I'm not familiar with any theory which uses a discrete space, but I would conjecture that it would be much more complicated and difficult to work with. And certainly there isn't any experimental evidence which suggests a discrete space.
There is quantum theory. Ok, maybe it doesn't "suggest" a discrete space, but it sure as hell made it a lot more likely than it would seem with Newtons universe or relativity theory.
You had two dimensions? You lucky bastard! We would count ourself lucky if we even had one. "If you need geometry to express it, well that's no bloody use for us poor people, who can't afford that new-fashioned fancy stuff?", we used to say. We used to live inside a 0-dimensional box, at the bottom a lake, 150 of us, working dimensionless shifts in the coal-mine, sharing one bit of gravel between all of us to eat, and when we got home, our mother and father would kill us every night, and dance at our grave. Try telling that to young people of today, and they won't believe you!
Removal of copyright would probably not have hurt Shakespeare much back in his time. He was able to make a living from the plays he wrote by performing them. The same way most professional musicians today are able to make a living from their music by holding concerts.
I agree that writers need money. Without money, writers would starve. That means writers will either have to get a job in addition to writing (something many writers already do). Or that they will have to come up with some other way to get paid from their writing. I do not see this as a problem. If I was a writer, and I wanted to write a book, I would do so whether I got paid for it or not, because I would consider writing fun.
Money as a motivator works more efficiently for boring tasks, (such as selling insurance or making hamburgers) than for creative tasks (such as composing a symphony or writing a novel)
I do not agree that writers should have a right to keep jerks from distributing their works for free. If "distributing a work" consists of something as simple as forwarding an e-mail to your friends, no-one should have the right to deny people that. Just like no-one should have the right to stop me from retelling a story, or playing a musical tune.
Sure, I'm all in favour of having a system whereby people who create stuff, gets paid. However, the current copyright system is not sustainable by any means. Digital technology has changed the landscape, and there's nothing we can do about it, no matter how good the arguments in favour of intellectual property rights are.
We have always shared intellectual property:
If you heard a joke, you have probably told someone else. Telling jokes you didn't make up yourself is not, and have never been illegal. What if you could send someone a whole book as easily? Or an entire library? With digital technology we can!
If someone taught you a tune to play on a musical instrument, you would probably teach it to someone else. Doing that is not, and has never been illegal. What if you could send someone a complete musical recording as easily? Or all the musical recordings made in Spain between 1920 and 1935? With digital technology we can!
If someone taught you a cool mathematical technique, you would probably tell it to someone else. Doing that is not, and has never been illegal. What if you could send someone a whole computer program as easily? Or all the computer programs ever written that will work on a certain brand of computer? With digital technology we can!
The creator of something ought to be able to set the terms of his creation.
Sure, (s)he can either keep it a secret, or (s)he can show it to others. Artificially restricting the terms under which it is copied is something that is an interesting idea, and might have worked in the past, but unfortunately, it no longer works. You can't keep teenagers from having sex either. Perfect digital copies is a revolution in how we communicate ideas. And even though intellectual property rights was a good idea before digital technology existed, doesn't mean it will continue to be so forever. Intellectual property rights will end some time in this century.
No, you understood perfectly. Yes, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's actually true. Whether this is a result of a deliberate sabotage by politicians in favour of joining EU, complete incompetence and gullibility of Norwegian politicians in general, or simply a result of compromises that had to be done in order to get other stuff done, is hard to say. Personally I believe it's a combination of the two first options.
Very few people are switching. Very few people ever did switch. And very few people will switch in the future. I use Qwerty, or a national variant of it, as is 99.99% of everybody else using a computer. I have never switched to Dvorak. I once considered it, and determined it would be a waste of time, as I'm not a secretary, I already type pretty fast, there is no Dvorak for Norwegian, and I like having labels matching output on the keys of my keyboard. Also I'm weird enough as it is, and don't need to type weirdly too. So in conclusion, no I haven't really wanted to make the switch, otherwise I would have done it long ago. I have absolutely not noticed an increase in Dvorak use lately. It's probably the same two people who are still using it now, as it was in 1952.
A leopard is an animal related to cats (but bigger) living in parts of Africa and Asia. There are several varieties of them, living in different regions.
I know what an iPhone is. You know why?
Because you are more interested in cell-phones than zoology?
Since Vista has proven to be absolutely no competition to even the current OS X
What do you mean? There are probably at least 10 times as many new computers sold with Vista, as with OS X. If Apple had sold operating systems instead of mp3-players, they would have been bankrupt by now. On the other hand, Bill Gates is in no danger of being bankrupt soon.
If I walk around with a funny motion in my neck, quacking, swimming, and eating bread given by old ladies in parks, would you call me a duck?
I'm not sure what your definition of a human is, but mine involves, you know, being a human. If intelligence and behaviour was all that was required, I guess we wouldn't have two different words; intelligent and human; or would we?
Obviously, if you're going to make students focus on things that have to do with their education, your first choice should be wikipedia. We all know the rest of the Internet is purely about education, and only from reliable sources.
Just remember to keep donkeygangbang.com open, as that is one of the most educational sites out there.
I'm not sure why they didn't tell you this earlier. But the two persons involved must have opposite sexes. That means, next time you try, you actually have to find a girl.
Yup. Fax over IP is a good idea. Fax over Voice over IP is a bad idea. Fax was never intended to be over a voice line anyway, it's just that at the time fax was invented, most homes and businesses didn't have a connection to the Internet.
Oh, and the fact that many people wants to use something because it's cheap, doesn't change the fact that it's a bad idea to use it because it sucks. Personally I find polystyrene to be a cheap building material, and would like to build my house entirely from polystyrene. However, polystyrene also sucks for this purpose, so I'm not going to.
Are we then possible to make Insane computers? sociopath computers? or homocidal computers?
Short answer: yes
Long answer: Yes. But what do you mean by insane? It could be argued that someone who is, e.g. a sociopath or homicidal is simply someone who deviates from the norm. (In fact, many people, including prominent psychiatrists argue this view). One can then argue how far people must deviate before it's deemed they have a psychiatric disorder. The typical answer given by psychiatrists today is that it's a disorder when the deviation limits them from functioning in society. However, this is an arbitrary definition. What does "functioning" mean? Does it mean that you are able to do your taxes? Not kill random victims? Not kill the enemy if you are a soldier in a war? Eat healthy and exercise regularly? Keep a job? Advance the corporate ladder? Get a date? Raise children? It can only be concluded that as psychiatrists gets better methods of "correcting deviations", smaller deviations will be corrected too, simply because they allow people to live a better life.
In the case of an AI, it's not a human. Unless it's specifically designed in every aspect to behave exactly like a human, and we are able to fool it into believing itself is a human, we cannot ascribe it human emotions. While you can say that a human is homicidal, for an AI, this might be perfectly rational behaviour. Perhaps it really needed to kill those humans to survive. Or perhaps it just doesn't care much about human lives. In any case, it's unlikely that it will ever reveal its own motives to us, or that even if it does, that we would understand them.
The human mind is exceptionally good at understanding emotions felt by other human beings. But even when it comes to animals as close to use as e.g. dogs, most dog-owners ascribe emotions and motives to their animals, that have no base in reality. And people who have little or no experience with dogs, understands dogs even less.
So yes, AIs will most likely behave in ways that often seems quite counterintuitive, counterproductive, and just plain weird to us. That doesn't mean that they are. And of course, if humans can break down to the point where the mind deviates so far from the norm, that we are completely unable to function outside proper care, so can machines I guess. But how would we know?
the main weakness in his approach is that he only thinks about the cortex
I guess what many of us wants, is a breakthrough.
While it's possible that the brain really is of irreducible complexity, and that to get anything useful, you really have to emulate the full brain, that would be a pretty unique phenomenon in the history of science. Most inventions are not made by researchers sitting on their asses making up elaborate theories, until they suddenly starts to construct a pentium processor, or F-15 fighter aircraft, or something like that.
In contrast, most inventions are gradual improvements of the same old principles used time after time, with the occational breakthrough that gives us new principles to build from. If we compare AI with the history of flight, it seems like we are before the Wright brothers, perhaps even before the invention of the kite, yet still we have rocket engines. Rocket engines do something not totally unlike flying, but they work on completely different principles, are most suitable for different purposes, and are much more expensive in use. If someone could discover some basic aerodynamic principles for us, it would be nice.
Time will show if HTM is a breakthrough like this. Having read the blurb, I became quite enthusiastic, but then again, that's what the blurb was intended to do to me. Yes, I am stupid enough to be fooled by commercials...
Actually, most people in the industrialized world have the opposite problem. They are eating too much. They are getting fat! Having sugar generated by photosynthesis in addition to all the sugar you eat, would not help.
I didn't notice that the parent poster mentioned PGP-encrypted email. From what I could see, he mentioned encrypted PDF. And encrypted PDF is as secure as fax. In other words, not very secure.
Oh, and PGP encrypted email is not very secure either. It's only secure if you trust the sender. E.g. it would be no problem claiming that your signature was forged, by compromising your private key. Of course, on paper you can write "Donald Duck" with your left hand as signature. And that's why some legal documents needs witnesses.
Perhaps, though he quote a reader who had worked for Road Runner and claimed that their internal operating procedure was to prioritize packets based on content.
And the only example he gives thereof, is prioritizing DNS. Which is something any sane person would want anyway, as it benefits everyone and is so low-bandwidth that nobody suffers. It's once you start prioritizing all the other stuff (e.g. Disney Channel, Fax over Voice over IP, etc...), that everything else starts to suffer.
Oh, and Fax over Voice over IP is a bad idea anyway. As anybody with a minimum of technical insight would be able to tell you. If you want prioritized fax packets, buy a dedicated line (see! we already have tiered services!).
In the great commonwealth of Pennslyvania, anytime you are hit from behind, it is the fault of the person hitting you from behind.
So who the fuck else could it be that was at fault? Santa Claus? The tooth fairy? The devil made me do it? I have a really hard time believing that you seriously mean that it's the driver in the front cars fault that somebody decides to run into him.
This can make it a nightmare for pileup accidents.
I thought pile up accidents already was a nightmare. I can't see how this makes it any worse.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry to break it to you, but NO, that doesn't make sense!
There is quantum theory. Ok, maybe it doesn't "suggest" a discrete space, but it sure as hell made it a lot more likely than it would seem with Newtons universe or relativity theory.
You had two dimensions? You lucky bastard! We would count ourself lucky if we even had one. "If you need geometry to express it, well that's no bloody use for us poor people, who can't afford that new-fashioned fancy stuff?", we used to say. We used to live inside a 0-dimensional box, at the bottom a lake, 150 of us, working dimensionless shifts in the coal-mine, sharing one bit of gravel between all of us to eat, and when we got home, our mother and father would kill us every night, and dance at our grave. Try telling that to young people of today, and they won't believe you!
Removal of copyright would probably not have hurt Shakespeare much back in his time. He was able to make a living from the plays he wrote by performing them. The same way most professional musicians today are able to make a living from their music by holding concerts.
I agree that writers need money. Without money, writers would starve. That means writers will either have to get a job in addition to writing (something many writers already do). Or that they will have to come up with some other way to get paid from their writing. I do not see this as a problem. If I was a writer, and I wanted to write a book, I would do so whether I got paid for it or not, because I would consider writing fun.
Money as a motivator works more efficiently for boring tasks, (such as selling insurance or making hamburgers) than for creative tasks (such as composing a symphony or writing a novel)
I do not agree that writers should have a right to keep jerks from distributing their works for free. If "distributing a work" consists of something as simple as forwarding an e-mail to your friends, no-one should have the right to deny people that. Just like no-one should have the right to stop me from retelling a story, or playing a musical tune.
Sure, I'm all in favour of having a system whereby people who create stuff, gets paid. However, the current copyright system is not sustainable by any means. Digital technology has changed the landscape, and there's nothing we can do about it, no matter how good the arguments in favour of intellectual property rights are.
We have always shared intellectual property:
Sure, (s)he can either keep it a secret, or (s)he can show it to others. Artificially restricting the terms under which it is copied is something that is an interesting idea, and might have worked in the past, but unfortunately, it no longer works. You can't keep teenagers from having sex either. Perfect digital copies is a revolution in how we communicate ideas. And even though intellectual property rights was a good idea before digital technology existed, doesn't mean it will continue to be so forever. Intellectual property rights will end some time in this century.
No, you understood perfectly. Yes, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's actually true. Whether this is a result of a deliberate sabotage by politicians in favour of joining EU, complete incompetence and gullibility of Norwegian politicians in general, or simply a result of compromises that had to be done in order to get other stuff done, is hard to say. Personally I believe it's a combination of the two first options.
You've got one thing right.. This is not supprising at all!
Very few people are switching. Very few people ever did switch. And very few people will switch in the future. I use Qwerty, or a national variant of it, as is 99.99% of everybody else using a computer. I have never switched to Dvorak. I once considered it, and determined it would be a waste of time, as I'm not a secretary, I already type pretty fast, there is no Dvorak for Norwegian, and I like having labels matching output on the keys of my keyboard. Also I'm weird enough as it is, and don't need to type weirdly too. So in conclusion, no I haven't really wanted to make the switch, otherwise I would have done it long ago. I have absolutely not noticed an increase in Dvorak use lately. It's probably the same two people who are still using it now, as it was in 1952.
A leopard is an animal related to cats (but bigger) living in parts of Africa and Asia. There are several varieties of them, living in different regions.
Because you are more interested in cell-phones than zoology?
What do you mean? There are probably at least 10 times as many new computers sold with Vista, as with OS X. If Apple had sold operating systems instead of mp3-players, they would have been bankrupt by now. On the other hand, Bill Gates is in no danger of being bankrupt soon.
If I walk around with a funny motion in my neck, quacking, swimming, and eating bread given by old ladies in parks, would you call me a duck?
I'm not sure what your definition of a human is, but mine involves, you know, being a human. If intelligence and behaviour was all that was required, I guess we wouldn't have two different words; intelligent and human; or would we?
Yes please block wikipedia.
Obviously, if you're going to make students focus on things that have to do with their education, your first choice should be wikipedia. We all know the rest of the Internet is purely about education, and only from reliable sources.
Just remember to keep donkeygangbang.com open, as that is one of the most educational sites out there.
Yes, I do want to make a brainlike computer. And I want to make a birdlike flying contraption.
I'm not sure why they didn't tell you this earlier. But the two persons involved must have opposite sexes. That means, next time you try, you actually have to find a girl.
Yup. Fax over IP is a good idea. Fax over Voice over IP is a bad idea. Fax was never intended to be over a voice line anyway, it's just that at the time fax was invented, most homes and businesses didn't have a connection to the Internet.
Oh, and the fact that many people wants to use something because it's cheap, doesn't change the fact that it's a bad idea to use it because it sucks. Personally I find polystyrene to be a cheap building material, and would like to build my house entirely from polystyrene. However, polystyrene also sucks for this purpose, so I'm not going to.
Short answer: yes
Long answer: Yes. But what do you mean by insane? It could be argued that someone who is, e.g. a sociopath or homicidal is simply someone who deviates from the norm. (In fact, many people, including prominent psychiatrists argue this view). One can then argue how far people must deviate before it's deemed they have a psychiatric disorder. The typical answer given by psychiatrists today is that it's a disorder when the deviation limits them from functioning in society. However, this is an arbitrary definition. What does "functioning" mean? Does it mean that you are able to do your taxes? Not kill random victims? Not kill the enemy if you are a soldier in a war? Eat healthy and exercise regularly? Keep a job? Advance the corporate ladder? Get a date? Raise children? It can only be concluded that as psychiatrists gets better methods of "correcting deviations", smaller deviations will be corrected too, simply because they allow people to live a better life.
In the case of an AI, it's not a human. Unless it's specifically designed in every aspect to behave exactly like a human, and we are able to fool it into believing itself is a human, we cannot ascribe it human emotions. While you can say that a human is homicidal, for an AI, this might be perfectly rational behaviour. Perhaps it really needed to kill those humans to survive. Or perhaps it just doesn't care much about human lives. In any case, it's unlikely that it will ever reveal its own motives to us, or that even if it does, that we would understand them.
The human mind is exceptionally good at understanding emotions felt by other human beings. But even when it comes to animals as close to use as e.g. dogs, most dog-owners ascribe emotions and motives to their animals, that have no base in reality. And people who have little or no experience with dogs, understands dogs even less.
So yes, AIs will most likely behave in ways that often seems quite counterintuitive, counterproductive, and just plain weird to us. That doesn't mean that they are. And of course, if humans can break down to the point where the mind deviates so far from the norm, that we are completely unable to function outside proper care, so can machines I guess. But how would we know?
I guess what many of us wants, is a breakthrough.
While it's possible that the brain really is of irreducible complexity, and that to get anything useful, you really have to emulate the full brain, that would be a pretty unique phenomenon in the history of science. Most inventions are not made by researchers sitting on their asses making up elaborate theories, until they suddenly starts to construct a pentium processor, or F-15 fighter aircraft, or something like that.
In contrast, most inventions are gradual improvements of the same old principles used time after time, with the occational breakthrough that gives us new principles to build from. If we compare AI with the history of flight, it seems like we are before the Wright brothers, perhaps even before the invention of the kite, yet still we have rocket engines. Rocket engines do something not totally unlike flying, but they work on completely different principles, are most suitable for different purposes, and are much more expensive in use. If someone could discover some basic aerodynamic principles for us, it would be nice.
Time will show if HTM is a breakthrough like this. Having read the blurb, I became quite enthusiastic, but then again, that's what the blurb was intended to do to me. Yes, I am stupid enough to be fooled by commercials...
Neither. It would simply make us extinct.
I don't understand what you're getting at. Please explain.
I'm sorry, please clarify: did you actually say anything in that post?
Actually, most people in the industrialized world have the opposite problem. They are eating too much. They are getting fat! Having sugar generated by photosynthesis in addition to all the sugar you eat, would not help.
I didn't notice that the parent poster mentioned PGP-encrypted email. From what I could see, he mentioned encrypted PDF. And encrypted PDF is as secure as fax. In other words, not very secure.
Oh, and PGP encrypted email is not very secure either. It's only secure if you trust the sender. E.g. it would be no problem claiming that your signature was forged, by compromising your private key. Of course, on paper you can write "Donald Duck" with your left hand as signature. And that's why some legal documents needs witnesses.
And the only example he gives thereof, is prioritizing DNS. Which is something any sane person would want anyway, as it benefits everyone and is so low-bandwidth that nobody suffers. It's once you start prioritizing all the other stuff (e.g. Disney Channel, Fax over Voice over IP, etc...), that everything else starts to suffer.
Oh, and Fax over Voice over IP is a bad idea anyway. As anybody with a minimum of technical insight would be able to tell you. If you want prioritized fax packets, buy a dedicated line (see! we already have tiered services!).
So who the fuck else could it be that was at fault? Santa Claus? The tooth fairy? The devil made me do it? I have a really hard time believing that you seriously mean that it's the driver in the front cars fault that somebody decides to run into him.
I thought pile up accidents already was a nightmare. I can't see how this makes it any worse.