one of the ones in my list is Richard Feynman (dead). Just the other day i was reading one of his talks on why we're not in a scientific age - most people really don't understand what science is, nor do they really give a shit. Science is irrelevant from the personal perspective of most of the people alive today.
How's this for a preliminary stab at a distributed computing organization business model:
Each computing unit (whatever size) is allocated a price based on demand. You can use the units at the given price, or you can generate the computing units (have other peoples jobs run on your machine) at $0.50 on the dollar. Your account is tracked/stored with the organization.
The benefits are as follows:
-Your spare computing units are automatically contracted out at a competitive price. You can (arguably) make money doing it with all those spare computers laying about.
-You can stockpile computing units to be used later in your research. (Make your computer work for you even while in the reading phase).
-If you have a project where you need units, but don't have time to contribute, you can simply buy the distributed processing time.
-You could enhance your effective computing time by contributing at peak times (when the price is highest) and processing at off peak times (when the price is lowest). You will effectively have improved your computer.
International incidents? RIAA terrorism?
on
RIAA Smacked by DoS
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
BTW, assuming their new proposed legislation gets passed, does the RIAA plan to do their own denial of service only on USA machines, or internationally also? Although the RIAA will feel all smug about it, other countrys may call it terrorism. If a company from a country currently in USA disfavour did that to the RIAA, that's what it would be called.
And, FWIW, I also consider mathematics to be a human endeavor, and thus also falible.
Mathematics is a way to talk about the fabric of our universe. Although we use our own terminology, the concepts math describe exist independent of humanity and are, by definition, universal.
Rather than a google engine to index everything there, i'd rather have a WayBack Machine that allows me to see the variant versions of documents. (that aren't in a revision control system accessible to me)
Wouldn't it be great for when they say "your code doesn't meet the specification of what the product needs to do" and you can use it to say "let's look to the wayback machine to see when you changed the spec but didn't bother telling me"
Why was that guy modded down? He's right, and it is relevant to "mindpixel" and his interviews. Ask around in that guy's hometown...there's a reason he doesn't live there anymore, and it's probably closer to lynch mobs than you think. I went and looked at mindpixel's press web page - the lies are laughable when you know the real story.
In other words, people are buying enormous numbers of blank CDRs. Most of these CDRs are probably being filled with music.
I'm glad you said "probably", but your guess is still unfounded. I say that most of these CDRs are probably being filled with data, but i have no more proof than you.
In the last 100 or so CDs i've burned, approximately 2 of them have been music. --
I recall reading an interview with the creators of LEXX. I'm not sure if this was for the second or for the third season (probably second), but an american network offered to pick it up if they "had more violence and less sex". That contrasted the canadian, french, and german audiences that requested it have more sex and less violence. (LEXX is a joint canada/germany production) To the american network, they said "no, sorry".
More sex, less violence was the way they went. If you ever saw the season three episode, "Boomtown", which was pretty much a big orgy episode complete with lots of nudity, you'd know what i was talking about.:-) [all the episodes eventually aired on a usa network, but they were heavily edited]
One thing new to canadian TV that is really useful - most canadian-origin
stations are now broadcasting digital information somewhere in their signal
that contains the name of the show currently being broadcast. Some stations
also have their call letters in the signal. I imagine the V-chip info will
also be in there somewhere.
I haven't seen any public references to this information, yet. It
started showing up a year ago on a few stations, but now its on almost all
of them. Its on some american stations, too, like TBS and some PBS stations.
The only hardware i have that detects/displays it is my VCR (Sony SLV-679HF).
I don't know anybody else at all that has something that allows them to see this
info. Note that this information is not something i've programmed into
the VCR myself - it has taken all this information exclusively from the
television signal. (my guess is it is encoded somewhere in the blanking interval)
It's really great to have that info, especially when you're flipping channels...and
especially late at night so you
can immediately see the title of "Paid Programming" and keep flipping. As i write
this, one offair channel sending a test pattern actually has the info "OffAir".
Sometimes the info gets screwed up and lists garbage characters, and sometimes it just
says puzzling things.
When the circle of "in the know" gets large enough, there's always somebody who wants to "be cool" by blabbing about it to anybody who will listen. I've had plans foiled because the circle got too big and some chatty poser fscked it up.
We have excellent observational evidence that we are - namely we can feel ourselves think, and we can watch other
people do things that clearly involve reasoning. What more do you want?
I have evidence that I am thinking. I have no evidence that my thinking is not controlled (ie. brain in jar). The rest is supposition.
Actually, the "creatures" in the game "Creatures (I, II, and III)" can all do this. They can learn by observing the other creatures exclusively. You can teach them, too, but it is not required.
Acording to some people (scientists) we use a primitive part of our brain when we dream. We got this part of
the brain from reptiles and small mammals.
I use a primitive part of my brain when i walk and have sex, too. That in of itself doesn't prove anything.
Did you notice how you can't think straight, or you can't read on a dream?
can you say you are not self aware? You are, but on a lower level.
I can mostly think straight in my dreams - when i remember to do so. At those times i have will and intent. I can read in a dream, however, attempting to read in a dream as we normally would is usually inappropriate, as the printed words tend to change with time. Rather than turning the page in a book, try reading the same page again. Most likely its different, and perhaps just as useful.;-)
The mind and consciousness depends on randomness...
That's quite a bold assertation. It is most probably false (and you have no scientific evidence that it is true).
Randomness does not result in free will, but in "random will", just as determinism results in no free will.
The free will we appear to have cannot be adequately explained [at this point in time] by a random universe any better than it can a deterministic one.
I think it was DEC (could be wrong) that used to have an online random
number generator based on the position of the "bubbles" in a Lava Lamp. There is nothing deterministic about their
location.
The lava lamp system is chaotic, not random. The difference is that randomness is unpredictable. A chaotic system is deterministic, but so sensitive to initial conditions that we cannot predict its operation very far into the future.
When the ability to create hardware (in the context of digital logic) on the desktop becomes trivial and commonplace, this will be a BOON for long distance space travel!!!
One of the critical problems for long distance space endevours is what to do when/if you need to replace hardware in your systems when you're far far away from any fab plant. This kind of technology will go a long way to making the problem moot.
over the last month or so we have been used primarily as cheap labor in simple, repetitive
jobs, such as equipment tests and upgrades.
First, you are cheap labour!
Second, equipment test and upgrade is something that engineers do! (although i don't, personally)
Now, to elaborate.
You are cheap labour. You are high school students. In terms of the technology, it is most likely that you know about 1% of what the engineers know. Which is in the company's better interests (in terms of time and finance); paying high school students to do a repetitive job or paying engineers to do it? Of course, the company should hold up their end of their social contract and expose you to technology.
They are exposing you to technology! Let me reiterate - you are high school students. You are capable of much, but most likely you aren't yet capable of designing fibre-optics (or whatever it is they do there). You are likely in the position where you are at the peak of the parabola in terms of what you can contribute to the company and what they can contribute to you. (outside of money, that is)
Testing is a LARGE part of the engineering business, and anybody who says it is not is likely part of a vapourware company. Exposing you to testing is a great way to get you to learn what's going on. Testing isn't just throwing a switch and saying "it doesn't work", but following a detailed procedure, noting where it fails, producing a report sufficient to allow people to reproduce a fault, and often offering suggestions about why something failed. There are many positions with the title "Test Engineer". (who do a lot more than described here)
Personally, i don't think you have anything to complain about, you just don't know it, yet.
But we're talking about an 8 year old here. The fact that it occurred to her at that age to have something resembling a statistical sampling is impressive.
When i was in the 8th grade, i collected some data on peoples's preferences for a study. I sampled 50 people. When i reported the percentage findings, i multiplied my results by two (results/samplesize * 100 = (in my case) results*2 = x%). When asked by the teacher "how did you get these percentages" and i explained it, she was aghast and exclaimed "you can't do that!!! that's lying!!". Puzzled by her response, i tried to explain how math worked, but to no avail. Her opinion was that you had to have exactly 100 samples to get a percentage out of 100.
The moral: teachers are humans, and aren't always the brightest bulbs in the chandelier.
Done in `97 by a high-school student
on
AI Advances
·
· Score: 1
Research published in the journal "Artificial Life" reveals that autonomous agents [...] can communicate with one another as they work to achieve a common goal. They actually develop a language of sorts...."
I judged a science fair in Hilo, Hawaii in 1997 that had an entry that demonstrated something almost identical. The 1st place entry was by a student named Ben Schmidel, whose topic was "Virtual Mating: An
Exploration In Artificial Communication".
His project was hotly debated amongst the judges by those "in the know" and some "science" teachers who would have been better off as assistant gym teachers. In the end, Ben also went on to win first prize in the state fair. It was actually a very interesting and thought-provoking project, especially for a high school student. I'm not quite sure what he's up to now.
If he didn't play any role in the research mentioned in the article, it is yet another example of parallel evolution. (or maybe an obvious progression of ideas) Either way, i'll remember Ben as "the guy who did it first".
Slashdot Mirror
one of the ones in my list is Richard Feynman (dead). Just the other day i was reading one of his talks on why we're not in a scientific age - most people really don't understand what science is, nor do they really give a shit. Science is irrelevant from the personal perspective of most of the people alive today.
I don't know what you were reading, but the website you link to says:
Orbital period: 3.524738 ± 0.000015 d.
which looks like ~3.52 days in the year to me.
How's this for a preliminary stab at a distributed computing organization business model:
Each computing unit (whatever size) is allocated a price based on demand. You can use the units at the given price, or you can generate the computing units (have other peoples jobs run on your machine) at $0.50 on the dollar. Your account is tracked/stored with the organization.
The benefits are as follows:
-Your spare computing units are automatically contracted out at a competitive price. You can (arguably) make money doing it with all those spare computers laying about.
-You can stockpile computing units to be used later in your research. (Make your computer work for you even while in the reading phase).
-If you have a project where you need units, but don't have time to contribute, you can simply buy the distributed processing time.
-You could enhance your effective computing time by contributing at peak times (when the price is highest) and processing at off peak times (when the price is lowest). You will effectively have improved your computer.
BTW, assuming their new proposed legislation gets passed, does the RIAA plan to do their own denial of service only on USA machines, or internationally also? Although the RIAA will feel all smug about it, other countrys may call it terrorism. If a company from a country currently in USA disfavour did that to the RIAA, that's what it would be called.
Mathematics is a way to talk about the fabric of our universe. Although we use our own terminology, the concepts math describe exist independent of humanity and are, by definition, universal.
Wouldn't it be great for when they say "your code doesn't meet the specification of what the product needs to do" and you can use it to say "let's look to the wayback machine to see when you changed the spec but didn't bother telling me"
:-)
Why was that guy modded down? He's right, and it is relevant to "mindpixel" and his interviews. Ask around in that guy's hometown...there's a reason he doesn't live there anymore, and it's probably closer to lynch mobs than you think. I went and looked at mindpixel's press web page - the lies are laughable when you know the real story.
I'm glad you said "probably", but your guess is still unfounded. I say that most of these CDRs are probably being filled with data, but i have no more proof than you.
In the last 100 or so CDs i've burned, approximately 2 of them have been music.
--
More sex, less violence was the way they went. If you ever saw the season three episode, "Boomtown", which was pretty much a big orgy episode complete with lots of nudity, you'd know what i was talking about. :-) [all the episodes eventually aired on a usa network, but they were heavily edited]
Three cheers for canadian TV! :-)
--
(although on canadian tv non-T&A is getting hard to find ;-)
--
I haven't seen any public references to this information, yet. It started showing up a year ago on a few stations, but now its on almost all of them. Its on some american stations, too, like TBS and some PBS stations. The only hardware i have that detects/displays it is my VCR (Sony SLV-679HF). I don't know anybody else at all that has something that allows them to see this info. Note that this information is not something i've programmed into the VCR myself - it has taken all this information exclusively from the television signal. (my guess is it is encoded somewhere in the blanking interval)
It's really great to have that info, especially when you're flipping channels ...and
especially late at night so you
can immediately see the title of "Paid Programming" and keep flipping. As i write
this, one offair channel sending a test pattern actually has the info "OffAir".
Sometimes the info gets screwed up and lists garbage characters, and sometimes it just
says puzzling things.
--
When the circle of "in the know" gets large enough, there's always somebody who wants to "be cool" by blabbing about it to anybody who will listen. I've had plans foiled because the circle got too big and some chatty poser fscked it up.
go to grad school. that's what i did. it's a snooze button on the alarm clock of life. :-)
When i was building a Tesla Coil, i got shocked all the time. Does this mean it was real life? :-P
I have evidence that I am thinking. I have no evidence that my thinking is not controlled (ie. brain in jar). The rest is supposition.
Actually, the "creatures" in the game "Creatures (I, II, and III)" can all do this. They can learn by observing the other creatures exclusively. You can teach them, too, but it is not required.
I use a primitive part of my brain when i walk and have sex, too. That in of itself doesn't prove anything.
Did you notice how you can't think straight, or you can't read on a dream? can you say you are not self aware? You are, but on a lower level.
I can mostly think straight in my dreams - when i remember to do so. At those times i have will and intent. I can read in a dream, however, attempting to read in a dream as we normally would is usually inappropriate, as the printed words tend to change with time. Rather than turning the page in a book, try reading the same page again. Most likely its different, and perhaps just as useful. ;-)
That's quite a bold assertation. It is most probably false (and you have no scientific evidence that it is true).
Randomness does not result in free will, but in "random will", just as determinism results in no free will.
The free will we appear to have cannot be adequately explained [at this point in time] by a random universe any better than it can a deterministic one.
The lava lamp system is chaotic, not random. The difference is that randomness is unpredictable. A chaotic system is deterministic, but so sensitive to initial conditions that we cannot predict its operation very far into the future.
One of the critical problems for long distance space endevours is what to do when/if you need to replace hardware in your systems when you're far far away from any fab plant. This kind of technology will go a long way to making the problem moot.
I believe you skimmed over the part that said (paraphrased) "we are high school students". They are not people with engineering degrees.
First, you are cheap labour!
Second, equipment test and upgrade is something that engineers do! (although i don't, personally)
Now, to elaborate.
You are cheap labour. You are high school students. In terms of the technology, it is most likely that you know about 1% of what the engineers know. Which is in the company's better interests (in terms of time and finance); paying high school students to do a repetitive job or paying engineers to do it? Of course, the company should hold up their end of their social contract and expose you to technology.
They are exposing you to technology! Let me reiterate - you are high school students. You are capable of much, but most likely you aren't yet capable of designing fibre-optics (or whatever it is they do there). You are likely in the position where you are at the peak of the parabola in terms of what you can contribute to the company and what they can contribute to you. (outside of money, that is)
Testing is a LARGE part of the engineering business, and anybody who says it is not is likely part of a vapourware company. Exposing you to testing is a great way to get you to learn what's going on. Testing isn't just throwing a switch and saying "it doesn't work", but following a detailed procedure, noting where it fails, producing a report sufficient to allow people to reproduce a fault, and often offering suggestions about why something failed. There are many positions with the title "Test Engineer". (who do a lot more than described here)
Personally, i don't think you have anything to complain about, you just don't know it, yet.
Stallman would never call it Linux, but would have obsessively called it GNU/Linux and insist everybody else did, too.
Therefore, it couldn't have been him. :-)
When i was in the 8th grade, i collected some data on peoples's preferences for a study. I sampled 50 people. When i reported the percentage findings, i multiplied my results by two (results/samplesize * 100 = (in my case) results*2 = x%). When asked by the teacher "how did you get these percentages" and i explained it, she was aghast and exclaimed "you can't do that!!! that's lying!!". Puzzled by her response, i tried to explain how math worked, but to no avail. Her opinion was that you had to have exactly 100 samples to get a percentage out of 100.
The moral: teachers are humans, and aren't always the brightest bulbs in the chandelier.
I judged a science fair in Hilo, Hawaii in 1997 that had an entry that demonstrated something almost identical. The 1st place entry was by a student named Ben Schmidel, whose topic was "Virtual Mating: An Exploration In Artificial Communication".
His project was hotly debated amongst the judges by those "in the know" and some "science" teachers who would have been better off as assistant gym teachers. In the end, Ben also went on to win first prize in the state fair. It was actually a very interesting and thought-provoking project, especially for a high school student. I'm not quite sure what he's up to now.
If he didn't play any role in the research mentioned in the article, it is yet another example of parallel evolution. (or maybe an obvious progression of ideas) Either way, i'll remember Ben as "the guy who did it first".