Further update: looks like it *might* be aluminium oxynitride , which is similar to sapphire but can be formed into large sheets (and is not single-crystal). Either that or they are lying about the hardness of 9.
Dan
Update on this: based on the asus.com page
here ,
it looks like it may not be sapphire at all - it makes no such claim, only that it has has
a hardness of 9 (the same as sapphire).
Dan
I'm confused about this... based on searching on google for "sapphire largest crystal", it looks like
it's very hard to grow sapphire crystals above 30cm or so (e.g. see wikipedia article ).
So how do they make it only $350? It looks to me like even small pieces of the stuff
are darned expensive (e.g. see here ).
Dan
"I mean, I know that it's "common knowledge" that only the stupid breed, but can you actually source it?"
Yes - there is a book "Dysgenics" by Richard Lynn that goes into this in detail. He estimates we are losing 1 IQ point
per generation.
Yes - well, if we assume IQ has a genetic plus an environmental component, we still have to be worried about the genetic component
going down even if the environmental component is going up. After all, we can change the environment but not so easily our genes.
Yes, certainly - the reason this hasn't happened yet is because modern medicine and the welfare
state have only been invented in the past one or two generations. It will also be hard to
see if there are further improvements in nutrition, education, etc.
Dan
There is an interesting book by Richard Lynn called "dysgenics". He shows that
in modern societies, we are actually selecting backwards in that the least smart people
are having more children on average. I think it comes to about one IQ point per generation
that we are losing.
It's not as hard a problem as you think. There are algorithms that could
recognize a short segment of video even if re-encoded.. it's like iris recognition.
They can recognize your iris even though the new image may be rotated and scaled.
It's all about transforming the image so that these kinds of trivial transformations
are made to disappear, and then comparing the result to a bank of pre-stored images.
I am astonished that everyone on this forum seems to be siding with the school. What harm were the kids doing
by bypassing the websense system? It's not like by viewing forbidden things they were hurting anyone else.
Sure, they were breaking the rules - but if I had been suspended for 3 months every time I broke a rule I'd never
have had any time in school.
Oops - just noticed someone else is claiming Google is using Nuance technology - in which case perhaps my claim that Google made
their own stuff is wrong - this was just speculation on my part.
In the last couple of years Google has been hiring a lot of people with speech recognition expertise.
I know because I used to work with some of these people before they moved to Google.
They have been building their own technology in-house. I am impressed by how fast they have
been able to do this.
Dan
Science is a bit special because when you patent something and make a million bucks, you
are taking much more than a million bucks from other people - because the restrictions put in
place by your patent hurt people by a lot more than that million bucks. It's like SCO - they caused
damage to peopls much greater than the profit they made (or stood to make) in licensing fees.
You are right. I remember the guy from when I used to live in Britian
Georges Monbiot is some kind of postmodernist, leftist public figure whose arguments tend
to be totally fallacious. I can't remember exactly what his positions are, but I remember
that I hate him.
Someone was saying in comments on another Slashdot article that most vertical
axis wind turbine things are scams designed to steal investors' money. So I would
be cautious about this. I think the time it makes sense is when you need a simple, very
small-scale device to run isolated electronic equipment.
Dan
I don't care if I get modded down because I'm only submitting this so that Google will index my homepage. I hope this is not considered spam. Anyway it's no less contentful than the parent message.
At last, someone is being reasonable here.
Of course it's necessarily to profile, and probably the #1 thing we should be profiling
on is skin color, for a simple reason - it's very hard to fake. Almost all of the terrorists
"look" Muslim, and they will have a hard time finding a large enough number of white
converts to get on planes for them. On the other hand, they will find it very easy to get a
return ticket, or check baggage, or defeat whichever other stupid system we put in place.
We have to understand that the terrorists can easily discover the security policy we use,
so we can only rely on things that are hard to fake.
Religion is a hard thing to use because they can always deny being Muslim, but Muslim
names could be used to give them the extra hassle of changing their names to non-Muslim
names - which could then flag them for extra investigation.
Dan
This seems to be blocking something in Slashdot:
# [SourceForge]
127.0.0.1 ads.osdn.com
127.0.0.1 sfads.osdn.com
127.0.0.1 images-aud-pg.osdn.com
127.0.0.1 images-aud.freshmeat.net
127.0.0.1 images-aud.slashdot.org
127.0.0.1 images-aud.sourceforge.net
So Slashdot is peddling malware now?
I work in the area of audio processing (speech recognition) and I can tell you that they do not have anything worthy of a press release. They distinguished a pure tone from noise, which is a very easy thing to do. Other than that, they just have a pretty picture. It's not useful for anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Further update: looks like it *might* be aluminium oxynitride , which is similar to sapphire but can be formed into large sheets (and is not single-crystal). Either that or they are lying about the hardness of 9. Dan
Update on this: based on the asus.com page here , it looks like it may not be sapphire at all - it makes no such claim, only that it has has a hardness of 9 (the same as sapphire). Dan
I'm confused about this... based on searching on google for "sapphire largest crystal", it looks like it's very hard to grow sapphire crystals above 30cm or so (e.g. see wikipedia article ). So how do they make it only $350? It looks to me like even small pieces of the stuff are darned expensive (e.g. see here ). Dan
"I mean, I know that it's "common knowledge" that only the stupid breed, but can you actually source it?" Yes - there is a book "Dysgenics" by Richard Lynn that goes into this in detail. He estimates we are losing 1 IQ point per generation.
Yes - well, if we assume IQ has a genetic plus an environmental component, we still have to be worried about the genetic component going down even if the environmental component is going up. After all, we can change the environment but not so easily our genes.
Yes, certainly - the reason this hasn't happened yet is because modern medicine and the welfare state have only been invented in the past one or two generations. It will also be hard to see if there are further improvements in nutrition, education, etc. Dan
There is an interesting book by Richard Lynn called "dysgenics". He shows that in modern societies, we are actually selecting backwards in that the least smart people are having more children on average. I think it comes to about one IQ point per generation that we are losing.
Your .sig killed my xterm, you a***ole!
It's not as hard a problem as you think. There are algorithms that could recognize a short segment of video even if re-encoded.. it's like iris recognition. They can recognize your iris even though the new image may be rotated and scaled. It's all about transforming the image so that these kinds of trivial transformations are made to disappear, and then comparing the result to a bank of pre-stored images.
I am astonished that everyone on this forum seems to be siding with the school. What harm were the kids doing by bypassing the websense system? It's not like by viewing forbidden things they were hurting anyone else. Sure, they were breaking the rules - but if I had been suspended for 3 months every time I broke a rule I'd never have had any time in school.
Dyson, can you reveal how you got this information? Did you recognize the setup or something? Or do you have a mole?
Oops - just noticed someone else is claiming Google is using Nuance technology - in which case perhaps my claim that Google made their own stuff is wrong - this was just speculation on my part.
In the last couple of years Google has been hiring a lot of people with speech recognition expertise. I know because I used to work with some of these people before they moved to Google. They have been building their own technology in-house. I am impressed by how fast they have been able to do this. Dan
I, for one, welcome our new bionic insect overlords.
Science is a bit special because when you patent something and make a million bucks, you are taking much more than a million bucks from other people - because the restrictions put in place by your patent hurt people by a lot more than that million bucks. It's like SCO - they caused damage to peopls much greater than the profit they made (or stood to make) in licensing fees.
You are right. I remember the guy from when I used to live in Britian Georges Monbiot is some kind of postmodernist, leftist public figure whose arguments tend to be totally fallacious. I can't remember exactly what his positions are, but I remember that I hate him.
I always assumed that my_email@removethis.gmail.com was enough.
Am I wrong?
I should read the FA, but what's to stop his platters from flopping all over the place?
Someone was saying in comments on another Slashdot article that most vertical axis wind turbine things are scams designed to steal investors' money. So I would be cautious about this. I think the time it makes sense is when you need a simple, very small-scale device to run isolated electronic equipment. Dan
I don't care if I get modded down because I'm only submitting this so that Google
will index my homepage. I hope this
is not considered spam. Anyway it's no less contentful than the parent message.
At last, someone is being reasonable here. Of course it's necessarily to profile, and probably the #1 thing we should be profiling on is skin color, for a simple reason - it's very hard to fake. Almost all of the terrorists "look" Muslim, and they will have a hard time finding a large enough number of white converts to get on planes for them. On the other hand, they will find it very easy to get a return ticket, or check baggage, or defeat whichever other stupid system we put in place. We have to understand that the terrorists can easily discover the security policy we use, so we can only rely on things that are hard to fake. Religion is a hard thing to use because they can always deny being Muslim, but Muslim names could be used to give them the extra hassle of changing their names to non-Muslim names - which could then flag them for extra investigation. Dan
This seems to be blocking something in Slashdot: # [SourceForge] 127.0.0.1 ads.osdn.com 127.0.0.1 sfads.osdn.com 127.0.0.1 images-aud-pg.osdn.com 127.0.0.1 images-aud.freshmeat.net 127.0.0.1 images-aud.slashdot.org 127.0.0.1 images-aud.sourceforge.net So Slashdot is peddling malware now?
I work in the area of audio processing (speech recognition) and I can tell you that they
do not have anything worthy of a press release. They distinguished a pure tone from noise,
which is a very easy thing to do. Other than that, they just have a pretty picture. It's
not useful for anything.
It's just that the energy needed to do this can be comparable to the energy you get out of the temperature differential. So it's hard to engineer.
But the water that goes back down is no longer cold.