nooneelse

> And I do hope that science can be held to a slightly higher standard of objectivity than the general economy (maybe that's too idealistic?).

Doesn't sound to idealistic to this science-oriented engineer. With the field of scientometrics, the feedback loops look like they can be closed entirely within the domain of science instead of needing to extend outside of it to be closed.

There is no reason to think that actual experimental studies can't be brought to bear on the matter of what ranking/organizing metrics of papers/research best (for various definitions of 'best') help scientists do their work. Also no a priori reason I can see why various fields would converge to the same measures; or that those most used within science would be the ones that the press, students, people external to the fields, and such would find most helpful.

I'm actually a bit curious why we haven't yet seen any reports of organized crime related hits using cheap drones and explosives.

Or his non-science-fiction speculations on such matters in The Transparent Society. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society)

I think some sort of concept of "attention-condition" levels could and should be applied. These would be like "def-con" levels, but labeling the readiness of one to switch attention, instead of readiness to engage in military action. Saying something along the lines of, "Ok, Glass, set at-con 2 for the next hour," could do things like switch notifications to only a whitelist of people and message types. "At-con 5" would let everything through. "At-con 1" would only show you something from an even more restricted whitelist, or if a nuclear war started. ;-)

Now add in commands like, "Ok, Glass, set at-con 2 whenever I'm driving," or "whenever I'm in this building." And a person's distraction levels can be overall reduced by this device rather than expanded.

I think having a fake display would be taking it too far. However, having a frame that puts an extra battery and/or the 3G chip & antenna over on the other side would make it nicely less visually lop-sided and have functional benefits.

So far the Arms Control Wonk blog hasn't said anything about it.

It doesn't matter what a penguin says, I won't understand it any more than a talking lion.

What percentage of traditionally funded ventures of a similar type ship on time according to the the initial plan? Isn't knowing that vital to understanding the results of this study.

Well, in one sense, I agree. Make sure you know what each line does on its own. But sometimes a single line doesn't make sense, in a larger sense, without something that comes later. So you have to have some tolerance for not understanding each line before you move to the next. It could be put in terms of knowing the "what" vs letting the "why" be uncertain a while.

Similar to having a bag with lots of different people's hair and skin cells to dust over a crime scene.

Laser Squad Nemesis is a great game. I remember spending too many hours learning and trying to properly implement the lessons of The Grenadier’s Bible.

Another such video from this year: http://youtu.be/Y6ZuZuB4tfM

One could trace it back to monastic traditions born during the early middle ages. James Burke makes that point in one of the later Connections episodes in the first series.

I heard recently that there is a new translation which is rather good for the modern reader. (http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperors-Handbook-Translation-Medi...) I think I heard about it on the excellent "History of Philosophy: Without Any Gaps" podcast, but I'm not certain of that. It can seem silly to spend money when you can get the ideas for free, on the other hand, the style of translation can easily get in the way with ancient writers and old translations. I've quit reading a couple of dry translations of the Meditations when they would put me to sleep rather too fast during bed-time reading. I've got the new one on my Xmas wishlist and plan to buy it in the new year if someone doesn't get it for me.

So maybe check it out if you find the old versions slow going.

I'm actually rather keen to get one. I guess the appeal for me is A) a neat toy for particular occasions, and B) personal ideas of using less-subjective feedback for understanding and controlling myself toward goals. But I want to see some example pictures from the actual device before committing money to it.

Indeed, and we are probably facing new selection pressures. Such as the propensity toward addictions to substances our ancestors would not have had (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/28/painkiller-add...).

> The Asus transformer was the next big step, I think. Again, keyboard and touchscreen, but this time a 19 hour battery. If it allowed dual booting it would be perfect.

I'm a fan of the Asus transformer too. One benefit from the keyboard having a battery that I didn't notice till I had been using it this way for a while is that I never charge the tablet directly. When it is low, I attach the keyboard and let that charge the tablet. Then when the keyboard is low I pull that off and charge it. So the tablet itself is never tied to a wall. Psychologically, the tablet feels a hair's breadth away from being a device I don't have to charge at all. The battery state is never in the way of me using it.

Analogy time. If one left a partisan alone with unsealed boxes of ballots, I would think they would be considered spoiled (correct me if I'm wrong). I agree with you that leaving the electronic ballots in a partisan's computer with no mechanisms to detect tampering should similarly be considered spoiled.

A strong paper trail seems to be the answer. It doesn't matter what the hardware and software tries to do if the machine has to produce a paper record (checked and approved by each voter) that is spooled for later checking against the electronic total.

The DRM could embed something analogous to a watermark in unseen parts/layers of the physical structure printed, like in the particular path used to fill in some layers. A recording of the stepper motor commands would still have that information encoded in it.

Also, the trap question could easily have the opposite "right response" as it does in the post and still be defensible as something important to learn about a candidate. Another interviewer performing the same test sequence might want to see if the candidate can change subjects quickly, roll with new circumstances, and not get flustered or stuck on a single, obsolete outcome.

Hmm, Aristotle has some very hard-reading bits. Especially without someone/thing there to put together the contexts, or to let you know you can skip over the truly boring bits to the next bit of meat when the bogging down gets heavy into obscure ancient disputes without missing a thing.

Maybe try listening to http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/ . It is very good. Almost as good as, say, a giraffe.

Also, for easier reading in general, people that wrote in pretty much the language you are reading are good for working up some philosophical inertia before plowing into tougher soil. I always recommend Hume. Rereading something like his epic philosophical burn on the design argument is just fun but then, that's me.

It can't just be pattern recognizers at every level of the hierarchy of abstraction/organization anyway. I mean, eventually, after I process inputs and come to understandings of them, I also produce patterns, sequence them, compare them, prune them, and occasionally produce them as outputs. Unless that phrase "of pattern recognizers" is supposed to be labeling only the lowest level of building blocks that go into the self-organizing hierarchical system, in which case, it is much like saying a jet-engine is just atoms arraigned somehow... not a very complete explanation.

Also, self-organized? I know the way he meant it. But it irks me, considering all the structured inputs that a child gets, training material for the programming of neural connections, different at various stages of mental development, tailored toward particular chosen outcomes using centuries to eons of human experience on building minds in young brain matter. A modern person's mind is also quite constructed by, if one is lucky, one's good parents/family and cultural environment.

I know, I know, I'm picking on a promo-speak blurb, there no doubt better ways for me to have spent this time.

Seems like they could get 100% of the ambiguity reduction they are probably going for with the "no renderings" rule by requiring that any renderings have a standard label. Some very noticeable and tasteful diagonal bar saying "Rendering" across the corner of the image would do nicely. Perhaps you could/should propose that to them as a sensible middle-ground position.

I really like the "you have to show what you have now" part of the requirement, but getting a look at where the creator wants to get to as a goal is also very useful for choosing projects. And your cutaway animation also sounds like a knock-down case for why renderings are needed sometimes.

Only way I can read that comment as anything but shameless self-promotion (or, more generously, over the line entrepreneurial-delusion) is if they intend to morph their using of social status to get things into being whuffies.

Well, there is at least one good thing about having only smaller businesses. They are more governable by nations, unlike transnational corporations. Since power-aggregations, like motors, tend to need a governor for stability of the overall system, that counts as a good thing.

That pushes the issue back into the older question, given a nation's worth of people, what type of dividing lines best group them into sub-populations for the purpose of representation. That is, why lines in space vs lines in income, or total wealth, or hair color, or profession? And what defense of lines in space could possibly defend such complex (gerrymandered) ones?

I quite like the way these phones look too. Nokia, when they try, does a good job on such things, I think. It is just that nothing about them looks organic at all. So it is absurd that someone kept using that term for them.

But if ants could and did paint little ant-paintings and murals, I bet someone would be collecting said paintings. Also, some website would have people arguing about the nuances of them. If aliens are to us as we are to ants, they might not need to care much about us to spawn a few instances of their minds and cross interstellar distances so as to chat with us as much as we care to. It might be so little effort for them so as not to need much reward. Just as kids have ant-farms.

Organic things like trees and such are well known for their smooth glass surfaces and straight edges. Be careful if you put one of these phones down in a park, you might lose track of it among any nearby sticks. :)

This goes beyond distortion and well into redefinition.

Putting things another way, some people seem to be under the odd misapprehension that "privately owning a piece of land" is tantamount to sovereignty over it. When in actual, complicated reality what one really buys when one "buys land" is a more limited set of rights to possession, use, development, etc. of the land that have been wrapped up in a title. And thus there exist limitations to what one can do with "private property" as exemplified by the fact that other people can get an easement to use one's land for access to their own or might own the minerals under your house.