AI might PARSE sentences better than humans, and even relate it to other text... according to the way humans read its output.
But today's state of "AI" doesn't "comprehend" a damn thing.
There is nothing to do the comprehending. There is no mind. This is a completely one-off, specifically programmed task. Which we already know computers are good at.
I'll be willing to bet that very soon most "personal" computing will be centrally controlled with very little processing happening on a users device and most of it being pumped from the vendors servers.
Not bloody likely.
It's been tried -- several times -- and except in specific corporate use-cases is just not very feasible.
Over the years, as networking and local compute power have vied for "usefulness", different combinations of local computing versus "thin clients" have been tried. None really caught on except in narrow niches.
Ultimately, people do not -- and should not -- want to be tied to some third party to do what can be done in their own home. Most people aren't that stupid.
"... and affects pretty much any Intel chip still functioning."
Not true. If you have an i3, i5, i7 processor made in the last few years, and it was manufactured using a smaller process than 32nm, it is not vulnerable.
I wrote "This is irrelevant to the point. X pixels are supposed to be X times 1/72 inch. PERIOD. If that's not what you're getting, you bought from the wrong company.".
Irrelevant. It doesn't matter where its handled, a finger is fat and imprecise while a mouse cursor is typically very finely positioned.
It is anything BUT irrelevant. It is the essence of the matter.
In case you hadn't noticed, decent modern cell phones are very consistent about where that "point" is, in relation to where you put your finger.
This is not a problem with the UI: the only problem is you getting used to it. It is as precise as a desktop with a mouse, given how finely you can move your finger. Any difficulty there (again, with a decent modern phone) is YOURS, not theirs.
Open up your favorite word processor. Type in some characters. Hit the zoom button. You notice how the font size physically changes on the screen but the point size is the same? Yeah. That.
You are on an old system, aren't you?
This is irrelevant to the point. X pixels are supposed to be X times 1/72 inch. PERIOD. If that's not what you're getting, you bought from the wrong company.
But lets assume Apple has implemented perfect font scaling so that when you set your system font to 8pt is exactly 1/9" on both the phone and the desktop. So that same font is taking around 2% of your (vertical) lines on a 5.5" phone while only taking ~0.46% of your 24" monitor.
Straw-man argument. Your original argument was that 8pt was "too small" on some devices (proven false). Now you move the goalposts to some other personal bitch that you have.
Which ends up amounting to the pretty much the exact same problem just coming at it from the other direction -- you have to adjust to fit more information on the larger screen at the same font size (in points) rather than having to fit less on the smaller screen with a larger font size (in pixels.)
Nope. Nothing of the sort. It just means you don't know how to use your equipment. Pardon me if I am not particularly sympathetic.
Iridium did not really meet its initial spectacular (for the time) objectives.
But it was still a success, in more limited roles.
The new Iridium satellites should not only exceed the initial project goals, but (with more recent technology) do what it was originally designed to do, but much better. (The latter of course depends on what the commercial contracts say.)
You have the basic idea right, but the motivations wrong.
This isn't intended to make people "forget their internal divisions". On the contrary, it is supposed to stimulate and create division.
A divided people is easier to "unite" under a common rule. (In the case of CoR, meaning rule of a select pre-chosen few.)
Get the picture?
Just look at the artificial divisions that have been introduced in the last 9 years or so (coincidentally REALLY ramping up at about the time Obama was elected): the most racial division (at least in U.S) in many decades, up to and including calls for white genocide; the most division by sex; nearly unrestrained, unwanted immigration; more politically-motivated shootings; "climate change", Antifa (which is really anything but), etc., etc.
The primary issue is that a mouse pointer is small and fairly accurate while a finger is relatively fat and imprecise.
I would dispute that. On both desktop and touch screens the pointer position is handled by hardware + firmware, not the app. Also, Apple has already done a good job of managing to scale controls on different display sizes in a way that works appropriately (e.g., on a 24" 1080p or a 27" 'retina' 5K monitor you get controls about the same size). Further, if you hadn't noticed, iPhones now sport screens with much higher resolutions than desktop screens from just a few years ago. These "retina" screens, again, handle automatic interface scaling quite well, versus the older iPhones with lower pixel count... controls are about the same size.
Also, mice pretty much universally have at least 2 buttons that you can take advantage of (and often 3 or more plus a scroll wheel) whereas a finger is just a finger.
That much is true.
An 8pt font on a 25" monitor is barely legible. An 8pt font on a 5.5" phone screen is a dot.
No, that's not true. A point is a fixed unit of size on paper or screen, and has to be compensated for with different screen resolutions. A U.S. point is 1/72 inch and in UK it's 0.3528 mm. An 8 point font on a desktop and on a phone screen -- no matter the pixel resolution of either -- should be 1/9 inch.
That isn't the problem. And it isn't why customers have been leaving in droves.
The problem is that rather than taking that percentage out of the received money, the plan (now retracted, I understand) was to tack an additional 5% on to what people donate.
If that needs explanation, the old scheme was: if you give $100, the recipient received $100 - (Patreon's % + $0.35).
In the new scheme they brought out, if you gave $100, you, not the recipient, would be charged $100 + (Patreon % + $0.35)
Almost nobody liked the idea. Neither the people with Patreons, or the people who paid.
Not even close. Spencer's "alt-right" is completely separate and distinct from the populist Alt-Right, which is a populist movement started as a consequence of GamerGate and certain other similar occurrences.
They have nothing at all to do with one another. Completely separate things. The vast majority of "alt right" belongs to the populist group, and they hate Neo-Nazis just as much as anyone else.
Utter nonsense. He didn't misunderstand, he got it quite right.
The term "snowflake" is used by a great many people, only a small minority of whom are "nutcases".
But for the most part it has been used in a certain context by people of the political Right, and in fact it can be quite amusing to see people on the Left trying to use it properly, and as often as not failing hilariously.
Keep trying. You might get it right one of these days.
Sorry, but one of the most basic premises of our Constitution -- the idea that government must treat all people equally -- is directly contradicted by the concept of a "protected class".
Slashdot Mirror
I only use gmail for junk mail.
Why bother to "secure" an email account when Google is going to read all the mail and sell your information anyway?
Seems kind of pointless.
AI might PARSE sentences better than humans, and even relate it to other text... according to the way humans read its output.
But today's state of "AI" doesn't "comprehend" a damn thing.
There is nothing to do the comprehending. There is no mind. This is a completely one-off, specifically programmed task. Which we already know computers are good at.
But "comprehension"? Not a chance.
Yes
Clarification:
"None really caught on except in narrow niches." should have been "None of the thin client solutions really caught on..."
I'll be willing to bet that very soon most "personal" computing will be centrally controlled with very little processing happening on a users device and most of it being pumped from the vendors servers.
Not bloody likely.
It's been tried -- several times -- and except in specific corporate use-cases is just not very feasible.
Over the years, as networking and local compute power have vied for "usefulness", different combinations of local computing versus "thin clients" have been tried. None really caught on except in narrow niches.
Ultimately, people do not -- and should not -- want to be tied to some third party to do what can be done in their own home. Most people aren't that stupid.
It wasn't even always very much to do with technology.
Yes it was.
But he didn't focus on the technology per se. His focus was on how that technology could influence our reality.
And Ubik is a prime example. It was (ultimately) about a possible result of technology that could keep people "sort of" alive after death.
"... and affects pretty much any Intel chip still functioning."
Not true. If you have an i3, i5, i7 processor made in the last few years, and it was manufactured using a smaller process than 32nm, it is not vulnerable.
A list of the processors that are vulnerable can be found here.
For example: I have an i7 4790k made in 2014. It was manufactured using a 22nm process. It is not on the list of processors vulnerable to Meltdown.
Slashdot is a for-profit advertising company.
To clariy:
In this way, the anti-decryption provisions of the DMCA directly contradict other, existing laws.
There were some rulings, years ago, that the right to archive overrides the proscription from decrypting, but then... you still have to decrypt.
Nearly all of DMCA is trash, and needs to go. The "Safe Harbor" provisions are about the only good provision in that whole set of laws.
Consumers ("end users") in the United States have a right to make archival copies, DRM or not.
Making archival copies falls square under the Fair Use rules that have been in place for many, many decades.
An awful lot of religion in these replies.
No, your own story is inaccurate.
What the CDC director actually said was "There are NO banned words at CDC." emphasis mine
That statement was reported by sources across the media spectrum, from Left to Right. So why did you get it wrong?
This is the weirdest attempt to define "wisdom", then argue based on that weird definition, I have ever seen.
Not worth my time to respond tonight: it's my Christmas weekend. May your Yule Tide be 0.5 mm / year.
Sorry, man, my friend got her first.
Don't feel bad. You had good judgment.
Correction:
I wrote "This is irrelevant to the point. X pixels are supposed to be X times 1/72 inch. PERIOD. If that's not what you're getting, you bought from the wrong company.".
That should have read "X points", not "X pixels".
Irrelevant. It doesn't matter where its handled, a finger is fat and imprecise while a mouse cursor is typically very finely positioned.
It is anything BUT irrelevant. It is the essence of the matter.
In case you hadn't noticed, decent modern cell phones are very consistent about where that "point" is, in relation to where you put your finger.
This is not a problem with the UI: the only problem is you getting used to it. It is as precise as a desktop with a mouse, given how finely you can move your finger. Any difficulty there (again, with a decent modern phone) is YOURS, not theirs.
Open up your favorite word processor. Type in some characters. Hit the zoom button. You notice how the font size physically changes on the screen but the point size is the same? Yeah. That.
You are on an old system, aren't you?
This is irrelevant to the point. X pixels are supposed to be X times 1/72 inch. PERIOD. If that's not what you're getting, you bought from the wrong company.
But lets assume Apple has implemented perfect font scaling so that when you set your system font to 8pt is exactly 1/9" on both the phone and the desktop. So that same font is taking around 2% of your (vertical) lines on a 5.5" phone while only taking ~0.46% of your 24" monitor.
Straw-man argument. Your original argument was that 8pt was "too small" on some devices (proven false). Now you move the goalposts to some other personal bitch that you have.
Which ends up amounting to the pretty much the exact same problem just coming at it from the other direction -- you have to adjust to fit more information on the larger screen at the same font size (in points) rather than having to fit less on the smaller screen with a larger font size (in pixels.)
Nope. Nothing of the sort. It just means you don't know how to use your equipment. Pardon me if I am not particularly sympathetic.
Although this comment has a negative score, I feel compelled to ask:
Who said anyting about "promoting ethnic mixing"?
I haven't stated anything even remotely like that.
Maybe a lot of the "problem" you see, is YOU imagining that other people said things they actually did not.
The Slashdot scoring system disagrees with you.
Have a nice day.
Iridium did not really meet its initial spectacular (for the time) objectives.
But it was still a success, in more limited roles.
The new Iridium satellites should not only exceed the initial project goals, but (with more recent technology) do what it was originally designed to do, but much better. (The latter of course depends on what the commercial contracts say.)
You have the basic idea right, but the motivations wrong.
This isn't intended to make people "forget their internal divisions". On the contrary, it is supposed to stimulate and create division.
A divided people is easier to "unite" under a common rule. (In the case of CoR, meaning rule of a select pre-chosen few.)
Get the picture?
Just look at the artificial divisions that have been introduced in the last 9 years or so (coincidentally REALLY ramping up at about the time Obama was elected): the most racial division (at least in U.S) in many decades, up to and including calls for white genocide; the most division by sex; nearly unrestrained, unwanted immigration; more politically-motivated shootings; "climate change", Antifa (which is really anything but), etc., etc.
The primary issue is that a mouse pointer is small and fairly accurate while a finger is relatively fat and imprecise.
I would dispute that. On both desktop and touch screens the pointer position is handled by hardware + firmware, not the app. Also, Apple has already done a good job of managing to scale controls on different display sizes in a way that works appropriately (e.g., on a 24" 1080p or a 27" 'retina' 5K monitor you get controls about the same size). Further, if you hadn't noticed, iPhones now sport screens with much higher resolutions than desktop screens from just a few years ago. These "retina" screens, again, handle automatic interface scaling quite well, versus the older iPhones with lower pixel count... controls are about the same size.
Also, mice pretty much universally have at least 2 buttons that you can take advantage of (and often 3 or more plus a scroll wheel) whereas a finger is just a finger.
That much is true.
An 8pt font on a 25" monitor is barely legible. An 8pt font on a 5.5" phone screen is a dot.
No, that's not true. A point is a fixed unit of size on paper or screen, and has to be compensated for with different screen resolutions. A U.S. point is 1/72 inch and in UK it's 0.3528 mm. An 8 point font on a desktop and on a phone screen -- no matter the pixel resolution of either -- should be 1/9 inch.
That isn't the problem. And it isn't why customers have been leaving in droves.
The problem is that rather than taking that percentage out of the received money, the plan (now retracted, I understand) was to tack an additional 5% on to what people donate.
If that needs explanation, the old scheme was: if you give $100, the recipient received $100 - (Patreon's % + $0.35).
In the new scheme they brought out, if you gave $100, you, not the recipient, would be charged $100 + (Patreon % + $0.35)
Almost nobody liked the idea. Neither the people with Patreons, or the people who paid.
Not even close. Spencer's "alt-right" is completely separate and distinct from the populist Alt-Right, which is a populist movement started as a consequence of GamerGate and certain other similar occurrences.
They have nothing at all to do with one another. Completely separate things. The vast majority of "alt right" belongs to the populist group, and they hate Neo-Nazis just as much as anyone else.
Utter nonsense. He didn't misunderstand, he got it quite right.
The term "snowflake" is used by a great many people, only a small minority of whom are "nutcases".
But for the most part it has been used in a certain context by people of the political Right, and in fact it can be quite amusing to see people on the Left trying to use it properly, and as often as not failing hilariously.
Keep trying. You might get it right one of these days.
Sorry, but one of the most basic premises of our Constitution -- the idea that government must treat all people equally -- is directly contradicted by the concept of a "protected class".
You can have one, or the other, but not both.