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Προβολή αναρτήσεων από Ιανουάριος, 2012

Why God doesn't have a Ph.D.

1) He had only one major publication. 2) It was in Hebrew. 3) It had no references. 4) It wasn't published in a referreed journal. 5) Some even doubt he wrote it by himself. 6) It may be true that he created the world, but what has he done since then? 7) His cooperative efforts have been quite limited. 8) The scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results. 9) He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human subjects. 10) When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it up by drowning his subjects. 11) When subjects didn't behave as predicted, he deleted them from the sample. 12) Some say he had his son teach the class. 13) He expelled his first two students for learning. 14) He rarely came to class, and he just told students to read the book. 15) Although there were only 10 requirements, most of his students failed his tests. 16) His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountaintop. Original Source

Ανθρώπινο, πολύ ανθρώπινο

"Οι Έλληνες δεν έβλεπαν τους ομηρικούς θεούς σαν κυρίους από πάνω τους, ή τους εαυτούς τους κάτω απ' τους θεούς σαν υπηρέτες, όπως έκαναν οι Εβραίοι. Έβλεπαν μόνο την αντανάκλαση των πιο επιτυχών δειγμάτων της ίδιας τους της κάστας, δηλαδή ένα ιδανικό, και όχι μια αντίθεση προς την ίδια τους τη φύση.'Ένιωθαν συνδεδεμένοι μαζί τους, υπήρχε ένα αμοιβαίο ενδιαφέρον, ένα είδος συμμαχίας. Ο άνθρωπος σκέφτεται τον εαυτό του ως "ευγενή" όταν δίνει στον εαυτό του τέτοιους θεούς, και βάζει τον εαυτό του σε μια σχέση μ' αυτούς όμοια μ' εκείνη που υπάρχει ανάμεσα στην κατώτερη και στην ανώτερη "αριστοκρατία". Εκεί όπου αποτύγχαναν να κυριαρχήσουν οι Ολύμπιοι θεοί, η ελληνική ζωή γινόταν πιο ζοφερή και πιο γεμάτη από αγωνία. Ο χριστιανισμός, από την άλλη μεριά, συνέθλιψε και κατακερμάτισε τον άνθρωπο πλήρως, και τον βύθισε σαν σε παχιά λάσπη. Τότε ευθύς, μέσα στο συναίσθημα της πλήρους πτώσης, αφέθηκε να λάμψει το φως της θεϊκής συμπόνιας, κι έτσι

Artificial Brain

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We’re still non able to produce a program or a golem that can think or act human. But we may be closer than most realize. Here’s an overview of our latest progress. Cognitive robotics. Researchers in this discipline seek to build software that can perform complex, visceral cognitive tasks the way humans and animals do. While nobody has reinforced software capable of doing this in the real world, researchers have created programs that can do it in a lab. Computational intelligence. Computationally intelligent machines recognize patterns and make predictions. Chess programs ar examples  of computational intelligence. Data mining. Data minelaying programs sort through large amounts of data, analyze it, and pick out relevant information. Data excavation programs ar used in fiscal analysis firms, business, law enforcement, and even search engines. Artificial brains. There ar several projects in the works to build an artificial brain. One example, Project Blue Brain, seeks to

Surgical robots to provide open-source platform for medical robotics research

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By Hannah Hickey - In a basement on the University of Washington campus perch seven identical robots. Named Raven, each has two winglike arms that end in tiny claws designed to perform surgery on a simulated patient. Soon the robots will be flown to campuses across the country, where they will provide the first common research platform to develop the future of surgical robotics. Members of the public are invited to view the robots at an  open house  Friday, Jan. 13, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the UW’s Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering. Mary Levin, UW Photography Three of the seven Raven II robots. Each one has a pair of tiny hands that are controlled by a surgeon and can operate on a simulated patient. After a round of final tests, five of the systems will be shipped to medical robotics researchers at Harvard University , Johns Hopkins University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the  University of California , Berkeley, and the University of California,

Japan Gets Robotic Guide Dog

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Production of Sony’s  AIBO , probably the world’s most famous robotic dog, may have been discontinued in 2006, but that didn’t stop  other  Japanese companies to keep on developing similar robots . 12 years after AIBO saw the light of day, Tokyo-based NSK  took the wraps off a more advanced (nameless)  robo-dog [JP]. Unlike AIBO, the NSK robot is designed to actually fulfill a purpose one day: serving as a guide dog for blind people. Work on the robot started in 2005, and the newest model is able to walk at 3.8km/h. Judging by the first videos (see below), the robot is pretty slow, so real animals still have a role for the time being. The “dog” has four joints in each leg and is equipped with a set of cameras and sensors to help humans walk around. As robot blog  Plastic Pals  points out, NSK could equip their robot with GPS, web-connected maps and other bells and whistles to actually turn it into an alternative for real dogs one day. Here’s the robot in action: This vi

The RoboDynamics Luna Robot: We're Getting There, Perverts

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Slowly but surely we’re moving to an era immortalized by  Blade Runner  where robots become our boon companions and electronic friends with benefits, a helpmate and, in the cold reaches of deep space, a tender lover. Take Luna, for example. She is a robot made by  Schultze Works  for a company called  RoboDynamics . If she is real she seems to be able to move in multiple directions and has special hands that can be placed in any position for various activities including the all-important “tray holding” position so she can swirl through the crowd crowing about “Long Island Ice Teas” while the government’s top brass slowly get drunk. No word on availability and the website is sufficiently generic that it could have been put up in a few hours. It seems Luna will be coming soon and she will be available in standard and editions limited to 1,000 pieces. The robot has, according to the Schultze website “(1) completely expandable via expansion ports, (2) fully programmable with open s

The Social Robots Are Coming to the Event Industry

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One of the biggest challenges faced by event professionals today is capturing the attention and respect of  today's more complex, tech-savvy and often quite jaded audiences.  From the White House to Elizabeth Arden, Ford, Motorola, Pfizer and many others, event strategists around the globe are learning to leverage a new generation of iconic, time-appropriate Social Robots. Borne out of research in Technology-to-People Behavioral Psychology, the Social Robots are earning their place alongside Keynote Speakers, hosting Opening Ceremonies, Press Conferences, receptions, and exhibits. Oftentimes, they will perform all of these functions in a single day, making this event tactic uncommonly cost-effective. How Do Social Robots Work? Gone are the days of promotional robots operated by model-airplane radio controls at malls and children's birthday parties. Today's Social Robot is a sophisticated and impressively engineered computer-supported technology. Social Robots are wire