguments like yours is that the job of checker is entirely obsolete. I don't think so. I do think it's nice to have a few lanes set up so people have a choice, but people who want to see this expand further don't seem to recognize what they're trading away.
I said nothing of the sort.. I'm happy for the normal checkouts to be there too, they're great for larger family shopping runs and the like, but I never do those, I usually just get a basketful or handful of stuff, so I prefer the self checkouts.
First, these machiens don't reduce the number of people waiting. Today you see a shorter line because most people still don't use them. What would happen if everyone used them? Why, the lines are right back where they started.
Actually, the self checkout lines are usually longer than all the other queues, but it's deceptive because they move much faster. If everyone started using them, they'd make more of them. One of the supermarkets I frequent has about 10 self checkout stations, so at that one you can generally get a machine straight away. With the ones that have around 6 (8 there but 2 are often out of service:p ) you might have to wait a minute or so when it's busy.
If you fit the checkout stations back to back then you can actually fit 4 checkouts in the space that one "normal" checkout would take, and only the very end ones have 2 instead of 4 checkouts. But anyway, like I said I think converting the whole place to self checkouts is stupid. As you suggested, they're best for people who have less than 20 items. I'm always one of those people, so this saves me a lot of time waiting behind a couple of people with whole trolleys full of shopping.
We don't have baggers here in the UK, and I've never had any issues scanning stuff myself. I buy pretty standard stuff, even if I buy fresh vegetables they're in a packet with a barcode. If I bought loose fruit/veg I'd probably just go to a normal checkout as I don't know the system they use at the self checkouts..
As I've said several times I can definitely checkout faster than going through a normal checkout if I don't have a lot of items. Often I'll go through with one or two items, do the card payment with very little time wasted having to have questions asked and me reply to them, or to wait for the cashier to hand me my receipt etc. It's very quick:p If I have a whole basket then the slight wait that occurs while the item weight is checked would start to come into play and then I suspect it would be more of a tie.
Yes. Again as I said elsewhere, I've made the mistake of avoiding the self checkouts when I thought the line was large, only for 10 people to go through the self checkout faster than the 3 people with baskets in front of me at the normal checkout. There was some issue and they had to call over a supervisor or something. If that was happening at the self checkouts then it would block one terminal, but the others would keep moving. 4 people would have to be having problems at once for the queue to be moving slower than a normal one.. that could happen, but it's much less likely than a normal queue going slowly.
Personally I don't care about more savings, I'm just saying that I think it will cut down on costs for the store, and that's potential savings for the customer since the supermarket space is so competitive.
Mine was a Skoda Fabia vRS, basically a slightly remodelled VW Polo. With a little remap of the ECU it had some enjoyable response and performance, and still got 35MPG with my typical "brisk" city driving style, and probably around 45MPG on boring intercity journeys, but I don't do many of those and never measured it precisely.
We get diesel Fords here in the UK, it is pretty unfortunate that they wouldn't do the same over there..
If I got another diesel it would probably be something like a BMW 123d, and I'd get it remapped. That would be a fun little car with the rear wheel drive and all that torque:)
Slashdot Mirror
Is it going to be a major drawback if China can predict the weather slightly faster than the US can?
Why would you need to rebuy it each time? Amazon's Kindle is multi-platform (annoyingly no Linux yet so I only have it on my Android phone), and even keeps the page you were last at synched across devices. It's not intended to lock you in to one device. And if you buy DRM free eBooks you can put them wherever you wish..
I keep my phone and laptop charged up as a matter of principal, the battery thing doesn't seem like an issue to me. e-ink devices also last weeks, don't tell me you can't keep that charged up..
As for the cats and dogs.. um. Okay.
Yep I guess we just think of things differently. I have something like 10GB of digital photos, and the only time I've printed any were as gifts, I've never actually printed any for myself..
I do like physical bookstores, it's easier when just browsing. I rarely read any more though. The only new books I'm guaranteed to read are ones by Pratchett :) That's why I bought his latest book as an eBook, to try to give the format a decent shot at me actually trying it out.. might start it tonight.
[ComicBookGuy saying="Most powerful Blue Screen ever!" /]
I know that supercomputers are useful things, but I suspect that whoever has the fastest does not matter too much. Having two smaller supercomputers would still be useful for example. I don't know much about it but I assume that you don't usually use the whole supercomputer for just one task - you probably are often running several at once?
I do IBM and the US should keep pushing forward, but saying they should do something simply because China is also doing it is the thing that is bothering me. As someone else pointed out though, it's all politics, and politicians are just the type of people that care about "keeping up with the Joneses" type thing, so it is a smart move on IBM's part..
Ah, I missed where you were using Google News rather than just Google. Still, 24 news articles is not 2.. it does sound like a bad joke, but I wouldn't be that shocked if it were true.
It does look like it: http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=cambrioleurs+aspirateur+monoprix&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
Perhaps Americans get offended when they see French websites?
Supercomputers are cool, but I really don't care which country has the largest. It's a bit sad to be honest. How are China going to "eat [USA's] lunch" with a big supercomputer (which in supercomputing terms seems to just involve throwing more money at it to add in even more interconnects and processors - not exactly very innovative)? By beating them at Chess?
Two? There are over 4000 results for that search string, and the first page is all French news sites (apart from Slashdot, of course) covering this story..
The technology already exists for the ISP to resolve an IP address to a specific customer. How else would they be able to disable your access if you stop paying your internet bills?
I think it's more likely they identify their customers by their phone number, and they assign an IP address after they verify that they're a current paying customer. Broadband IP addresses are often assigned via DHCP and so will be fairly random. They would have to check their DHCP logs to tell which customer was using which IP at which time.
i watch my shit online
People put webcams in the strangest places.. and are clearly far too easily amused.
Maybe they actually do something reasonable like download the file themselves to make sure that the accused is actually breaking copyright. As someone pointed out just above, a torrent named "Aliens" could be anything. There's probably paperwork (and hopefully a nice fee too) to be done too to allow someone's address to be given out.
2 guys that only barely got the joke, and one that completely missed it despite the emote.
Excuse me while I go and weep for humanity..
It is more likely that it can be done as an emergent system that develops intelligence from a rudimentary impulse to learn and apply knowledge. Some form of emotion-like responses would be useful to drive such a machine toward successful learning and use of its knowledge by creating the reward of "pleasure" when accomplishing a task and "sadness" for failing.
So, pretty much a neural network with an appropriate cost function?
Or any kind of algorithm that encourages the desired behaviour.. pretty simple to do. Like when I was making bots for CS before, I taught them to save little info points around a map about where they had previously died - next time around (and depending on how "brave" their personality type was and how many team mates they had around them), they might choose to sneak or camp once they got to that point, or toss a flashbang or grenade first and then charge in.. pretty simple implementation, but with nicely realistic results that would automatically have the bots learn appropriate behaviour for each map, and would result in the occasional grenade kill which was always fun to see :) Creating apparently advanced intelligent behaviour in certain types of domain is pretty easy to do just with a few simple rules. It's funny to see people talk about AIs that you've created, presuming that they have much more intelligent thought processes than they actually do, simply because their behaviours often appear to be rather intelligent. Even just adding a random component to any algorithm will make the results seem a lot more "human" as it gives the machine the capability to make mistakes or do unexpected things.
Often making a machine seem more like a human does not require making it more intelligent, it simply requires making it fallible.
volcano can kill people, but it makes no sense to hold the volcano responsible for doing so. It does not possess free will, and thus there's no entity there to blame.
Actually, God did it. That sadistic bastard, He was giggling when He told me.
Next, He's going to make frogs drop out of the sky onto a runway, causing a major loss of friction and a huge fiery fireball of frog scented death when the next 747 that lands.
Does that mean she could not also feel sad? What about other emotions? That is rather intriguing.
Then buy the paperback and quit whining. Eventually eBooks will be cheaper than the paperbacks anyway, and if you really want a paper copy you could print it yourself. When they have flexible e-ink eBook readers I don't see why you'd want to print it anyway, beyond experiencing some form of nostalgia. Personally I read books so that I can get the content out of them and into my brain, not so that I can lovingly let my sweat absorb into the pages.
That and there is nothing like a real book, sitting on a real shelf.
I used to think that about CDs, but after I ripped them all I just found the CDs an annoying waste of space. Likewise the bottom of one of my cupboards is full of books that I need to put into storage somewhere, and the top of it and the shelf next to my bed are covered in books that I haven't got around to yet. If I could put them all onto one device, I would.
I've bought one eBook as an experiment so far to see how I enjoy it. I certainly won't miss not having the extra space if I get into them.
When you buy a book, you aren't paying so that you can have a physical object, you're buying for the story. Now I agree that eBooks should be cheaper than they are, but after a month or so I became totally at ease with buying MP3s instead of CDs. I keep backups, but even if I lost everything and the backup, I'd feel justified in torrenting all of my music to recover it.
Note that you can also check out eBooks from certain libraries these days. I think that is a great way to go if you read a lot.
I'm not sure if your lack of imagination is a blessing, or a curse. Just don't be running the engine at the time.. or actually, if you left the engine running and use the fuel port you could get some nice suction going..
No, why would you think that?
Do you work at the horse drawn carriage store?
Seconded. It's pretty impressive considering how much of a place paper books have had in most people's lives, and throughout history, I certainly didn't expect eBook penetration to be so high anytime soon!
I bought an eBook as a test on Android recently, then was pretty annoyed to find out there's no official Linux Kindle client, and the Windows version doesn't even work in WINE.. come on Amazon, you can do better than that. I don't want to read the whole of the book on a 5" screen..!
That personal info is pretty useless to advertisers if you're blocking their ads. And if you actually leave the ads on, wouldn't you want them to at least be relevant..?
There are a couple problems with that... The typical agenda that surrounds arguments like yours is that the job of checker is entirely obsolete. I don't think so. I do think it's nice to have a few lanes set up so people have a choice, but people who want to see this expand further don't seem to recognize what they're trading away.
I said nothing of the sort.. I'm happy for the normal checkouts to be there too, they're great for larger family shopping runs and the like, but I never do those, I usually just get a basketful or handful of stuff, so I prefer the self checkouts.
First, these machiens don't reduce the number of people waiting. Today you see a shorter line because most people still don't use them. What would happen if everyone used them? Why, the lines are right back where they started.
Actually, the self checkout lines are usually longer than all the other queues, but it's deceptive because they move much faster. If everyone started using them, they'd make more of them. One of the supermarkets I frequent has about 10 self checkout stations, so at that one you can generally get a machine straight away. With the ones that have around 6 (8 there but 2 are often out of service :p ) you might have to wait a minute or so when it's busy.
If you fit the checkout stations back to back then you can actually fit 4 checkouts in the space that one "normal" checkout would take, and only the very end ones have 2 instead of 4 checkouts. But anyway, like I said I think converting the whole place to self checkouts is stupid. As you suggested, they're best for people who have less than 20 items. I'm always one of those people, so this saves me a lot of time waiting behind a couple of people with whole trolleys full of shopping.
We don't have baggers here in the UK, and I've never had any issues scanning stuff myself. I buy pretty standard stuff, even if I buy fresh vegetables they're in a packet with a barcode. If I bought loose fruit/veg I'd probably just go to a normal checkout as I don't know the system they use at the self checkouts..
As I've said several times I can definitely checkout faster than going through a normal checkout if I don't have a lot of items. Often I'll go through with one or two items, do the card payment with very little time wasted having to have questions asked and me reply to them, or to wait for the cashier to hand me my receipt etc. It's very quick :p If I have a whole basket then the slight wait that occurs while the item weight is checked would start to come into play and then I suspect it would be more of a tie.
Yes. Again as I said elsewhere, I've made the mistake of avoiding the self checkouts when I thought the line was large, only for 10 people to go through the self checkout faster than the 3 people with baskets in front of me at the normal checkout. There was some issue and they had to call over a supervisor or something. If that was happening at the self checkouts then it would block one terminal, but the others would keep moving. 4 people would have to be having problems at once for the queue to be moving slower than a normal one.. that could happen, but it's much less likely than a normal queue going slowly.
Personally I don't care about more savings, I'm just saying that I think it will cut down on costs for the store, and that's potential savings for the customer since the supermarket space is so competitive.
Mine was a Skoda Fabia vRS, basically a slightly remodelled VW Polo. With a little remap of the ECU it had some enjoyable response and performance, and still got 35MPG with my typical "brisk" city driving style, and probably around 45MPG on boring intercity journeys, but I don't do many of those and never measured it precisely.
We get diesel Fords here in the UK, it is pretty unfortunate that they wouldn't do the same over there..
If I got another diesel it would probably be something like a BMW 123d, and I'd get it remapped. That would be a fun little car with the rear wheel drive and all that torque :)
The location in this instance is ever moving, as it is in fact a train journey from Buckingham to Bangalore. Possibly with a further leg to Phucket.