Not really. I simply pointed out that everything we are is written in our DNA and that DNA was created by a specific process. We are machines created for a purpose.
As I said, Dawkins makes a similar argument in the Selfish Gene.
So by your logic the AI and humans are the results of the evolutionary process which created humans. That process is in turn the result of the physical parameters of the universe. We're not quite sure what that is the result of but the specific parameters are quite likely random (cue anthropic principle). Which in turn means the whole argument has no point.
Except for the last sentence (which is a non-sequitir) you are talking about determinism. Which as I've already said, is a question we are unlikely to have answered in our lifetimes.
"Ultimate cause" has a specific meaning in philosophy. It doesn't have the same meaning as "create" or "conceive". A man is not the "ultimate cause" of a child. But a man is the ultimate cause of a machine.
When code becomes self-modifying, it can go beyond the human mind
Code can only self-modify within the confines of parameters set by the human programmer. Therefore the ultimate cause of the modified code was the human.
It's the same as creating a sharpened rock as a tool, then using the tool to sharpen a stick into a hunting spear. The rock didn't create the spear. The human did.
You have to ask though, what if AI improves the AI? Is that different than if a human does it?
An AI is just a machine in abstract form. If an AI "improves" an AI it's not different to a human making a machine to build a machine. The human is still the ultimate cause.
If AI programs are capable of identifying, solving, and verifying the solution to a problem, how is that different than humans doing the same thing?
Because the AI only exists within the confines of the programming that the human creates. It is therefore only a tool of the human mind. Just like a screwdriver is a tool of the human hand.
Sure, you could say "well that's still the work of humans." But isn't that just as fatalistic as saying that *human* destinies are predetermined?
Determinism is a separate discussion. One that probably won't be answered in our lifetimes.
It doesn't *have* to be humans that are doing the engineering, does it? Couldn't we, at some point in the future, have AI performing engineering?
If a human wrote the AI, then the human performed the engineering, not the AI.
If you mill a block of steel in a CNC you wouldn't say the CNC did the engineering. Programming the CNC is the hard work; the CNC just did the boring labour.
Similarly if an AI one day designs and builds a bridge, the human who wrote the AI did the hard work. The AI just did the boring labour of turning the human vision into steel parts.
Haven't you noticed by now that a lot of people on Slashdot are against software patents?
Most people on Slashdot these days are obnoxious. That's why Slashdot has lost most of its good commenters.
... stupid! You're either so biased... you're so stupid... So which are you, biased or stupid?
Case in point.
You go ahead and keep destroying Slashdot, one comment at a time. Just keep insulting people who disagree with you by calling them "stupid". Then you can turn Slashdot into your own little echo chamber where the only valid opinions are ones like yours. One more dissenting opinion leaves today, this time for good.
What, you mean producing a standard that actually matches the implementation and irrevocably granting free use of the necessary patents to everyone?
More like Microsoft making Word the most popular format for documents by leveraging their Windows monopoly and then submitting the Word format for standardisation. This despite there being actual existing standards for documents. You can all see through the transparent mendaciousness in Microsoft's case, but when Google does the exact same thing you cheer them on. The Google lovefest on Slashdot is clouding your judgement.
1) H.264 is not an open standard. Nothing which is patent-encumbered can be. And the MPEG LA is not an open organization.
2) VP8 is an open standard. Not designed in the open and not controlled by an open organization (yet?), but an open standard nonetheless.
You are simply wrong on both points. H.264 is an open standard. Managed by an open standards body. You aren't going to win the argument by making up your own facts.
I gave you the Ars Technica article. It laid out very clearly the case against Google. Do you disagree with the content? Or the author? Because you'd end the argument nicely if you just claimed Ars Technica is lying!
Matter of fact, I do. You're not doing much in ways of challenging, though.
Anyway, we will not agree. Let's stop.
And on another note, what is it with your obnoxious attitude? Every post of yours has some snotty insult where you claim to be the intellectual superior. Are you for real?
Get over yourself. You need to accept that sometimes other people know more than you do about certain subjects. This is one of those times.
It addresses Google's reluctance to submit VP8 and WebM to a standards body. That alone should be enough of a red flag. In case it's not, I'll point it out to you... companies that try and maintain sole control of a format, are not doing it with your best interest in mind.
But one side proved again and again that they must not be trusted
MPEG is not to be trusted? Are you kidding? They've standardised the dominant formats for digital music (mp3), video discs (mpeg-2), video broadcasts (mpeg-2-ts), and now Internet video (mpeg-4-avc). They have wide ranging industry support from hardware producers, content creators, and content owners. You would be hard pressed to find a better example of trustworthy creators of open standards. They are a subset of ISO/IEC for crying out loud. Engineers all over the world worship ISO. You simply can't do better than MPEG!
What's the alternative? Some two-bit company that Google bought and realised they couldn't make money off, so they dumped the code on a website and said "this is the future of Internet video!". What a joke. No thought went into that.
Every chip-maker other than Intel committed to supporting VP8 in hardware.
You do realise you're now defending vapourware.
I note that you did not address any of my points about the various downsides of H.264 and the MPEG LA, by the way.
There's no downside to using a well-supported, well-implemented, cross-platform, industry-accepted, multi-vendor, open-standard, that is already built into every smartphone and computer and software worth considering.
Give me open standards any day of the week. Open source is nice to have but it's not the most important factor. It's more important for my DATA to be in a format that outlives my software. That's why I use POSIX and HTML and MPEG.
I have no time for VP8 or WebM or ViVO or Flash or RealVideo or whatever proprietary technology-of-the-week is in fashion.
than how would you describe Apple and Microsoft's work to make sure the only way to play a video is the use of a proprietary format?
H.264 is an open standard. It has an ISO/IEC number. More than 30 companies contributed to its development; those companies come from a diverse background spanning hardware and software and content. By all definitions H.264 is as open a standard as POSIX or HTML.
Now on the other hand WebM is owned by a single company, which by its very definition means that WebM is proprietary.
The only difference is that WebM is open source. Woe betide the future of free software if the OSS spastics now believe open-source is somehow better than open-standards. Open-source software is nothing unless it follows open-standards. WebM as it stands now is just another proprietary piece of junk.
Stop defending software patents as being legitimate concepts in a debate over formats
If you live in the USA, UK, Europe, Australia, or most of the modern world where software patents are legally enforceable, then software patents are legitimate concepts in the debate. Your personal ideology notwithstanding, until the laws on software patents are changed they are most certainly relevant.
Anyone who does not approve of what they are doing right now either has a hidden agenda or did not understand the underlying issues.
What we actually have here is a single vendor (Google) trying to achieve market dominance in one technology by leveraging existing market share in another technology. Even worse Google is doing all this to destroy an actual open standard (H.264). The underlying issue is Google wants to dictate the video format for the Internet at the expense of open standards.
A single vendor. Their video format. Nobody else gets a say in the matter. Who would willingly cheer for that?
Anyone who does not approve of what they are doing right now either has a hidden agenda or did not understand the underlying issues.
Not much answer for a "in what ways it is better" question, I think.
The "in what ways it is better" question was answered 5 posts up. Your question was about direct equivalency. The fact that they have different implementations is all the proof you need that they are not direct equivalents.
> Solaris Zones is an example of operating system virtualisation. There is no direct equivalent on Linux.
You should check out VServers before you bet your house on that.
Not a direct equivalent. OpenSolaris has a FAQ on this:
OpenVZ and FreeBSD Jails are equivalent conceptually to Solaris Containers. The difference is the extent to which they've been implemented. Sun went the whole hog and made Solaris Containers "first class citizens". All the user space tools were modified to understand zones. All the documentation was updated. All the application suites were updated. They're not a ill-supported second-rate tack-on so you can tick the "we've got that" feature box.
If you want the analogy, it's like Microsoft saying "don't use Apache, we've got a webserver too" and pointing to IIS. In theory, true. In practise, bullshit.
LXC will one day be a zones alternative. Right now it's a pre-1.0 alpha with severely reduced functionality. I consider it basically unusable in its current form.
Same deal for BTRFS. One day it will be a ZFS alternative. Right now it's only for BTRFS developers.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a standard term in philosophy. Your ignorance is not my problem.
www.google.com.
As I said, Dawkins makes a similar argument in the Selfish Gene.
Except for the last sentence (which is a non-sequitir) you are talking about determinism. Which as I've already said, is a question we are unlikely to have answered in our lifetimes.
And I already replied to you.
A "cause" is not the same thing as "ultimate cause". I've also pointed this out in another post.
"Ultimate cause" has a specific meaning in philosophy. It doesn't have the same meaning as "create" or "conceive". A man is not the "ultimate cause" of a child. But a man is the ultimate cause of a machine.
Code can only self-modify within the confines of parameters set by the human programmer. Therefore the ultimate cause of the modified code was the human.
It's the same as creating a sharpened rock as a tool, then using the tool to sharpen a stick into a hunting spear. The rock didn't create the spear. The human did.
Dawkins says something similar in the Selfish Gene.
An AI is just a machine in abstract form. If an AI "improves" an AI it's not different to a human making a machine to build a machine. The human is still the ultimate cause.
Because the AI only exists within the confines of the programming that the human creates. It is therefore only a tool of the human mind. Just like a screwdriver is a tool of the human hand.
Determinism is a separate discussion. One that probably won't be answered in our lifetimes.
If a human wrote the AI, then the human performed the engineering, not the AI.
If you mill a block of steel in a CNC you wouldn't say the CNC did the engineering. Programming the CNC is the hard work; the CNC just did the boring labour.
Similarly if an AI one day designs and builds a bridge, the human who wrote the AI did the hard work. The AI just did the boring labour of turning the human vision into steel parts.
Most people on Slashdot these days are obnoxious. That's why Slashdot has lost most of its good commenters.
Case in point.
You go ahead and keep destroying Slashdot, one comment at a time. Just keep insulting people who disagree with you by calling them "stupid". Then you can turn Slashdot into your own little echo chamber where the only valid opinions are ones like yours. One more dissenting opinion leaves today, this time for good.
More like Microsoft making Word the most popular format for documents by leveraging their Windows monopoly and then submitting the Word format for standardisation. This despite there being actual existing standards for documents. You can all see through the transparent mendaciousness in Microsoft's case, but when Google does the exact same thing you cheer them on. The Google lovefest on Slashdot is clouding your judgement.
You are simply wrong on both points. H.264 is an open standard. Managed by an open standards body. You aren't going to win the argument by making up your own facts.
I gave you the Ars Technica article. It laid out very clearly the case against Google. Do you disagree with the content? Or the author? Because you'd end the argument nicely if you just claimed Ars Technica is lying!
And on another note, what is it with your obnoxious attitude? Every post of yours has some snotty insult where you claim to be the intellectual superior. Are you for real?
Get over yourself. You need to accept that sometimes other people know more than you do about certain subjects. This is one of those times.
You are blinded by your ideology. The entire world is built on open standards created by consortiums of companies.
You mean you will not change your ideology... that much is obvious.
H.264 is part of MPEG-4, which is an ISO/IEC standard. It's an open standard.
VP8 and WebM are under the sole control of Google. They are both proprietary.
The suggestion that they don't own them is delusional.
There seems to be much confusion on Slashdot about what "open standards" actually means. I blame the schools for not learning our kids.
Addressing this item separately...
It's now very clear that you don't know what "open standard" means. Read this Ars Technica article:
It addresses Google's reluctance to submit VP8 and WebM to a standards body. That alone should be enough of a red flag. In case it's not, I'll point it out to you... companies that try and maintain sole control of a format, are not doing it with your best interest in mind.
MPEG is not to be trusted? Are you kidding? They've standardised the dominant formats for digital music (mp3), video discs (mpeg-2), video broadcasts (mpeg-2-ts), and now Internet video (mpeg-4-avc). They have wide ranging industry support from hardware producers, content creators, and content owners. You would be hard pressed to find a better example of trustworthy creators of open standards. They are a subset of ISO/IEC for crying out loud. Engineers all over the world worship ISO. You simply can't do better than MPEG!
What's the alternative? Some two-bit company that Google bought and realised they couldn't make money off, so they dumped the code on a website and said "this is the future of Internet video!". What a joke. No thought went into that.
You do realise you're now defending vapourware.
There's no downside to using a well-supported, well-implemented, cross-platform, industry-accepted, multi-vendor, open-standard, that is already built into every smartphone and computer and software worth considering.
Give me open standards any day of the week. Open source is nice to have but it's not the most important factor. It's more important for my DATA to be in a format that outlives my software. That's why I use POSIX and HTML and MPEG.
I have no time for VP8 or WebM or ViVO or Flash or RealVideo or whatever proprietary technology-of-the-week is in fashion.
Google bundling Flash (proprietary plugin) but not bundling H.264 (open standard) makes the web more open?!?
Google being the sole vendor and owner of the WebM format (proprietary format) makes the web more open?!?
WebM is almost certainly infringing on patents as well.
It's open source. It's not an open standard. The "free [from] fear of legal action" remains to be seen.
You don't know what "open standard" even means.
POSIX is an open standard. HTML is an open standard. H.264 is an open standard. VP8 is an open-source project.
Even worse, an open-source project with no industry support managed by a single company. Blind faith in OSS won't solve that intractable problem.
H.264 is an open standard. It has an ISO/IEC number. More than 30 companies contributed to its development; those companies come from a diverse background spanning hardware and software and content. By all definitions H.264 is as open a standard as POSIX or HTML.
Now on the other hand WebM is owned by a single company, which by its very definition means that WebM is proprietary.
The only difference is that WebM is open source. Woe betide the future of free software if the OSS spastics now believe open-source is somehow better than open-standards. Open-source software is nothing unless it follows open-standards. WebM as it stands now is just another proprietary piece of junk.
If you live in the USA, UK, Europe, Australia, or most of the modern world where software patents are legally enforceable, then software patents are legitimate concepts in the debate. Your personal ideology notwithstanding, until the laws on software patents are changed they are most certainly relevant.
What we actually have here is a single vendor (Google) trying to achieve market dominance in one technology by leveraging existing market share in another technology. Even worse Google is doing all this to destroy an actual open standard (H.264). The underlying issue is Google wants to dictate the video format for the Internet at the expense of open standards.
A single vendor. Their video format. Nobody else gets a say in the matter. Who would willingly cheer for that?
Oh the irony.
No I didn't. You are a crazy person. Go be crazy elsewhere.
You, Sir, are full of shit.
You weren't even mentioning VServers 5/6 posts up.
You were talking about hardware virtualization and stating that Linux has no operating system virtualization (like VServer).
I said Linux has no direct equivalent to Solaris Zones. That statement is true, your foul mouth non-withstanding.
And you are trying to pull a strawman on me.
You are a nice fit with Oracle, it seems.
You should re-read the definition of strawman. You aren't using the term correctly.
Not much answer for a "in what ways it is better" question, I think.
The "in what ways it is better" question was answered 5 posts up. Your question was about direct equivalency. The fact that they have different implementations is all the proof you need that they are not direct equivalents.
> Solaris Zones is an example of operating system virtualisation. There is no direct equivalent on Linux.
You should check out VServers before you bet your house on that.
Not a direct equivalent. OpenSolaris has a FAQ on this:
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+zones/faq#HQArecontainerslikeLinuxvServers
OpenVZ and FreeBSD Jails are equivalent conceptually to Solaris Containers. The difference is the extent to which they've been implemented. Sun went the whole hog and made Solaris Containers "first class citizens". All the user space tools were modified to understand zones. All the documentation was updated. All the application suites were updated. They're not a ill-supported second-rate tack-on so you can tick the "we've got that" feature box.
If you want the analogy, it's like Microsoft saying "don't use Apache, we've got a webserver too" and pointing to IIS. In theory, true. In practise, bullshit.
LXC will one day be a zones alternative. Right now it's a pre-1.0 alpha with severely reduced functionality. I consider it basically unusable in its current form.
Same deal for BTRFS. One day it will be a ZFS alternative. Right now it's only for BTRFS developers.