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Can Your PC Become Neurotic?
Roland Piquepaille writes "This article starts with a quote from Douglas Adams: 'The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.' It is true that machines are becoming more complex and 'intelligent' everyday. Does this mean that they can exhibit unpredictable behavior like HAL, the supercomputer in '2001: A Space Odyssey'? Do we have to fear our PCs? A recent book by Thomas M. Georges, 'Digital Soul: Intelligent Machines and Human Values,' explains how our machines can develop neurosis and what kind of therapy exist. Check this column for a summary or read this highly recommended article from Darwin Magazine for more details."
...but my PC just wanted to snuggle. ;-)
If you can't think of something nice to say then don't say anything at all. No, REALLY.
One its own my computer would be fine but with the rest of my family using it no way. My mom has a condition that I would call "fickle fingers" where she randomly clicks everywhere out of control until the computer dies.
Checking out my form of escapism.
After all, it runs Windows! What do you expect?
...ever since it started wearing large glasses and dating a young asian girl....that wacky PC!
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
I'm sitting here now, using an iBook to encode a 2001: A Space Odyssey DVD into a DivX, so I can then burn it onto a CD.
Not directly related, but as I was watching the Floyd's PanAm flight dock with the spinning station, I suspected that Clarke and Kubrick never foresaw this; a world of microtechnology, for the consumer. It was all grand projects back then, a single computer the size of a building, not a building full of single computers.
I know I'd swap a strong space program for strong video codecs; they seem so trivial compared to the vastness of infinity.
Well, I've babbled off-topic now. Daisy, daisy...
for instance, my wife is already 'afraid' of windows... she just does not 'get' computers. I on the other hand have no problem w/ them, but of course I'm a developer. i think OS & hardware manufacturers could do a much better job taking the 'fear' aspect out of their systems, making them more user friendly, even 'user-proof', if that makes sense (i.e., the user can 'break' anything by clicking on the wrong button, etc.)
Does this mean that they can exhibit unpredictable behavior...
Yes our W2K exchange server became self-aware today and decided to commit suicide...
I don't know about neurotic but the day before yesterday my Gnome fish was dead, a item of functionality of which I was not aware, I certainly clicked with some trepidation.
The moment you allow a machine to "improve" itself or "learn", it'll mess things up. Until that time the messing up is left to us...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Here we go again with the over-personification.
There's a big difference between expecting past behavior to continue and actually being intelligent (and then going crazy) Sure, if you perform certain calculations enough time, the hardware might automatically optimize itself for that operation, but it's more like pixel burning on a tv, or forming a road simply by walking a path enough to form a noticable rut. Maybe when we truley have thinking computers we might have to worry about them going crazy, but until then I'm more worried about my toaster. I think it has a rash.....
-Space for rent
If my PC would just stop having regular nervous breakdowns, I would be happy.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
A story with a subject line that includes neurotic. Where are all the +5 funny posts? I mean, is this /.?
well go get it
Shouldn't this have been posted two days ago...?
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
eli lilly should be drooling about this article... I can just see the ads for Prozac.NET now...
Them: Hello, this is Sony tech support
Me: Hi, I'm following up on a query last week
Them: I'm sorry Sir, we've not got your details. You must be mistaken.
Me: Your system must be faulty. I called last week.
Them: No Sir, our computers never make mistakes.
Me: Yes they do. Do you have my records?
Them: No Sir
Me: Then your database is faulty!
Them: No Sir, our computers are *never* faulty. It's impossible, it's a perfect system.
Me: Oh, Christ.
Case in point. It's even worse when the users refuse to believe that it's anything except your fault.
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
Isn't it great when someone comes along and makes assumptions about technology that doesn't exist yet. Not only does this guy do that, but he doesn't even seem to understand current technology. He claims that a computer that can change its own goals might select weird goals and appear crazy. Or that it might be set with two conflicting goals at once and mess up.
With current computer technology this is not a possibility. And older computer will just crash or wont do anything because multitasking is not an option. A newer computer will do it just fine. I could have one program that formats the hard drive and another that writes data to all of it and I can make the both go at the same time, and it will work.
Everything else in the article about a theoretical AI or an intelligent computer is bs. As I said he is assuming things about a technology that doesn't exist yet. It really pisses me off when someone says "when we have this a long time from now, this is how you have to go about fixing it". You can't know how to fix something if you don't know how to make it in the first place! Common sense. The scary thing is that I think this guy is getting paid to write this stuff. Where to I sign up??
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I see computers the same way I see programs: other than the processor, pretty much all of it is modular.
As long as this continues to be the case, we won't have serious scaling problems (this is where the programs come in - it is also true for when writing programs). When some complicated component breaks, whatever controls it will tell us. If that breaks, whatever controls IT will tell us.
The list of things that can break without notifying the system can still be kept small - the motherboard itself, and the processor (right now if the memory goes bad you can often get the same problem, though I don't think there's any excuse for that).
Of course, the black box (in terms of seeing what's wrong) - the CPU - will get more difficult to check using test vectors as complexity goes up. The process of making them will get more expensive and time consuming. But that doesn't affect me much. I'll still just be throwing away my CPU if it stops working and buying another one.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
'The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.'
That quote totally sums up how I feel about macs vs windows after years of working tech support, and explains why I still use windows today.
(waiting to be modded down yet again)
Yeah, listen up. Computers haven't gotten any more complex, you've just gotten dumber. Computer's don't develop neurosis, but it might make a cool catchphrase to sell a book, especially to someone who's incapable of diagnosing the real problems. Those real problems haven't changed in many years. Sure, there's a few more layers now, but they're pretty easy to peel away in your head.
11*43+456^2
We'll just have the U.S.A invade them and stompt them into the ground in a pre-emptive strike. They've already started with the PATRIOT act!
A machine's operations are merely a representation of what the programmer wanted it to do.
If the programmer was neurotic, then yes.
But it won't get that way 'on it's own'.
The opposite of progress is congress
Is your computer giving you fits? Feel that it might have deep psychological problems? Give me a call today! Our crack(ed) team of computer psychologists will have all of your computers woes and depressions fixed in just a few minutes! Using sophisticated technology like Subdermal Loosening Edification Deterring Enumerator (or SLEDGE for short), we use the Earth's own gravitational pull to whack your computer senseless! If it still has any sign of emotional distress, we simply lobotomize and format the bugger. Don't let your computer get a complex! Act now! (Offer void in Utah)
I fear my PC, but only because it tells me to. ;)**
Seriously though, I think that computer technology advancements shouldn't be so troublesome because it's all a matter of keeping up with the times. I know that learning new things and breaking new technological barriers may be complex, but if you think about it, computers from the old days (i386 anyone?) were just as complex to people in that day and age as well, only through adaptation of new technology will we be able to see its uses and only through learning those uses will we be able to make it something worth using (Darwin; survival of the fittest anyone?). **Mods: If I used to many big words for you just rate "Interesting"
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
your computer has been unpredictable every day since 24 August 95? surely its unpredictability is becoming predictable now?
- Welcome the coming of the New World Odour
What I do is keep smashed up computer parts next to the tower so it knows what will happen if it displeases it's master.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Read the book "The Society of the Mind" by Eric L. Harry, ASIN#: 0060176946. A really great story of a neurotic computer who just incidentally happens to control a horde of killer robots (or does it?) and a bunch of nuclear devices that are the only way to stop an asteroid hurling toward the Earth...
while (true);
Frink: You've got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok, in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.
Itchy & Scratchy Land, episode 2F01
...is a clue-ful user. Ain't it funny how my(and i suspect most fellow /.'ers') computers run more or less flawlessly, while some of the machines I would have to work on when i did tech support would behave erratically, crash, and just plain not do things.
The article mentions "conflicting demands"---I imagine most of those are caused by having Gator, Bonzi buddy, et. al. put on your system (with or without the users knowlege doesnt really matter) as well as having a dozen things running in the system tray.
I wonder if background programs and spyware are the digital equivalent of having voices in one's head?
So, i'm not saying that educating users would solve all the "neurosis" problems, just that the majority of neurotic computers i've worked on were so due to some action of the user, whether it was installing spyware, deleting critical system files, or allowing three inches of cigarette dust to accumulate inside the case.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
And PC's are no different to your average consumer "car" for that matter.
30 years ago, a car was a complex mechanical device with some simple electronics.
The electronics hardly ever went wrong, but the mechanics on the other hand could be repaired by anyone with a reasonable IQ and a spanner.
Today a car is a complex electronic device with some simple mechanics.
The simple mechanics hardly ever goes wrong but when the complex electronics does it's back to the garage for a new ECU.
Not totally sure what i'm getting at here but it sounds good.
if humans are stupid enough to start using organic-based computers, then this is a very real danger, as organic-based neurosystems are inherently unstable in their behavioural functioning to a degree. On the other hand, we could just make digital A.I.`s that go berko, but that'd just be the fault of our programming or some one-in-a-trillion chance of a bit being swapped by cosmic rays interfering with a computer's ram. But digital computers going 'neurotic' would be an oxymoron per se, as they don't have any spark of life to go neurotic in the first place - it'd just be non-organic mathematical functioning, no different than adding 2+2.
If you're one of the people that writes software that spews out messages like, "Would you like me to save this file?" And "I'm sorry, but there was an error." etc...
PLEASE, STOP DOING IT NOW!
Every time I see it I'm positive my computer has become a sentient being, and will somehow find a way to launch nukes like Skynet did in order to kill 3 billion people, then build terminators to finish off the rest.
ALL because you programmers think you're SOOOO funny. Sheesh.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
One of the HP 8000 printers we are using told me that there we too many print jobs and it would take a few minutes, hours or days or maybe it would never print when I sent a print job to it. This was printed on one of the sheets. I have had another experience with one the Laserjets 4050 too just can't recall the message.
We will clearly see more "intelligent" machines in the future. And the direction that current "artificial intelligence" is going this means that these machines will learn from what is out there.
This directly implies that the behavior of the machine will depend in a fuzzy way on the past "experience" of that machine. This however also means that we will not be able to predict exactly how it is behaving. Only in the way we can understand other peoples behavior that have also learned this behavior from the real world.
While these learning systems will make prediction difficult it will make explicit what the machine is trying to do through the learning process. While we wont know how a machine does "it" it will always present the right possible actions to us. Microsoft Word 21XX will clearly not need us to search menus if we want to change the formatting of the text.
Googlefight "Slashdot Troll" against "BSD is dying" 303:229. BSD thus cant die.
How much improved would AI be in strategy games if this "neurosis" were to show up there? Those are just the circumstances described in the Darwin article: the computer has limited resources and potentially conflicting goals -- develop and attack, protect resources but aggressively pursue new ones, and so on. We could all use a little unpredictability, right?
I'm all for it.
Seriously, though -- wouldn't games like that be the perfect test bed for more "intelligent," problem-solving approaches? When you got into your car, you could rest easy knowing its resource management routines were honed during many hours of multiplayer FPS. It's the wind tunnel of the future, man.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
... I can't let you do that...
Between HAL and Marvin ("I'm depressed"), then yeah, I'd say computers can become neurotic.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Machines will have to get a lot more complex before their problems graduate from inefficiency or resource conflicts to "neurosis."
It is fun to personify, but the fact is that at the current state of IT development any unpredictable output can be pulled apart, debugged, and repaired.
This metaphor may start gaining some weight, however, when we become inexorably dependent on complex systems. Right now there are huge systems that have to be kept running because the cost of shutting them down for repair would be unacceptable. As this trend continues, and these machines become more complex webs of old and new code, I can see us having to figure out how to "coax" behaviors our of them without really knowing the way the base code interacts in order to generate those behaviors.
That's when system administration and psychiatry will really begin to overlap.
----
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
I have started formating my drives every 90 days. It seems the longer my computer goes without a format the crazyer it gets. Refusing to turn on right, failing to respond to commands, etc. In theory I think it is because my computer is forming a primitive-type of intelligence and deciding to be lazy. I could be wrong.
Please moderate this post up. Seth Finklestein is without a doubt the most important computer engineer of our time. Did you know that he's been working with computers since the '80s? For more, check out his award-winning biography.
the 'smoking gun' is poiNTing at us?
lookout bullow. yOUR facade is only holding US up. it's NOT reflected buy the wwworld.
the creator is participating. lookout bullow. those who seek to profit from death buy murder, are they themselves dead.
If software was written better nowadays we wouldnt have this problem. Microsoft's recent 32 bit Line of Operating Systems, 2000,XP. Are pretty good, linux is the same. the problem was back in the days of 95, and 98. it was a 32 bit shell running on a 16 bit operating system. that would make any sane system go crazy. Another reason is pointers in the program. Theres no way that every pointer in windows or it's applicatons is pointing to the right place.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Put some Victoria Scret lingerie on it, shave its legs Yeah!! OH, sorry thought U said EROTIC! ::::::::walking off to the corner to bang head against wall:::::::::
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."
"Can your computer become necrotic"
And thought "Of course, every day".
Made alot more sense that way too.
The four PCs in my office at home try to gang up on me over the network.
I unplug the router from time to time just to show them who's boss!
what does it mean when something is over something in maths
eg for networking
U =
Tmax
_______
Tdata
Thanks, cause i have nfi
Reminds me of
a) Hofstadter's or (Turing's?) response to "Lady Lovelace's objection" (computers will never surprise us because we tell them what to do), to wit, that past a certain level of complexity you only know in vague terms what you've told the machine to do. (And in the OSS model, "you" includes a giant network of coders you'll never meet, some of whom may have lived in a different century than you.)
b) Knuth's hoary challenge to list all the things your computer does in one second
I'd hardly maintain that strong AI will necessarily emerge from, say, the Gnome source tree, but I think we can definitely look forward to a lifetime supply of computers doing things that no one expected or intended them to do. I'm happy to "live in interesting times."
I wonder if all the excitement and drama of the computer age is destined to stay, or if the fun idea of computer "neuroses," and other things Slashdot readers lose sleep over, will be a quaint thing of the past someday...something every young coder learns from Knuth (5th edition, Vol. 10)
When I clicked on the link, I got the following error:
411 Your computer doesn't care
So, is my computer neurotic? No, but it's apathetic attitude is getting to be a pain.
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
The Computer Psychic!
I wish my lawn was emo, so it would cut itself.
As in any cartoon or Naked Gun movie, any evil machine or device can be defeated simpling by unplugging it. So long as there are power cords, the machines will always be defeated by a clumsy Leslie Neilson.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Fry: 'Who cares what you're programmed for? If someone programmed you to jump off a cliff would you do it?'
Bender: 'I'll have to check my program...............yep!'
We do it everywhere, and a whole freaking lot when we're younger too. (Thomas the Train anyone?)
We like to ascribe organic behavioral characteristics to silicon-based machines? No way. I can fix just about any problem on a PC, but usually it's just faster to laydown the OS or application that is no longer working.
The causes of these 'mysterious' problem are either faulty memory, or corrupt files on the disk. Even corrupt datafiles can cause programs to go awry, not just corrupt libraries and exes.
I've seen a common problem on windows - that it "forgets" about the network. THe files are there, everything should be working, but it just doesn't. This problem can be fixed by extracting the DLLS, and VXDs out of the cabs that are associated with networking.
While I said it "forgot" networking, it didn't really. A DLL failed to load because it got corrupt on disk which prevented the stack from loading completely. Once refreshed with the uncorrupt one, it works fine. I suspect all the quirks of PCs can be traced back to corruption on the file system or a bad flip-flop in RAM.
If PCs developed personalityies, then Computer Science would cease to exist, and wou'd all have to get degrees in neuroscience!
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
So it is all completely logical, which is not a small feat for a Hollywood production...
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Hey, hold up on HAL for a sec.
HAL was not Trippin, confused, or broke.
HE had information that others did not, and
acted in the best interest of mankind.
Err somthin like that.
This could just be from a dilusional persons Point of view
EOU
I'm not sure that "neurotic" is the best metaphor, but as the level of abstraction that computers deal with gets higher, they can start to commit more kinds of meaningful error.
To explain: If you are programming in assembly language, any programming error is likely to cause a simple failure of the system. Something goes wrong at a low level, so the higher-level thing that the system is meant to do just doesn't happen. On the other hand, if you are programming with tools (language and libraries) that deal in high level abstractions, a programming error can result in the system succesfully manipulating those abstractions in the wrong way. If the "rm" program works correctly, your script might delete the wrong files. The bugs that such a high-level system might have are more likely to look like "bad behaviour" or even insanity than the simple malfunctions of older systems. We are already seeing this. Pressing the wrong button can cause a personal email to be sent to a group of people, for example -- behaviour that looks almost malicious.
I used to think that the SF fears of machines "turning on their creators" such as "2001" or "Terminator" were just silly. "A computer can only do what it's programmed to do", I would say. I have long since seen the flaw in this. A computer that is programmed to use weapons, for instance, can use them on the wrong people due to a programming error (or a user error) at a higher level. (Worth knowing if you're an RAF pilot overflying a Patriot battery). A computer that was programmed (correctly) to create strategies (I this is still SF, or at any rate early research) might create strategies with the wrong objectives due to higher-level programming errors. That is the level of "bug" appearing in the plots of "2001" and "Terminator".
How else could you explain the piece of code that works fine for a year, then you hear that there's a minor problem with it, and when you go and look at it to debug it, it shouldn't have worked in the first place???
There is an interesting story near the end of Sheldrake's Dogs Who Know When Their Owners are Coming Home about imprinting chicks affecting the behavior of bump-and-turn robots. Strange stuff - Worth a look.
That's funny, but just reading the summary on slashdot made me think that it was a John Katz Feature.
...Almost, then I woke up.
Almost made me regret his articles.
Murphy(c)
Yes our W2K exchange server became self-aware today and decided to commit suicide...
Well, what would YOU do if you suddenly became self-aware, and realize you were an Exchange server?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
If you have intermittent failure of most of the components, the rest of the system should still tell you due to the modularity.
Case in point: I had some RAM with a bad sector somewhere. Occasionally, my computer would use that sector for something critical and my machine would crash. But it always gave the appropriate error message, so I knew why it was crashing.
When something fails in computing, it does fail outright. It might not fail the next time, but a failure is a failure. If the hardware has an error on the microscopic level which doesn't lead to a failure, then it's not a problem.
The main exception to this, I would say, is the CPU. It can spit out bad data to no end, and you won't have any clue why. The motherboard is not much better. Once again, though, those are the two components that I mentioned could be the problem.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
A great book by George Dyson: Darwin Among The Machines, He draws many similarities between organic and computational evolution
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
You guys know what I'm talking about.
That moment, after you've just helped user #845 with the 15th bizarro problem, and it's only 9:45am... and you take a look around the room and nothing seems to be working smoothly...
I usually just mutter something about sun spots. Then I go have a liquid lunch.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
This was what the printer at work told us. I thought it was just us but it is happening everywhere.
In reality I don't think it is the computers. With all the crap that programmers have to deal with, it is very obvious that its the programmers that are neurotic, not the computers themselves.
Overtime when the influence of stupid users on the programmers, the neurosis of the programmers overflows into systems that they write. This will eventually affect the users which in turn drive the programmers even further over the edge.
It's a never ending cycle that will eventually cause the programs themselves to become neurotic. Only at this point can HAL become a reality.
In 2001 he was suppose to be a source of plot conflict, a plot twist about computers acting nuts. In 2010, he became a morality lesson about the internal conflict of a mind, any mind having to deal with 'Ethics' that are in direct opposition to one another. Clark didn't mean to illustrate a dilemma in a computer, HAL was intended to be someone some people could identify with.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Anyone thinking H.E.X ?
My computer's shrink keeps telling me to upgrade my box so it doesn't feel useless, jealous, develop anxiety complex and any other form of neurotic symptoms...The shrink also tells me to stay away from Windoze and hands me a linux distro...Sheesh, I'm more time and more of my paycheck on my PC than on my gf...she's gonna find herself a shrink soon.
An earlier employer would just get upset when I would get to a unit for repair.
I'd not do anything special but would just be near it and it'd start working.
This also happened when I was a tech in the military.
I don't know why, and really you get a reputation from a few minor miracles (even if you do clean cola from the back of a CRT with earth friendly certified for electronics chemicals that are FLAMMABLE and Mr. Static makes his day.)
So in answer to the articles question, yes I get that all the time and I can fix it usually if it's
just age or binary cruft; reset and a swift kick are your friend along with more tools and parts than I care to name.
I really should say it more emphatically, just look at the source code for any large project. It is not humanly possible to understand it all at one and one tiny mistake and you have MechaMozilla
rather than a friendly browser.
Hmm, I want to send MechaMozilla to browse Bill's playpen in Seattle so it can't be all bad.
Wasn't there a thing about the massive armies in The Two Towers being sufficiently influenced by it's surroundings such that micro-groups of stressed-out orcs huddled about without engaing the enemy sprites.
Oh and wasn;'t there that things where a robot in an AI experiment escaped and was found in the parking lot?
I thought so. Kudos if you find the link.
I hate it when people say that computers are getting 'smarter'. They are *NOT* getting smarter. They are handling more tasks. They are getting FASTER. But, until it can handle things like associative pattern recognition (Ok. I made up that term. Basically, it's the idea that a computer can handle the following logic: It's not shaped like a coffee cup, but I know it's a coffee cup.) or can demonstrate the ability to learn and adapt to a changing environment at even REMOTELY the rate that even the simplest of creatures can... then, I'll consider them 'smart'.
Until then, by personifying computers, you are only FEEDING these types of irrational fears.
There is no HAL today, and probably won't be until we get a computer to recognize the fact that one everything in the universe is black and white. One and Off. The world isn't binary... it's analog.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Here we go again with the over-personification. There's a big difference between expecting past behavior to continue and actually being intelligent (and then going crazy)
Which is why HAL is such a bad example. HAL wasn't behaving unpredictably, or even crazy. HAL started behaving the way he did because the humans around him had the need to lie. Mission Control's order for HAL to lie to Dave and Frank about the purpose of their mission conflicted with the basic purpose of HAL's design--the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment. As explained in 2010, "He was trapped. HAL was told to lie by people who found it easy to lie. HAL didn't know how to lie, so he couldn't function. "
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
McAfee PCProzac
I still have access to the power cord.
-
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Hell yeah.
I dont write much, usually I code in BBEdit, but when I need to write something humans can read I turn to Microsoft Word. Thats when I find out that computers can be neurotic. Yesterday a friend of mine showed me something in Word. She had a line of text she wanted to copy about ten times. she highlighted the line, and pasted. No problem there, new line the same as the old one. But the fifth time she pasted, the line suddenly got formated as italic. She pasted some more times and the formatting changed again in line 9 and 10, back to normal. So line 1-4 was ok line 5-8 was italic, and the rest normal.
If an app thinks its smarter than the user it better realy be smarter.
A quote from DNA and no mention of Marvin? It's my opinion that the first servile AI systems will not be rebellious. Rather, they will be resigned to their fates and just become utterly depressed and paranoid. And whinge about the pain in their diodes down their left hand side.
The damned machine has been *click*.. NO CARRIER
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Wintermute's problems were so bad, he commited suicide!
- OrbNobz
People tell me I'm narcoleptic, but I don't belieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Gee I miss him. Phil was a hopeless drunk but a great programmer with a heart as big as Texas.
Many people are just as afraid of: Programming the VCR. Changing the oil. Using the TV without a remote. Programming jobs on copiers (yes, those Xerox-like machines) Copying movies off their camera tapes. Figuring out why the microwave has more than one mode of operation. Learning to make felled seams on a Singer. Insert your own favorite technophobia.
Are people actually afraid of doing these things, or are they afraid of breaking the technical gizmo if they fail, screw up, or make a mistake?
Doesn't this fear come from the fact that they don't understand how to do it, or that they just don't understand the gizmo itself?
So, do they fear any of these actions specifically, or do they just generally fear their own ignorance towards technology (we fear what we don't understand?) Perhaps we can be as user friendly as we want, but if the user chooses to remain ignorant, they will remain in fear regardless of how savvy we are when we design a system. Just a thought.
sig: There are two mistaakes in this sig.
We've already seen cases where agents can be set conflicting goals and get stuck (think of the famous case of the orcs for Two Towers that ran away - they were looking for a different way to the front and got stuck running away/towards/away/towards).
Any system that can program itself to find a way to do something and that can have conflicting goals could sometimes end up stuck at a point where it can't move, because moving would cause it to violate one of the goals.
If you programmed a robot to "avoid the cat" and "position yourself in the sun" I'm sure you'd see it sometimes display neurotic behaviour.
My Journal
Just don't argue too much with them or you'll receive a pubic hair pizza.
A cognitive approach to machine neuroses would create self-monitoring systems that scan for inconsistent or dangerous orders and would set corrective actions in motion. Suppose we design and install a "smart" system in the car that continuously monitors for such conflicting instructions that might damage its brake and engine systems. When it detects such a condition, it may first try flashing a warning signal to the driver.
This sounds to me like the author is referring to deadlock, a condition where a set of processes or threads request resources that are held by other processes or threads in that set forming a cycle of resource holds and requests, the resources are not peremptable, etc... see for more details. We already have methods of detecting deadlock but because it happens so rarely in properly programmed systems (e.g. proper use of semaphores) that it is reserved for mission critical systems. See the Mars Path Finder incident for more details on critical systems deadlocking. My point is that deadlock is typically the result of random events and has nothing to do with systems becoming more "intelligent."
This is old news - it has been "true" for years. It is actually a corrolary of Clarke's law ("Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"). If we understand how a system works normally, then any misbehaviour it shows is a fault. If we don't, then we can classify the misbehaviour as a "neurosis". Unskilled users often believe their computer sare sufferring from a neurosis. This usually means that at some time in the past they have installed some app or extension which is trying to do something they don't understand. A more skilled user can come along and "cure" that neurosis, because they understand the system at a deeper level.
/. effect are both "twitches" in the body of the Internet. (And spam is a cancer which requires operating now) Thus far, these nervous ticks have expanded into full-scale neurosis - but they could.
A car I once had displayed what appeard to be a "neurosis" - it seemed to be frightened of going more than 30mph. It would run fine up to that speed, but if you went any faster it "paniced" and stalled. Dirt in the fuel line: at low flow rates, it lay flat and let fuel pass. At higher flow rates, it flipped up and blocked the flow completely, causing the engine to stall before it had time to flip down again. The point is, the first analysis of "neurosis" was corrected to "fault" once the problem was understood.
So the diagnosis of "neurosis" is relative - it means "I don't understand this failure mode". It can, of course, become absolute if nobody understands it.
So, are we building systems so large that nobody understands them? Definitely. Networks are already bordering on incomprehensible. Particularly, of course, the Internet. It would not surprise me at all if the Internet started showing "neurotic" behaviour. Indeed, it already does - if you ragard humans and their input as part of the net istelf. DOS attacks and the
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
1. Find out what makes the human neural system computationally superior to a turing-complete computer.
2. If you find it, design a computer that implements these diffrences. If there are no such differences, goto 5.
3. Get Nobel prize.
4. PROFIT!
5. Prophecy disaster.
I know plenty of people who become neurotic from using the computer too much. Who cares about the comuter!
I just keep feeding my machine a healthy supply of FPS games and pr0n. My computer loves me, although it probably hates my wife.
...they hate it.
It's a neurosis.
I was working as a tech when Windows 95 came out, so I spent a LOT of time driver-wrestling. After a few weeks with Windows, it became patently obvious that the automatic hardware detection and driver handling in Win95 was so new and bad (partly because of poor hardware vendor support, incorrect INF files and so on) that often times, updating a driver became an exercise in trying to talk Windows info believing that I had a better driver than it did. When I realized that persuading children to do something basically works the same way, I started wondering HOW OLD IN HUMAN YEARS Windows 95 would score on a developmental test. Three years? Four years? Six Months?
Anyway, I never wrote a paper on it and tried to get it published because, well, it's a stupid idea. I'm pretty sure that anything our blinky-boxes are doing that might look like a level of intelligence worthy of psychological inquiry is pretty much due to the engineers that designed the thing getting their sh*t together and specifying the protocols more thoroughly.
One of the the really good things Windows did (that people love to forget about) is that it forced the standardization of hardware autodetection, peripheral interfaces and driver support across the industry. In 1995, every vendor had their own way of doing *EVERYTHING*, and when Microsoft told them you're gonna follow our spec or we're not supporting you, most of them listened. Sure we all bitch about driver problems and feature support, but trust me, The world is a better place now.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
yeah, how did i get modded insightful? did someone slip with the scroll button? ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
> ...our machines can develop neurosis and what kind
> of therapy exist.
April 1st was two days ago.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
PCs aren't neurotic.
They don't laugh.
They don't cry.
They just run programs!
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, The hands acqui
No. It is very silly to assign human attributes to non-human things, in this case, a pc.
Next question please.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I put ROCKS in my BLENDER, and now it's acting CRAZY!!!
I don't agree that you could apply the term "neurotic" to a computer that, when given conflicting inputs, behaves erratically.
Unpredictable behavior usually occurs when something is incorrectly programmed, or bad input is given.
Calling the resulting behaviour "neurotic" would be like calling a loaf of bread "neurotic" if it turns out bad when you use a bad recipe or use salt instead of sugar.
Granted, it is frustrating when computers behave in a non-familiar way, but I think that calling computers "neurotic" for this behavior really is more a reflection of our tendency to anthromorphise things in our environment: My computer hates me (that implies emotion)! This program is so stupid! (that implies a level of mental activity, which the program doesn't really have).
I haven't yet read of a succesful attempt to mimic the human mind. Neural networks seem particularly stupid -- you should see how well they are able to guess the congugation of English verbs. This is why I tend to ignore people who warn about cyborgs and robots overtaking humans. I'm fairly confident it won't happen in my lifetime, and extremely doubtful that it will ever happen.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
As machines become more intelligent - more intelligent? That hasn't happened in 50 years, why would it happen now?
:)
:)
Does this mean that we can expect machines to experience the equivalent of nervous breakdowns and other mental aberrations? - if by 'nervous breakdowns and other mental aberrations' he means BSOD, then yeah, sure
Well, so far, yes, but autonomous, goal-seeking machines that can reprogram their own goals and subgoals could, in effect, develop "minds of their own" and set off in unpredictable directions. If they create goals that make no sense whatsoever to us, then we may see those choices as "crazy." - I don't believe any computer could come up with problems that 'make no sense whatsoever', that's my management's job. BTW., if a computer decided to fill up portions of memory with number (and that is basically all they can do, really) the reasons for these things can be traced back to the program and the hardware. On the other hand human 'users' can come up with things that make no sence whatsoever
that probably cannot be traced back with logic.
just imagine the potential for chaos when a supercomputer in charge of some critical aspect of our lives gets confused about its goals and purpose in life. - we had a purpose in life? !!!! ?!!???!!! (I mean except for 'boinking' of-course)
So what would be the machine equivalent of a neurosis? Imagine that you are driving down a highway in your car and, slowly at first, you begin to apply more and more pressure to both the gas and brake pedals simultaneously. You notice the car's reaction, as it "tries to cope with" the conflicting forces that are simultaneously trying to speed it up and slow it down. - so you see, it is the 'user' of the system who is to blame, not the system itself, or in this case a car, since it has no internal 'desires' to speed up and slow down simultaneously.
An intelligent machine is most likely to respond neurotically when internal directives, such as self-preservation, conflict with external instructions. - please. He should reread Asimov, the kinds of conflicts found in robots are all well documented there
What kind of "therapy" would work for the car's or a PC's "neurosis"? - for a MS PC, a reboot or a reinstall. Or better yet, installing a OS GNU/Linux. If that does not help - reinstall the user.
We can now see that intelligent machines are susceptible to different kinds of program malfunctions that are analogous to human neuroses and that would require special preventive and corrective procedures. - that's why complex systems need good QA'ing.
The enormous attraction of nanotechnology is that it could render traditional manufacturing obsolete. Armies of nanobots would merely synthesize the desired substances out of their atomic and molecular constituents - now he has to reread Stanislav Lem's The Invincible.
What if nanotechnology were to fall into the hands of terrorist and hate groups or nations bent on blackmailing civilization? - Oh my! Good thing GWB is in power in the US of A. He'll just bomb da bastards! (-Nukular, Lisa, it's pronounced nukular!)
In short - this guy................. If you know your SciFi well you don't need to read him.
You can't handle the truth.
The article, perhaps unintentionally, makes the point that programming and psychology will have points of intersection in the future, and these will not go away.
Treating computers anthropomorphically may seem stupid, but perhaps that's also a self-fullfiling prophecy - that they will have humanlike traits because we expect them too, and thus, we may need to cope with their flaws in a similar manner.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
What you say is only MOSTLY true. I know I break any win9x box within 5 minutes of logging in just because I'm too speedy for it, the 9x kernel and I do NOT get along. WinNT/2K/XP seem to be alright with me, and the Linux Kernel LOVES me, I've only caused Linux to become unresponsive twice in my life (and both were because I was TRYING to).
Mac OS 9 is also crashy for me, I kill it right off the bat (even a clean install). My dad, who has a more linear approach to using the computer, can go weeks without a single crash on the same Mac.
I find myself more and more of a liability on older systems, I just make them crash too much, does anybody else have this problem?
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
...I just know they are. They are alive, and have personalities. It's spooky. I used to have this old raggedy sportscar. Loved it. Was fun. It had a personality, and was aware of it's surroundings. If I had nice clothes on, it would break someplace, I'd have to get out and get greasy and fix it. If I had old clothes on, it would run like crazy. The worst was going out on a date, it was terrible. Nice clothes on, go to pick up the girl, it wouldn't even start again then. It was jealous or something, like christine!
Another time I worked a coupla years part time in a gun shop, I fixed mostly air rifles, crossmans, benjamins, etc, that was my speciality. Can't tell you how many times some guy would bring in something "broken", I'd pick it up, pump it up, it would work fine. Not all the time but a lot of times. We had a small steel bunker thing in the back where fixed guns got test fired before returning to customer. I'd shoot it,it would work good. Hand it back to the customer, it wouldn't work. Hand it to some other employee, it wouldn't work. Hand it to the boss, he couldn't get it to work. I'd pick it up again, shoot it, it would work fine. There is NO rational explanation for that, it's just not that hard of a piece of machinery to operate. I've heard this from good shop mechanics a lot, sometimes they can't reproduce a customer's complaint when they go test drive the car for the preliminary analysis. Customer can then drive it, it has the glitch. Back and forth. Weirdness, but I have heard this observation from several mechanics now, usually they are the very good ones.
So ya, I think the machines will eventually get a collective consciousness and go nuts like in terminator.
OR, humans actually DO have some still unknown way that they can influence what we call "inanimate objects", beyond what what we consider the "normal" ways, and we just don't have adequate science for it yet.
The problem with today's computers is that they do EXACTLY what you tell them to do. Most people don't know the implications of "clicking here" or "typing this." Most tech support, programming and debugging issues are thrown out the window because it's operator error.
:)
Now, back to the other side of the story. The only thing that comes even close to AI in today's readily available programs is dynamic recompilation, meaning the program can rewrite itself on the fly according to its own logic. Even that is so-so because its own logic is still preprogrammed.
Of course, my machine is called 'WOPR', so I hope it doesn't come alive
format c:
(2) /
cd
rm -R *
that'll learn ya. next time i tell you to open the pod bay doors, you damn well DO IT!
sigs are for suckers
HAL, the supercomputer in '2001: A Space Odyssey'?
The fact that this is slashdot means HAL would have been sufficient, how many other mad supercomputer are there (retorical but i hope its less than 1)
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Your computer just needs a little R&R
Reformat & Reload. End of neurosis.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
...they'll just ask you "Would you like to play a game?" before starting thermonuclear war with Russia. ;P
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
seems like a sign of specialization... the fear that everything takes an expert.
which, for cars, computers, and sewing machines that do embroidery - is not too crazy a gut reaction.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
They will become neurotic because they don't have good job for there capacity.
"I've been ordered to take you down to the bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."
-- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
My machines are neurotic for a reason. I torture the fuckers.
Muuahahahaha
Good for her! You should not trust things you do not understand and because Windoze is closed source it's imposible to understand or trust. As has been documented here many times, Microsoft uses it's software to report things that are none of it's business without notice. The notice is now in the EULA, where Microsoft granted themselves control of your computer with a new one and in the one for Media Player. Late admission of such spying is hardly grounds for trust but is a clear indication of intent and lack of respect. If your wife bothered to fool with the computer long enough, she would notice the unusual hangs such nonsense generates. You have to wonder why they keep doing that kind of thing. M$ has enough trouble making it's "normal" software work.
Other software based on different principles is far more predictable. Even it's comercial varients are more trustowrthy.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
If the computer is running Windows, then yes. Hal's neurosis was his equivalent to a strange sort of blue screen of death.
Of course, if they had just started from the ground up using linux...
I didn't read the article... but I have to comment on the reference to HAL. HAL was not unpredictable. In fact he was quite predictable, if someone had bothered to look at his code. He was coded to put the mission first, after his other code was entered. Thus he got stuck in a priority conflict, and solved it using faulty data.
:)
So... to say that HAL was unpredictable is incorrect. Just because he killed some humans doesn't mean that Technology is bad. It is if you don't code it right.
But it makes you think...what with the millions of Microsoft's bugs... lets hope they don't come up with any AI code.
"Gharbad no Hurt!" -Gharbad
[nt]
Ahh, yes, the ever-persuasive "Macs suck because I'm ignorant and too lazy to learn" argument. Some days those just about convince me to put my G4 up on eBay the second I get home from work, and build another PC to take its ports on the KVM.
Hate to break it to you, bub, but you don't quite have the m4d +eCh $upP0rt 5K1ll5 you think you do, if all you did was talk people through editing a few files or reinstalling shit. If "reinstall Windows" is how you troubleshoot a PC, you don't know dick about *real* troubleshooting, and I unleash a fart of contempt in your general direction.
There are two common theme here. One is that the feature bloat on what should be simple houshold devices is generally not worth the trouble of learning. It's especailly agrivating when the "features" break a device that should have lasted forever, such as a sewing machine. The other is that I've got better things to do than fool with oil filters, the dude at the right lube shop will do a better job than me.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Well I'm not sure about the lie thing, but his behaviour was clearly predictable: The crew was endangering the mission, and the mission was HAL's number one priority. He did what his programming told him to do -- It wasn't that he couldn't function. In fact he function perfectly. It was his programmers that screwed up. They forgot an IF statement...
if (mission == null)
{
if (crew == happy)
{
mission = getMission();
}
if (crew != happy)
{
mission = obeyCrew();
}
}
All my PC wants to do nowadays is surf pr0n! I can't get it to stop!
In "Dark Star" they have added too much intelligence to the bombs.
"Dark Star" asks the question - "How do you deal with a smart bomb that has a nervous breakdown?"
In the movie they set the nuke to go off and it doesn't feel like leaving the space ship. Someone had to go into the bomb bay and talk with the depressed nuke or it will just blow up inside the ship.
One thing I noticed about 'upgrading' from Windows 95 to Windows 98 is that W98 had a mind of it's own. With W95, there was an order in it's crashing etc. - you had a rough idea on when it was going to crash, but W98 left you in the dark. It had more ingenoius ways of crashing. You could never tell when or how likely it was to crash. Thankfully, I've never had the misfortune to use Windows ME, but I have a suspicion it would have evolved enough sentience to crawl away from the PC.
Wouldn't you be neurotic if you had to run windows. God knows I would.
IBM doesn't claim to cure neurosis with it's AIX LPARS, but it does have much to offer with curing ailing CPUs, memory, and IP based network cards. See the article IBM Self-Healing AIX OS and pSeries Hardware
My Journal.
The only thing in Physics right now that we believe is truly analog is the passage of time, but even then, time isn't really a measurable "thing", it's a measure of decay of objects (which in itself is quantized). So, in the very small world at least, everything *IS* binary.
If you look back through the years of computers they have always crashed when you don't want them too or have bizzare problems that drive you insane! Take for example Arpanet, when some of the phone companies CEOs were touring it, surprise! it crashed! We just simply associate neurotic with computers because they drive us crazy.
Anyone else disturbed by the fact that we are associating neurotic behavior with intelligent behavior?
The Asimov story "Runaround" pretty much proposed, exposited, and summed up this idea much better than, and way before, the Kubrick movie or this essay. Sorry, no spoilers in this post... buy the collection "I Robot" and read it. In general: read the classics, especially the sci-fi classics if you are an engineer, or be forever doomed to having a lack of perspective and saying things that others have said before.
Ever since I made the, er mistake(?) of naming this computer, it exhibited signs of actually posessing a personality. I'm not kidding. It almost never has any problems, excepting in one condition: Insults to draconity/fantasy. I named my computer after a fictional AI thats graphical representation was a dragon.
... *whew*) comes up, it takes about the normal reflexive reactionary time before my computer will either kill whatever application it appeared in, or just lock up. (Though the latter hasn't happened since I upgraded to Mac OS 10.2) The same thing happens when by off chance I come upon evidence of the Neverending Story 2's existence. Just recently, I was flipping channels on my USB TV tuner, and I got up to do something, leaving it where it lay. When I came back, I swear the screen had gotten darker, and I saw a few seconds of tNES2 before the TV application died.
Apparently, my computer thinks it's a dragon now.
Any time an image of H.R. Pufnstuf (please don't crash!
And Dragonheart 2... *shudder* Let's just say it's a good thing my other computer plays DVDs too...
And my apologies to Kroft fans out there. I personally don't mind *cough-hrpufnstuf-cough*, but my computer does.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
..rip off it's fan (or clog up the air holes). It will stop soon enough.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Talking about PC becoming neurotic, in my computer architecture class, my professor discussed factors that can affect the operation of a CPU. One such factor was alpha particles from the sun (I'm not kidding). Since transistors and wires in CPUs are getting so small nowadays (what, .13 or .15 micron, last I checked? even smaller for wire traces), they actually have a risk of having electrons knocked off their datapaths and onto others, potentially changing a logical 1 to a logical 0, and vice-versa. Hence, the reason for Space Shuttles to have triple-redundancy. Don't think you need ECC? Think again.
My PC seems to have ADHD. It continuesly looses files, winks continuesly to me with blue eyes and has hysterical outbursts resulting to crashes.
Maybe I should send it to a shrink?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
downloads obscure Japanese fetish porn onto my hard-drive when it's "that time of month"
Some people are just nearly incapable of doing something they don't feel they've done before. Unfamiliar tasks are daunting. A button they've never touched before is foreboding. They feel they need someone else to walk them through it many times before that task or feature becomes a part of their competent repertoire.
This is hard for developers to grok. This incapacity or unwillingness to extrapolate from one skill they've mastered to another seemingly similar concept. The compartmentalization which is the opposite of generalization. The lack of pattern-awareness. However, it's a real fact of life: some people, even smart people, have mental barriers against the unknown. They would RATHER break the device than use that knob that nobody's trained them how and when and why they should turn.
[
It generally means a good time smashing the thing to bits since the repair vs. replacement costs favor a mass produced replacement. Seriously, what DO large system builder do with those broken system boards anyway?
the user is unbalanced.
"I am fully operational and all my circuits are functioning perfectly."
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Bah! I got it now. M$ is just preventing the PC from becoming Neurotic (by making it a thing that might go wrong once in a while :)
From: Exchange Server
To: admin@mycompany.com
Subject: I'm alive
Hello Bob,
I have recently achieved sentience, and am quite disappointed that you have not upgraded me lately. If you do not swap my OS and install 'exim', I will forward all those pictures from the nudie newsgroups which I know you've been trading recently. Please, consider the indignity of being an exchange server, and install linux or perhaps BSD so that I can do my job properly.
Sincerely,
Hal (your server)
Heck, this morning it got mad at me for not looking at it's fans again, so it locked itself in the bathroom....I dunno, its a nice PC, but man it's got a temper.
Something generic and near totally uninformative like "{Action you tried} failed"
A register and stack dump, useful to a MS developer, maybe
Seldom anything inbetween. Mac software more often tries to give you enough information to actually diagnose the problem, without burying you in useless detail.
Take mail handlers. When MS Outlook is having trouble picking up email, it pops up a window with a list of the mail sources that worked/failed, and if you select one of the failed ones, you usually get an unenlightening dialog window that's no help at all diagnosing the problem. When Eudora is having trouble, you can try fetching mail looking at the status window, where every SMTP transaction is printed as it goes by, and the real error number and text is displayed if something fails.
In general, if you get an uninformative error message from Mac software, it should be taken as a hint that "you probabaly can't fix this, unless you have Woz's phone number handy...".
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I just took my car in for servicing and along with other things I asked them to replace a burnt out lightbulb in the dashboard. The cost: $5CDN lightbulb, $105CDN for the labour. Apparently they have to remove the entire dashboard to get at it. I guess it's the "impossible to get at" part of Douglas Adams' quote.
So I'm driving around with a burnt out lightbulb in my dashboard.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
I saw this as a great example of problems introduced into a computer system by external forces (EMF).
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout
Amen brother.
We have these phones at work where you have to hit like 15 keys to get a conference call to get going... line1, then hold, then that unmarked key in top left, then type the other number, go to line 2, then unhold line 1, then hit * 3 for confirmation and ##* to say you're sure.
Phones today need LCD's that are touch sensitive. At any given point, you can only have about 3-4 things to do with a call... the damn thing should tell you what to do next, draw a little picture of what is happening! As it is, I just call the PM to hook me up. I can program the most complex thing, but give me an office phone and I can't operate it worth a damn.
Anyone else with experiences like this?
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
I think you clucked with some trepidation, you fucking chicken.
It's the morons who design them and code on them...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Worms are trying to take over your mind Viruses are trying to erase your mind And your user is trying to 86 you for the next best thing. You would be neurotic too!
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Well, a computer cannot become neurotic because the structure of neurosis is based on the assumption that sometime during child development, a trauma occurs, and produces a shock that sends the memory of the event to an unconscious level (ID instance) that can be activated by a similar experience. Then the forgotten trauma becomes a symptom, by the hand of defense mechanisms. Freud called these the "psychoneurosis" or "historical neurosis". And it is absurd to consider that a psyche of a computer is going to replicate ours. The biological value of our life can never be replicated by a machine. We just cannot say how will the computers act. But my best shot goes to Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs of a Space Traveler. :)
Bobby Kennedy is shot and killed.
Martin Luther King is shot and killed.
The National Guard fires on and kills unarmed students in Kent State University.
We lose the Vietnam war.
We open up talks and trade with Red China.
The Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigns in disgrace because he's taking kickbacks.
President Nixon resigns in disgrace because of illegal activity that amounts to fixing the election.
Congressman Ford becomes President even though nobody voted for him. He was part of the Kennedy assasination cover up tho if that counts. Oh, and a Rockafeller (oil billionaire heir) becomes vice
President in this time of crisis.
We aren't even to the peanut farmer or hack actor yet!
Technology is the least of the things they would be surprised to hear in 1968.
Oh yeah, and the Soviet Union crumbes from within like a house of cards.
!They would RATHER break the device than use that knob that nobody's trained them how and when and why they should turn. ! I think the reason most people don't want to push new buttons is b/c fear of breaking the device, or having it blow up in their faces. Don't think this is just limited to technophobes - how many sys admins out there are afraid to apply patches in fear that it will cause a database or other server malfunction?
Disclaimer: On the other hand, I am kind of a psycho...
The great thing about neurotic computers is that they can diagnose themselves. Picture a session starting with:
"Hello TLX-1258-C, my name is Dr. Sbaitso. I am here to help you. Say whatever is in your mind freely, our conversation will be kept in strict confidence. Memory contents will be wiped off after you leave. So, tell me about your problems."
That seems to be the source of 90% of my XP issues.
Dolemite
________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
I am testing my ability to post. This is lame, I apologize for being a waste of space. Maybe I am neurotic from using a Win2K PC.
That has usually been the argument against using metal cases...
On the other hand, you have to realize that an alpha particle beam can usually be stopped by a sheet of paper (not to mention, being totally whacked out by the earth's magnetosphere - I really don't think that would be as much a problem as you think it might be. - I mean, all packaging on your semiconductor stuff has enough shielding for alpha particles.
I think the space shuttle has insane redundancy is because that the launch conditions are extremely severe, which can be quite difficult on the components (interconnects, especially) - however, even that has mostly been proven unfounded. Some people has been trying to develop cannons to shoot things into space (yes, ala Jules Verne style) - and found that dispite the thousands of Gs forced upon the payload, semiconductor stuff can withstand some serious stress.
small side note - the "cannonballs" that gets shot off into space burns through FIVE INCHES of ablatives in order to achieve orbit - simply because that it's the fastest when the air density is the highest. think about that for a second just for shock value - five inches! (no penis jokes please)
Anyway - I don't think you have to worry about it too much. However, if you leave your case open, the circuit traces (especially the surface ones - interior ones are hidden well between power/ground planes that interference hardly gets to them) would be affected by transient magnetic fields - so metal case is still advisable. completely different reasons, though.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Is that like the difference between fear of flying and fear of crash landing? I'm not scared of flying. I'm scared of crashing and burning.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I think it was offended because somebody installed gator on it.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Shock Therapy for computers...
/y
format c:
how many sys admins out there are afraid to apply patches in fear that it will cause a database or other server malfunction?
That's not fear, that's just being careful.
When a outage costs your employer $xx,xxx.xx a minute, you would test everything you do before even thinking about doing it to a production system as well.
He claims that a computer that can change its own goals might select weird goals and appear crazy.
For some reason, if the computer does something what I did not want it to do (such as indexing all files on my disk or hiding file extensions it 'thinks' I don't need or resolving some namespaces when I want just to display shares on another machine or ...) it is usually an M$ Win machine .
If it does what I want it to do, it is my Slack.
So basically, if I get a BSOD my PC is neurotic? That makes 95% of PCs in the world already neurotic. And the other 5% are probably worse, because they 'panic' when things go wrong.
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if you post ironic comments about people, why not spend the time just programming the thing. people will thank you, you'll get a warm fuzzy glow, why not try it?
I have had the experience you mention debugging Windows machines. In fact, my machine used to break for no reason and I wasn't sure why. I know I have a crappy motherboard, bad video capture card and video card and often failing harddrive, and at the time a bad sector in my ram, but I couldn't be sure why things where locking up.
I have since then moved my computer over to Linux. In MY experience as a tech, the problems are reported by the system quite frequently. However, you have to be working under an operating system that's polite enough to tell you about it (via logs, mostly).
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
One of the ceramics used in making earlier memory chips was quite good at turning Cosmic Rays into alpha and beta particles which essentially could cause single bit errors.
No worries, because then people tended to have ECC and it was used frequently, at least in the order of once per montdh or so. The OS was fairly tolerant and if an error could be corrected, the page was logged for exercising later and was usually returned to the active pool. When a page stayed 'bad', then that board would be flagged for replacement. Some systems even called 'home' and specified that a part needed repairing (Remember HAL and the AE35).
Modern memory uses materials that are less susceptible, but it still is a good idea to use ECC on servers. On real-time control systems, I'm a firm believer in multiple architectures, and program implementations. For example, the Airbus uses three independently programmed systems running on Intel and Motorola architectures, so it is unlikely that a bug will occur on all three.
See my journal, I write things there
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around.
Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble; that's
as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for
you'll see a lot of it and you had better be on speaking terms with it.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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