I had similiar pain with a game called Hugo's House of Horrors (not text based, but the same text input pain). In one of the rooms in the mansion, you open a cupboard to find a funny looking sprite on the ground. I must have tried a 100 different things to figure out what that sprite was. Eventually I looked in the game directory to see a file called "mask.gif". Pick Up Mask. It was a wonderful thing when the click based adventure game (such as lucas arts games), was introduced.
Unfortunatly, DNA decays very quickly, even under ideal conditions. Tassy tiger and Mammoth are very recent (relatively speaking), and they have soft tissue to work with. The only 1 million years plus dna that anyone has been able to extract came from some amber. And even in this case, it is still strongly debated as to whether the DNA was simply contamination. Even if the DNA is legit, were still talking only 0.001% that could be extracted. I would love for them to be able to analyse some ancient DNA (imagine what we could learn!), but it seems unlikely that we'll ever be able to extract anything usefull. Unless someone can work out the ole time machine...
This may be dependent on the country in which you work. In Australia (from whence I come), there is no benefit to a masters degree whatsoever. In fact, there is a negative perception associated with a Masters for the very reasons stated in the previous post! People with a Masters degree expect a higher income, and are rarely any more useful than a totally green 3 year graduate (and less so than one who has been spending their spare time coding; someone who actually loves the code). Those who can DO. Get out there, and get some experience, don't waste your time getting bits of paper that just tell people "I would like some more money please..."
In my experience (approx 8 years in the field), only very average coders ever had Masters Degree's (perhaps an attempt to compensate for average coding skills). Some of the very best have no degree at all! The thing that seems to separate the good from the great, is that the great guys never stop learning. They're the guys whose book-shelf is full, are showing you F#, listening to pod-casts. Your Master's degree won't mean squat in a couple of years.
So don't waste your time.
Pfft, we have this system here in Sydney shopping centres. If all the spots are taken, people simply cruise around looking for people leaving, same as always. Fantastic when it is only 80% full or so however.
I've often wondered whether a person dieing (from being stranded) on mars might actually encourage people to return more so than any other possible reason. Imagine the media coverage whilst we watched his/her last hours, the books and movies that would follow. Then imagine the idea of leaving this persons body for ever more on a lonely distant rock. No, I think if someone could not return, that would stimulate the populas to send a rocket ship to get the brave heroe's remains back. Far more insentive than any reason scientific research could provide.
Farewell modding, but I had to reply to this post. From my experience, good people != good software. Good teams, with good leadership, combined with good process == good software. A champion team will always out-perform a team of champions. In my own working life, I have seen the best of the best in projects that fail horribly due to their inability to function as a team (add a little managment failure in recognising some of the issues in time). I've also seen average talent working well together and delivering quality product ahead of schedule. Now granted, one or two "guns", can make a big difference in a team; but the people with the most impact tend to be the ones that are making the squishy* work well.
*squishy - All things human related, generally ignored by engineers except when cursing the failings of others.
What? What? What? How can you not see what an amazing idea this is? Say I want to travel to another city, and see the sights. I could purchase a travel booklet and some maps; but these would only show me land marks and a top down plan view. With google street view, I could get off at the station, tour around, and really get a feel for the place before ever visiting. Also, house/unit hunting. All my hunting occurs through the internet these days (properties have pictures, floor plans etc). The one thing that's missing is the ability to get a feel for the general area; google street view fills this void! There are many cities in the world that might be worth seeing, but nobody could see them all. Google street view is allowing you to search a large data collection with enough detail to make an informed decision.
I have never understood why anyone would expect things to work differently. If I use electricity, I pay by the watt. If I use petrol, I pay by the litre. If I use bandwidth, I pay by the megabyte. Any other system simply implies that many small usage consumers are keeping the price low for the few high users. If everyone paid for their actual usage, then the prices would be much lower per megabyte. Is the hue and cry more to do with the fact that Slashdot users are typically heavy users, and don't want the free lunch to end?
The point of the "geometric centre" test, is that the "rectangles" that you see, are difficult for the computer to work out. Notice how the colour distortion creates many other rectangles which we, as humans, dismiss as noise. Still I suspect that the researcher is only trying to get the free ride of others doing his image recognition research while attempting to "crack the captcha".
I live in Australia, so my experiences may be different to that of a North American. In Australia, the early maths courses are taken within the science faculty, as are some of the later advanced mathematical electives. Theory aplenty. Where the divergence occurs, is where the divergence between engineering and science in the real world occurs; application. Engineers require a far greater breadth of knowledge in mathematics rather than depth. They need a large tool box, if you will, but do not need to understand how to build every tool that is contained within. An analogy in the computer science realm would be algorithms. A software developer is concerned with finding an algorithm that will perform the required task efficiently, whereas a mathematician may wish to create a proof for said algorithm. The developer does not care about the proof, he/she simply needs to know that it will fulfil the requirements. So; in Australia at least there is plenty of mathematical theory, where you get less theory is when it becomes impractical to shows proofs for every equation due to the breadth of the material. I really can't see an alternative to this.
The reason that devices such as this exist is because crime is inversely proportional to age (exponentially so) [See http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=442]. This is exacerbated by the fact that in a growing population, the percentage of youth is quite high; leading to some researchers to suggest that stable population growth will relieve some of the pressure on the justice system (among other things) [See http://www.growthfetish.com/clive.htm].
The article is not claiming that the Monkey is directly controling actuators. The monkey is walking, and the signals from it's brain (several hundred neurons), are being used to control the walking motion of the robot. Obviously the processing of monkey neurons response -> robot control is being performed in software specifically tuned to this one monkey with implants. The interesting thing about this experiment is not that they trained a monkey to walk a robot (they didn't), but rather that the monkey was able to keep the robot walking after it had stopped moving itself. This means that all those neurons that the researches are triggering the walking motions from are still going when the monkey thinks about walking but doesn't actually do it.
We've known the brain is capable of this for some time, but this is the first experiment I have seen that appears to involve more than a simple "go stop" form of response. If they have tapped enough neurons to control all the actuators required for a robot to walk, then this is news indeed.
I find this attitude disturbing. Where I work, all code is based on coding standards and is peer-reviewed on a daily basis (and I have a high level of respect for the code generated by the people I work with). No one can say your code sucks if they approved it in the first place! In my opinion, if everyone in a company is saying that everyone elses code is rubbish... Maybe the answer is that everyone's code is rubbish.
The unfortunate truth is that this thinking is not confined to the US. I live in Australia, and it seems like this is the same general attitude here (of course, many of our companies are US owned or run). I'm not sure I like the future we are creating. We've hung all our hopes on the saviour of economic growth at any cost; it doesn't seem to make life better, and if our economies start to fail...
I think you might be getting confused about the risk of IR lasers and IR light in general. Although it is true that IR light is more dangerous than visible light in a laser context for exactly the reasons you have listed, the non directed IR light used in this senario will not harm your eyes.
It seems to help to be a lurker. I have a total of 3 (4 now) posts to my name, and no one has ever moderated any of them. But I have lurked for years. I seem to get mod points about once a week. No one mode me or you'll screw up this good thing I have going here!
Listen, pal, if you don't trust scientists, then give up all your modern conveniences and move into a cave. You should be respectful of the work they've done to provide you with what you have. Hang on a minute. Since when are we required to trust scientists? I trust the scientific method. Scientists are human, and that means they will have their own adgenda's and make mistakes. This is why we have the concept of a peer review (and even this is subject to social pressures that can skew objectivity). You would fit right in with the conservative religious seeing as you like to 'trust' and 'respect' people so much. Just change scientist to leader, and your all set!
Wikipedia is generally excellent for factually based information. Where it falls down is when a topic has some element of 'controversy'. In this situation you often end up with an article very biased in one direction, or (what I believe is worse), an article that fails to show either side in an effort to be neutral. In these instances the 'talk' page is often much more insightful than the article itself, as it details all the controversy that will not make it into the article.
Slashdot Mirror
I had similiar pain with a game called Hugo's House of Horrors (not text based, but the same text input pain). In one of the rooms in the mansion, you open a cupboard to find a funny looking sprite on the ground. I must have tried a 100 different things to figure out what that sprite was. Eventually I looked in the game directory to see a file called "mask.gif". Pick Up Mask. It was a wonderful thing when the click based adventure game (such as lucas arts games), was introduced.
Unfortunatly, DNA decays very quickly, even under ideal conditions. Tassy tiger and Mammoth are very recent (relatively speaking), and they have soft tissue to work with. The only 1 million years plus dna that anyone has been able to extract came from some amber. And even in this case, it is still strongly debated as to whether the DNA was simply contamination. Even if the DNA is legit, were still talking only 0.001% that could be extracted. I would love for them to be able to analyse some ancient DNA (imagine what we could learn!), but it seems unlikely that we'll ever be able to extract anything usefull. Unless someone can work out the ole time machine...
This may be dependent on the country in which you work. In Australia (from whence I come), there is no benefit to a masters degree whatsoever. In fact, there is a negative perception associated with a Masters for the very reasons stated in the previous post! People with a Masters degree expect a higher income, and are rarely any more useful than a totally green 3 year graduate (and less so than one who has been spending their spare time coding; someone who actually loves the code). Those who can DO. Get out there, and get some experience, don't waste your time getting bits of paper that just tell people "I would like some more money please..." In my experience (approx 8 years in the field), only very average coders ever had Masters Degree's (perhaps an attempt to compensate for average coding skills). Some of the very best have no degree at all! The thing that seems to separate the good from the great, is that the great guys never stop learning. They're the guys whose book-shelf is full, are showing you F#, listening to pod-casts. Your Master's degree won't mean squat in a couple of years. So don't waste your time.
Pfft, we have this system here in Sydney shopping centres. If all the spots are taken, people simply cruise around looking for people leaving, same as always. Fantastic when it is only 80% full or so however.
I've often wondered whether a person dieing (from being stranded) on mars might actually encourage people to return more so than any other possible reason. Imagine the media coverage whilst we watched his/her last hours, the books and movies that would follow. Then imagine the idea of leaving this persons body for ever more on a lonely distant rock. No, I think if someone could not return, that would stimulate the populas to send a rocket ship to get the brave heroe's remains back. Far more insentive than any reason scientific research could provide.
Farewell modding, but I had to reply to this post. From my experience, good people != good software. Good teams, with good leadership, combined with good process == good software. A champion team will always out-perform a team of champions. In my own working life, I have seen the best of the best in projects that fail horribly due to their inability to function as a team (add a little managment failure in recognising some of the issues in time). I've also seen average talent working well together and delivering quality product ahead of schedule. Now granted, one or two "guns", can make a big difference in a team; but the people with the most impact tend to be the ones that are making the squishy* work well. *squishy - All things human related, generally ignored by engineers except when cursing the failings of others.
What? What? What? How can you not see what an amazing idea this is? Say I want to travel to another city, and see the sights. I could purchase a travel booklet and some maps; but these would only show me land marks and a top down plan view. With google street view, I could get off at the station, tour around, and really get a feel for the place before ever visiting. Also, house/unit hunting. All my hunting occurs through the internet these days (properties have pictures, floor plans etc). The one thing that's missing is the ability to get a feel for the general area; google street view fills this void! There are many cities in the world that might be worth seeing, but nobody could see them all. Google street view is allowing you to search a large data collection with enough detail to make an informed decision.
I have never understood why anyone would expect things to work differently. If I use electricity, I pay by the watt. If I use petrol, I pay by the litre. If I use bandwidth, I pay by the megabyte. Any other system simply implies that many small usage consumers are keeping the price low for the few high users. If everyone paid for their actual usage, then the prices would be much lower per megabyte. Is the hue and cry more to do with the fact that Slashdot users are typically heavy users, and don't want the free lunch to end?
The point of the "geometric centre" test, is that the "rectangles" that you see, are difficult for the computer to work out. Notice how the colour distortion creates many other rectangles which we, as humans, dismiss as noise. Still I suspect that the researcher is only trying to get the free ride of others doing his image recognition research while attempting to "crack the captcha".
I live in Australia, so my experiences may be different to that of a North American. In Australia, the early maths courses are taken within the science faculty, as are some of the later advanced mathematical electives. Theory aplenty. Where the divergence occurs, is where the divergence between engineering and science in the real world occurs; application. Engineers require a far greater breadth of knowledge in mathematics rather than depth. They need a large tool box, if you will, but do not need to understand how to build every tool that is contained within. An analogy in the computer science realm would be algorithms. A software developer is concerned with finding an algorithm that will perform the required task efficiently, whereas a mathematician may wish to create a proof for said algorithm. The developer does not care about the proof, he/she simply needs to know that it will fulfil the requirements. So; in Australia at least there is plenty of mathematical theory, where you get less theory is when it becomes impractical to shows proofs for every equation due to the breadth of the material. I really can't see an alternative to this.
The reason that devices such as this exist is because crime is inversely proportional to age (exponentially so) [See http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=442]. This is exacerbated by the fact that in a growing population, the percentage of youth is quite high; leading to some researchers to suggest that stable population growth will relieve some of the pressure on the justice system (among other things) [See http://www.growthfetish.com/clive.htm].
The article is not claiming that the Monkey is directly controling actuators. The monkey is walking, and the signals from it's brain (several hundred neurons), are being used to control the walking motion of the robot. Obviously the processing of monkey neurons response -> robot control is being performed in software specifically tuned to this one monkey with implants. The interesting thing about this experiment is not that they trained a monkey to walk a robot (they didn't), but rather that the monkey was able to keep the robot walking after it had stopped moving itself. This means that all those neurons that the researches are triggering the walking motions from are still going when the monkey thinks about walking but doesn't actually do it. We've known the brain is capable of this for some time, but this is the first experiment I have seen that appears to involve more than a simple "go stop" form of response. If they have tapped enough neurons to control all the actuators required for a robot to walk, then this is news indeed.
I find this attitude disturbing. Where I work, all code is based on coding standards and is peer-reviewed on a daily basis (and I have a high level of respect for the code generated by the people I work with). No one can say your code sucks if they approved it in the first place! In my opinion, if everyone in a company is saying that everyone elses code is rubbish... Maybe the answer is that everyone's code is rubbish.
The unfortunate truth is that this thinking is not confined to the US. I live in Australia, and it seems like this is the same general attitude here (of course, many of our companies are US owned or run). I'm not sure I like the future we are creating. We've hung all our hopes on the saviour of economic growth at any cost; it doesn't seem to make life better, and if our economies start to fail...
I think you might be getting confused about the risk of IR lasers and IR light in general. Although it is true that IR light is more dangerous than visible light in a laser context for exactly the reasons you have listed, the non directed IR light used in this senario will not harm your eyes.
It seems to help to be a lurker. I have a total of 3 (4 now) posts to my name, and no one has ever moderated any of them. But I have lurked for years. I seem to get mod points about once a week. No one mode me or you'll screw up this good thing I have going here!
Wikipedia is generally excellent for factually based information. Where it falls down is when a topic has some element of 'controversy'. In this situation you often end up with an article very biased in one direction, or (what I believe is worse), an article that fails to show either side in an effort to be neutral. In these instances the 'talk' page is often much more insightful than the article itself, as it details all the controversy that will not make it into the article.
Except that recruiters often demand you send them a .doc version of your resume (so they can remove your contact information).