And if you don't understand how important that is, consider how you reacted when George W Bush did all sorts of crazy illegal things. If it's ok for presidents you like to do something, it's also ok for presidents you don't like to do the same thing.
Would you say that the American people frequently let Obama get away with crazy illegal things?
...and might that not imply that he already has their trust?
You and the GP keep using the word "AI". I do not think it means what either of you think it means.
Algorithmic trading does indeed involve a great deal of classical machine learning, which is one area of focus within the very broad field of artificial intelligence. What you're ascribing to "AI" is the specific goal of artificial human intelligence, regularly granted the misnomer of general artificial intelligence. The example you gave would be of more interest to translators of unknown languages than to people trying to create an artificial brain.
This was one of the many misconceptions about intelligence that muddied AI efforts in the twentieth century, incidentally. Parsing and producing language isn't the end-all of everything like logicians once believed; other factors, like knowledge representation, planning, and creativity also must be considered. These have (for the most part) redefined the AI landscape as it's been introduced; KR and fuzzy logic led to expert systems in the 80s (which were pretty successful in some contexts but an absolute pain to build) and classical planning led to a wide variety of different manifestations like the intelligent agents of the 90s (which weren't so intelligent), automation of flight planning, and enemy AI in real-time strategy games. Computational creativity has yet to really have its time in the sun, being mostly displaced by a vastly-improved second round of more involved linguistic analysis called natural-language processing (culminating in things like IBM's Watson, although that involved a measure of creativity as well.)
I don't understand why so many people have trouble with the idea that Obama does all of these crazy illegal things that he hates because he's trying to win Congress's trust. Is it really that hard to remember what happened to Jimmy Carter?
Is it just me or does "Wheaton Wil" sound like a suitable Ubuntu version codename? Karmic Kirk, Picky Picard, Jaded Janeway, Suspicious Sisko... Quixotic Q, Whiny Wesley?
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
on
Diablo III Released
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· Score: 1
The official story is that true offline SP mode was eliminated so that all characters could participate in co-op. (Diablo 2 had two separate types of character, though you probably already knew that; one stored on the machine, the other stored on the Battle.net server. However, you could still play single-player Battle.net games.) I have a little trouble believing that this freedom is such a burden that it needed to be taken away—if Blizzard was really as legitimately surprised at the fan backlash as they claim, there must have been some severe Steve Jobs-style minimalism behind the wheel.
I realise this brand of hatemongering is popular, but as someone with friends and coworkers in the pharmaceutical industry: citation really desperately needed. Pharmaceutical companies have plenty of shortcomings, moral and otherwise, but the simple truth is that they are still comprised of individuals who want to improve the world. A lot of diseases that have had management regimens instead of cures are in that situation because they're genuinely hard to fix. The good PR, investor money, and reputation that would come from fixing a major human ailment is a huge thing for these companies, and generally lost profits can be recouped in this way (and by the corresponding boost in public image, leading to more purchase of other products.) The shadier companies would just jack up the cure's price.
Even from a purely competitive perspective, there are companies trying to improve upon their competitors' products to steal markets, and finding a cure to the disease that creates an enemy's main revenue stream is a fantastic weapon.
In short, pharmaceutical companies do not exhibit rent-seeking behaviour to anywhere near the same extent that the software industry does, and while their dealings with third-world countries are certainly unpleasant, they're not quite as morally unscrupulous as it looks when Fox News or CNN is busy riling up their audiences.
(Aaand I totally reverted like three mod points to make this post.)
If you want to talk about the idea of a creator in a deistic sense, as in something outside of known history, then yes; that's perfectly well and good and you can go on winding up the watches in your blind watchmaker's front-window display case. If you want to talk about the idea in an historical context, absolutely; undoubtedly creation myths have had a great impact on how people act and how empires were wound up. These are important matters that should not be ignored, lest we lose the lessons garnered from them.
But the moment you start suggesting that creationism is some kind of alternative to understanding biological evolution is the moment you step off the deep end. Kindly put, sir, you have just used very loaded and inarticulate language that is directly in conflict with what we know is philosophically, scientifically, and intellectually honest. In absolutely no way are there any genuine alternatives to the statement that we developed from single-celled organisms over the course of billions of years, and if you feel the need to distrust what I am saying I will be more than happy to teach you how disastrously misguided such a claim is, regardless of how much or how little biology you have been formally instructed in.
What does exist is the age-old reality of one of humankind's greatest inventions: the power of religion to provide answers to those who need them emotionally, even if they are brutally false and bestow us with an incredibly unwarranted sense of self-importance. Sometimes lies are necessary for social order to proceed, and the most urgently important lies are generally conveniently relevant creation myths.
(P.S., I'm retracting a mod point I gave you by making this post.)
Re:Hate to put a damper on the celebration
on
Diablo III Released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
You are, of course, severely late to the party; a lot of interesting discussion on this point happened way back in August. Here's the Slashdot conversation from then. I believe the consensus is that since this is Blizzard and not EA, no boycott like the one that marred Spore's release will transpire, and the loss of flexibility will simply be accepted.
Another controversy from about the same time (which didn't receive Slashdot attention) is that all gameplay-altering modifications are banned in D3, a somewhat harsher stance than the one Blizzard took with WoW interface mods. There has been some concern that DarkD3, a mod that diminishes the game's 'painted' look to make it clearer and crisper graphics may be cause for a ban, but so far the word is "probably not".
You should switch to something cleaner, like Aquafina. I hear some of their plastic products have as low as 80% DHMO. The other 20% is primarily comprised of the same innocuous hydrocarbons you'd find in your toothbrush or remote control.
Because the standard won't be done for like a bajillion years, and the correct syntax could change. The prefixes are supposed to be dropped at the earliest opportunity by site implementers, and should serve as a warning to the coder that the feature they're toying with isn't done yet—unfortunately, W3C has once more underestimated the cargo-cult mindset of web developers.
Physicists are perhaps more famous for the same folly; one example I recently stumbled upon was David Boehm, who, in conjunction with a psychologist, developed a completely nonsensical theory of higher brain function and the emergence of independent thought based on nothing more than the appeal of physics concepts to a biological problem.
If it consoles you any, rectifying such misconceptions is one of the reasons I make a habit of posting here. Experience more suggests, however, that not reading the article is more commonly a source of error—but perhaps that's an artefact of the same presumptiveness.
Neither; it's "Elephant, Turtle, Turtle, Turtle,...". But if it were one of those, it would be the former, because the sequence has a defined starting position.
The ugliest stuff I have seen was from mathematicians working in medicine. As a naive student, one is inclined to think that MATLAB code, like any programming language that isn't Perl, line noise, INTERCAL, bf, or TECO, has a minimum floor of ugliness. One would be wrong.
That is so cheating, but I will admit I've considered a single loop version rather than a spherical one. Like a ringworld instead of a Dyson sphere. Of giant turtles. All the way down. With a fork in the middle.
(Fun fact: if you ever find someone claiming someone in particular had a conversation with an old man or woman that ended this way, they didn't do their research. Probably.)
In my experience, scientists will do just about anything to convince themselves that they're not actually programming, if only to avoid pesky annoyances like source code control. The less it looks like a programming language, the better.
Oh god. That would explain why none of their code looks like it's written in a programming language.*
* I work with biologists. By 'they,' I mean biologists. I know you physicists and quantum chemists have it lucky. Stop bragging. You're making me feel bad.
The secret is in the reading of TFA. Twitter's angry that the subpoena claims that Harris has no right to challenge it. The only circumstance allowed by the Stored Communications Act under which the subpoena is filed in which this right can be withheld is if Harris has "no proprietary interest in the content," which is patent bullocks and makes no sense. Officially the subpoena is being made by the prosecution in anticipation of a particular defence; by contrast I do believe a warrant requires suspicion of guilt before it can be issued. It's also very, very unnecessarily broad, and hence blatantly meant to fish for incriminating materials.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure it was cottage cheese and alligator clamps? Not sour cream or banana clips or something? I ... can't reproduce your search results.
That... is the weirdest definition of Markov model I have ever heard, but I guess Wikipedia agrees with you.
And if you don't understand how important that is, consider how you reacted when George W Bush did all sorts of crazy illegal things. If it's ok for presidents you like to do something, it's also ok for presidents you don't like to do the same thing.
Would you say that the American people frequently let Obama get away with crazy illegal things?
...and might that not imply that he already has their trust?
(Spoiler warning: I'm Canadian.)
You and the GP keep using the word "AI". I do not think it means what either of you think it means.
Algorithmic trading does indeed involve a great deal of classical machine learning, which is one area of focus within the very broad field of artificial intelligence. What you're ascribing to "AI" is the specific goal of artificial human intelligence, regularly granted the misnomer of general artificial intelligence. The example you gave would be of more interest to translators of unknown languages than to people trying to create an artificial brain.
This was one of the many misconceptions about intelligence that muddied AI efforts in the twentieth century, incidentally. Parsing and producing language isn't the end-all of everything like logicians once believed; other factors, like knowledge representation, planning, and creativity also must be considered. These have (for the most part) redefined the AI landscape as it's been introduced; KR and fuzzy logic led to expert systems in the 80s (which were pretty successful in some contexts but an absolute pain to build) and classical planning led to a wide variety of different manifestations like the intelligent agents of the 90s (which weren't so intelligent), automation of flight planning, and enemy AI in real-time strategy games. Computational creativity has yet to really have its time in the sun, being mostly displaced by a vastly-improved second round of more involved linguistic analysis called natural-language processing (culminating in things like IBM's Watson, although that involved a measure of creativity as well.)
I don't understand why so many people have trouble with the idea that Obama does all of these crazy illegal things that he hates because he's trying to win Congress's trust. Is it really that hard to remember what happened to Jimmy Carter?
Tokelau. Tokelau does! Or, at worst, an internet with a banner frame across the bottom and an option to remove it for $10.95 a month.
Is it just me or does "Wheaton Wil" sound like a suitable Ubuntu version codename? Karmic Kirk, Picky Picard, Jaded Janeway, Suspicious Sisko... Quixotic Q, Whiny Wesley?
The official story is that true offline SP mode was eliminated so that all characters could participate in co-op. (Diablo 2 had two separate types of character, though you probably already knew that; one stored on the machine, the other stored on the Battle.net server. However, you could still play single-player Battle.net games.) I have a little trouble believing that this freedom is such a burden that it needed to be taken away—if Blizzard was really as legitimately surprised at the fan backlash as they claim, there must have been some severe Steve Jobs-style minimalism behind the wheel.
I realise this brand of hatemongering is popular, but as someone with friends and coworkers in the pharmaceutical industry: citation really desperately needed. Pharmaceutical companies have plenty of shortcomings, moral and otherwise, but the simple truth is that they are still comprised of individuals who want to improve the world. A lot of diseases that have had management regimens instead of cures are in that situation because they're genuinely hard to fix. The good PR, investor money, and reputation that would come from fixing a major human ailment is a huge thing for these companies, and generally lost profits can be recouped in this way (and by the corresponding boost in public image, leading to more purchase of other products.) The shadier companies would just jack up the cure's price.
Even from a purely competitive perspective, there are companies trying to improve upon their competitors' products to steal markets, and finding a cure to the disease that creates an enemy's main revenue stream is a fantastic weapon.
In short, pharmaceutical companies do not exhibit rent-seeking behaviour to anywhere near the same extent that the software industry does, and while their dealings with third-world countries are certainly unpleasant, they're not quite as morally unscrupulous as it looks when Fox News or CNN is busy riling up their audiences.
(Aaand I totally reverted like three mod points to make this post.)
If you want to talk about the idea of a creator in a deistic sense, as in something outside of known history, then yes; that's perfectly well and good and you can go on winding up the watches in your blind watchmaker's front-window display case. If you want to talk about the idea in an historical context, absolutely; undoubtedly creation myths have had a great impact on how people act and how empires were wound up. These are important matters that should not be ignored, lest we lose the lessons garnered from them.
But the moment you start suggesting that creationism is some kind of alternative to understanding biological evolution is the moment you step off the deep end. Kindly put, sir, you have just used very loaded and inarticulate language that is directly in conflict with what we know is philosophically, scientifically, and intellectually honest. In absolutely no way are there any genuine alternatives to the statement that we developed from single-celled organisms over the course of billions of years, and if you feel the need to distrust what I am saying I will be more than happy to teach you how disastrously misguided such a claim is, regardless of how much or how little biology you have been formally instructed in.
What does exist is the age-old reality of one of humankind's greatest inventions: the power of religion to provide answers to those who need them emotionally, even if they are brutally false and bestow us with an incredibly unwarranted sense of self-importance. Sometimes lies are necessary for social order to proceed, and the most urgently important lies are generally conveniently relevant creation myths.
(P.S., I'm retracting a mod point I gave you by making this post.)
You are, of course, severely late to the party; a lot of interesting discussion on this point happened way back in August. Here's the Slashdot conversation from then. I believe the consensus is that since this is Blizzard and not EA, no boycott like the one that marred Spore's release will transpire, and the loss of flexibility will simply be accepted.
Another controversy from about the same time (which didn't receive Slashdot attention) is that all gameplay-altering modifications are banned in D3, a somewhat harsher stance than the one Blizzard took with WoW interface mods. There has been some concern that DarkD3, a mod that diminishes the game's 'painted' look to make it clearer and crisper graphics may be cause for a ban, but so far the word is "probably not".
(Nah, only 1.0. Read all about it here.)
You should switch to something cleaner, like Aquafina. I hear some of their plastic products have as low as 80% DHMO. The other 20% is primarily comprised of the same innocuous hydrocarbons you'd find in your toothbrush or remote control.
They don't. They prefer white mushrooms to morels.
Because the standard won't be done for like a bajillion years, and the correct syntax could change. The prefixes are supposed to be dropped at the earliest opportunity by site implementers, and should serve as a warning to the coder that the feature they're toying with isn't done yet—unfortunately, W3C has once more underestimated the cargo-cult mindset of web developers.
That it does.
Physicists are perhaps more famous for the same folly; one example I recently stumbled upon was David Boehm, who, in conjunction with a psychologist, developed a completely nonsensical theory of higher brain function and the emergence of independent thought based on nothing more than the appeal of physics concepts to a biological problem.
If it consoles you any, rectifying such misconceptions is one of the reasons I make a habit of posting here. Experience more suggests, however, that not reading the article is more commonly a source of error—but perhaps that's an artefact of the same presumptiveness.
Neither; it's "Elephant, Turtle, Turtle, Turtle, ...". But if it were one of those, it would be the former, because the sequence has a defined starting position.
The ugliest stuff I have seen was from mathematicians working in medicine. As a naive student, one is inclined to think that MATLAB code, like any programming language that isn't Perl, line noise, INTERCAL, bf, or TECO, has a minimum floor of ugliness. One would be wrong.
That is so cheating, but I will admit I've considered a single loop version rather than a spherical one. Like a ringworld instead of a Dyson sphere. Of giant turtles. All the way down. With a fork in the middle.
De minimis non curat praetor!
(Fun fact: if you ever find someone claiming someone in particular had a conversation with an old man or woman that ended this way, they didn't do their research. Probably.)
In my experience, scientists will do just about anything to convince themselves that they're not actually programming, if only to avoid pesky annoyances like source code control. The less it looks like a programming language, the better.
Oh god. That would explain why none of their code looks like it's written in a programming language.*
* I work with biologists. By 'they,' I mean biologists. I know you physicists and quantum chemists have it lucky. Stop bragging. You're making me feel bad.
I am using the eccentric alternative for hysterical raisins.
The secret is in the reading of TFA. Twitter's angry that the subpoena claims that Harris has no right to challenge it. The only circumstance allowed by the Stored Communications Act under which the subpoena is filed in which this right can be withheld is if Harris has "no proprietary interest in the content," which is patent bullocks and makes no sense. Officially the subpoena is being made by the prosecution in anticipation of a particular defence; by contrast I do believe a warrant requires suspicion of guilt before it can be issued. It's also very, very unnecessarily broad, and hence blatantly meant to fish for incriminating materials.