There was an episode of "The Simpsons" (from back when that show did real satire) that summed it up nicely. We see a Republican convention, and the conventioneers are holding up signs that read "We're evil" and "We only care about the rich!" Then it cuts to the Democratic convention and they're holding up signs that read "We can't govern!" and "Incompetence Now!"
Close, but no cigar. It is Episode 1F15, "Bart Gets an Elephant", the seventeenth episode of The Simpsons' fifth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 31, 1994.
The attendees of the Republican Convention hold signs declaring: "We want what's worst for everyone" and "We're just plain evil."
The Democratic Convention signs say: "We can't govern" and "We hate ourselves."
As the Sage of Springfield says: "It's funny because its true!"
To the AnonCow troll above: GNU code has nothing to do with how the kernel handles multicore processors, so your whole point is moot within this context.
I think you should inform AnonCow that GNU is m-m-ooooot!
Reminds me of former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz's witticism about how African-American males enjoy comfortable footwear, satisfying sex, and heated bathroom facilities.
It doesn't change the fact that it was his function. And Eintein didn't know what he was working on, but he did know he was working on a top secret project so he had an idea that it was for the government and probably for the military.
Einstein did no work for any top secret government project at any time. He pursued his strictly civilian career (mostly in theoretical physics; plus working in a patent office and doing a bit of inventing) throughout his life. Despite being a pacifist he most likely would have devoted effort to war related work (since he was also a Jewish refugee from the Nazis) but he was denied a security clearance in July 1940 and classified projects were forbidden to contact him.
Step 4 - Rent tower space, depending on the area it could run $500-$10000. I'll guesstimate for a few antennas, probably $2000
Again if rural then putting those antennas on your rooftop seems an easier/cheaper option. At least you have your tower and equipment all nearby, and putting a 5-10m mast on your rooftop shouldn't be too hard to do safely. Even in a sprawling suburb that may be a good option. Depending on the required range (how far your neighbours are; how many you want to serve) a 2-3m tall steel tube attached to your chimney may simply do the job.
The big issue of "renting tower space" is that you need to have a tower that has space for rent nearby.
May suggest looking into what Ham radio operators do? They erect modest (even not-so-modest) towers all the time. See for example a list of products here: http://www.championradio.com/shop/Towers.3 . One thousand bucks (including shipping) gets you a 24 foot tower. $5000 gets you a 96 foot tower. You will need to pour a concrete base.
Putting a substantial mast (were not talking a simple aerial folks) on you house is a lot more problematic than you might suppose. The building structure was probably not designed to anchor a load like that, and you are putting the integrity of you house on the line. Better to erect a separate structure usually.
Are you new to dealing with human beings (I was going to say "women" but then realized even that was too narrow)?
Every single one of those pix looks like the same attractive woman. But people look a bit different from time to time, like when they are working vs when they are posing for an "image" shot. It is exactly the same with guys as with gals, except that you don't have the same "appearance police" mentality scrutinizing the guys for imperfections like you do with gals.
This reminds me of the candid paparazzi snaps of, say, Jennifer Aniston picking up some hygiene products on a midnight run to 7-11 at midnight in her sweats. Someone who is possibly the world's most beautiful woman (sorry Ashwariya) looks kind of dowdy under those conditions but she is still the same person and could look absolutely dazzling later in the morning. If she doesn't pass your "always must look beautiful test", its your problem not hers.
Guys who expect woman to be glamorous 24/7/365 are either very rich or idiots. Both sets are jerks.
One more greedy corporation who muscled out the small, neighborhood stores and when they finally became the big kid on the block, squeezed their customers for everything they could. Now, in the light of new technology they're unable to control, they become unable to compete. So be it.
In the words of airline stewardesses everywhere: B'bye!
Indeed. My "venal Blockbuster" story are the sheets of prepaid rental coupons that were suitable for "gift giving". My wife bought some sheets of these to give me as a birthday gift - which I used a few times, and then discovered that they had "expired"! These were not some sort of promotional freebies, not even some sort of discount deal, they were full price pre-paid rentals! And in tiny print on the back of the coupons (not evident in any of their gift promotions) I discovered that they were only good for six months. Having advance use of our money for free, and the bonus possibility that I might lose or forget about them and thus never redeem all of them (common with gift cards) was not good enough for their profit margins - they had to convert a sale into a theft. I didn't use Blockbuster much after that - a great strategy for building your consumer loyalty.
Some researchers claim we can simulate intelligent parts of the human brain - I claim we can't simulate an average mouse (i.e. one that would survive long enough in real-life conditions), probably not even it's sight.
We cannot even simulate the nervous system of the only organism to have its neural network completely mapped (it has 308 neurons) - the model organism Caenorhabditis Elegans (C. elegans), a tiny nematode. We may achieve that loft goal in the next 10-20 years.
China is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and at one time had perhaps the most powerful. And yet, after their golden age, they withered and spent the rest of history being what we would call a Third World Country.
Only now are they finally ready for world power status again.
Contrast them against Japan, who only a little more than a century ago, was a dirt poor, backwards country that had to be literally forced at the barrel of a gun to open their doors to the world.
Not quite. China was as advanced an wealthy a country as any in the world up to about 1800 (and far more advanced than most) - that is until the start of the Industrial Revolution. China did not "wither" until well into the 1800s when direct competition with - an invasion by - the industrializing west destroyed its economy and governmental effectiveness.
Similarly Japan was a wealthy pre-industrial society, and successfully adapted to forced trade with the West (unlike China), shifting to become a successful industrial nation in one generation. Never were they "dirt poor".
Be very careful. Aluminium foil will not work effectively. On needs genuine tin foil to be safe.
Ooo! Ooo! You're right! Tin foil! Only true tin foil will protect! But where can you get genuine CERTIFIED tin foil?
I see a market dying to be served! Open a business to supply pure tin foil to provide the maximum amount of protection, with an embossed certificate of purity -- call the business "Tinline". There is this really gifted pitch man on this cable news network I've seen who is currently working with Goldline, I'll bet he would be more than happy to add Tinline to his marketing spiel - he has already cultivated an audience who will understand the value of Tinline Pure Tinfoil Protection (TM).
The documentation (just links to web pages) has gotten out-dated and inconsistent, and hard to use over the years. Does the new release come with a clean up so that it is actually easy to use and understand?
It'll mean they had better bulshitters doing crowd estimates. But, simply put, there's no way in hell Stewart and Colbert will bring out more people than Glenn Beck did. I've read and heard and seen the estimates and all that crap. There were at least 100,000 people there. I think all honest and realistic people would say somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000. I doubt Stewart and Colbert will pull more than 50,000. If only because people in the middle really do have shit to do.
The AirPhotosLive.com estimate, that collected actual data and analyzed in a transparent systematic fashion arrived at an estimate of 87,000 (plus/minus 9,000) so 100,000 is a reasonable round number to use though a tad on the high side. A round 90,000 would be more, shall we say, "conservative" (Oh wow! Conservatives being conservative! What a radical concept!)?
You got any basis for throwing out the AirPhotosLive.com estimate and inflating the count by a factor of up to two? Why would "honest and realistic" people throw out a scientific estimation procedure for a wild assed guess?
Since the Republican party has been going through a systematic purge of members who fail purity tests by supporting moderate positions, that point is rapidly becoming moot.
These days, Richard Nixon would lose in the primaries because his policies make him a RINO.
Oh my, it is far worse than that! Richard Nixon would never get into the primaries, and would be shunned as a far left socialist (imposing a national wage price freeze?, taking us off the gold standard?, proposing a national health care plan far to the left of the Romney/Obama style plan?) and would have been drummed out of the party altogether.
These days a man proposing the exact same policies followed by Ronald Reagan would be thrown out as a RINO! (As governor he signed an abortion liberalization bill, as president instituted an amnesty for illegal immigrants, signed tax increases in the course of his presidency, "cut and ran" under terrorist threat after the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, etc.).
Numerous commentors here point out the error of using cool colored dim lighting for a facility where actual work gets done. But you can have your cake (or Cake, if you are using cool indie rock background music) and eat it too - just have a button that switches the lighting to "cool mode" whenever a visitor comes in. Meaningless but cool looking graphic "screen savers" could also pop up on the screens.
Most of the data needed for accident investigations could be transmitted in real time for logging on the ground, the only need for a "black box" would be to cover periods where communication is lost - like in the last few minutes of a catastrophe. Like everyone, flight crews object to having every moment of their work day subjected to surveillance by their employers - hence their objection to transmitting flight data and crew conversations for recording on the ground.
The flight crew union objections could be overcome by having the data encrypted and logged in a system run by an international agency which alone has the keys to decrypt the data. The data could only be accessed when an accident report is filed which meets the agency's criteria. The agency would really only need to log a few days of telemetry, since accidents are invariably known immediately. Whenever a preliminary report is filed the relevant data would be preserved (but not necessarily released) until the matter is resolved.
... I would assert if we know enough to do FTL, we aren't going to be using chemical projectile weapons in a fight....
"Chemical projectile weapons" is a technology that is really, really tough to beat as way of killing in a planetary atmosphere. First off - guns are very efficient at converting stored energy. The efficiency by which the chemical energy in the propellant is converted to kinetic energy in the projectile can reach 80%, a remarkably efficient heat engine. Second - projectiles not only transfer energy, they transfer momentum as well - which turns out to be an very effective way to inflict damage on a target. Third - that little packet of energy plus momentum travels through atmospheres far better than any type of energy beam. Atmospheres are transparent only to visible light - anything else gets rapidly absorbed - and then only when aerosols (clouds) are not blocking the path; bullets are unaffected by clouds and while they do lose energy they can remain effective at ranges of a kilometer or more.
Besides do we know for sure the guns use chemical propellants? Electrothermal guns are already under development, which can generate plasmas as propellant gases.
In the year 2500, if starship troopers fighting in an atmosphere have only a choice between projectile and energy weapons (and not, say a "probability inverter field" or other fantasy technology), they will be using projectiles.
I suspect a fake, though I would have a hard time trying to demonstrate it. Just one thought : who would be willing to pay the huge costs this ad represents?...
Reading TA it is revealed that only a small specially selected group of farmers got it, like farmers with over 1000 acres. At a price of $8000 an acre in Iowa, that means only operations with capitalization in excess of $8 million received the ad (which cost $50). So the answer is - a company running a targeted campaign to customers who might buy tens of thousands of dollars of their product annually. Some years ago a single click on an Overture search engine ad for the key word "data recovery" was worth $25 due to hefty sum a convertible lead would bring.
Nope, not even close. We are still in the early stages of simply characterizing the behavior of these 302 neurons.
This sounds very interesting.
Am I correct when I interpret "behaviour" in your statement as "figure out what each neuron gives at the output when it gets a specific input"? Maybe that also implies another question, is the output of a neuron a function of its current state and its input, or does it also depend on the state of the other neurons?
- Can you explain what makes this process difficult?
In essence behavior is always response to stimulus, a paradigm sufficiently broad to offer little guidance. A single neuron is actually a very complex device with more than one type of memory, there are scores if not hundreds of different connection types, and each neuron has an average 30, which will typically be of several types, each processed a different way. Some connections are "digital", but the signal is actually temporal statistical properties of impulses, others are analog and bi-directional, and then there are the neuro-modulators are various types that act in other ways than on synapses. And this is biological system where the ability for making simultaneous measurements different types is very limited. Defining and measuring specific sets of inputs and outputs and showing their relationship over time sufficiently well to predict neuronal responses over a realistic range of circumstances is an extremely difficult task.
Then there are the 118 different neuron types - each essentially a different type of device, and the surprisingly complex topology of the neural network, with incompletely separated sub-systems (not like humans would design it, imagine that!).
- What else is needed to simulate a neuron, besides its "behaviour"? (quoting that because I am not yet sure I understand you correctly)
Thank you forward.
If you draw the term "behavior" sufficiently broadly and have successfully characterized it, then nothing really. But it should be realized that it is impossible to model the internal logic of a system of sufficient (and rather modest) complexity by simply studying inputs and outputs. We may have to go down yet one more level to the molecular design of a neuron to get a sufficiently good model to use in a C. elegans simulation.
There is no artificial sentience on earth, why is it supposed that machines can be made sentient?
Because nothing says it is impossible. Who argues it is impossible to send men to Jupiter's orbit with regular rockets ? We haven't done it yet but nothing in this project seems impossible, it is just a matter of cost and engineering. Similarly, nothing uncomputable seems to occur in our brains. In the worst case, a computer simulating neurons (yes, a simplified model, there are many reasons to argue that this is sufficient) connected in a network that would be copied from a real human brain would display intelligence. We don't have powerful enough computers or precise enough IRMs yet for that, but there are no theoretical impossibilities. That is why we suppose that machines can be made sentient. I personally think that it will happen before we manage to copy a human neural network, but it gives a higher bound to the difficulty of the problem.
Useful data to consider when we get to the matter of simulating neural networks is how much progress we have made in simulating simple natural networks which we have already completely characterized structurally.
We have one such network in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (a tiny worm). After many years of work its nervous system has been completely mapped: it contains 302 neurons, 6393 chemical synapses, 890 gap junctions, and 1410 neuromuscular junctions.
So we must have simulations of C. elegans little brain running, right?
Nope, not even close. We are still in the early stages of simply characterizing the behavior of these 302 neurons. It will only be after many more years of research that we would understand what it does well enough to make a reasonable simulation. Forget IRM (I think this is a different acronym for MRI), being able to dissect the entire nervous system neuron by neuron and probe it directly at every point is not enough (yet) to describe what it does.
Now imagine trying this on a neural network 50 million times larger that you can't dissect at will, and which has correspondingly more complex behaviors.
Still should be possible in principle - but the level of difficulty is immensely higher than "singularity" theorists would have you believe.
There are hardly any fields of endeavor where the people asking to provide a service are exempt from scrutiny.... Would you want to hire the services of a crappy... doctor? Why does the consumer not have access to the data to make an informed decision on whether to accept the services for which they will have to pay for? This is just not fair.
Funny you should mention doctors. In fact the AMA, among other doctors associations, have been opposing releasing performance related data to the public for decades. This includes insurers evaluations, patient evaluations, and performance related data that is already in the possession of public agencies.
Doctors can make a lot of the same claims to "special considerations" as teachers - patients aren't all the same, they (often) can't select their patients, success is strongly affected patient compliance, community support affects patient outcomes, etc. etc. See for example: http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/american-medical-association/.
It is very common for people providing a service not to want to be scrutinized. But I wonder how many teachers will agree that doctors should also be excluded from review.
At some point in the near future teacher's unions had better wake up realize that reform is essential and come up with effective house-cleaning measures of their own. Stone walling has worked for them fairly well so far, but the union fortress is not so strong that they can beat back all assaults forever.
A model of the human brain would need to model 10^10 neurons, each connected (not at random) to some 10,000 other neurons to produce a net of 10^14 synapses.
To understand the challenge of modelling a system this vast and complex, consider the state of research on the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (a tiny worm). After many years of work its nervous system has been (almost) exactly mapped: it contains 302 neurons, 6393 chemical synapses, 890 gap junctions, and 1410 neuromuscular junctions. Imagine now the difficulty of reaching this level of precision in a system 10^7 times larger. Unlike the genome, we have no clues about how to automate mapping of an intact brain.
But the good news is that with this level of neuro-mapping precision we can now completely simulate the neural network ("brain") of a tiny worm, right? Right?
Wrong. Not by a long shot. We are still struggling with characterizing the behavior of this primitive neural net, and making efforts at simulating some aspects of that behavior. The 302 neuron "brain" is far beyond our abilities to simulate at present.
There is a major flaw in the article too: The author apparently believes that you need to simulate the proteins and the exact chemical method for interaction in order to simulate the result of the interaction. It is the result that is important, not the method. I won't say that it is an easy matter of determining how the cells in the brain interact with one another, nor will I say that the chemical interactions are entirely precise, but if there is a finite number of possible outcomes to all possible interactions between two cells in the brain, it can be simulated.
...
It is not a flaw. He was explaining what one would have to do to derive "the brain" from the genome, which was Kurzweil's contention.
One could indeed simply look at the complete brain and model it, true, but then you are looking at 10^10 neurons, each connected (not at random) to some 10,000 other neurons to produce a net of 10^14 synapses.
To understand the challenge of modelling a system this vast and complex, consider the state of research on the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (a tiny worm). Its nervous system has been (almost) exactly mapped: it contains 302 neurons, 6393 chemical synapses, 890 gap junctions, and 1410 neuromuscular junctions. Imagine now the difficulty of reaching this level of precision in a system 10^7 times larger.
But the good news is that with this level of neuro-mapping precision we can now completely simulate the neural network ("brain") of a tiny worm, right? Right?
Wrong. Not by a long shot. We are still struggling with characterizing the behavior of this primitive neural net, and making efforts at simulating some aspects of that behavior. The 302 neuron "brain" is far beyond our abilities to simulate at present.
If you let them, they'll take away a few more of those pesky freedoms or yours, and then have the gall to send you a non-contestable tax bill for their trouble.
Wait, so you are arguing that I should have the freedom to have throttled Internet but not the freedom to have the ability to choose unfiltered open Internet? What freedom do I lose when the government-created monopolies are prevented from abusing their monopolies to screw their customers?
You do not understand the insights of the modern (anti-conservative) right wing and their Tea Party intellectual shock troops. Government is always evil in everything it does and private corporations never do wrong. This revelation frees you from needing to study such boring and old fashioned things as "facts" or "evidence" or to engage in elitist "rational thought".
Somebody in Washington is actually STOPPING the maniacally evil corporations for once? I must be missing something. Either that or I'm going to fall over dead from a shock induced heart attack in 3, 2, 1.......
But do not fear! The Tea Party is riding to the rescue! The glories of corporate control over every aspect of our lives, the right to be monetized and "revenue optimized" to the grave will be preserved by these courageous patriots!
Slashdot Mirror
There was an episode of "The Simpsons" (from back when that show did real satire) that summed it up nicely. We see a Republican convention, and the conventioneers are holding up signs that read "We're evil" and "We only care about the rich!" Then it cuts to the Democratic convention and they're holding up signs that read "We can't govern!" and "Incompetence Now!"
Close, but no cigar. It is Episode 1F15, "Bart Gets an Elephant", the seventeenth episode of The Simpsons' fifth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 31, 1994.
The attendees of the Republican Convention hold signs declaring: "We want what's worst for everyone" and "We're just plain evil."
The Democratic Convention signs say: "We can't govern" and "We hate ourselves."
As the Sage of Springfield says: "It's funny because its true!"
To the AnonCow troll above: GNU code has nothing to do with how the kernel handles multicore processors, so your whole point is moot within this context.
I think you should inform AnonCow that GNU is m-m-ooooot!
Reminds me of former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz's witticism about how African-American males enjoy comfortable footwear, satisfying sex, and heated bathroom facilities.
...
It doesn't change the fact that it was his function. And Eintein didn't know what he was working on, but he did know he was working on a top secret project so he had an idea that it was for the government and probably for the military.
Einstein did no work for any top secret government project at any time. He pursued his strictly civilian career (mostly in theoretical physics; plus working in a patent office and doing a bit of inventing) throughout his life. Despite being a pacifist he most likely would have devoted effort to war related work (since he was also a Jewish refugee from the Nazis) but he was denied a security clearance in July 1940 and classified projects were forbidden to contact him.
...
Step 4 - Rent tower space, depending on the area it could run $500-$10000. I'll guesstimate for a few antennas, probably $2000
Again if rural then putting those antennas on your rooftop seems an easier/cheaper option. At least you have your tower and equipment all nearby, and putting a 5-10m mast on your rooftop shouldn't be too hard to do safely. Even in a sprawling suburb that may be a good option. Depending on the required range (how far your neighbours are; how many you want to serve) a 2-3m tall steel tube attached to your chimney may simply do the job.
The big issue of "renting tower space" is that you need to have a tower that has space for rent nearby.
May suggest looking into what Ham radio operators do? They erect modest (even not-so-modest) towers all the time. See for example a list of products here: http://www.championradio.com/shop/Towers.3 . One thousand bucks (including shipping) gets you a 24 foot tower. $5000 gets you a 96 foot tower. You will need to pour a concrete base.
Putting a substantial mast (were not talking a simple aerial folks) on you house is a lot more problematic than you might suppose. The building structure was probably not designed to anchor a load like that, and you are putting the integrity of you house on the line. Better to erect a separate structure usually.
This is a photo of Leslie Sobon Alright, that's pretty good, but then these are also photos of Leslie: one two three four That's quite a range there, never know what you're going to get.
Are you new to dealing with human beings (I was going to say "women" but then realized even that was too narrow)?
Every single one of those pix looks like the same attractive woman. But people look a bit different from time to time, like when they are working vs when they are posing for an "image" shot. It is exactly the same with guys as with gals, except that you don't have the same "appearance police" mentality scrutinizing the guys for imperfections like you do with gals.
This reminds me of the candid paparazzi snaps of, say, Jennifer Aniston picking up some hygiene products on a midnight run to 7-11 at midnight in her sweats. Someone who is possibly the world's most beautiful woman (sorry Ashwariya) looks kind of dowdy under those conditions but she is still the same person and could look absolutely dazzling later in the morning. If she doesn't pass your "always must look beautiful test", its your problem not hers.
Guys who expect woman to be glamorous 24/7/365 are either very rich or idiots. Both sets are jerks.
One more greedy corporation who muscled out the small, neighborhood stores and when they finally became the big kid on the block, squeezed their customers for everything they could. Now, in the light of new technology they're unable to control, they become unable to compete. So be it.
In the words of airline stewardesses everywhere: B'bye!
Indeed. My "venal Blockbuster" story are the sheets of prepaid rental coupons that were suitable for "gift giving". My wife bought some sheets of these to give me as a birthday gift - which I used a few times, and then discovered that they had "expired"! These were not some sort of promotional freebies, not even some sort of discount deal, they were full price pre-paid rentals! And in tiny print on the back of the coupons (not evident in any of their gift promotions) I discovered that they were only good for six months. Having advance use of our money for free, and the bonus possibility that I might lose or forget about them and thus never redeem all of them (common with gift cards) was not good enough for their profit margins - they had to convert a sale into a theft. I didn't use Blockbuster much after that - a great strategy for building your consumer loyalty.
Some researchers claim we can simulate intelligent parts of the human brain - I claim we can't simulate an average mouse (i.e. one that would survive long enough in real-life conditions), probably not even it's sight.
We cannot even simulate the nervous system of the only organism to have its neural network completely mapped (it has 308 neurons) - the model organism Caenorhabditis Elegans (C. elegans), a tiny nematode. We may achieve that loft goal in the next 10-20 years.
...
China is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and at one time had perhaps the most powerful. And yet, after their golden age, they withered and spent the rest of history being what we would call a Third World Country.
Only now are they finally ready for world power status again.
Contrast them against Japan, who only a little more than a century ago, was a dirt poor, backwards country that had to be literally forced at the barrel of a gun to open their doors to the world.
Not quite. China was as advanced an wealthy a country as any in the world up to about 1800 (and far more advanced than most) - that is until the start of the Industrial Revolution. China did not "wither" until well into the 1800s when direct competition with - an invasion by - the industrializing west destroyed its economy and governmental effectiveness.
Similarly Japan was a wealthy pre-industrial society, and successfully adapted to forced trade with the West (unlike China), shifting to become a successful industrial nation in one generation. Never were they "dirt poor".
Be very careful. Aluminium foil will not work effectively. On needs genuine tin foil to be safe.
Ooo! Ooo! You're right! Tin foil! Only true tin foil will protect! But where can you get genuine CERTIFIED tin foil?
I see a market dying to be served! Open a business to supply pure tin foil to provide the maximum amount of protection, with an embossed certificate of purity -- call the business "Tinline". There is this really gifted pitch man on this cable news network I've seen who is currently working with Goldline, I'll bet he would be more than happy to add Tinline to his marketing spiel - he has already cultivated an audience who will understand the value of Tinline Pure Tinfoil Protection (TM).
The documentation (just links to web pages) has gotten out-dated and inconsistent, and hard to use over the years. Does the new release come with a clean up so that it is actually easy to use and understand?
It'll mean they had better bulshitters doing crowd estimates. But, simply put, there's no way in hell Stewart and Colbert will bring out more people than Glenn Beck did. I've read and heard and seen the estimates and all that crap. There were at least 100,000 people there. I think all honest and realistic people would say somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000. I doubt Stewart and Colbert will pull more than 50,000. If only because people in the middle really do have shit to do.
The AirPhotosLive.com estimate, that collected actual data and analyzed in a transparent systematic fashion arrived at an estimate of 87,000 (plus/minus 9,000) so 100,000 is a reasonable round number to use though a tad on the high side. A round 90,000 would be more, shall we say, "conservative" (Oh wow! Conservatives being conservative! What a radical concept!)?
You got any basis for throwing out the AirPhotosLive.com estimate and inflating the count by a factor of up to two? Why would "honest and realistic" people throw out a scientific estimation procedure for a wild assed guess?
Since the Republican party has been going through a systematic purge of members who fail purity tests by supporting moderate positions, that point is rapidly becoming moot.
These days, Richard Nixon would lose in the primaries because his policies make him a RINO.
Oh my, it is far worse than that! Richard Nixon would never get into the primaries, and would be shunned as a far left socialist (imposing a national wage price freeze?, taking us off the gold standard?, proposing a national health care plan far to the left of the Romney/Obama style plan?) and would have been drummed out of the party altogether.
These days a man proposing the exact same policies followed by Ronald Reagan would be thrown out as a RINO! (As governor he signed an abortion liberalization bill, as president instituted an amnesty for illegal immigrants, signed tax increases in the course of his presidency, "cut and ran" under terrorist threat after the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, etc.).
MOD THIS GUY UP!
Numerous commentors here point out the error of using cool colored dim lighting for a facility where actual work gets done. But you can have your cake (or Cake, if you are using cool indie rock background music) and eat it too - just have a button that switches the lighting to "cool mode" whenever a visitor comes in. Meaningless but cool looking graphic "screen savers" could also pop up on the screens.
Most of the data needed for accident investigations could be transmitted in real time for logging on the ground, the only need for a "black box" would be to cover periods where communication is lost - like in the last few minutes of a catastrophe. Like everyone, flight crews object to having every moment of their work day subjected to surveillance by their employers - hence their objection to transmitting flight data and crew conversations for recording on the ground.
The flight crew union objections could be overcome by having the data encrypted and logged in a system run by an international agency which alone has the keys to decrypt the data. The data could only be accessed when an accident report is filed which meets the agency's criteria. The agency would really only need to log a few days of telemetry, since accidents are invariably known immediately. Whenever a preliminary report is filed the relevant data would be preserved (but not necessarily released) until the matter is resolved.
... I would assert if we know enough to do FTL, we aren't going to be using chemical projectile weapons in a fight. ...
"Chemical projectile weapons" is a technology that is really, really tough to beat as way of killing in a planetary atmosphere. First off - guns are very efficient at converting stored energy. The efficiency by which the chemical energy in the propellant is converted to kinetic energy in the projectile can reach 80%, a remarkably efficient heat engine. Second - projectiles not only transfer energy, they transfer momentum as well - which turns out to be an very effective way to inflict damage on a target. Third - that little packet of energy plus momentum travels through atmospheres far better than any type of energy beam. Atmospheres are transparent only to visible light - anything else gets rapidly absorbed - and then only when aerosols (clouds) are not blocking the path; bullets are unaffected by clouds and while they do lose energy they can remain effective at ranges of a kilometer or more.
Besides do we know for sure the guns use chemical propellants? Electrothermal guns are already under development, which can generate plasmas as propellant gases.
In the year 2500, if starship troopers fighting in an atmosphere have only a choice between projectile and energy weapons (and not, say a "probability inverter field" or other fantasy technology), they will be using projectiles.
I suspect a fake, though I would have a hard time trying to demonstrate it. Just one thought : who would be willing to pay the huge costs this ad represents?...
Reading TA it is revealed that only a small specially selected group of farmers got it, like farmers with over 1000 acres. At a price of $8000 an acre in Iowa, that means only operations with capitalization in excess of $8 million received the ad (which cost $50). So the answer is - a company running a targeted campaign to customers who might buy tens of thousands of dollars of their product annually. Some years ago a single click on an Overture search engine ad for the key word "data recovery" was worth $25 due to hefty sum a convertible lead would bring.
Nope, not even close. We are still in the early stages of simply characterizing the behavior of these 302 neurons. This sounds very interesting.
Am I correct when I interpret "behaviour" in your statement as "figure out what each neuron gives at the output when it gets a specific input"? Maybe that also implies another question, is the output of a neuron a function of its current state and its input, or does it also depend on the state of the other neurons? - Can you explain what makes this process difficult?
In essence behavior is always response to stimulus, a paradigm sufficiently broad to offer little guidance. A single neuron is actually a very complex device with more than one type of memory, there are scores if not hundreds of different connection types, and each neuron has an average 30, which will typically be of several types, each processed a different way. Some connections are "digital", but the signal is actually temporal statistical properties of impulses, others are analog and bi-directional, and then there are the neuro-modulators are various types that act in other ways than on synapses. And this is biological system where the ability for making simultaneous measurements different types is very limited. Defining and measuring specific sets of inputs and outputs and showing their relationship over time sufficiently well to predict neuronal responses over a realistic range of circumstances is an extremely difficult task.
Then there are the 118 different neuron types - each essentially a different type of device, and the surprisingly complex topology of the neural network, with incompletely separated sub-systems (not like humans would design it, imagine that!).
- What else is needed to simulate a neuron, besides its "behaviour"? (quoting that because I am not yet sure I understand you correctly)
Thank you forward.
If you draw the term "behavior" sufficiently broadly and have successfully characterized it, then nothing really. But it should be realized that it is impossible to model the internal logic of a system of sufficient (and rather modest) complexity by simply studying inputs and outputs. We may have to go down yet one more level to the molecular design of a neuron to get a sufficiently good model to use in a C. elegans simulation.
There is no artificial sentience on earth, why is it supposed that machines can be made sentient?
Because nothing says it is impossible. Who argues it is impossible to send men to Jupiter's orbit with regular rockets ? We haven't done it yet but nothing in this project seems impossible, it is just a matter of cost and engineering. Similarly, nothing uncomputable seems to occur in our brains. In the worst case, a computer simulating neurons (yes, a simplified model, there are many reasons to argue that this is sufficient) connected in a network that would be copied from a real human brain would display intelligence. We don't have powerful enough computers or precise enough IRMs yet for that, but there are no theoretical impossibilities. That is why we suppose that machines can be made sentient. I personally think that it will happen before we manage to copy a human neural network, but it gives a higher bound to the difficulty of the problem.
Useful data to consider when we get to the matter of simulating neural networks is how much progress we have made in simulating simple natural networks which we have already completely characterized structurally.
We have one such network in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (a tiny worm). After many years of work its nervous system has been completely mapped: it contains 302 neurons, 6393 chemical synapses, 890 gap junctions, and 1410 neuromuscular junctions.
So we must have simulations of C. elegans little brain running, right?
Nope, not even close. We are still in the early stages of simply characterizing the behavior of these 302 neurons. It will only be after many more years of research that we would understand what it does well enough to make a reasonable simulation. Forget IRM (I think this is a different acronym for MRI), being able to dissect the entire nervous system neuron by neuron and probe it directly at every point is not enough (yet) to describe what it does.
Now imagine trying this on a neural network 50 million times larger that you can't dissect at will, and which has correspondingly more complex behaviors.
Still should be possible in principle - but the level of difficulty is immensely higher than "singularity" theorists would have you believe.
There are hardly any fields of endeavor where the people asking to provide a service are exempt from scrutiny. ... Would you want to hire the services of a crappy... doctor? Why does the consumer not have access to the data to make an informed decision on whether to accept the services for which they will have to pay for? This is just not fair.
Funny you should mention doctors. In fact the AMA, among other doctors associations, have been opposing releasing performance related data to the public for decades. This includes insurers evaluations, patient evaluations, and performance related data that is already in the possession of public agencies.
Doctors can make a lot of the same claims to "special considerations" as teachers - patients aren't all the same, they (often) can't select their patients, success is strongly affected patient compliance, community support affects patient outcomes, etc. etc. See for example: http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/american-medical-association/ .
It is very common for people providing a service not to want to be scrutinized. But I wonder how many teachers will agree that doctors should also be excluded from review.
At some point in the near future teacher's unions had better wake up realize that reform is essential and come up with effective house-cleaning measures of their own. Stone walling has worked for them fairly well so far, but the union fortress is not so strong that they can beat back all assaults forever.
A model of the human brain would need to model 10^10 neurons, each connected (not at random) to some 10,000 other neurons to produce a net of 10^14 synapses.
To understand the challenge of modelling a system this vast and complex, consider the state of research on the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (a tiny worm). After many years of work its nervous system has been (almost) exactly mapped: it contains 302 neurons, 6393 chemical synapses, 890 gap junctions, and 1410 neuromuscular junctions. Imagine now the difficulty of reaching this level of precision in a system 10^7 times larger. Unlike the genome, we have no clues about how to automate mapping of an intact brain.
But the good news is that with this level of neuro-mapping precision we can now completely simulate the neural network ("brain") of a tiny worm, right? Right?
Wrong. Not by a long shot. We are still struggling with characterizing the behavior of this primitive neural net, and making efforts at simulating some aspects of that behavior. The 302 neuron "brain" is far beyond our abilities to simulate at present.
There is a major flaw in the article too: The author apparently believes that you need to simulate the proteins and the exact chemical method for interaction in order to simulate the result of the interaction. It is the result that is important, not the method. I won't say that it is an easy matter of determining how the cells in the brain interact with one another, nor will I say that the chemical interactions are entirely precise, but if there is a finite number of possible outcomes to all possible interactions between two cells in the brain, it can be simulated.
...
It is not a flaw. He was explaining what one would have to do to derive "the brain" from the genome, which was Kurzweil's contention.
One could indeed simply look at the complete brain and model it, true, but then you are looking at 10^10 neurons, each connected (not at random) to some 10,000 other neurons to produce a net of 10^14 synapses.
To understand the challenge of modelling a system this vast and complex, consider the state of research on the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (a tiny worm). Its nervous system has been (almost) exactly mapped: it contains 302 neurons, 6393 chemical synapses, 890 gap junctions, and 1410 neuromuscular junctions. Imagine now the difficulty of reaching this level of precision in a system 10^7 times larger.
But the good news is that with this level of neuro-mapping precision we can now completely simulate the neural network ("brain") of a tiny worm, right? Right?
Wrong. Not by a long shot. We are still struggling with characterizing the behavior of this primitive neural net, and making efforts at simulating some aspects of that behavior. The 302 neuron "brain" is far beyond our abilities to simulate at present.
If you let them, they'll take away a few more of those pesky freedoms or yours, and then have the gall to send you a non-contestable tax bill for their trouble. Wait, so you are arguing that I should have the freedom to have throttled Internet but not the freedom to have the ability to choose unfiltered open Internet? What freedom do I lose when the government-created monopolies are prevented from abusing their monopolies to screw their customers?
You do not understand the insights of the modern (anti-conservative) right wing and their Tea Party intellectual shock troops. Government is always evil in everything it does and private corporations never do wrong. This revelation frees you from needing to study such boring and old fashioned things as "facts" or "evidence" or to engage in elitist "rational thought".
Somebody in Washington is actually STOPPING the maniacally evil corporations for once? I must be missing something. Either that or I'm going to fall over dead from a shock induced heart attack in 3, 2, 1.......
But do not fear! The Tea Party is riding to the rescue! The glories of corporate control over every aspect of our lives, the right to be monetized and "revenue optimized" to the grave will be preserved by these courageous patriots!