nikhilgk

This is not exactly an apples to apples comparison. [hq4x](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hqx) is meant to magnify by a factor of 4. The comparison images use it for 16x magnification. Would be interesting to run this algorithm after magnifying it with hqx.

Nice idea and implementation. However my first thought after reading the title here and the domain name was that it was an analysis tool for Salesforce Chatter (http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/whatischatter/). You may want to check if there are any trademark implications.

Exactly. An AI machine made by digesting all of human knowledge and then capable of advancing it will not do it unless it was built with the specific "motive" of advancing that knowledge. Without that "purpose" it will just sit in an idle state waiting for the next input and trigger the next deductions. Only an evolved AI or one integrated to wetware brains will be self-aware enough to pursue higher goals like understanding and controlling the universe.

Industrial revolution lead to the popularization of democracy and the emergence of socialism and communism which are all ultimately means for adapting society and economy to the revolutionary changes. Information revolution will have to bring similar societal and economic changes before all the short term negative impact dissipates and its benefits becomes more universally available. However the main difference here is the timespan afforded by the new revolution. Society had time in the order of generations to catch up to Industrial revolution; Information revolution reduces this by an order of magnitude.

I have read Manna (http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm) and strongly recommend it in the context of this post.

Be aware that since all of these are very Javascript heavy, their performance will depend a lot on the browser you use. For eg YUI data grids lets you reorder columns by drag and drop - try that in IE 8 and you will see what I mean. Off the ones in this list that I have tried, SlickGrid comes head and shoulders above others when it comes to performance.

Can't remember where I read it, but another way to look at the Zones was that it breaks the idea and occurance of a technological singularity from a temporal to a spatial dimension.

For the sanity of anyone who may want to read this, link to the print version: http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35058&...

Thank you for posting this, could be useful to someone.

But let me remind you that this post does not fall within the general guidelines for HN posting. For your reference:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I usually let the following quote -

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

- guide me before I upvote stories, even if the topic is not of particular interest to me. I would rather voyeur as great minds discusses ideas here.

Instead of a dedicated server, use a router that can run DD-WRT or Tomato. I use a cheap(35$) refurbished wireless router from Linksys[1] and I am sure there are other models. These will be more energy efficient and easier to maintain than running a dedicated server. Additionally, of course, you can use these as routers for your home network.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-WRT160N-RM-Refurbished-W...

That first link just gave us some analytics about the people here on HN. Offtopic: It reported Chrome on Ubuntu as Browsers: Ubuntu

There was some initiative to create an archive of shortened URLs if the provider were to close down. http://www.archive.org/details/301works. But looks like it did not gain much traction.

I think two other variables needs to be factored in: cultural influence of the native speakers of the languages and the age at which you acquire the. I can attest to the second factor because I learned four languages before I was six (typical if you grow up in India) and still use three of them almost every day and I do not feel any discernible personality change when I shift the language I speak or think in.

This was the link I was looking for when I posted that, a slightly more "authoritative" source. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13digi.html

The only example I have seen is plentyoffish.com. According to this: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rol... the guy who owns this works barely an hour a day and earns more than 4M$ in revenue of it.

Public work in the US cannot be a good comparison. Workers in communist Russia must have other motivations to be efficient - patriotism and pride in their work for some, but more likely, fear of the state and lack of alternatives. Either way, my point was not that they had an efficient or scalable model, but that the government can throw in any resource they have at making more weapons - even at the expense of starving millions.

In a communist society, the state owns everything. They own all natural resources, the industries that processes them, the supply chains, the labor and the economy. Profits and margins are not the objectives and there is no competition. So overall, the expenses to the state are far lesser than in a capitalistic society. Imagine if the US government owned IBM, Boeing, Lockheed, all the mines, had the cheapest yet most skilled labor then the cost of an ICBM would have been significantly lesser.

But this argument may be underestimating other human traits like curiosity and spirit for exploration. Even if we were wired to "simputers" at birth, many of the hacker types here would want to explore what is beyond those constructs once made aware of it. This leads me to believe there will always be some who would not accept the virtual world as an end all and explore beyond it.

A and B may not be sufficient reasons either. Here is a counter example from my home state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model#Human_Development_... Economically Kerala is a third world economy, but in Human Development Index and birth rates it is more closer to developed economies. The birth rate is at replacement level and still falling even though most people do not have sufficient pensions, most parents are not professionals and unemployment is endemic. So you will have to look beyond GDP and consumerism for falling birth rates.

Capital punishment, though legal, has been reserved for the ["rarest of the rare"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_India#Law) cases by the Supreme Court of India. There have been instances when even serial killers have been pardoned. So it may not even be legally possible to pass such a law.