Very true. This kinda supports what I was saying, although your explanation of the purpose behind making 7 Tiger Woods games (or whatever they're at now) is a little more on the mark than mine was. By "easier to re-vamp a game than it is to come up with a new one", I partly meant that there is less risk in making a sequel to a popular game, so I should have been more clear.
I know this is a really crazy idea, but if companies want to be successful, maybe they should focus more on making innovative games instead of following a formula for making profit.
This so-called "emphasis on sequels" doesn't seem real to me. I see the big companies pumping out sequels (EA being the most obvious), but I don't think they are doing it because it's what consumers want, only that it's easier to re-vamp a game than it is to come up with a new one. At least some people I know have gotten smart to this system, and if a new EA game comes out, they'll wait for the sequel cuz they know it's coming. Similarly, I buy every other FIFA game, since there isn't much of a difference between any two consequtive titles (not that there is that much more of a difference between any 3, but at least you get a graphics boost). The emphasis on sequels isn't something that is demanded by the market, it is created by the publishers. As a contrast to the EA games, consider Final Fantasy, where each game not only provides a different world, but a different style of gameplay, mini games, character development, etc. I know it's hard to change a sports game from year to year, but if you can't make anything new, maybe you shouldn't spend a lot of money making the same thing.
In a market where most games are just clones with different graphics, what do the companies expect? Come up with something innovative instead of remaking the same tired games. Katomari Damacy for $20 anyone? Innovation and a low price in box. So what if the graphics sucked. If you can't compete with the Gears of War in the graphics department, don't try.
As we look back at the most popular games, they are rarely sequels. Innovation is the key.
Did it cross your mind that both the current administration and the terrorist groups profit most from the status quo?
Yes it did, and then I filed it under conspiracy theory. Before anyone jumps down my throat for that, I'm not saying that those two groups don't necessarily benefit from the status quo, just that at least Bush wasn't jumping for joy on 9/11. Benefiting from an event and planing or hoping for it to take place are two different things. As with the other response to my post, I hope you read the whole thread because this is really beside the point.
I hope you read the other posts in this thread bofore you commented on that. I was replying to a post that had little to do with the discussion, and was trying to give a few reasons why it isn't true. I wasn't saying that any of those things aren't possible or even probable, but I was saying that they aren't the only or the primary reasons, as the parent of my post seemed to indicate. I can see why you would think my post was stupid and offensive since you seemed to miss the point of it.
Actually, you were just supporting the argument. You (or at least your post if you don't actually believe what you said), along with most people, don't put terrorism into perspective. You're saying that shutting down the NYSE and air travel along with 2,973 deaths in a single event is more important than 20,000 deaths each year along with lowered productivity and missed days at work which have a significant economic impact. I'm not saying that I think we need a war on the flu, but if you think that your statement is a good counter to the parent's, then you've missed the point and have become a perfect example of it.
Besides this being offtopic, I think that's pretty ridiculous for a couple reasons.
1. You give reasons why it is easy to recruit with all the things the US is doing, and then say, Recruiting is a lot tougher when "America wants to kill Muslims!" is merely a hypothetical argument. Is recruiting the main goal of a terrorist group? I don't know exactly what the goal is of some of these fundamentalist groups, but I think it has more to do with killing infidels than converting them (didn't want to use the word infidel because its such a cliche, but I couldn't think of anything better and I think it conveys the meaning).
2. We are vulnerable when we are crazy-scared of terrorism, running around doing stupid things and basically becoming our own worst enemy. So if we stop doing that, I say expect another attack to try to get us riled up and crazy again. So you claim that they want to keep us in a state of vulnerability, and that they will be more likely to attack when we aren't vulnerable so that they can make us vulnerable again? Does that really make a lot of sense? I'm not saying that terrorism makes a lot of sense, but that idea is pretty out there.
3. The basic reason is that as of right now there is still no need to attack the U.S. 9/11 got Osama bin Laden just about everything he could have ever dreamed for in response. And there was a need to attack the US before 9/11? Was 9/11 really necessary for these groups to carry out their goals? You said Osama got everything he wanted out of 9/11, so does that mean his whole goal was to make recruiting easier? I have trouble believing that those terorrists were sitting around saying, "Our numbers are down. Let's plan the most elaborate attack in history to boost are recruiting." And then after the attack, "Hey that worked great. Let's just sit back and watch the fresh blood roll in! No need to do anything else until some people start deserting."
4. I think Dick Cheney was right when he said that the Democrats taking control of the country could result in more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Alright, I have an idea of your thought process here. You're a democrat who's tired (or more likely has been tired for a long time) of hearing people say that if a Democrat was in office, they'd most likely be "weak on terror" by stopping the torture and harsh treatment of potential terror suspects and all the other bullshit that those types of people like to spout because they think being American makes their lives worth more than others' (just to point out, I'm a liberal, I hate Bush, I'm from the US, and I did not say that that is how all Americans think, just a certain group of jack asses). Now, after hearing this one too many times, you decided to come up with a hypothetical that illustrates how the current administration is actually doing exactly what the terrorists want, to counter the idea that getting a Dem in office would be falling into their plans. Your theory was born of this twisted logic. Actually, your theory is definitely possible. So is the other theory. So are a multitude of other theories. Hell, the moon landing might have been faked too, but just because a theory is possible, doesn't mean it makes any sense.
You're preaching to the choir on that one, but that really isn't what you were talking about before. I read somewhere that you are more likely to be killed by a pig than a terrorist (of course, that statistic leaves out a lot of relevant information, but still).
It seemed like you were trying to counter the idea that the US is drawing the attention of terrorists by sticking it's nose in others' business with the fact that even Norway, who has not been attacked, has been threatened. Being threatened is not the same as being attacked. I'd be surprised to find out if there was a single country who has never been threatened by terrorists, and am also fairly certain that the majority of countries who have been threatened by Muslim fundamentalists have not been attacked.
After a quick search, OSU has roughly 9000 students (2005 estimate) in on-campus housing while OU has 7800 (from their housing page, not sure when it was last updated). I don't know how their networks work, but generally you are only part of the university's network if you are on-campus, so their networks have a pretty similar capacity. It appears that OSU's size isn't really relevant in this article because the number of people are on the network are close to the same. Smaller schools generally have a higher percentage of on-campus housing out of enrollment.
There haven't seen terroist bombings yet in Norway, though they have been directly threatened.
That sounds a lot like the US administration when they try to scare the public by saying that just because we haven't been attacked since 9/11, doesn't mean that the terrorists won't attack tomorrow...
For the most part, I agree with you, but that's kinda changing the subject of your initial argument. Besides that, there are still other things to take into consideration. When have a few fixtures in our apartment that take 3-4 bulbs. With incandescents, we usually only put one or two bulbs in them. Now that we have CFLs, we fill them all up.
Assuming that in switching to CFLs, homes use just as many CFLs as they did regulars and don't leave them on longer, then they will use less energy. It's just that there are a bunch of other factors that go into it. The main point anyway was that forcing people to switch isn't the answer.
Deploying such systems does raise ethical and quality-of-life issues but these will have to be addressed by the larger society (not the computer scientists).
First off, you're definitely right here. I was trying to avoid looking at those issues so I just focused on the technical aspects, but that isn't to say that they aren't important.
These researchers realize that the hardware (memory, sensors) will keep advancing at a steady pace.
No disagreement from me there. I think that the hardware requirements will be feasible in the near future. The ability to analyze that data is what I think is lacking.
I am sure that the sales records from a large supermarket chain would look meaningless if a human should try to analyze it, but we have algorithms that do spit out useful information.
Again, correct. I've written a program that takes a small number of gene sequences (
With all that said, if the point of this project is just to advance the technology, then I missed the point. From the article, they seemed to be claiming that this stuff is in the near future, which is really hard for me to believe. Also, I could definitely be wrong on all of this. Ya never know what might happen. Someone could develop software that allows a computer to become aware and more intelligent than a human, or someone else find a way to determine and prove the absolute limit of a computer's computational power. I think we will be more likely to see the techs in the article than those last two hypotheticals, but we can't know. I just find this tech to be before its time on the computational side.
I agree I could have explained that better, but in my defense, many of the responses looked like people hadn't bothered reading anything beyond that sentence.
I completely understand. I wasn't trying to blame you for doing it, just pointing it out even though I figured you already recognized it. Between people not reading the whole post, selectively attacking sentences out of context, and failing to take the thread into context, it gets difficult to have a reasonable, intelligent, cohesive conversation around here sometimes.
As for the rest, I can see where you're coming from on that. I can still see problems with the system, but there are problems with any system, so what can ya do. It's an interesting philosophy, thanks for the response.
Yes, I definitely agree that voice recognition could make things easier to search. I also think that that is one of the more feasible undeveloped technologies required in the article. I think that, one way or another, there are so many people working on voice recognition, that it is just a matter of time (probably not that long anymore) before it really works well. Things like image recognition, where it needs to determine that a kite is in the picture, is considerably harder, but that's really not relevant to what you were saying. As for determining who was talking, I really don't know either if it would be easy to determine who is talking, assuming that the person has talked before and has been labelled.
Tagging via GPS or time and date is definitely easy, but provides little help if you don't know the time or location of the thing you are searching for. What if you got really angry while talking about something a week ago and want to remember why... tagging would be necessary unless somehow your mood could be monitored. It could also be difficult to find the point where the person you were talking to got angry. There are other examples, but the tagging issue really isn't important for conversations if we can search them. Tagging is much more relevant for events that happen around you or for images that you see. Without tagging these images or the use of image recognition, it would be extremely difficult to find events where you don't know the time and place. Consider the billboard example in my original post. Also, as we add these new technologies and information, the amount of data increases. Maybe it's just because I'm a CS major and taking a class on algorithms and their running times right now, but I really think that a lot of things you would want to know would be difficult to locate.
You're absolutely right that there would be some easy ways to determine a high risk for heart attack. I didn't mean to say that it wouldn't be possible for all indications of risk. I bet it would also be pretty easy to determine if a person has a minor heart attack, since, from my understanding, this happens for some people without them ever realizing they had a heart attack. It's the tough ones that I was concerned with. I wish I knew a computationally intensive example, but I think it's fair to say that some risk factors would be difficult to detect. I can imagine there are some factors that a doctor would be able to recognize given this information that wouldn't be possible for a program to recognize, but with all that information in front of him, it might be incredibly difficult to spot those risks. Again, this is really all speculation since I don't know that much about heart attacks. Regardless, good point.
I'm a little confused, are you saying you think it would or wouldn't be better with voice recognition? Not that I disagree with you that it could be done, but I still think it would be a lot of work to do it that way. You'd still have to take them time to manually (I'm considering voice to be manual as well as typing, as opposed to automatic which could accomplished with something like recognizing voice patterns and linking them together in this case) tag information. Unless the software could determine that voice 1 is John Smith, I don't think voice recognition would help much. Of course, it would be very helpful to have voice recognition software that could save a conversation in some searchable form. I'm not sure if that was what you were talking about or if you were referring to another situation from my post.
You're right, there isn't much of a point in entering numbers into a fun (not meant to be an insult, just kinda funny...).
Ok, my example was running on the assumption that you use your cell phone to store your numbers. For the purpose of that example, if you don't store numbers in your cell phone, the phone isn't any different from phones fifty years ago. Cell phones store your numbers primarily so you don't have to remember them, or so you can get them if you don't remember, which is similar to the technology described in the article but on a much smaller scale.
Also, I don't think that I'm being lazy by using my phone's capabilities. I can argue that you are the one who is being lazy by not taking the time to enter the numbers into your phone just as easily as it can be argued that I'm lazy for not remembering them.
I thought that would be obvious to most people. We can derive anecdotal evidence to support this claim by looking at how well we remember phone numbers now compared to before cell phones were commonplace. I really think that most people can recognize what's going on there. Of course, anecdotal evidence isn't proof of anything.
With a little research, you'll find that this correlation has been reproduced in scientific studies. To sum up the results, the more our brains are forced to recall information, the better we are able to do so. The more we rely on other sources to easily provide us with information, the weaker our memory becomes. I'm not sure how to word this properly, but this is also related to how much a person wants to avoid looking up the information. Think about needing to ask your boss for a password when you hate your boss, so you memorize that password very quickly (or write it down, but I'm not going to spend a ton of time coming up with a perfect example for something that isn't a very complex, especially after it was suggested I might have a time machine). Since studies have already be conducted on the effects that devices like cell phones have on memory, it is pretty safe to assume that this would also be the case for the technology described in the article.
With that said, if your complaint was directed at the fact that I left the words "most likely" from the sentence you quoted, then congratulations for pointing out semantics. Allow me to return the favor by pointing out that having a time machine is not the only other possible reason for my comment besides forgetting that sometimes things behave counterintuitively. You have apparently forgotten that sometimes there is more than two possibilities for a result. Other than that, it's not really necessary to be condescending to every person who responds to one of your posts, especially when someone doesn't even disagree with you or attempt to insult your intelligence.
If it was actually possible to use this technology in the way it is described, a study would be completed on the effects on your memory of using this technology (think cell phones and how you probably can't remember anyone's phyone number but a decade or two ago you had your most frequent numbers memorized). Since there would be an obvious negative effect on your brain's ability to store information, it could be argued that use of such technology is a detriment to your mental health and cannot be mandatory. Of course, it is reasonable to assume that if this technology is used for many generations, eventually, there would be no one left to remember what its like to think without the aid of such a machine, so I guess you're kinda right with your initial claim.
nice project for a person, worthless to the masses
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Recording Your Entire Life
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· Score: 3, Insightful
To me, this project is pretty interesting, let alone impressive that the guy manages to stay committed to working at it for 9 years.
But this idea that everyone will be doing this seems pretty stupid to me. If we recorded everything we did, without revolutionary advancements in search or data mining technology (which the article recognizes), that information would be worthless for most cases with the exception of things for which you know an exact date or time. So you want to know what you did Jan 4, 2003, no problem. Want to know the last time you saw a kid flying a kite in the park? Problem, unless you want to search the video of each time you were in the park. Want to remember that song that you liked that was playing when you were driving with your brother in the car, but can't remember when it happened? Problem unless you want to replay all the audio of you two in the car. The article discusses using metadata to "tag" events, but this is cumbersome with currect technology (as the article also recognizes). Most "tags" would need to be manually added, which would still be a problem even if voice recognition software made it easier to add the tags. We could solve the problem of remembering parts of conversations if voice recognition software converted all speech into a searchable form, but we aren't quite at that level yet.
FTA: An ordinary notebook PC can run a database that is more powerful and almost 100 times as large as that of a major bank of the 1980s. An inexpensive cell phone can surf the Web, play videos and even understand some speech.
Yeah, and a decade before that in 1976, the CRAY-1 was impressive. Sorry if beating an 80s computer doesn't allay my feelings that our computers can't handle the massive amount of data that the article discusses.
The article talks about logging health information that would allow the doctor to see early warning signs of things like heart attacks. I'm not going to preted to know all of the warning signs for heart attacks, but it seems to me that many of them are only valid when certain other factors are present as well. For example, if your heart rate is high, its probably not a warning sign if you are also running a marathon. FTA: "Sensors can also log the three billion or so heartbeats in a person's lifetime, along with other physiological indicators". Yeah, have fun running the queries to search through the roughly 40 million heartbeats you have each year while comparing that to the other important factors that determine heart attacks, and then do it again for other diseases.
I'm sure there are a ton of great uses for this technology. I just don't think that we are anywhere near diong all of the things the article wants, and even if we were, it would end up making more work for people. With that said, consider how this might affect our brains. When I was young, I had my closest friends' phone numbers memorized, along as a few of their addresses. Once I got a cell phone, I slowly forgot every number I knew. Up until a year a year ago, my mom, who just got a cell phone 3 years ago, could remember the number of the first house she lived in. As we develop technology that remembers things for us, what happens to our ability to remember?
That's what I thought, but I couldn't be sure from your wording since a lot of people don't know how to use grammer properly. I didn't want to put words in your mouth by assuming that you intended to say one thing or another, so I just pointed out that a counterexample exists depending on your intention. As a note, the example you provided in the original post really didn't convey the general idea that you describe in this one. I understand (and recognized before) that generally money lost in one area goes to another, and energy is probably always used when producing or servicing, so money saved is money spent and energy used. You really didn't make it clear that this was what you were trying to say, so I see why so many people responded in a contrary way to your post. However, I also understand that it is impossible to explain everything down to the lowest (or up to the highest) level so that no one on slashdot can find a way to be contrary.
Anyway, that was mostly just semantics. As for the car question, it seems like you are basically arguing for a free market where most (or maybe even all?) externalities are accounted for and figured into the pricing of applicable goods and services. Is that correct? If so, do you extend this model to most other markets or just energy? I'm not sure that I agree with that in other markets because I don't think it's feasible to consider every externality in each market, whereas carbon emissions are a relatively easy thing to measure and monitor, but I haven't thought about it enough to really form an opinion as a whole yet. I'm interested to hear how you feel this applies (or if I'm missing the mark on your views).
The more realistic result of conversion to CFLs is "Hey honey, our electric bill is a lot lower! Look at that!" "Great, dear! Now we don't have to worry about turning up the heat in winter!"
First, I have to say that I don't think this is always true, but then again I don't think you are really claiming that it is true in every instance. If you think it is, it's easy to provide a counterexample.
Beyond that, I'm wondering if you feel the same way about this when it comes to car emissions. I can see how the same argument applies, but I have doubts about it due to things like the availability of cars with good gas mileage. I guess I'm wondering if you think that car manufacturers shouldn't have to make fuel efficient cars. I agree that if someone wants to buy a car that eats gas, they should be able to, but I also think that American car makers wouldn't make fuel efficient options without some restrictions. I'm in the middle for that topic, so I'm curious if you have a good argument for it.
On some level's the GP is right, but you are on others. My roommates and I made the lightbulb switch about 6 months ago. In support of your comment, we haven't started using more heat, or other forms of electricity in any other appliances. However, I have noticed that most of us leave our lights on more often, although I doubt that adds up to the energy saved by switching bulbs. People are greedy. I got a car that is more fuel efficient than my old one, and generally I try to drive conservatively. However, sometimes I'm on the highway about to pass someone and think to myself, "I'm saving a bunch of gas compared to before, so flooring it to pass this guy really isn't going to matter." Again, this wasted gas probably doesn't add up to the gas I saved, but I have to admit that waste a little more often because I know I save in the long run.
Besides that, you're taking an idea from the post out of context, in a way. The GP was arguing that restricting lightbulbs is wrong, and that a realistic result of such a restriction is that people will use the saved electricity in other ways, which is not to say that it is the only result. Furthermore, "If you stop using them your energy footprint will be smaller." isn't true. As the GP pointed out, if you switch to CFLs but use them 10 times as much (or whatever factor is necessary there), then your energy footprint is not smaller. Also, that statement assumes that the premise of "[adding] up your total extra energy..." is false, so it can't lend any support for disproving it. So basically, you claimed two things, one of which you gave no support for and the other of which is technically wrong.
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. See, they know it will be secure because no one cares about Joost. What better way to keep people from "stealing" your IP than to create a new service that is a clone of already popular and well-established services so that no one cares to use it? Genius, I tell ya.
I'm not disagreeing with you that your examples could be nice, but calling them "cracks in the armor" is a little misleading, at least for B and C. I don't think we can really expect Nintendo, or the companies making games for the Wii, to figure out every possible use of this new technology in its first 6 months on the market. As time goes by, there will be more and more innovative ways to use the wiimote, but it will take time to come up with those uses. I agree that there is a lot of potential here, but saying that they are missing out on the potential just isn't fair since they haven't come close to reaching a point of becoming stagnant in the development cycle (actually, we can't even say that since there hasn't been enough time to determine whether or not they are stagnant). The same applies for the Wiisaber, it's only a matter of time before something like that is produced.
Slashdot Mirror
Very true. This kinda supports what I was saying, although your explanation of the purpose behind making 7 Tiger Woods games (or whatever they're at now) is a little more on the mark than mine was. By "easier to re-vamp a game than it is to come up with a new one", I partly meant that there is less risk in making a sequel to a popular game, so I should have been more clear.
I know this is a really crazy idea, but if companies want to be successful, maybe they should focus more on making innovative games instead of following a formula for making profit.
This so-called "emphasis on sequels" doesn't seem real to me. I see the big companies pumping out sequels (EA being the most obvious), but I don't think they are doing it because it's what consumers want, only that it's easier to re-vamp a game than it is to come up with a new one. At least some people I know have gotten smart to this system, and if a new EA game comes out, they'll wait for the sequel cuz they know it's coming. Similarly, I buy every other FIFA game, since there isn't much of a difference between any two consequtive titles (not that there is that much more of a difference between any 3, but at least you get a graphics boost). The emphasis on sequels isn't something that is demanded by the market, it is created by the publishers. As a contrast to the EA games, consider Final Fantasy, where each game not only provides a different world, but a different style of gameplay, mini games, character development, etc. I know it's hard to change a sports game from year to year, but if you can't make anything new, maybe you shouldn't spend a lot of money making the same thing.
In a market where most games are just clones with different graphics, what do the companies expect? Come up with something innovative instead of remaking the same tired games. Katomari Damacy for $20 anyone? Innovation and a low price in box. So what if the graphics sucked. If you can't compete with the Gears of War in the graphics department, don't try.
As we look back at the most popular games, they are rarely sequels. Innovation is the key.
Did it cross your mind that both the current administration and the terrorist groups profit most from the status quo?
Yes it did, and then I filed it under conspiracy theory. Before anyone jumps down my throat for that, I'm not saying that those two groups don't necessarily benefit from the status quo, just that at least Bush wasn't jumping for joy on 9/11. Benefiting from an event and planing or hoping for it to take place are two different things. As with the other response to my post, I hope you read the whole thread because this is really beside the point.
I hope you read the other posts in this thread bofore you commented on that. I was replying to a post that had little to do with the discussion, and was trying to give a few reasons why it isn't true. I wasn't saying that any of those things aren't possible or even probable, but I was saying that they aren't the only or the primary reasons, as the parent of my post seemed to indicate. I can see why you would think my post was stupid and offensive since you seemed to miss the point of it.
Actually, you were just supporting the argument. You (or at least your post if you don't actually believe what you said), along with most people, don't put terrorism into perspective. You're saying that shutting down the NYSE and air travel along with 2,973 deaths in a single event is more important than 20,000 deaths each year along with lowered productivity and missed days at work which have a significant economic impact. I'm not saying that I think we need a war on the flu, but if you think that your statement is a good counter to the parent's, then you've missed the point and have become a perfect example of it.
Besides this being offtopic, I think that's pretty ridiculous for a couple reasons.
1. You give reasons why it is easy to recruit with all the things the US is doing, and then say, Recruiting is a lot tougher when "America wants to kill Muslims!" is merely a hypothetical argument.
Is recruiting the main goal of a terrorist group? I don't know exactly what the goal is of some of these fundamentalist groups, but I think it has more to do with killing infidels than converting them (didn't want to use the word infidel because its such a cliche, but I couldn't think of anything better and I think it conveys the meaning).
2. We are vulnerable when we are crazy-scared of terrorism, running around doing stupid things and basically becoming our own worst enemy. So if we stop doing that, I say expect another attack to try to get us riled up and crazy again.
So you claim that they want to keep us in a state of vulnerability, and that they will be more likely to attack when we aren't vulnerable so that they can make us vulnerable again? Does that really make a lot of sense? I'm not saying that terrorism makes a lot of sense, but that idea is pretty out there.
3. The basic reason is that as of right now there is still no need to attack the U.S. 9/11 got Osama bin Laden just about everything he could have ever dreamed for in response.
And there was a need to attack the US before 9/11? Was 9/11 really necessary for these groups to carry out their goals? You said Osama got everything he wanted out of 9/11, so does that mean his whole goal was to make recruiting easier? I have trouble believing that those terorrists were sitting around saying, "Our numbers are down. Let's plan the most elaborate attack in history to boost are recruiting." And then after the attack, "Hey that worked great. Let's just sit back and watch the fresh blood roll in! No need to do anything else until some people start deserting."
4. I think Dick Cheney was right when he said that the Democrats taking control of the country could result in more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
Alright, I have an idea of your thought process here. You're a democrat who's tired (or more likely has been tired for a long time) of hearing people say that if a Democrat was in office, they'd most likely be "weak on terror" by stopping the torture and harsh treatment of potential terror suspects and all the other bullshit that those types of people like to spout because they think being American makes their lives worth more than others' (just to point out, I'm a liberal, I hate Bush, I'm from the US, and I did not say that that is how all Americans think, just a certain group of jack asses). Now, after hearing this one too many times, you decided to come up with a hypothetical that illustrates how the current administration is actually doing exactly what the terrorists want, to counter the idea that getting a Dem in office would be falling into their plans. Your theory was born of this twisted logic. Actually, your theory is definitely possible. So is the other theory. So are a multitude of other theories. Hell, the moon landing might have been faked too, but just because a theory is possible, doesn't mean it makes any sense.
You're preaching to the choir on that one, but that really isn't what you were talking about before. I read somewhere that you are more likely to be killed by a pig than a terrorist (of course, that statistic leaves out a lot of relevant information, but still).
It seemed like you were trying to counter the idea that the US is drawing the attention of terrorists by sticking it's nose in others' business with the fact that even Norway, who has not been attacked, has been threatened. Being threatened is not the same as being attacked. I'd be surprised to find out if there was a single country who has never been threatened by terrorists, and am also fairly certain that the majority of countries who have been threatened by Muslim fundamentalists have not been attacked.
After a quick search, OSU has roughly 9000 students (2005 estimate) in on-campus housing while OU has 7800 (from their housing page, not sure when it was last updated). I don't know how their networks work, but generally you are only part of the university's network if you are on-campus, so their networks have a pretty similar capacity. It appears that OSU's size isn't really relevant in this article because the number of people are on the network are close to the same. Smaller schools generally have a higher percentage of on-campus housing out of enrollment.
There haven't seen terroist bombings yet in Norway, though they have been directly threatened.
That sounds a lot like the US administration when they try to scare the public by saying that just because we haven't been attacked since 9/11, doesn't mean that the terrorists won't attack tomorrow...
For the most part, I agree with you, but that's kinda changing the subject of your initial argument. Besides that, there are still other things to take into consideration. When have a few fixtures in our apartment that take 3-4 bulbs. With incandescents, we usually only put one or two bulbs in them. Now that we have CFLs, we fill them all up.
Assuming that in switching to CFLs, homes use just as many CFLs as they did regulars and don't leave them on longer, then they will use less energy. It's just that there are a bunch of other factors that go into it. The main point anyway was that forcing people to switch isn't the answer.
Deploying such systems does raise ethical and quality-of-life issues but these will have to be addressed by the larger society (not the computer scientists).
First off, you're definitely right here. I was trying to avoid looking at those issues so I just focused on the technical aspects, but that isn't to say that they aren't important.
These researchers realize that the hardware (memory, sensors) will keep advancing at a steady pace.
No disagreement from me there. I think that the hardware requirements will be feasible in the near future. The ability to analyze that data is what I think is lacking. I am sure that the sales records from a large supermarket chain would look meaningless if a human should try to analyze it, but we have algorithms that do spit out useful information.
Again, correct. I've written a program that takes a small number of gene sequences (
With all that said, if the point of this project is just to advance the technology, then I missed the point. From the article, they seemed to be claiming that this stuff is in the near future, which is really hard for me to believe. Also, I could definitely be wrong on all of this. Ya never know what might happen. Someone could develop software that allows a computer to become aware and more intelligent than a human, or someone else find a way to determine and prove the absolute limit of a computer's computational power. I think we will be more likely to see the techs in the article than those last two hypotheticals, but we can't know. I just find this tech to be before its time on the computational side.
I agree I could have explained that better, but in my defense, many of the responses looked like people hadn't bothered reading anything beyond that sentence.
I completely understand. I wasn't trying to blame you for doing it, just pointing it out even though I figured you already recognized it. Between people not reading the whole post, selectively attacking sentences out of context, and failing to take the thread into context, it gets difficult to have a reasonable, intelligent, cohesive conversation around here sometimes.
As for the rest, I can see where you're coming from on that. I can still see problems with the system, but there are problems with any system, so what can ya do. It's an interesting philosophy, thanks for the response.
Yes, I definitely agree that voice recognition could make things easier to search. I also think that that is one of the more feasible undeveloped technologies required in the article. I think that, one way or another, there are so many people working on voice recognition, that it is just a matter of time (probably not that long anymore) before it really works well. Things like image recognition, where it needs to determine that a kite is in the picture, is considerably harder, but that's really not relevant to what you were saying. As for determining who was talking, I really don't know either if it would be easy to determine who is talking, assuming that the person has talked before and has been labelled.
Tagging via GPS or time and date is definitely easy, but provides little help if you don't know the time or location of the thing you are searching for. What if you got really angry while talking about something a week ago and want to remember why... tagging would be necessary unless somehow your mood could be monitored. It could also be difficult to find the point where the person you were talking to got angry. There are other examples, but the tagging issue really isn't important for conversations if we can search them. Tagging is much more relevant for events that happen around you or for images that you see. Without tagging these images or the use of image recognition, it would be extremely difficult to find events where you don't know the time and place. Consider the billboard example in my original post. Also, as we add these new technologies and information, the amount of data increases. Maybe it's just because I'm a CS major and taking a class on algorithms and their running times right now, but I really think that a lot of things you would want to know would be difficult to locate.
You're absolutely right that there would be some easy ways to determine a high risk for heart attack. I didn't mean to say that it wouldn't be possible for all indications of risk. I bet it would also be pretty easy to determine if a person has a minor heart attack, since, from my understanding, this happens for some people without them ever realizing they had a heart attack. It's the tough ones that I was concerned with. I wish I knew a computationally intensive example, but I think it's fair to say that some risk factors would be difficult to detect. I can imagine there are some factors that a doctor would be able to recognize given this information that wouldn't be possible for a program to recognize, but with all that information in front of him, it might be incredibly difficult to spot those risks. Again, this is really all speculation since I don't know that much about heart attacks. Regardless, good point.
Would it be better with Voice Recognition?
I'm a little confused, are you saying you think it would or wouldn't be better with voice recognition? Not that I disagree with you that it could be done, but I still think it would be a lot of work to do it that way. You'd still have to take them time to manually (I'm considering voice to be manual as well as typing, as opposed to automatic which could accomplished with something like recognizing voice patterns and linking them together in this case) tag information. Unless the software could determine that voice 1 is John Smith, I don't think voice recognition would help much. Of course, it would be very helpful to have voice recognition software that could save a conversation in some searchable form. I'm not sure if that was what you were talking about or if you were referring to another situation from my post.
You're right, there isn't much of a point in entering numbers into a fun (not meant to be an insult, just kinda funny...).
Ok, my example was running on the assumption that you use your cell phone to store your numbers. For the purpose of that example, if you don't store numbers in your cell phone, the phone isn't any different from phones fifty years ago. Cell phones store your numbers primarily so you don't have to remember them, or so you can get them if you don't remember, which is similar to the technology described in the article but on a much smaller scale.
Also, I don't think that I'm being lazy by using my phone's capabilities. I can argue that you are the one who is being lazy by not taking the time to enter the numbers into your phone just as easily as it can be argued that I'm lazy for not remembering them.
Interesting. I can't say I've read any of Asimov's work beyond a few short stories and summaries, but he was quite an insightful individual.
I thought that would be obvious to most people. We can derive anecdotal evidence to support this claim by looking at how well we remember phone numbers now compared to before cell phones were commonplace. I really think that most people can recognize what's going on there. Of course, anecdotal evidence isn't proof of anything.
With a little research, you'll find that this correlation has been reproduced in scientific studies. To sum up the results, the more our brains are forced to recall information, the better we are able to do so. The more we rely on other sources to easily provide us with information, the weaker our memory becomes. I'm not sure how to word this properly, but this is also related to how much a person wants to avoid looking up the information. Think about needing to ask your boss for a password when you hate your boss, so you memorize that password very quickly (or write it down, but I'm not going to spend a ton of time coming up with a perfect example for something that isn't a very complex, especially after it was suggested I might have a time machine). Since studies have already be conducted on the effects that devices like cell phones have on memory, it is pretty safe to assume that this would also be the case for the technology described in the article.
With that said, if your complaint was directed at the fact that I left the words "most likely" from the sentence you quoted, then congratulations for pointing out semantics. Allow me to return the favor by pointing out that having a time machine is not the only other possible reason for my comment besides forgetting that sometimes things behave counterintuitively. You have apparently forgotten that sometimes there is more than two possibilities for a result. Other than that, it's not really necessary to be condescending to every person who responds to one of your posts, especially when someone doesn't even disagree with you or attempt to insult your intelligence.
If it was actually possible to use this technology in the way it is described, a study would be completed on the effects on your memory of using this technology (think cell phones and how you probably can't remember anyone's phyone number but a decade or two ago you had your most frequent numbers memorized). Since there would be an obvious negative effect on your brain's ability to store information, it could be argued that use of such technology is a detriment to your mental health and cannot be mandatory. Of course, it is reasonable to assume that if this technology is used for many generations, eventually, there would be no one left to remember what its like to think without the aid of such a machine, so I guess you're kinda right with your initial claim.
To me, this project is pretty interesting, let alone impressive that the guy manages to stay committed to working at it for 9 years.
But this idea that everyone will be doing this seems pretty stupid to me. If we recorded everything we did, without revolutionary advancements in search or data mining technology (which the article recognizes), that information would be worthless for most cases with the exception of things for which you know an exact date or time. So you want to know what you did Jan 4, 2003, no problem. Want to know the last time you saw a kid flying a kite in the park? Problem, unless you want to search the video of each time you were in the park. Want to remember that song that you liked that was playing when you were driving with your brother in the car, but can't remember when it happened? Problem unless you want to replay all the audio of you two in the car. The article discusses using metadata to "tag" events, but this is cumbersome with currect technology (as the article also recognizes). Most "tags" would need to be manually added, which would still be a problem even if voice recognition software made it easier to add the tags. We could solve the problem of remembering parts of conversations if voice recognition software converted all speech into a searchable form, but we aren't quite at that level yet.
FTA: An ordinary notebook PC can run a database that is more powerful and almost 100 times as large as that of a major bank of the 1980s. An inexpensive cell phone can surf the Web, play videos and even understand some speech.
Yeah, and a decade before that in 1976, the CRAY-1 was impressive. Sorry if beating an 80s computer doesn't allay my feelings that our computers can't handle the massive amount of data that the article discusses.
The article talks about logging health information that would allow the doctor to see early warning signs of things like heart attacks. I'm not going to preted to know all of the warning signs for heart attacks, but it seems to me that many of them are only valid when certain other factors are present as well. For example, if your heart rate is high, its probably not a warning sign if you are also running a marathon. FTA: "Sensors can also log the three billion or so heartbeats in a person's lifetime, along with other physiological indicators". Yeah, have fun running the queries to search through the roughly 40 million heartbeats you have each year while comparing that to the other important factors that determine heart attacks, and then do it again for other diseases.
I'm sure there are a ton of great uses for this technology. I just don't think that we are anywhere near diong all of the things the article wants, and even if we were, it would end up making more work for people. With that said, consider how this might affect our brains. When I was young, I had my closest friends' phone numbers memorized, along as a few of their addresses. Once I got a cell phone, I slowly forgot every number I knew. Up until a year a year ago, my mom, who just got a cell phone 3 years ago, could remember the number of the first house she lived in. As we develop technology that remembers things for us, what happens to our ability to remember?
Correct. But my point was more general
That's what I thought, but I couldn't be sure from your wording since a lot of people don't know how to use grammer properly. I didn't want to put words in your mouth by assuming that you intended to say one thing or another, so I just pointed out that a counterexample exists depending on your intention. As a note, the example you provided in the original post really didn't convey the general idea that you describe in this one. I understand (and recognized before) that generally money lost in one area goes to another, and energy is probably always used when producing or servicing, so money saved is money spent and energy used. You really didn't make it clear that this was what you were trying to say, so I see why so many people responded in a contrary way to your post. However, I also understand that it is impossible to explain everything down to the lowest (or up to the highest) level so that no one on slashdot can find a way to be contrary.
Anyway, that was mostly just semantics. As for the car question, it seems like you are basically arguing for a free market where most (or maybe even all?) externalities are accounted for and figured into the pricing of applicable goods and services. Is that correct? If so, do you extend this model to most other markets or just energy? I'm not sure that I agree with that in other markets because I don't think it's feasible to consider every externality in each market, whereas carbon emissions are a relatively easy thing to measure and monitor, but I haven't thought about it enough to really form an opinion as a whole yet. I'm interested to hear how you feel this applies (or if I'm missing the mark on your views).
The more realistic result of conversion to CFLs is "Hey honey, our electric bill is a lot lower! Look at that!" "Great, dear! Now we don't have to worry about turning up the heat in winter!"
First, I have to say that I don't think this is always true, but then again I don't think you are really claiming that it is true in every instance. If you think it is, it's easy to provide a counterexample.
Beyond that, I'm wondering if you feel the same way about this when it comes to car emissions. I can see how the same argument applies, but I have doubts about it due to things like the availability of cars with good gas mileage. I guess I'm wondering if you think that car manufacturers shouldn't have to make fuel efficient cars. I agree that if someone wants to buy a car that eats gas, they should be able to, but I also think that American car makers wouldn't make fuel efficient options without some restrictions. I'm in the middle for that topic, so I'm curious if you have a good argument for it.
On some level's the GP is right, but you are on others. My roommates and I made the lightbulb switch about 6 months ago. In support of your comment, we haven't started using more heat, or other forms of electricity in any other appliances. However, I have noticed that most of us leave our lights on more often, although I doubt that adds up to the energy saved by switching bulbs. People are greedy. I got a car that is more fuel efficient than my old one, and generally I try to drive conservatively. However, sometimes I'm on the highway about to pass someone and think to myself, "I'm saving a bunch of gas compared to before, so flooring it to pass this guy really isn't going to matter." Again, this wasted gas probably doesn't add up to the gas I saved, but I have to admit that waste a little more often because I know I save in the long run.
Besides that, you're taking an idea from the post out of context, in a way. The GP was arguing that restricting lightbulbs is wrong, and that a realistic result of such a restriction is that people will use the saved electricity in other ways, which is not to say that it is the only result. Furthermore, "If you stop using them your energy footprint will be smaller." isn't true. As the GP pointed out, if you switch to CFLs but use them 10 times as much (or whatever factor is necessary there), then your energy footprint is not smaller. Also, that statement assumes that the premise of "[adding] up your total extra energy..." is false, so it can't lend any support for disproving it. So basically, you claimed two things, one of which you gave no support for and the other of which is technically wrong.
2. No one cares about Joost?
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. See, they know it will be secure because no one cares about Joost. What better way to keep people from "stealing" your IP than to create a new service that is a clone of already popular and well-established services so that no one cares to use it? Genius, I tell ya.
I'm not disagreeing with you that your examples could be nice, but calling them "cracks in the armor" is a little misleading, at least for B and C. I don't think we can really expect Nintendo, or the companies making games for the Wii, to figure out every possible use of this new technology in its first 6 months on the market. As time goes by, there will be more and more innovative ways to use the wiimote, but it will take time to come up with those uses. I agree that there is a lot of potential here, but saying that they are missing out on the potential just isn't fair since they haven't come close to reaching a point of becoming stagnant in the development cycle (actually, we can't even say that since there hasn't been enough time to determine whether or not they are stagnant). The same applies for the Wiisaber, it's only a matter of time before something like that is produced.