If the link to this "Elbot" is running the same code that they used in the contest, then the judges are a bunch of morons. I've never found a single so-called AI online that convinced me for even a few seconds that it was human, and this Elbot isn't an exception. It couldn't follow or react appropriately to anything I fed it, not even once. Anybody know where I can apply to become one of the judges for this Turing contest?
I think the majority of all this started with lightweight on-ear headphones, and then with earbuds. To make matters worse authorities kept pushing for on-ear headphones that allowed ambient sound through, because so many people insisted on wearing their headphones in inappropriate places. Stir all the above with a spoon, and you get earbuds that weigh almost nothing, and don't block any ambient sound -- so everyone turns the volume up to eleven in order to hear their music. Personally I prefer over-ear, closed-back headphones (read as: old school) with full-size drivers; when I feel the need to put on headphones, I want ALL the ambient sound blocked, if possible; of course I don't wear headphones in inappropriate places (while driving, riding my bike, etc) so it's not an issue, and I'll likely never experience hearing loss because of headphones. Ironically though I'll likely experience hearing loss from the live rock shows I mix sound for.:p
OK, I believe you. I can also say that I've bought lots of Maxtor and Western Digital hard drives and never had one fail on me, even after years of service -- which is counter to many people's experience with those companies; YMMV as they say. I've bought supposedly new, OEM batteries for my phones and had to ship them back and forth because they were crap. To expand on my original point, there are so many iPods and other apple products out there, that the temptation to sell crappy knock-off replacement batteries will be high, and since Apple will charge a premium for their OEM batteries, people will take the chance on a replacement that's, say, half the cost or less.
The flip side of the coin is then Apple handheld products, like everything else, will be subjected to the usual flood of crappy, knock-off, sub-standard aftermarket batteries we've all come to know and hate passionately. Apple may have designed these devices in such a way that they've created a monopoly on battery replacement, but on the other hand at least you know you're getting a proper battery.
Wow, that'll really pick up the processing power of my 2.0MHz i8080 processor! At that speed I probably won't even be able to see the data and address bus lights blinking on the front panel anymore!
Sign up wherever you want, just don't use any real information unless it's done in a secure fashion. 'Duncan' is not my real name, and unless there's a legal requirement for me to do so (like online credit card use for purchases) I don't ever use my real name, address, phone number, or anything else, as none of that is anybody's business to know. As for things like Facebook, I really don't blame you, but not so much because of any privacy issues, but for the aesthetics of it: I think sites like Facebook and Myspace are tacky, therefore I don't participate with them. Seriously, I used to be in the same boat you're in, but I just don't have the time to waste writing checks for all my bills or roving from store to brick-and-mortar store looking for things I want to buy, and some of my closest friends have become far-flung across the country and without Livejournal I wouldn't ever hear a peep out of them and vice-versa. You don't have to be a Luddite in order to protect your privacy, you just have to be thoughtful about it.
No worries. If I know that there's a 99.9% chance of a "planet killer" sized asteroid colliding with this planet, the only thing I'm going to be worrying about is whether I can get drunk enough fast enough before it happens so I'll be passed out when the end comes.:p
Am I the only person who just about crapped his pants when he started reading TFA? Likewise, am I the only person who made the general assumption that an 'asteroid' referred to an object significantly larger than what they're talking about here? WTF dude!?
Speaking as someone who HAS done some design work, designing any machine that's going to be used by the general public without considering various modes of tampering or failure is the mark of a PISS POOR design effort. I'd expect that they'd at least approach it as if it were a video gambling device of some sort (poker, slot machine, etc) and test it for things like tampering using a high voltage discharge. If this story is true then all those machines should be pulled from use and either warehoused until the original vendor can revise the design, or completely destroyed and sent to the scrap yards.
I'm glad to hear that, for a while longer at least, some people aren't going to be allowed to turn this entire planet into one big prison for it's citizens.
Really? I'm just (finally) upgrading my main desktop machine at home to XP, in part because of getting a Netflix subscription and wanting to take advantage of streaming movies-on-demand. Netflix was using around 1 million BYTES per second -- which is essentially all the bandwidth I'm paying for from Comcast (8Mbps down, 768kbps up). So, I'm not sure what you're basing that statement on.
..and I guess I won't make any plans to watch streaming movies through them, even if I have the bandwidth to do so in high quality BECAUSE 15 minutes into the movie they'll cut the speed back (to WHAT, by the way?) and there goes my movie. Not acceptable. I'd recommend everyone with Comcast get a Netflix subscription, and watch movies online. Then if and when it gets screwed up, complain to Netflix AND Comcast about it. Hopefully they'll eventually get tired of the complaints from customers AND from Netflix, and cut this nonsense out, too.
PETA is a PITA, really, and this proposal of theirs is just the same flavor of hyperbole they've been serving up for a long time now. There's NO WAY you could possibly do what they're proposing, and if you did you'd be opening a huge can of worms that nobody wants to deal with (public health, compensation for the "producers" of said milk, etc).
That'll save me -- and likely many people -- the trouble of having to get the chainsaw and hack Outlook Express out of the thing, and installing something like Thunderbird. Of course that'll be about 10 years from now; I'm just today starting to transition my main desktop machine over to XP this week.
The loss of USENET doesn't bother me at all. 10 years or so ago when I first got Internet access, it was kinda cool -- like I used to think IRC was kinda cool -- but as others here have said, it's riddled with SPAM now, and even the binaries groups are useless; they were rather useless to start with anyway, having to use clunky MIME64 encoding and breaking one file up over many posts, with almost invariably one of them missing. I'm just a touch sad to see it go but I think there are much better ways to do things now.
I'd rather have half the bandwidth and NO cap and NO limits of ANY kind, than to have Comcast blow smoke up my ass. And YOU, YOU sound like you're on their payroll.
OK, for the moment I'll say I believe you on the cost issue, because for the moment I can't refute what you're saying. Still, this seems like way, way overkill for a simple problem. Seriously, couldn't they come up with a more down-to-earth solution? Or are there really so many pet dogs livng in ths suburb of Tel Aviv, making it such a huge public health issue that they have to go to this sort of extreme? I have a hard time believing that.
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Obviously your product management people think little of the intelligence of your customer base, let alone the sanity of their developers.
Maybe they'd better check those dark spots for the presence of objects with the precise proportions of 1:4:9
If the link to this "Elbot" is running the same code that they used in the contest, then the judges are a bunch of morons. I've never found a single so-called AI online that convinced me for even a few seconds that it was human, and this Elbot isn't an exception. It couldn't follow or react appropriately to anything I fed it, not even once. Anybody know where I can apply to become one of the judges for this Turing contest?
I think the majority of all this started with lightweight on-ear headphones, and then with earbuds. To make matters worse authorities kept pushing for on-ear headphones that allowed ambient sound through, because so many people insisted on wearing their headphones in inappropriate places. Stir all the above with a spoon, and you get earbuds that weigh almost nothing, and don't block any ambient sound -- so everyone turns the volume up to eleven in order to hear their music. Personally I prefer over-ear, closed-back headphones (read as: old school) with full-size drivers; when I feel the need to put on headphones, I want ALL the ambient sound blocked, if possible; of course I don't wear headphones in inappropriate places (while driving, riding my bike, etc) so it's not an issue, and I'll likely never experience hearing loss because of headphones. Ironically though I'll likely experience hearing loss from the live rock shows I mix sound for. :p
OK, I believe you. I can also say that I've bought lots of Maxtor and Western Digital hard drives and never had one fail on me, even after years of service -- which is counter to many people's experience with those companies; YMMV as they say. I've bought supposedly new, OEM batteries for my phones and had to ship them back and forth because they were crap. To expand on my original point, there are so many iPods and other apple products out there, that the temptation to sell crappy knock-off replacement batteries will be high, and since Apple will charge a premium for their OEM batteries, people will take the chance on a replacement that's, say, half the cost or less.
I don't own (read as: can't afford) any Apple products.
The flip side of the coin is then Apple handheld products, like everything else, will be subjected to the usual flood of crappy, knock-off, sub-standard aftermarket batteries we've all come to know and hate passionately. Apple may have designed these devices in such a way that they've created a monopoly on battery replacement, but on the other hand at least you know you're getting a proper battery.
Wow, that'll really pick up the processing power of my 2.0MHz i8080 processor! At that speed I probably won't even be able to see the data and address bus lights blinking on the front panel anymore!
Sign up wherever you want, just don't use any real information unless it's done in a secure fashion. 'Duncan' is not my real name, and unless there's a legal requirement for me to do so (like online credit card use for purchases) I don't ever use my real name, address, phone number, or anything else, as none of that is anybody's business to know. As for things like Facebook, I really don't blame you, but not so much because of any privacy issues, but for the aesthetics of it: I think sites like Facebook and Myspace are tacky, therefore I don't participate with them. Seriously, I used to be in the same boat you're in, but I just don't have the time to waste writing checks for all my bills or roving from store to brick-and-mortar store looking for things I want to buy, and some of my closest friends have become far-flung across the country and without Livejournal I wouldn't ever hear a peep out of them and vice-versa. You don't have to be a Luddite in order to protect your privacy, you just have to be thoughtful about it.
No worries. If I know that there's a 99.9% chance of a "planet killer" sized asteroid colliding with this planet, the only thing I'm going to be worrying about is whether I can get drunk enough fast enough before it happens so I'll be passed out when the end comes. :p
Am I the only person who just about crapped his pants when he started reading TFA? Likewise, am I the only person who made the general assumption that an 'asteroid' referred to an object significantly larger than what they're talking about here? WTF dude!?
BTW you may appreciate the custom bumper sticker I have on my truck: "I DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN A CHILDPROOFED WORLD!"
Speaking as someone who HAS done some design work, designing any machine that's going to be used by the general public without considering various modes of tampering or failure is the mark of a PISS POOR design effort. I'd expect that they'd at least approach it as if it were a video gambling device of some sort (poker, slot machine, etc) and test it for things like tampering using a high voltage discharge. If this story is true then all those machines should be pulled from use and either warehoused until the original vendor can revise the design, or completely destroyed and sent to the scrap yards.
That whole reply makes NO sense to me. Does it make any sense to anyone else? Bueller?
Ah, STFU. They developed it completely from scratch. Lets see how well YOU do under those conditions.
I'm glad to hear that, for a while longer at least, some people aren't going to be allowed to turn this entire planet into one big prison for it's citizens.
Really? I'm just (finally) upgrading my main desktop machine at home to XP, in part because of getting a Netflix subscription and wanting to take advantage of streaming movies-on-demand. Netflix was using around 1 million BYTES per second -- which is essentially all the bandwidth I'm paying for from Comcast (8Mbps down, 768kbps up). So, I'm not sure what you're basing that statement on.
..and I guess I won't make any plans to watch streaming movies through them, even if I have the bandwidth to do so in high quality BECAUSE 15 minutes into the movie they'll cut the speed back (to WHAT, by the way?) and there goes my movie. Not acceptable. I'd recommend everyone with Comcast get a Netflix subscription, and watch movies online. Then if and when it gets screwed up, complain to Netflix AND Comcast about it. Hopefully they'll eventually get tired of the complaints from customers AND from Netflix, and cut this nonsense out, too.
PETA is a PITA, really, and this proposal of theirs is just the same flavor of hyperbole they've been serving up for a long time now. There's NO WAY you could possibly do what they're proposing, and if you did you'd be opening a huge can of worms that nobody wants to deal with (public health, compensation for the "producers" of said milk, etc).
That'll save me -- and likely many people -- the trouble of having to get the chainsaw and hack Outlook Express out of the thing, and installing something like Thunderbird. Of course that'll be about 10 years from now; I'm just today starting to transition my main desktop machine over to XP this week.
The loss of USENET doesn't bother me at all. 10 years or so ago when I first got Internet access, it was kinda cool -- like I used to think IRC was kinda cool -- but as others here have said, it's riddled with SPAM now, and even the binaries groups are useless; they were rather useless to start with anyway, having to use clunky MIME64 encoding and breaking one file up over many posts, with almost invariably one of them missing. I'm just a touch sad to see it go but I think there are much better ways to do things now.
I'd rather have half the bandwidth and NO cap and NO limits of ANY kind, than to have Comcast blow smoke up my ass. And YOU, YOU sound like you're on their payroll.
OK, for the moment I'll say I believe you on the cost issue, because for the moment I can't refute what you're saying. Still, this seems like way, way overkill for a simple problem. Seriously, couldn't they come up with a more down-to-earth solution? Or are there really so many pet dogs livng in ths suburb of Tel Aviv, making it such a huge public health issue that they have to go to this sort of extreme? I have a hard time believing that.
As I said, you've got to be kidding me. Isn't DNA analysis still kind of expensive?
I resent being modded down as "flamebait" for voicing my opinion, whoever you are, you insensate ass!