Sun - July 6, 2008
4,113 American soldiers dead and 30,314 wounded in Iraq
As of June 30,
4,113
U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began and at least
30,314
have been wounded.
13,476
of the wounded were hurt seriously enough that they could not be returned to
duty within 72 hours. Over
85,461
Iraqi civilians have been killed according to the Iraq Body Count
website.
(The above charts of U.S. military fatalities are based on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site, which gets its numbers from public data provided by the U.S. government. The numbers of wounded are from the Department of Defense web site, as of July 1 at 10 a.m.)
Additional "coalition" deaths include: 176 Britain, 33 Italy, 18 Ukraine, 23 Poland, 13 Bulgaria, 11 Spain, 7 Denmark, 5 El Salvador, 5 Georgia, 4 Slovakia, 3 Latvia, 3 Romania, 2 Thailand, 2 Estonia, 2 Netherlands, 2 Australia, 1 Czech Republic, 1 Hungary, 1 Kazakhstan, 1 Azerbaijan, and 1 South Korea.
The Iraq Body Count web site reports that between 85,461 and 93,238 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the military intervention in Iraq.
According to the Cost of War site, the war in Iraq has currently cost the U.S. in excess of $534,275,000,000.
See also: Iran: Consequences of a War by the independent think tank Oxford Research Group.
Posted at 01:04 AM
Tue - September 4, 2007
NBC TV shows no longer on iTunes Store
Apple announced on Friday that the iTunes Store
will no longer carry NBC TV shows. This includes the loss of
Heroes,
Law and
Order,
Scrubs,
Stargate
SG-1 and
Battlestar
Galactica.
Apple said NBC wanted to more than double the
wholesale price of its shows, which would have resulted in a retail price to
consumers of $4.99, compared to the current $1.99. Pure greed on the part of
NBC.
Posted at 10:21 AM
3,741 American soldiers dead and 27,662 wounded in Iraq
As of Sept. 2,
3,741
U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began and at least
27,662
have been wounded.
12,429
of the wounded were hurt seriously enough that they could not be returned to
duty within 72 hours. Over
71,259
Iraqi civilians have been killed according to the Iraq Body Count
website.
(The above charts of U.S. military fatalities are based on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site, which gets its numbers from public data provided by the U.S. government. The numbers of wounded are from the Department of Defense web site, as of Aug 28 at 10 a.m.)
Additional "coalition" deaths include: 168 Britain, 33 Italy, 18 Ukraine, 21 Poland, 13 Bulgaria, 11 Spain, 7 Denmark, 5 El Salvador, 4 Slovakia, 3 Latvia, 2 Thailand, 2 Estonia, 2 Netherlands, 2 Australia, 2 Romania, 1 Czech Republic, 1 Hungary, 1 Kazakhstan, and 1 South Korea.
The Iraq Body Count web site reports that between 71,259 and 77,808 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the military intervention in Iraq.
According to the Cost of War site, the war in Iraq has currently cost the U.S. in excess of $448,652,000,000.
See also: Iran: Consequences of a War by the independent think tank Oxford Research Group.
Posted at 09:11 AM
Tue - August 21, 2007
Skype didn't deliver on their promise of an explanation of the outage
On Saturday, Skype promised to give (on Monday)
"a more detailed explanation of what happened" that caused a worldwide loss of
Skype service that lasted nearly 2 days. They failed to give a convincing
explanation.
Skype claims, "The disruption was triggered by a
massive restart of our users' computers across the globe within a very short
timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through
Windows Update."
Other bloggers have pointed out that Windows Update happens on a schedule based on each user's local time; so the updates do not happen everywhere at once and do not trigger a simultaneous restart of computers all over the world. Moreover, Windows Update happens regularly and Skype offered no explanation as to why this sort of problem hasn't happened in the past.
Skype claims to have experienced "a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact." Again, no explanation as to why this hasn't happened before. They do admit to "a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly."
Since they had already admitted that they were not the target of a malicious attack, it was obvious that they had a bug in their system; and since we had to wait nearly 2 days for the system return to usability, it was obvious that the bug had prevented a quick fix and that it had a "critical impact". So what did they tell us that we didn't already know? Very little.
In a followup to its first explanation, Skype gave an answer the question of why problems haven't occurred in the past when Microsoft released updates:
That’s because the update patches were not the cause of the disruption. In previous instances where a large number of supernodes in the P2P network were rebooted ... there had not been such a combination of high usage load during supernode rebooting. As a result, P2P network resources were allocated efficiently and self-healing worked fast enough to overcome the challenge.
The bottom line seems to be that this was a bug waiting to happen and it has now been fixed.
Other bloggers have pointed out that Windows Update happens on a schedule based on each user's local time; so the updates do not happen everywhere at once and do not trigger a simultaneous restart of computers all over the world. Moreover, Windows Update happens regularly and Skype offered no explanation as to why this sort of problem hasn't happened in the past.
Skype claims to have experienced "a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact." Again, no explanation as to why this hasn't happened before. They do admit to "a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly."
Since they had already admitted that they were not the target of a malicious attack, it was obvious that they had a bug in their system; and since we had to wait nearly 2 days for the system return to usability, it was obvious that the bug had prevented a quick fix and that it had a "critical impact". So what did they tell us that we didn't already know? Very little.
In a followup to its first explanation, Skype gave an answer the question of why problems haven't occurred in the past when Microsoft released updates:
That’s because the update patches were not the cause of the disruption. In previous instances where a large number of supernodes in the P2P network were rebooted ... there had not been such a combination of high usage load during supernode rebooting. As a result, P2P network resources were allocated efficiently and self-healing worked fast enough to overcome the challenge.
The bottom line seems to be that this was a bug waiting to happen and it has now been fixed.
Posted at 12:47 AM
Fri - August 17, 2007
Skype has been broken for a day and a half (and continues to be flakey)
For the past 35 hours or so, Skype has not been
available to many people and the people running Skype have been vague about what
the problem is. The only explanation that has appeared on their "Heartbeat"
blog is: "This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an
algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction
between the user's own Skype client and the rest of the Skype
network."
There is a suggestion that the problem is somehow
resolving itself, but it's certainly not over here in Pittsburgh. Although I
can now login and connect to the Skype network, my connection still occasionally
drops and when it does I can't make a call. It seems to randomly come and go,
although it is now more available than not. The opposite was the case
yesterday.
Saturday Update: Skype definitely seems to be back to normal now.
Saturday Update: Skype definitely seems to be back to normal now.
Posted at 10:09 AM
Sun - August 12, 2007
4,000 American soldiers dead by the end of the year in Iraq
We can expect the U.S. casualties in Iraq to
surpass 4000 before the end of this year, based on the long-term daily average
of 2.296 deaths per day.
Posted at 01:17 PM
Fri - August 10, 2007
Curious juxtaposition of images
On the front page of
The New York
Times web site, in the Video
section, there are (at this moment) two images suspiciously placed side by side.
One shows a woman (crying) with her hand covering her face. The other shows a
man, head bowed, with his hand covering his face. The caption over the image of
the woman reads "Iraqi Exiles in Jordan". The caption over the image of the man
reads "Dow Falls 387 Points on Loan Fears".
Does The
New York Times editor see some important
similarity in these two stories that motivated placing these images side by
side? Are we meant to think that the pain of a family exiled, perhaps
permanently, from their home is comparable to the "pain" of someone seeing a
temporary drop in stock
prices?
Posted at 12:54 AM
Wed - August 8, 2007
3,680 American soldiers dead and 27,279 wounded in Iraq
As of Aug 8,
3,680
U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began and at least
27,279
have been wounded.
12,267
of the wounded were hurt seriously enough that they could not be returned to
duty within 72 hours. Over
68,747
Iraqi civilians have been killed according to the Iraq Body Count
website.
(The above charts of U.S. military fatalities are based on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site, which gets its numbers from public data provided by the U.S. government. The numbers of wounded are from the Department of Defense web site, as of Aug 7 at 10 a.m.)
Additional "coalition" deaths include: 166 Britain, 33 Italy, 18 Ukraine, 21 Poland, 13 Bulgaria, 11 Spain, 7 Denmark, 5 El Salvador, 4 Slovakia, 3 Latvia, 2 Thailand, 2 Estonia, 2 Netherlands, 2 Australia, 2 Romania, 1 Czech Republic, 1 Hungary, 1 Kazakhstan, and 1 South Korea.
The Iraq Body Count web site reports that between 68,747 and 75,194 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the military intervention in Iraq.
According to the Cost of War site, the war in Iraq has currently cost the U.S. in excess of $450,209,000,000.
See also: Iran: Consequences of a War by the independent think tank Oxford Research Group.
Posted at 08:38 AM
Wed - August 1, 2007
Number of U.S. casualties in Iraq last month was well above the long term average
Yesterday, the
New York
Times reported the number of U.S. military casualties
in Iraq as low, but they didn't wait until all the numbers were in for the
month. In fact, the number of U.S. casualties in July, while lower than the
very elevated values of the previous three months, was still substantially
higher than the long term monthly average.
The
Times
said, "Estimates of the death toll varied, but Iraq Coalition Casualty
Count put the July total so far at 74, down from 101 in June and the
lowest number since November 2006." They knew the final total was not yet in;
so why did they rush to publish this
news?
The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count is currently putting the number of July U.S. casualties at 80 and that value may still not be the final total. The U.S. has been in Iraq for 1596 days and has suffered 3659 casualties (according to the current ICCC tally). That is 2.293 casualties per day and 71 casualties for an average 31 day month. So the July casualties are 12.67% higher than the monthly average, and that assumes there are no more casualties added to the July total.
It is certainly good that the July total is substantially lower than the triple-digit figures of the previous three months, but it's misleading to suggest that it's a low number. The July figure is still above the mean.
The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count is currently putting the number of July U.S. casualties at 80 and that value may still not be the final total. The U.S. has been in Iraq for 1596 days and has suffered 3659 casualties (according to the current ICCC tally). That is 2.293 casualties per day and 71 casualties for an average 31 day month. So the July casualties are 12.67% higher than the monthly average, and that assumes there are no more casualties added to the July total.
It is certainly good that the July total is substantially lower than the triple-digit figures of the previous three months, but it's misleading to suggest that it's a low number. The July figure is still above the mean.
Posted at 11:45 PM
3,653 American soldiers dead and 27,104 wounded in Iraq
As of July 30,
3,653
U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began and at least
27,104
have been wounded.
12,180
of the wounded were hurt seriously enough that they could not be returned to
duty within 72 hours. Over
68,009
Iraqi civilians have been killed according to the Iraq Body Count
website.
(The above charts of U.S. military fatalities are based on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site, which gets its numbers from public data provided by the U.S. government. The numbers of wounded are from the Department of Defense web site, as of July 31 at 10 a.m.)
Additional "coalition" deaths include: 163 Britain, 33 Italy, 18 Ukraine, 21 Poland, 13 Bulgaria, 11 Spain, 7 Denmark, 5 El Salvador, 4 Slovakia, 3 Latvia, 2 Thailand, 2 Estonia, 2 Netherlands, 2 Australia, 2 Romania, 1 Czech Republic, 1 Hungary, 1 Kazakhstan, and 1 South Korea.
The Iraq Body Count web site reports that between 68,009 and 74,403 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the military intervention in Iraq.
According to the Cost of War site, the war in Iraq has currently cost the U.S. in excess of $448,105,000,000.
See also: Iran: Consequences of a War by the independent think tank Oxford Research Group.
Posted at 12:02 AM
Mon - July 23, 2007
Sat - July 21, 2007
iPhone was not to blame for Duke University's network problems this week
When Duke University started having network
problems early this week, Duke's Office of Information Technology rushed to
blame the new iPhones on campus. It has now been confirmed that the problem was
caused by a faulty Cisco wireless access point.
Macworld
reported that Duke's chief information officer
has posted a statement to the university's web site admitting that "Earlier
reports that this was a problem with the iPhone in particular have proved to be
inaccurate." In other words, Kevin Miller in the Office of Information
Technology jumped to a false conclusion. The article at
Macworld
says, "It would appear at this point that Miller made his statements without a
full report or any basis to blame the iPhone or Apple for the
problems."
Posted at 02:11 AM
Sat - July 14, 2007
You can help classify galaxies for scientific research
An online project has begun to classify over a
million galaxies in an effort to determine if there is a special alignment of
spiral galaxies with an unexpected alignment of spots in the cosmic background
radiation observed in 2005. The public is invited to participate in the
classification of galaxies. If you would like to help, go to GalaxyZoo.org.
Participation includes doing a short tutorial to
help you learn about the types of galaxies and how to recognize them in photos.
After the tutorial there is a short test to see if you can perform the
classification task. Once you have passed the test (it's actually quite easy),
you can start to classify some of the million galaxies in the database. Do as
few or as many as you like.
Visual inspection is the best way to classify galaxies, but with a million galaxies to classify it will take a lot of volunteers to do the job. The primary task is simply to decide whether a galaxy is spiral or elliptical.
In April 2007, New Scientist reported, "[I]n 2005, Kate Land and João Magueijo of Imperial College London noticed a curious pattern in the map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) created by NASA's WMAP satellite. It seemed to show that some hot and cold spots in the CMB are not distributed randomly, as expected, but are aligned along what Magueijo dubbed the axis of evil."
"Michael Longo of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor analysed 1660 spiral galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and found that the axes of rotation of most galaxies appear to line up with the axis of evil (www.arxiv.org/astro-ph/0703325). According to Longo, the probability of this happening by chance is less than 0.4 per cent. 'This suggests the axis is real, and not simply an error in the WMAP data,' he says."
The galaxy classification project is intended to help determine if the supposed alignment of spiral galaxies with the "axis of evil" is real or imaginary.
Visual inspection is the best way to classify galaxies, but with a million galaxies to classify it will take a lot of volunteers to do the job. The primary task is simply to decide whether a galaxy is spiral or elliptical.
In April 2007, New Scientist reported, "[I]n 2005, Kate Land and João Magueijo of Imperial College London noticed a curious pattern in the map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) created by NASA's WMAP satellite. It seemed to show that some hot and cold spots in the CMB are not distributed randomly, as expected, but are aligned along what Magueijo dubbed the axis of evil."
"Michael Longo of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor analysed 1660 spiral galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and found that the axes of rotation of most galaxies appear to line up with the axis of evil (www.arxiv.org/astro-ph/0703325). According to Longo, the probability of this happening by chance is less than 0.4 per cent. 'This suggests the axis is real, and not simply an error in the WMAP data,' he says."
The galaxy classification project is intended to help determine if the supposed alignment of spiral galaxies with the "axis of evil" is real or imaginary.
Posted at 01:01 PM
Fri - July 13, 2007
Mac Daily News calls it the "God Phone"
Mac Daily News thinks there's a striking
resemblance between these images of an iPhone ad and of the famous fresco of
Michelangelo, but I don't see it.
Posted at 10:47 AM
Wed - July 11, 2007
3,609 American soldiers dead and 26,695 wounded in Iraq
As of July 10,
3,609
U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began and at least
26,695
have been wounded.
12,014
of the wounded were hurt seriously enough that they could not be returned to
duty within 72 hours. Over
67,172
Iraqi civilians have been killed according to the Iraq Body Count
website.
(The above charts of U.S. military fatalities are based on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site, which gets its numbers from public data provided by the U.S. government. The numbers of wounded are from the Department of Defense web site, as of July 10 at 10 a.m.)
Additional "coalition" deaths include: 159 Britain, 33 Italy, 18 Ukraine, 20 Poland, 13 Bulgaria, 11 Spain, 7 Denmark, 5 El Salvador, 4 Slovakia, 3 Latvia, 2 Thailand, 2 Estonia, 2 Netherlands, 2 Australia, 2 Romania, 1 Czech Republic, 1 Hungary, 1 Kazakhstan, and 1 South Korea.
The Iraq Body Count web site reports that between 67,172 and 73,497 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the military intervention in Iraq.
According to the Cost of War site, the war in Iraq has currently cost the U.S. in excess of $442,118,000,000.
See also: Iran: Consequences of a War by the independent think tank Oxford Research Group.
Posted at 01:30 AM
Tue - July 10, 2007
Why did I ignore the value of the iPhone's non-phone features?
Someone who read my previous iPhone post asked me
why I ignored the value of the features of the iPhone other than its being a
phone: web browser, email, calendar, music, videos, etc. My response, in
brief, is that I don't think it's good for those things.
I don't think any device the size of a cell phone
is good for those things. Even if the screen of the iPhone is much better for
those tasks than any other cell phone, it is still way too small for web
browsing, reading email and checking a calendar, and that would be true no
matter how much resolution it had. Those tasks are best done on a laptop with a
decent size screen and if I want to do them while I'm on the go, then I'll carry
a MacBook with me. So I don't view those features as reasons to get an iPhone.
I haven't heard a single reviewer say they were dumping their laptop after they
got an iPhone.
What about music and videos. When Apple released the video iPod I said it had too small a screen for watching movies and I think that's true of the iPhone also. People are spending thousands of dollars to upgrade their home entertainment systems to large screen HDTVs. Movies are made to be watched on big screens and everyone knows that. I just can't believe that many people want to watch movies on a cell phone size device; I know I don't. As for music, the iPods are great for that and a lot cheaper than an iPhone.
As far as I'm concerned the only reason to consider getting an iPhone is because it's a neat phone. For everything else, carry a MacBook and/or an iPod.
What about music and videos. When Apple released the video iPod I said it had too small a screen for watching movies and I think that's true of the iPhone also. People are spending thousands of dollars to upgrade their home entertainment systems to large screen HDTVs. Movies are made to be watched on big screens and everyone knows that. I just can't believe that many people want to watch movies on a cell phone size device; I know I don't. As for music, the iPods are great for that and a lot cheaper than an iPhone.
As far as I'm concerned the only reason to consider getting an iPhone is because it's a neat phone. For everything else, carry a MacBook and/or an iPod.
Posted at 03:58 AM
Sun - July 8, 2007
Why I'm not rushing to buy an iPhone
All the reviews of the iPhone that I've seen are
basically positive. Most reviewers obviously love their new iPhones. A friend
of mine who bought one reported that he likes it "quite a lot." Everyone agrees
it could be improved in various ways, but that doesn't seem to curtail their
enthusiasm for the device very much. Nevertheless, I'm not going to rush out
and get one, and it's neither because I wouldn't like to have one nor because
I'm waiting for version 2. It's the cost of phone service that is the stumbling
block for me.
I know that AT&T's $60 per month plan for
individuals is very competitive with the monthly options from other companies.
The problem is that I consider all the monthly service plans from all the cell
phone companies to be way too
expensive.
I carry a cell phone from T-Mobile with a prepaid plan. The phone cost me $70, despite the fact that it has very few features, but I didn't sign a contract and I don't get a bill each month. In fact, I never get one. That's the reason I didn't get much of a discount on the phone. T-Mobile doesn't have a 2-year lock on me. I pay 10 cents for every minute I use the phone and that's all I pay. I gave T-Mobile $100 up front for 1000 minutes, which don't expire for 1 year. After 10 months I still have not used up the 1000 minutes. You see, I don't hang on the phone all the time. I use it when I really need it. The result is that I can carry a cell phone for much less money than an iPhone service plan would cost me.
Phones are not hard to find in the U.S. I have one in my office, paid for by my employer. I have a landline phone at home. I don't need to pay an additional $75 dollars per month to have access to a phone. If I really need to make a call when I'm on the go, I can do so for 10 cents per minute.
One of the nice things about monthly cell plans is that you get pretty much unlimited long distance service, especially if you're willing to talk at night or on the weekends. I have the same level of service all the time, if I can make the calls from home, because I use Skype from my home computer. With my Plantonics headset the quality is excellent. I have Skype's unlimited calling plan, which cost me $15 for the first year and lets me call anyone in the U.S. and Canada anytime, day or night. It is really rare when I need to make a long distance call from someplace other than my home, but when I need to do that, I use a phone card, which costs me 2-3 cents per minute.
So how can I justify paying $75 per month for cell phone service? The service I currently have is quite adequate for my needs and while it's not exactly free, it's pretty darn close to free on a per minute basis, averaged over all the calls I make.
Apple would stand a lot better chance of selling me an iPhone if the iPhone could run Skype over its wi-fi connection and if it didn't require activation with a cellular phone service. I would be even more likely to get one if I could use it with my prepaid plan from T-Mobile. But Apple is not content to make $330 profit selling me the iPhone. It also wants to make a cut of AT&T's on-going monthly service fees for the iPhone, which I'm not currently willing to pay.
I carry a cell phone from T-Mobile with a prepaid plan. The phone cost me $70, despite the fact that it has very few features, but I didn't sign a contract and I don't get a bill each month. In fact, I never get one. That's the reason I didn't get much of a discount on the phone. T-Mobile doesn't have a 2-year lock on me. I pay 10 cents for every minute I use the phone and that's all I pay. I gave T-Mobile $100 up front for 1000 minutes, which don't expire for 1 year. After 10 months I still have not used up the 1000 minutes. You see, I don't hang on the phone all the time. I use it when I really need it. The result is that I can carry a cell phone for much less money than an iPhone service plan would cost me.
Phones are not hard to find in the U.S. I have one in my office, paid for by my employer. I have a landline phone at home. I don't need to pay an additional $75 dollars per month to have access to a phone. If I really need to make a call when I'm on the go, I can do so for 10 cents per minute.
One of the nice things about monthly cell plans is that you get pretty much unlimited long distance service, especially if you're willing to talk at night or on the weekends. I have the same level of service all the time, if I can make the calls from home, because I use Skype from my home computer. With my Plantonics headset the quality is excellent. I have Skype's unlimited calling plan, which cost me $15 for the first year and lets me call anyone in the U.S. and Canada anytime, day or night. It is really rare when I need to make a long distance call from someplace other than my home, but when I need to do that, I use a phone card, which costs me 2-3 cents per minute.
So how can I justify paying $75 per month for cell phone service? The service I currently have is quite adequate for my needs and while it's not exactly free, it's pretty darn close to free on a per minute basis, averaged over all the calls I make.
Apple would stand a lot better chance of selling me an iPhone if the iPhone could run Skype over its wi-fi connection and if it didn't require activation with a cellular phone service. I would be even more likely to get one if I could use it with my prepaid plan from T-Mobile. But Apple is not content to make $330 profit selling me the iPhone. It also wants to make a cut of AT&T's on-going monthly service fees for the iPhone, which I'm not currently willing to pay.
Posted at 04:31 PM
Sat - July 7, 2007
My review of Gutkind's Almost Human: Making Robots Think
I recently read Lee Gutkind's book
Almost Human: Making Robots
Think, published by W. W. Norton in 2006. It
is about the place where I've spent most of my working life, so I was curious to
see if he told the truth about the people I know. The rapid manufacturing
project I work on is not mentioned in this book.
Almost
Human is a book about a few of the mobile
robot projects in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Gutkind primarily focuses on Zoë, a mobile robot designed for
autonomous scientific investigations to find signs of life in the Atacama Desert
of Chile, Groundhog, a mobile robot designed to map mines, RoboCup, a
international robot soccer competition, and the DARPA Grand Challenge, a
competition to design an automated vehicle to travel autonomously across the
desert.
Gutkind spends a lot of time describing the people involved in the projects he studied. He talks about their personalities, their histories, their professional goals, how they work and aspects of their personal lives. He tries to give the reader an image of what it's like being a robotics researcher working on these projects. The image he presents is one that most people will not find attractive. It is an image of overly demanding project leaders coercing people, mostly graduate students, to work themselves to exhaustion over long periods of time, often to the detriment of the projects they are working on. It is also an image of highly motivated and intelligent people creating new things that others might have imagined to be impossible. But the reader can't help but wonder if all that creativity couldn't have been accomplished at a somewhat more sane pace, perhaps with more success.
Gutkind is not always fair to the people he describes. I was particularly annoyed by his characterization of Hans Moravec, whom he characterizes as representing the "dark side of robotics movement." Moravec believes that it might be possible to transfer all the information in a person's brain to a computer in the body of a robot and thus to make a person virtually immortal. He imagines a future where intelligent robots have become the dominant form of (non-biological) life, powerful enough to leave the confines of Earth and travel into space, possibly creating robot civilizations on other worlds. This future frightens Gutkind for reasons he never states. He calls Moravec's image of robots becoming more and more like humans "petrifying." He responds by writing absurd characterizations of Moravec as a person. He says Moravec "seems somewhat robotic" and "talks as if he has been activated by voice recognition software." Sheer nonsense! Moravec is a typically eccentric academic who walks around usually lost in thought, but otherwise he's quite normal and one of the most gentle souls I've ever met. As for Moravec's image of the future, at this point it is still science fiction, but Moravec is far from alone in believing that robots will become increasingly like us. They will become like us because we want them to be intelligent enough to help us do complex tasks, and our model of creatures capable of doing those best is ourselves.
At the end of the book, Gutkind writes, "Even the robots that are here today are far away—decades at least—from becoming a contributing element in our society." He must have been talking about the few research-oriented mobile robots that he focused his attention on, because in general that is not true. For example, iRobot Corporation sells a variety of practical mobile robots that are used every day in people's homes to vacuum their carpets, wash their floors, and clean their pools and garages, entirely automatically. (They don't sell a robot to empty the dirt out of the cleaning robots; you have to do that occasionally yourself.) Moreover, robots have been used for many years in a variety of manufacturing applications. For example, robots help humans construct automobiles on the assembly line and they automatically insert chips onto circuit boards for computers. Robots contribute enormously to society already, even if most people don't usually see them at work.
Gutkind spends a lot of time describing the people involved in the projects he studied. He talks about their personalities, their histories, their professional goals, how they work and aspects of their personal lives. He tries to give the reader an image of what it's like being a robotics researcher working on these projects. The image he presents is one that most people will not find attractive. It is an image of overly demanding project leaders coercing people, mostly graduate students, to work themselves to exhaustion over long periods of time, often to the detriment of the projects they are working on. It is also an image of highly motivated and intelligent people creating new things that others might have imagined to be impossible. But the reader can't help but wonder if all that creativity couldn't have been accomplished at a somewhat more sane pace, perhaps with more success.
Gutkind is not always fair to the people he describes. I was particularly annoyed by his characterization of Hans Moravec, whom he characterizes as representing the "dark side of robotics movement." Moravec believes that it might be possible to transfer all the information in a person's brain to a computer in the body of a robot and thus to make a person virtually immortal. He imagines a future where intelligent robots have become the dominant form of (non-biological) life, powerful enough to leave the confines of Earth and travel into space, possibly creating robot civilizations on other worlds. This future frightens Gutkind for reasons he never states. He calls Moravec's image of robots becoming more and more like humans "petrifying." He responds by writing absurd characterizations of Moravec as a person. He says Moravec "seems somewhat robotic" and "talks as if he has been activated by voice recognition software." Sheer nonsense! Moravec is a typically eccentric academic who walks around usually lost in thought, but otherwise he's quite normal and one of the most gentle souls I've ever met. As for Moravec's image of the future, at this point it is still science fiction, but Moravec is far from alone in believing that robots will become increasingly like us. They will become like us because we want them to be intelligent enough to help us do complex tasks, and our model of creatures capable of doing those best is ourselves.
At the end of the book, Gutkind writes, "Even the robots that are here today are far away—decades at least—from becoming a contributing element in our society." He must have been talking about the few research-oriented mobile robots that he focused his attention on, because in general that is not true. For example, iRobot Corporation sells a variety of practical mobile robots that are used every day in people's homes to vacuum their carpets, wash their floors, and clean their pools and garages, entirely automatically. (They don't sell a robot to empty the dirt out of the cleaning robots; you have to do that occasionally yourself.) Moreover, robots have been used for many years in a variety of manufacturing applications. For example, robots help humans construct automobiles on the assembly line and they automatically insert chips onto circuit boards for computers. Robots contribute enormously to society already, even if most people don't usually see them at work.
Posted at 11:26 AM
Fri - July 6, 2007
Why do Americans celebrate the 4th of July?
This message appeared in my mailbox yesterday:
"Since you have always had a closed mind you have never been touched by the
Lord, Hence you will probably never understand God". The subject line read,
"Re: Why do Americans celebrate the 4th of July?" At first I didn't understand
what motivated this, but then I remembered that I posted a message with that
title two years
ago. Since it is still being read, I thought
I would repost it:
July 4, 1776 is the date on the
Declaration of
Independence. That document is based on such
dubious philosophical premises, it is a wonder that educated people would
celebrate its signing.
The Declaration opens with the notion that the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" can entitle a group of people to a "separate and equal station". The laws of nature do not have political implications and there is no such thing as "nature's god". At least no one has discovered such an entity in the natural world.
The notion of "nature's god" becomes the notion of a "creator" in the second paragraph, where it is asserted that it is self-evident that all men (which apparently meant "white males") are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. If it were self-evident that men were endowed with certain rights by a creator, then it would be self-evident that there was a creator capable of making such an endowment. If the existence of such a creator were self-evident, it would be almost universally accepted by rational, educated people, but that is not the case; so it is not self-evident that men were endowed with rights by a creator.
The Declaration ends with "a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence", a notion just as dubious as those other religious notions with which it begins. Fortunately, this religious nonsense was removed when the Constitution was written.
The Declaration opens with the notion that the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" can entitle a group of people to a "separate and equal station". The laws of nature do not have political implications and there is no such thing as "nature's god". At least no one has discovered such an entity in the natural world.
The notion of "nature's god" becomes the notion of a "creator" in the second paragraph, where it is asserted that it is self-evident that all men (which apparently meant "white males") are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. If it were self-evident that men were endowed with certain rights by a creator, then it would be self-evident that there was a creator capable of making such an endowment. If the existence of such a creator were self-evident, it would be almost universally accepted by rational, educated people, but that is not the case; so it is not self-evident that men were endowed with rights by a creator.
The Declaration ends with "a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence", a notion just as dubious as those other religious notions with which it begins. Fortunately, this religious nonsense was removed when the Constitution was written.
Posted at 12:56 AM
Thu - July 5, 2007
"In the Life" TV will next air in Pittsburgh on Friday, July 6, at 10 PM
In the
Life, the gay and lesbian TV news magazine, is
scheduled to air on Friday, July 6, at 10 PM on WQED TV (channel 13). The show
is titled "Gender Revolution" and will be hosted by Charles Busch.
This episode of
In the
Life includes "Size Matters", about intersex
people; "Gender Warriors", about different ideas of what gender should be;
"Making Music Making Changes", about Billy Tipton in the world of jazz; "Binary
Culture", about how gender roles define us; "Vanderbilt", about LGBT students at
Vanderbilt University; and "Heterosexual Privilege", about same-sex
marriage.
Find out when In the Life is showing in your area by visiting ITL's When It's On page.
Find out when In the Life is showing in your area by visiting ITL's When It's On page.
Posted at 09:08 AM
Mon - July 2, 2007
3,580 American soldiers dead and 26,350 wounded in Iraq
As of July 1,
3,580
U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began and at least
26,350
have been wounded.
11,831
of the wounded were hurt seriously enough that they could not be returned to
duty within 72 hours. Over
66,807
Iraqi civilians have been killed according to the Iraq Body Count
website.
(The above charts of U.S. military fatalities are based on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site, which gets its numbers from public data provided by the U.S. government. The numbers of wounded are from the Department of Defense web site, as of June 26 at 10 a.m.)
Additional "coalition" deaths include: 156 Britain, 33 Italy, 18 Ukraine, 20 Poland, 13 Bulgaria, 11 Spain, 7 Denmark, 5 El Salvador, 4 Slovakia, 3 Latvia, 2 Thailand, 2 Estonia, 2 Netherlands, 2 Australia, 2 Romania, 1 Czech Republic, 1 Hungary, 1 Kazakhstan, and 1 South Korea.
The Iraq Body Count web site reports that between 66,807 and 73,120 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the military intervention in Iraq.
According to the Cost of War site, the war in Iraq has currently cost the U.S. in excess of $439,639,000,000.
See also: Iran: Consequences of a War by the independent think tank Oxford Research Group.
Posted at 09:31 AM
Wed - June 20, 2007
Openly gay mayoral candidate lost in Dallas on Saturday
On Saturday, Dallas elected a political newcomer
over the three-term openly gay City Councilman Ed Oakley to be mayor of the
city. The vote was 58 to 42 percent. It had been wrongly predicted to be a
close race.
People had various explanations of the results.
Some said there was a lot of last minute gay bashing by conservative groups.
Political co-chair of the HRC local steering committee also attributed the loss
to the attention paid to the race by local and national media. I don't know why
it's unusual that local media would pay attention to the mayoral race. Dallas
Voice's DVTV reported that the loss might be attributed to lots of rain, which
Democratic voters were said to be notorious for letting keep them from the
polls. The turnout in the five heavily gay districts of Dallas was 29.3%, twice
as high as elsewhere in the city. I guess those Democratic voters are the
exception.
Three other gay candidates in the runoff election also lost their races. The Dallas Voice reported, "In all of the runoff races involving gay candidates, either the candidates or their supporters had complained about conservative groups using gay-baiting tactics to attack the gay candidates."
Three other gay candidates in the runoff election also lost their races. The Dallas Voice reported, "In all of the runoff races involving gay candidates, either the candidates or their supporters had complained about conservative groups using gay-baiting tactics to attack the gay candidates."
Posted at 09:37 AM
Tue - June 19, 2007
YouTube video exposes Pittsburgh law firm advising businesses on how to avoid hiring Americans
Information Week reported on a YouTube video that shows a Pittsburgh law firm,
Cohen & Grigsby, holding a conference in which they tell attendees how to
avoid having to hire American workers while minimally satisfying the
requirements of the law.
The Cohen & Grigsby people in the video
suggest advertising positions in places where qualified American workers are
least likely to see the ads. They also advise how to screen applications that
arrive from American workers to quickly disqualify them on technical grounds and
avoid having to interview American applicants. Very qualified American
applicants are interviewed for the purpose of finding a legal basis for
disqualifying them. The point is to satisfy the legal requirements to
demonstrate that no qualified Americans are available so a company can get a
green card for a foreign worker.
Posted at 09:02 AM
Wed - June 6, 2007
3,497 American soldiers dead and 25,830 wounded in Iraq
As of June 5,
3,497
U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began and at least
25,830
have been wounded.
11,622
of the wounded were hurt seriously enough that they could not be returned to
duty within 72 hours. Over
64,575
Iraqi civilians have been killed according to the Iraq Body Count
website.
(The above charts of U.S. military fatalities are based on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site, which gets its numbers from public data provided by the U.S. government. The numbers of wounded are from the Department of Defense web site, as of June 5 at 10 a.m.)
Additional "coalition" deaths include: 149 Britain, 33 Italy, 18 Ukraine, 20 Poland, 13 Bulgaria, 11 Spain, 7 Denmark, 5 El Salvador, 4 Slovakia, 3 Latvia, 2 Thailand, 2 Estonia, 2 Netherlands, 2 Australia, 2 Romania, 1 Czech Republic, 1 Hungary, and 1 Kazakhstan.
The Iraq Body Count web site reports that between 64,776 and 70,934 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the military intervention in Iraq.
According to the Cost of War site, the war in Iraq has currently cost the U.S. in excess of $432,113,000,000.
See also: Iran: Consequences of a War by the independent think tank Oxford Research Group.
Posted at 01:51 AM
Tue - May 29, 2007
3,467 American soldiers dead and 25,549 wounded in Iraq
As of May 29,
3,467
U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began and at least
25,549
have been wounded.
11,476
of the wounded were hurt seriously enough that they could not be returned to
duty within 72 hours. Over
64,575
Iraqi civilians have been killed according to the Iraq Body Count
website.
(The above charts of U.S. military fatalities are based on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site, which gets its numbers from public data provided by the U.S. government. The numbers of wounded are from the Department of Defense web site, as of May 29 at 10 a.m., but may not be up-to-date because of the holiday.)
Additional "coalition" deaths include: 149 Britain, 33 Italy, 18 Ukraine, 20 Poland, 13 Bulgaria, 11 Spain, 7 Denmark, 5 El Salvador, 4 Slovakia, 3 Latvia, 2 Thailand, 2 Estonia, 2 Netherlands, 2 Australia, 2 Romania, 1 Czech Republic, 1 Hungary, and 1 Kazakhstan.
The Iraq Body Count web site reports that between 64,575 and 70,724 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the military intervention in Iraq.
According to the Cost of War site, the war in Iraq has currently cost the U.S. in excess of $430,075,000,000.
See also: Iran: Consequences of a War by the independent think tank Oxford Research Group.
Posted at 10:55 PM
Mon - May 28, 2007
R. J. Reynolds Tobacco company overrules Pittsburgh's smoking ban
After Allegheny County passed a smoking ban in
restaurants and bars last October, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco paid the legal bills for Mitchell's Bar &
Restaurant and the Smithfield Cafe to challenge the local law, which was struck
down by the state Commonwealth Court, which ruled that it was prohibited by the
state's Clean Indoor Air Act (1988), which allows indoor air to be polluted by
tobacco smoke.
Thanks to R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, nonsmokers will
continue to get cancer and die from breathing second-hand smoke in Pittsburgh
restaurants and bars. The best course of action for nonsmokers is to avoid
Mitchell's Bar & Restaurant, the Smithfield Cafe, and other deadly places of
business.
Posted at 12:40 PM
Genesis (pseudo-science) museum opens in Kentucky
A "creationist" museum opens today in Petersburg,
Kentucky. It is based on the absurd premise that
Genesis
is literally true and the earth only 6,000 thousand years old. Scientists know
for a fact that the earth is billions of years old.
The agricultural revolution began 10,000 years
ago when humans domesticated wild grasses. The oldest known fossils of
Homo
sapiens (modern humans) are 160,000 years old.
["Oldest Human Fossils Found"] The common
ancestor of humans and chimpanzees lived 5-7 million years ago. Dinosaurs
became extinct about 65 million years ago, long before humans of any sort
appeared. Fossils of cyanobacteria have been found that are 3.45 billion years
old. ["'Oldest ever' fossils found"] The oldest rocks
on Earth (the Acasta Gneisses in northwestern Canada) are 4.03 billion years
old. [Geologic Time: Age of the Earth] Scientists
estimate the age of the earth at about 4.5 billion years. The oldest stars that
we can readily observe, in the Milky Way's globular clusters, are 12 to 16
billion years old based on the theory of stellar evolution.
Posted at 12:12 PM
Sun - May 27, 2007
U.S. deaths in Iraq increasing at a higher rate
This is the first time that the U.S. has had two
consecutive months with over 100 casualties in Iraq. The U.S. has had over 100
casualties in four of the past eight months.
In 2003, no month had 100 U.S. casualties. In
2004, two did. In 2005, there was one. In 2006, two months had over 100 U.S.
casualties. This year, already, there have been two such months and the first
three months were statistically high as well. The long-term average number of
U.S. casualties per day has gone up from 2.1 to
2.5.
Voters in the last election gave the Democrats control of Congress to bring the war to an end; yet Congress continues to fund the war, with no limitations on Bush's ability to wage it as he wishes.
Voters in the last election gave the Democrats control of Congress to bring the war to an end; yet Congress continues to fund the war, with no limitations on Bush's ability to wage it as he wishes.
Posted at 11:44 AM
Thu - May 10, 2007
It's time for the Democrats to tell Bush his time is up
The Democrats should give Bush money for an
orderly withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and they should give him a deadline,
after which further funds will not be provided. They should tell him there will
be no compromise. He's had three years to do what he wants in Iraq and the
country is far worse off than when he launched his unprovoked invasion. It's
time to tell him he's out of time. Congress has the sole Constitutional
authority over funding and they should use it.
This would not put U.S. troops at any increased
risk. What puts them at risk is when they are ordered to go on the offensive to
put down the civil war in Iraq. Since they would be busy packing their bags,
they wouldn't be doing offensives anymore. So they would be at less
risk.
Bush would, of course, veto such a funding bill, but Congress should just keep sending it back to him, with no changes, or perhaps make it a bit more onerous each time he vetoes it. If he wants any more money at all, he will eventually have to sign it. So there's no point in compromising with him.
The voters put the Democrats in the majority because they are fed up with the Bush fiasco in Iraq; I bet a lot of Republicans are pretty fed up also. If the Democrats pussyfoot around on this issue, they will lose credibility themselves.
Bush would, of course, veto such a funding bill, but Congress should just keep sending it back to him, with no changes, or perhaps make it a bit more onerous each time he vetoes it. If he wants any more money at all, he will eventually have to sign it. So there's no point in compromising with him.
The voters put the Democrats in the majority because they are fed up with the Bush fiasco in Iraq; I bet a lot of Republicans are pretty fed up also. If the Democrats pussyfoot around on this issue, they will lose credibility themselves.
Posted at 10:37 PM
Wed - May 2, 2007
3,351 American soldiers dead and 25,090 wounded in Iraq
As of April 30,
3,351
U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began and at least
25,090
have been wounded.
11,215
of the wounded were hurt seriously enough that they could not be returned to
duty within 72 hours. Over
62,760
Iraqi civilians have been killed according to the Iraq Body Count
website.
(The above charts of U.S. military fatalities are based on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count web site, which gets its numbers from public data provided by the U.S. government. The numbers of wounded are from the Department of Defense web site, as of May 1 at 10 a.m.)
Additional "coalition" deaths include: 147 Britain, 33 Italy, 18 Ukraine, 20 Poland, 13 Bulgaria, 11 Spain, 6 Denmark, 5 El Salvador, 4 Slovakia, 3 Latvia, 2 Thailand, 2 Estonia, 2 Netherlands, 2 Australia, 2 Romania, 1 Hungary, and 1 Kazakhstan.
The Iraq Body Count web site reports that between 62,760 and 68,786 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the military intervention in Iraq.
According to the Cost of War site, the war in Iraq has currently cost the U.S. in excess of $422,113,000,000.
See also: Iran: Consequences of a War by the independent think tank Oxford Research Group.
Posted at 02:34 AM
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