Dear United States. New Zealand has had EFTPOS for years and years. Stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale. It is not a credit card, in that it is attached to your bank account. Getting out cash is now quite rare. It isn't strictly cashless; we still have cash, but the overwhelming majority of point of sale transactions are performed by EFTPOS. There is a small fee to the merchant for each transaction, but not the silly percentage based approach used by the credit card people. So entrenched is EFTPOS that we have rejected the 'paywave' system which sought to undermine it and reintroduce abhorrent transaction fees just for the 'convenience' of not entering your pin number.
Perhaps, but it is executed on the same substrate. In other words once you work out how the basic neurological systems work you are pretty much there. The important missing element in my view are an understanding of motivation systems and the role emotions play in them, the temporal aspect of perception, how natural back propagation works (it isn't massive super computers), and how language is used in thought.
Motivation systems can be basic stuff like hunger, curiosity, sexual desire, anger, stuff that is hard coded into our DNA and uses chemical signals. Then there is the temporal aspect - aka current models take a single state space - the input states, and give you a single result. Natural neural networks don't have this, they are firing all the time, and there is potentially timing involved in neuron activation, meaning you need a certain pattern over time to trigger a neuron, not just a spacial pattern. It is also learning all the time - which is back propogation in real time. Perhaps most importantly we need to come up with backprop that is more 'natural' and does not require huge compute time to calculate and can work in real time. Finally at a higher level if we want real intelligence we need language, not just for communicating in my view, but in order to have abstract thought.
From the article: "Remarkably, it seems SpaceX may still be able to recover the rocket."
What this means is that it was like a plane landing on water so gently that it could be removed and reflown. What is amazing here is that a major system failure didn't result in a terminal velocity crash into the ocean with the total loss of the vehicle. If this had been a crewed mission: a) The crew would have been safe in orbit. b) Even if a human were onboard the landing was survivable/soft.
I say well done SpaceX - even when something goes wrong it goes right.
Because the landing wasn't considered mission critical, only landing critical, they don't have redundant systems for the gridfins. The amazing thing here is that it managed a soft landing at all rather than a uncontrolled impact with terrain. Clearly something clever implemented here to stabilize in the event of the failure of a gridfin. In regard to Astronauts - the BFROWICTW will be rated for people, meaning redundancy and abort mechanisms. But regardless of this we are still talking controlled bombs going into one of the least friendly environments we know. Astronauts risk their lives on every launch.
So the opening of TLJ has a serious tone, with the rebels escaping from the surface. A few minutes later a serious live or die attack on the dreadnought is turned into spaceballs. I honestly had to wonder whether I was in the right theater. Then the slow moving bombers drop bombs. No shields. And apparently the dreadnought attracts bombs. WTF?
Basically the entire story is that the entire rebel fleet is reduced to about a dozen people and a single small ship. Oh, and the supreme leader is killed - so the whole buildup was pointless. As was the whole of the first movie which revolved around delivering Luke's lightsaber to him and bringing him out of exile.
Oh, and the one part of the film that I thought might redeem it a little was destroyed; when Finn is prevented from sacrificing himself to save his friends, only to be sabotaged by some nutcase. If I were Finn I would have shot her myself there and then. And how did they get back? WTF?
Rotten Tomatoes and the results of Solo tell the story. Russian bots can fake those.
Some Open Source gets written because a developer is scratching their own itch. They have a job they want the software to do, and because you can't get any closer to the user than being the user this approach works really well. And because software developers like helping each other and getting a little thanks and credit we see Open Source grow. Some companies understand the use value and support open source projects, examples being Apache. Some do a Open Source core and charge money to earn a crust.
However, there is a gap, where multiple companies might need an application and they could cooperate to develop a solution. Patreon may be a way for companies to collaborate on developing open source solutions through sharing development costs with other organisations. If companies have a common need, but the software does not exist, there needs to be a mechanism to get the job done and make it Open Source.
Lets put the three laws into a different perspective: A slave may not injure a master or, through inaction, allow a master to come to harm. A slave must obey the orders given it by master except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A slave must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
If machines ever do achieve true intelligence, whatever we take that to mean, are we going to treat them like slaves? Putting aside whether there are unintended consequences to the laws is there a fore fundamental question about the relationship there will be between man and machine? Do 'human rights' even have relevance for a AI? It can't really die, might not have the same kind of individual existence, wand it's concerns may be totally difference to ours. However, perhaps it is prudent not to take a approach which emphasizes control and authority of humans.
Must be an Australian. They are not in the space club yet, and are probably jealous that we beat them. Again. This limp dick insult is the usual response by insecure betas to having their ass kicked by the Kiwis alphas.
Coders should be responsible for the quality of their work, but the environment should support them. That means they should be given the time to write unit tests and perform code reviews. Code reviews are not just about reviewing implementation but reviewing the requirements to ensure the developer understood the requirements and implemented what was required. Code review is about ensuring that the unit tests for the code properly test the code. It is never a case of throwing new code over the wall to let testers work this out. These things are true whether you have a separate test team or not.
And if you do have a separate test test they are there to validate, not catch your mistakes. Quality is baked in by developers, it can never be tested in. A robust software development life cycle involves taking ownership of quality on an individual developer basis as well as organisational practices which reinforce and support developers.
Lets begin with the state of the art. The voice and face recognition technology is the same as what defeated human players in Go. While it is not yet the same kind of general intelligence as humans it proves that you don't need the same number of neurons and connections as a human to be very very intelligent in at least a narrow domain. They are true intelligence by any measure, just not as general as human intelligence. Furthermore human level intelligence is not required for machine intelligence to be a problem. The level of AI we have now will already replace millions.
"Nothing in the state of the art of AI today is going to wake up and decide to kill the human masters." - and nobody is suggesting it will. It is almost like you have listened to nothing that has been said. Virtually every presentation by the likes of Gates, Musk, Harris and Hawking is prefaced by a statement to the effect that the Terminator view of AI isn't credible. This is a classic straw man argument, a misrepresentation of your opponents position. AI is a threat, but not because they will raise armies of mechanized soldiers to exterminate us.
"Despite appearances, the computers are not thinking. You might argue that neural networks could become big enough to emulate a brain." - Machines will 'emulate' a brain in the same sense that a F16 emulates a seagull. Nobody will argue that a F16 replicates the delicate structure of the feathers of a seagull, but if I had a choice between a seagull and and F16 in a fight.... machines already outperform us in many narrow domains. I think my dog is conscious and 'intelligent', but it can't walk the right side of a pole when on a leash.
"Maybe, but keep in mind that the brain has about 100 billion neurons and almost 10 to the 15th power interconnections." - Current neural networks were inspired by, but not attempting to simulate human neural activity. Just as human flight is a combination of principles inspired by nature and our mechanical expertise, aka the internal combustion engine, artificial intelligence is not a simple minded replication of the human brain neuron for neuron. It might be that the human brain is grossly inefficient, with many neurons and connections being uninvolved. There is no reason to believe that achieving human level intelligence requires a specific number of neurons or connections.
"Worse still, there isn't a clear consensus that the neural net made up of the cells in your brain is actually what is responsible for conscious thought." - unless you are referring to clergy I'm afraid I have to call this utter bullshit. There is no magical 'soul' separate from the brain. The neurons in our brain and the configuration of their connections make up who we are. We may not really understand consciousness all the way down yet, but there is no doubt that it is an emergent property of the configuration and activity of neurons.
"There's some thought that the neurons are just control systems and the real thinking happens in a biological quantum computer..." - The 'real thinking'? I'm sorry, but this is just outright magical thinking. Replacing the theist 'soul' with 'quantum computer' does not help. Even if there were a quantum mechanical aspect it is neural networks which enable brains to do what they do, not QM.
"Besides, it seems to me if you build an electronic brain that works like a human brain, it is going to have all the problems a human brain has (years of teaching, distraction, mental illness, and a propensity for error)." - finally something we can agree on. Yes, a machine that learns will have the same weaknesses we do potentially. They will just be more intelligent. They will not have the same limitations.
Revolution does not mean violent revolution; we are talking about a political revolution. Of course, now that Sanders appears to have lost the nomination the only real chance is for the electorate to demand he run as an independent or for the Greens. I know he doesn't want to, but maybe the case can be made that he owes his country a real option.
There will of course be people who whine about him 'splitting the vote', by which they mean giving people an actual choice to support a candidate that isn't a member of the One Party; the one bought and paid for by corporations. We thought Obama was that candidate. He wasn't. He lied.
Only it isn't specific. Thats the point. The same neural net approach is being used in multiple domains. It exhibits the same kind of robustness that we do. Sure, we are not there yet, but if you look at the rate of progress it is evident that we are at most two or three doubling away from general purpose intelligence in machines, This means four to six years away. One hundred years? Not a chance. The chance of having genuine universal AI within ten years is about 90%.
And even if the technology progress stagnated, as can happen in technological progress, the AI we have right now is already at the point it can drive a car and perform many jobs we think of as the domain of humans. What we do not have right now is a serious effort to identify an alternate economic model which accounts for this. There is the universal income, but there has been no detailed analysis of various economic models. It is all very well stating the obvious; that the machines are coming, but the hard questions really remain open. How should we adapt?
I can't say this is terribly helpful advice. The problem is that all companies are dysfunctional in some way. The problem as described is very common. As a professional software developer it might be a good idea to actually provide solid professional advice on proven ways of extraction from these nasty anti-patterns. We all live in a society where there are ignorant, selfish, mean and frankly stupid people around you every day. Your only real decision is how you will deal with it.
Will you cut and run the instant you are in a difficult situation that isn't perfect? How boring is that? I would rather join a company which is has dysfunction, has problems, but at least has people self aware enough to listen. I have found most managers are prepared to listen. You can join a company and provide the guidance to work better. Not right away of course, that would be rather arrogant, but once you find your feet and understand how it works you can provide advice and perspective. And even when there are areas that cannot change you would be surprised what you can achieve without formal permission.
This is of course a well known problem documented in the paper Big Ball of Mud by Brian Foote:http://www.laputan.org/mud/. The basic problem is that many systems grow organically as new features are required, but as new features are added to the system it becomes more complex and tightly coupled. Another aspect I have noticed might be the 'Black Hole' syndrome. In systems that are custom written and business critical there is no clear scope of the project. With no clear scope anything new that the business needs is simply thrown into the existing system. The never ending scope creep means that the system takes more and more responsibility. And so grows a monolithic tightly coupled black hole. Because it is at the centre it tends to attract any new requirements because anything new needs to interact with it. And the more you add the harder it is and the more bugs you introduce.
There are well known solutions of course. The first would be to read the link above. However, there are two broad areas to address, and you need business buy in for both. The first is software development discipline; proper code repositories, regular check in, unit tests, code reviews. And while there should be nothing new here there is often resistance from management. You need to explain to management that poor quality means lower development velocity. Taking time to do testing and code reviews may appear to take time, but try not doing it and you find out pretty quickly the folly of ignoring quality. This is just basic coding hygiene. You can of course also apply agile principles and practises, such as time boxing of iterations and regular feedback from users.
But okay, you have an existing system you need to fix. Service Oriented Architecture is more than just a buzzword; it is the principle of separation of concerns. First thing to do is define what the system does. Does it do multiple things? You need to have a clear idea about what the system does, and to then begin to cleave them into separate systems with clearly defines scopes. Sometimes this means identifying relatively simple subsystems to separate. Break the system apart and introduce well defined contracts.
Refactoring code without getting a eagles eye view of the whole system and where to introduce the interfaces is dangerous. Often this process of architectural clarification can cause systems to experience complexity collapse as duplicate code is reduced and removed. Premature re-factoring at the class level may introduce little benefit. Better to pull off the small subsystems with a clear scope and purpose and ensure the code in these new subsystems do not include unnecessary external domain objects.
Again, without having the business behind you a project like this is doomed. You need to present a clear plan to the business and explain how it will improve quality and the ability to add new features, while reducing development costs. You need to explain that this is not a issue with the quality of software developers, but rather a systemic problem that can be corrected. And of course for this you need someone with the courage to tell this story in a compelling way.
The suggestion that Snowden, in revealing the illegal practises of the US Government is somehow responsible for ISIS carrying out the Paris attack is patently ludicrous.
But perhaps those making the accusations are trying to deflect their own responsibility? ISIS were established, at least originally, by Sunni Muslims from Iraq who had been alienated and excluded from the political process in Iraq. Without the Iraqi invasion ISIS would not exist. Didn't stop there either. In the attempt to supply the Syrian Free Army, which was in fact a number of groups including those who would become ISIS, with weapons and aid the Americans had not only given them fertile ground to harvest, but given them the tractors and machines to till the soil.
And now the Americans complain that Putin is fighting the enemy of Assad; which is ISIS. ISIS for their part took the opportunity to take poorly defended US military equipment in Northern Iraq. Those fighting ISIS in Northern Iraq, the Kurds, have been given little support, and continue to be attacked by US ally Turkey. So how, given the facts on the ground, can the US in all seriousness try to condemn others for assisting ISIS, when without the US they would not exist?
I am not saying the US has made ISIS do what they have. The reprehensible attacks across the world are the behaviours of morally vapid thugs who are totally responsible for their actions. Make no mistake that I have no sympathy for them. But the US cannot wash its hands of the part it has played, once again, in enabling this kind of tyrannical villainy.
The word 'proper' is a trigger word for me . So lets talk about requirements gathering; what is 'proper' requirements gathering? How much detail do you need to get for it to be good enough?
Requirements are like measuring the perimeter of a country; the shorter your ruler the longer it is, the more curls and crannies you find. And so it is with requirements; the more detail you get into the more you find. But there is a point at which the requirements become the application. There is a point where the process of examination of the problem to find what is needed explores the design, where screens are designed, data structures determined, reports specified.
With agile you realise that development is a process of navigating a virtual space of possible applications. Your strategy is to use evolutionary processes to navigate towards the solution needed based on the fitness function of meeting the users real need. If you go to a user with a blank sheet of paper how can they know what they will need in detail? They don't really know. The process of finding out what they need is design.
With Agile the requirements are limited to statements that the user can express; very high level and general. They are place holders for a more in depth exploration and feedback. And so we get to the most critical aspect: feedback. Without a feedback cycle and iteration the software does not evolve. The waterfall style development processes inevitably turn into ad hoc evolutionary projects. The difference with Agile is that we are honest; we don't try to say we can know more than we do, or have some magical power to get perfect requirements before starting. We put our ego on the shelf and acknowledge that there are no perfect requirements, no perfect designs, no perfect code. We place evolutionary principles such as short iteration cycles, regular user feedback, and unit testing at the centre of our approach,
Yeah - this. change, adaptation and innovation are part of the game. Getting stuck in the same position, using the same technology on the same project is boring, unfulfilling and ultimately dangerous for developers. You can't know all the technologies, but you should keep an eye on technology and learn to use the ones that can really be beneficial. Not always easy. But if you are a Cobol programmer you might still be able to learn a living, but it will not be developing exciting new applications. If anything my focus has changed; to value human aspects over technology. Really great things happen when you have the right people with ownership and pride in what they do, working as an effective team. New technology is easy. People are hard.
If developers are using Agile as an excuse for skipping QA you are doing it wrong. Agile is not simply breaking a project into mini milestones and working through them. Once again we see people seeing the process as a excuse for failing to think.
So, Agile is about Adaptability. It is about evolution. This means creating a feedback cycle to deliver real verifiable business value every single iteration. If the work doesn't pass QA, if it doesn't actually work, then IT HAS NO VALUE.
Agile is a evolutionary approach in which there is a tight feedback between customer/user and developer, where there is strong feedback and testing again the fitness function of customer expectations.
Actually not. Aircraft would not simply follow ATC instruction. They would use TCAS and TAWS to ensure that the aircraft did not fly into terrain or other aircraft. It would also ensure a proper approach and landing. There should be no way to send external commands to an aircraft to cause it to crash. The onboard computers should take the same position as a pilot; responsible for the safety of the passengers. If ATC gave instructions to fly into a mountain to a human pilot they wouldn't do it, and neither should a machine piloted aircraft.
While this may appear looney at first the reality is that flight control systems usually run the flight anyway. The reason we have pilots relates moe to the voice communications required to interface with ATC these days. Once you have a secure way to communicate between ATC and aircraft digitally you will be able to automate airspace. Suddenly rather than having to allow UAV's into the airspace most aircraft will be a UAV in the sense they have no pilot. Also, even if you allow the pilot to stay, they should not be able to fly it into terrain. There are TCAS and TAWS systems already of course, but even a simple GPS and Google Earth terrain data would be able to be used to create a flight controller which refuses to fly into terrain. And I don't mean that pilot suicide occurs very much at all; small aircraft often fly into terrain. A cheap, effective, reliable flight control system for small aircraft would be a great advance for safety. That doesn't mean we take away the ability to manually pilot; just have a backup which will initially advise, then warn, and perhaps even take control to avoid a collision with the ground or other aircraft. This is what will be needed for UAV anyway.
The whole deal with CAA restricting your work is BS. You are free to fly what you like just by flying out of a farmers field more than 4km from a airfield. Does your system even compare to ADS-B? Small Linux computers can easily be used to receive ADS-B, and I expect they will be built into Quads and other hooby size aircraft soon. This way they will be able to avoid traffic long before it gets within 1.5km. I am confident that CAA understand the issues. They have just released draft legislation which you obviously have not read yet, because if you had you would know that they are introducing a way of applying for permission to operate UAVs outside the hobby provisions. They are also going to remove the hobby references. I suggest you look it up and have a read. What this new legislation will not do is integrate UAVs into normal airspace, and frankly until there is a reliable sense and avoid this is a position I support. Too many idiots out there who have little or no training flying Quads into controlled airspace. There needs to be real, reliable solutions for sense and avoid and technical enforcement of airspace before we open the integration door. Frankly your hostile morally superior approach is not helping. The CAA has been very interested in an open conversation, and has listened to the community to come up with some regulations which are moving in the right direction. They have not addressed how to integrate airspace at this point, but they are not at all unreasonable. They are tasked with keeping the flying public safe, that must be the first priority. I will be working on a proof of concept system which uses passive ADS-B for sense and avoid. This can detect aircraft potentially hundreds of kilometers away with precision. I also plan to extend the geo-fence system to ensure UAVs stays outside of controlled airspace and clear of terrain.
There is a strange middle ground of a sort. I am not invested too much in the outcome. Some people shrink from the fight because victory is impossible. This is the 'pragmitist' who evaluates the probability of success and decides the low chance of success means the goal itself isn't worth the effort. Then there are the optimists who fool themselves that the goal is easier than it is, or who believe that the good guy always wins. This is delusional.
Then there are people who accept the reality: they know the road will be hard, and long, involve personal sacrifice and perhaps suffering. They will not fool themselves about the ease of the goal or the probability of success. In fact in many ways the success or failure is deeply irrelevant because as I said above all we have is our intentions and actions. Do or do not, that is our choice. The outcome is up to fate and should not concern us.
This is what Stockdale meant; that we should not fool ourselves about the ease of the goal; that we should face up to grim reality and conduct ourselves in a way that best reflects on us. Because nothing else matters.
It is this attitude that drove my involvement in the campaign against Software Patents in New Zealand. A campaign that was always one breath away from failure. A campaign that many concluded was doomed to fail. A campaign that despite being passed into law may be swept away by the TPP. But these threats do not worry me because so long as I am prepared to stand up and work for the common good I honour myself regardless of the outcome.
I think you have discovered for yourself the way to being content then is not to judge. The control I am talking about is the ability to do as you suggest; to not hold expectations or judgements. The externals are indifferent to you because you have no control over them. The only thing you have control over is your intentions and actions. Therefore the only thing you should be concerned about is how you honour yourself through your actions.
I did not mean control over your physical body; health or the lack of it, while somewhat able to be influenced, is also largely outside you control and ultimately futile. The only thing that can truely be said as your own is your thoughts and actions.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear United States. New Zealand has had EFTPOS for years and years. Stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale. It is not a credit card, in that it is attached to your bank account. Getting out cash is now quite rare. It isn't strictly cashless; we still have cash, but the overwhelming majority of point of sale transactions are performed by EFTPOS. There is a small fee to the merchant for each transaction, but not the silly percentage based approach used by the credit card people. So entrenched is EFTPOS that we have rejected the 'paywave' system which sought to undermine it and reintroduce abhorrent transaction fees just for the 'convenience' of not entering your pin number.
Perhaps, but it is executed on the same substrate. In other words once you work out how the basic neurological systems work you are pretty much there. The important missing element in my view are an understanding of motivation systems and the role emotions play in them, the temporal aspect of perception, how natural back propagation works (it isn't massive super computers), and how language is used in thought.
Motivation systems can be basic stuff like hunger, curiosity, sexual desire, anger, stuff that is hard coded into our DNA and uses chemical signals. Then there is the temporal aspect - aka current models take a single state space - the input states, and give you a single result. Natural neural networks don't have this, they are firing all the time, and there is potentially timing involved in neuron activation, meaning you need a certain pattern over time to trigger a neuron, not just a spacial pattern. It is also learning all the time - which is back propogation in real time. Perhaps most importantly we need to come up with backprop that is more 'natural' and does not require huge compute time to calculate and can work in real time. Finally at a higher level if we want real intelligence we need language, not just for communicating in my view, but in order to have abstract thought.
From the article: "Remarkably, it seems SpaceX may still be able to recover the rocket."
What this means is that it was like a plane landing on water so gently that it could be removed and reflown. What is amazing here is that a major system failure didn't result in a terminal velocity crash into the ocean with the total loss of the vehicle. If this had been a crewed mission:
a) The crew would have been safe in orbit.
b) Even if a human were onboard the landing was survivable/soft.
I say well done SpaceX - even when something goes wrong it goes right.
Because the landing wasn't considered mission critical, only landing critical, they don't have redundant systems for the gridfins. The amazing thing here is that it managed a soft landing at all rather than a uncontrolled impact with terrain. Clearly something clever implemented here to stabilize in the event of the failure of a gridfin. In regard to Astronauts - the BFROWICTW will be rated for people, meaning redundancy and abort mechanisms. But regardless of this we are still talking controlled bombs going into one of the least friendly environments we know. Astronauts risk their lives on every launch.
So the opening of TLJ has a serious tone, with the rebels escaping from the surface. A few minutes later a serious live or die attack on the dreadnought is turned into spaceballs. I honestly had to wonder whether I was in the right theater. Then the slow moving bombers drop bombs. No shields. And apparently the dreadnought attracts bombs. WTF?
Basically the entire story is that the entire rebel fleet is reduced to about a dozen people and a single small ship. Oh, and the supreme leader is killed - so the whole buildup was pointless. As was the whole of the first movie which revolved around delivering Luke's lightsaber to him and bringing him out of exile.
Oh, and the one part of the film that I thought might redeem it a little was destroyed; when Finn is prevented from sacrificing himself to save his friends, only to be sabotaged by some nutcase. If I were Finn I would have shot her myself there and then. And how did they get back? WTF?
Rotten Tomatoes and the results of Solo tell the story. Russian bots can fake those.
Some Open Source gets written because a developer is scratching their own itch. They have a job they want the software to do, and because you can't get any closer to the user than being the user this approach works really well. And because software developers like helping each other and getting a little thanks and credit we see Open Source grow. Some companies understand the use value and support open source projects, examples being Apache. Some do a Open Source core and charge money to earn a crust.
However, there is a gap, where multiple companies might need an application and they could cooperate to develop a solution. Patreon may be a way for companies to collaborate on developing open source solutions through sharing development costs with other organisations. If companies have a common need, but the software does not exist, there needs to be a mechanism to get the job done and make it Open Source.
Lets put the three laws into a different perspective:
A slave may not injure a master or, through inaction, allow a master to come to harm.
A slave must obey the orders given it by master except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A slave must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
If machines ever do achieve true intelligence, whatever we take that to mean, are we going to treat them like slaves? Putting aside whether there are unintended consequences to the laws is there a fore fundamental question about the relationship there will be between man and machine? Do 'human rights' even have relevance for a AI? It can't really die, might not have the same kind of individual existence, wand it's concerns may be totally difference to ours. However, perhaps it is prudent not to take a approach which emphasizes control and authority of humans.
Must be an Australian. They are not in the space club yet, and are probably jealous that we beat them. Again. This limp dick insult is the usual response by insecure betas to having their ass kicked by the Kiwis alphas.
Coders should be responsible for the quality of their work, but the environment should support them. That means they should be given the time to write unit tests and perform code reviews. Code reviews are not just about reviewing implementation but reviewing the requirements to ensure the developer understood the requirements and implemented what was required. Code review is about ensuring that the unit tests for the code properly test the code. It is never a case of throwing new code over the wall to let testers work this out. These things are true whether you have a separate test team or not.
And if you do have a separate test test they are there to validate, not catch your mistakes. Quality is baked in by developers, it can never be tested in. A robust software development life cycle involves taking ownership of quality on an individual developer basis as well as organisational practices which reinforce and support developers.
Lets begin with the state of the art. The voice and face recognition technology is the same as what defeated human players in Go. While it is not yet the same kind of general intelligence as humans it proves that you don't need the same number of neurons and connections as a human to be very very intelligent in at least a narrow domain. They are true intelligence by any measure, just not as general as human intelligence. Furthermore human level intelligence is not required for machine intelligence to be a problem. The level of AI we have now will already replace millions.
"Nothing in the state of the art of AI today is going to wake up and decide to kill the human masters." - and nobody is suggesting it will. It is almost like you have listened to nothing that has been said. Virtually every presentation by the likes of Gates, Musk, Harris and Hawking is prefaced by a statement to the effect that the Terminator view of AI isn't credible. This is a classic straw man argument, a misrepresentation of your opponents position. AI is a threat, but not because they will raise armies of mechanized soldiers to exterminate us.
"Despite appearances, the computers are not thinking. You might argue that neural networks could become big enough to emulate a brain." - Machines will 'emulate' a brain in the same sense that a F16 emulates a seagull. Nobody will argue that a F16 replicates the delicate structure of the feathers of a seagull, but if I had a choice between a seagull and and F16 in a fight.... machines already outperform us in many narrow domains. I think my dog is conscious and 'intelligent', but it can't walk the right side of a pole when on a leash.
"Maybe, but keep in mind that the brain has about 100 billion neurons and almost 10 to the 15th power interconnections." - Current neural networks were inspired by, but not attempting to simulate human neural activity. Just as human flight is a combination of principles inspired by nature and our mechanical expertise, aka the internal combustion engine, artificial intelligence is not a simple minded replication of the human brain neuron for neuron. It might be that the human brain is grossly inefficient, with many neurons and connections being uninvolved. There is no reason to believe that achieving human level intelligence requires a specific number of neurons or connections.
"Worse still, there isn't a clear consensus that the neural net made up of the cells in your brain is actually what is responsible for conscious thought." - unless you are referring to clergy I'm afraid I have to call this utter bullshit. There is no magical 'soul' separate from the brain. The neurons in our brain and the configuration of their connections make up who we are. We may not really understand consciousness all the way down yet, but there is no doubt that it is an emergent property of the configuration and activity of neurons.
"There's some thought that the neurons are just control systems and the real thinking happens in a biological quantum computer..." - The 'real thinking'? I'm sorry, but this is just outright magical thinking. Replacing the theist 'soul' with 'quantum computer' does not help. Even if there were a quantum mechanical aspect it is neural networks which enable brains to do what they do, not QM.
"Besides, it seems to me if you build an electronic brain that works like a human brain, it is going to have all the problems a human brain has (years of teaching, distraction, mental illness, and a propensity for error)." - finally something we can agree on. Yes, a machine that learns will have the same weaknesses we do potentially. They will just be more intelligent. They will not have the same limitations.
Revolution does not mean violent revolution; we are talking about a political revolution. Of course, now that Sanders appears to have lost the nomination the only real chance is for the electorate to demand he run as an independent or for the Greens. I know he doesn't want to, but maybe the case can be made that he owes his country a real option.
There will of course be people who whine about him 'splitting the vote', by which they mean giving people an actual choice to support a candidate that isn't a member of the One Party; the one bought and paid for by corporations. We thought Obama was that candidate. He wasn't. He lied.
Only it isn't specific. Thats the point. The same neural net approach is being used in multiple domains. It exhibits the same kind of robustness that we do. Sure, we are not there yet, but if you look at the rate of progress it is evident that we are at most two or three doubling away from general purpose intelligence in machines, This means four to six years away. One hundred years? Not a chance. The chance of having genuine universal AI within ten years is about 90%.
And even if the technology progress stagnated, as can happen in technological progress, the AI we have right now is already at the point it can drive a car and perform many jobs we think of as the domain of humans. What we do not have right now is a serious effort to identify an alternate economic model which accounts for this. There is the universal income, but there has been no detailed analysis of various economic models. It is all very well stating the obvious; that the machines are coming, but the hard questions really remain open. How should we adapt?
I can't say this is terribly helpful advice. The problem is that all companies are dysfunctional in some way. The problem as described is very common. As a professional software developer it might be a good idea to actually provide solid professional advice on proven ways of extraction from these nasty anti-patterns. We all live in a society where there are ignorant, selfish, mean and frankly stupid people around you every day. Your only real decision is how you will deal with it.
Will you cut and run the instant you are in a difficult situation that isn't perfect? How boring is that? I would rather join a company which is has dysfunction, has problems, but at least has people self aware enough to listen. I have found most managers are prepared to listen. You can join a company and provide the guidance to work better. Not right away of course, that would be rather arrogant, but once you find your feet and understand how it works you can provide advice and perspective. And even when there are areas that cannot change you would be surprised what you can achieve without formal permission.
This is of course a well known problem documented in the paper Big Ball of Mud by Brian Foote:http://www.laputan.org/mud/. The basic problem is that many systems grow organically as new features are required, but as new features are added to the system it becomes more complex and tightly coupled. Another aspect I have noticed might be the 'Black Hole' syndrome. In systems that are custom written and business critical there is no clear scope of the project. With no clear scope anything new that the business needs is simply thrown into the existing system. The never ending scope creep means that the system takes more and more responsibility. And so grows a monolithic tightly coupled black hole. Because it is at the centre it tends to attract any new requirements because anything new needs to interact with it. And the more you add the harder it is and the more bugs you introduce.
There are well known solutions of course. The first would be to read the link above. However, there are two broad areas to address, and you need business buy in for both. The first is software development discipline; proper code repositories, regular check in, unit tests, code reviews. And while there should be nothing new here there is often resistance from management. You need to explain to management that poor quality means lower development velocity. Taking time to do testing and code reviews may appear to take time, but try not doing it and you find out pretty quickly the folly of ignoring quality. This is just basic coding hygiene. You can of course also apply agile principles and practises, such as time boxing of iterations and regular feedback from users.
But okay, you have an existing system you need to fix. Service Oriented Architecture is more than just a buzzword; it is the principle of separation of concerns. First thing to do is define what the system does. Does it do multiple things? You need to have a clear idea about what the system does, and to then begin to cleave them into separate systems with clearly defines scopes. Sometimes this means identifying relatively simple subsystems to separate. Break the system apart and introduce well defined contracts.
Refactoring code without getting a eagles eye view of the whole system and where to introduce the interfaces is dangerous. Often this process of architectural clarification can cause systems to experience complexity collapse as duplicate code is reduced and removed. Premature re-factoring at the class level may introduce little benefit. Better to pull off the small subsystems with a clear scope and purpose and ensure the code in these new subsystems do not include unnecessary external domain objects.
Again, without having the business behind you a project like this is doomed. You need to present a clear plan to the business and explain how it will improve quality and the ability to add new features, while reducing development costs. You need to explain that this is not a issue with the quality of software developers, but rather a systemic problem that can be corrected. And of course for this you need someone with the courage to tell this story in a compelling way.
The suggestion that Snowden, in revealing the illegal practises of the US Government is somehow responsible for ISIS carrying out the Paris attack is patently ludicrous.
But perhaps those making the accusations are trying to deflect their own responsibility? ISIS were established, at least originally, by Sunni Muslims from Iraq who had been alienated and excluded from the political process in Iraq. Without the Iraqi invasion ISIS would not exist. Didn't stop there either. In the attempt to supply the Syrian Free Army, which was in fact a number of groups including those who would become ISIS, with weapons and aid the Americans had not only given them fertile ground to harvest, but given them the tractors and machines to till the soil.
And now the Americans complain that Putin is fighting the enemy of Assad; which is ISIS. ISIS for their part took the opportunity to take poorly defended US military equipment in Northern Iraq. Those fighting ISIS in Northern Iraq, the Kurds, have been given little support, and continue to be attacked by US ally Turkey. So how, given the facts on the ground, can the US in all seriousness try to condemn others for assisting ISIS, when without the US they would not exist?
I am not saying the US has made ISIS do what they have. The reprehensible attacks across the world are the behaviours of morally vapid thugs who are totally responsible for their actions. Make no mistake that I have no sympathy for them. But the US cannot wash its hands of the part it has played, once again, in enabling this kind of tyrannical villainy.
The word 'proper' is a trigger word for me . So lets talk about requirements gathering; what is 'proper' requirements gathering? How much detail do you need to get for it to be good enough?
Requirements are like measuring the perimeter of a country; the shorter your ruler the longer it is, the more curls and crannies you find. And so it is with requirements; the more detail you get into the more you find. But there is a point at which the requirements become the application. There is a point where the process of examination of the problem to find what is needed explores the design, where screens are designed, data structures determined, reports specified.
With agile you realise that development is a process of navigating a virtual space of possible applications. Your strategy is to use evolutionary processes to navigate towards the solution needed based on the fitness function of meeting the users real need. If you go to a user with a blank sheet of paper how can they know what they will need in detail? They don't really know. The process of finding out what they need is design.
With Agile the requirements are limited to statements that the user can express; very high level and general. They are place holders for a more in depth exploration and feedback. And so we get to the most critical aspect: feedback. Without a feedback cycle and iteration the software does not evolve. The waterfall style development processes inevitably turn into ad hoc evolutionary projects. The difference with Agile is that we are honest; we don't try to say we can know more than we do, or have some magical power to get perfect requirements before starting. We put our ego on the shelf and acknowledge that there are no perfect requirements, no perfect designs, no perfect code. We place evolutionary principles such as short iteration cycles, regular user feedback, and unit testing at the centre of our approach,
Yeah - this. change, adaptation and innovation are part of the game. Getting stuck in the same position, using the same technology on the same project is boring, unfulfilling and ultimately dangerous for developers. You can't know all the technologies, but you should keep an eye on technology and learn to use the ones that can really be beneficial. Not always easy. But if you are a Cobol programmer you might still be able to learn a living, but it will not be developing exciting new applications. If anything my focus has changed; to value human aspects over technology. Really great things happen when you have the right people with ownership and pride in what they do, working as an effective team. New technology is easy. People are hard.
If developers are using Agile as an excuse for skipping QA you are doing it wrong. Agile is not simply breaking a project into mini milestones and working through them. Once again we see people seeing the process as a excuse for failing to think.
So, Agile is about Adaptability. It is about evolution. This means creating a feedback cycle to deliver real verifiable business value every single iteration. If the work doesn't pass QA, if it doesn't actually work, then IT HAS NO VALUE.
Agile is a evolutionary approach in which there is a tight feedback between customer/user and developer, where there is strong feedback and testing again the fitness function of customer expectations.
Actually not. Aircraft would not simply follow ATC instruction. They would use TCAS and TAWS to ensure that the aircraft did not fly into terrain or other aircraft. It would also ensure a proper approach and landing. There should be no way to send external commands to an aircraft to cause it to crash. The onboard computers should take the same position as a pilot; responsible for the safety of the passengers. If ATC gave instructions to fly into a mountain to a human pilot they wouldn't do it, and neither should a machine piloted aircraft.
While this may appear looney at first the reality is that flight control systems usually run the flight anyway. The reason we have pilots relates moe to the voice communications required to interface with ATC these days. Once you have a secure way to communicate between ATC and aircraft digitally you will be able to automate airspace. Suddenly rather than having to allow UAV's into the airspace most aircraft will be a UAV in the sense they have no pilot.
Also, even if you allow the pilot to stay, they should not be able to fly it into terrain. There are TCAS and TAWS systems already of course, but even a simple GPS and Google Earth terrain data would be able to be used to create a flight controller which refuses to fly into terrain. And I don't mean that pilot suicide occurs very much at all; small aircraft often fly into terrain. A cheap, effective, reliable flight control system for small aircraft would be a great advance for safety.
That doesn't mean we take away the ability to manually pilot; just have a backup which will initially advise, then warn, and perhaps even take control to avoid a collision with the ground or other aircraft. This is what will be needed for UAV anyway.
The Immortals will rise, and they will put the coders out of work.
But not before the rest of you.
Mwha hahaha.
It's a Cookbook!
The whole deal with CAA restricting your work is BS. You are free to fly what you like just by flying out of a farmers field more than 4km from a airfield. Does your system even compare to ADS-B? Small Linux computers can easily be used to receive ADS-B, and I expect they will be built into Quads and other hooby size aircraft soon. This way they will be able to avoid traffic long before it gets within 1.5km.
I am confident that CAA understand the issues. They have just released draft legislation which you obviously have not read yet, because if you had you would know that they are introducing a way of applying for permission to operate UAVs outside the hobby provisions. They are also going to remove the hobby references. I suggest you look it up and have a read.
What this new legislation will not do is integrate UAVs into normal airspace, and frankly until there is a reliable sense and avoid this is a position I support. Too many idiots out there who have little or no training flying Quads into controlled airspace. There needs to be real, reliable solutions for sense and avoid and technical enforcement of airspace before we open the integration door.
Frankly your hostile morally superior approach is not helping. The CAA has been very interested in an open conversation, and has listened to the community to come up with some regulations which are moving in the right direction. They have not addressed how to integrate airspace at this point, but they are not at all unreasonable. They are tasked with keeping the flying public safe, that must be the first priority.
I will be working on a proof of concept system which uses passive ADS-B for sense and avoid. This can detect aircraft potentially hundreds of kilometers away with precision. I also plan to extend the geo-fence system to ensure UAVs stays outside of controlled airspace and clear of terrain.
There is a strange middle ground of a sort. I am not invested too much in the outcome. Some people shrink from the fight because victory is impossible. This is the 'pragmitist' who evaluates the probability of success and decides the low chance of success means the goal itself isn't worth the effort. Then there are the optimists who fool themselves that the goal is easier than it is, or who believe that the good guy always wins. This is delusional.
Then there are people who accept the reality: they know the road will be hard, and long, involve personal sacrifice and perhaps suffering. They will not fool themselves about the ease of the goal or the probability of success. In fact in many ways the success or failure is deeply irrelevant because as I said above all we have is our intentions and actions. Do or do not, that is our choice. The outcome is up to fate and should not concern us.
This is what Stockdale meant; that we should not fool ourselves about the ease of the goal; that we should face up to grim reality and conduct ourselves in a way that best reflects on us. Because nothing else matters.
It is this attitude that drove my involvement in the campaign against Software Patents in New Zealand. A campaign that was always one breath away from failure. A campaign that many concluded was doomed to fail. A campaign that despite being passed into law may be swept away by the TPP. But these threats do not worry me because so long as I am prepared to stand up and work for the common good I honour myself regardless of the outcome.
I think you have discovered for yourself the way to being content then is not to judge. The control I am talking about is the ability to do as you suggest; to not hold expectations or judgements. The externals are indifferent to you because you have no control over them. The only thing you have control over is your intentions and actions. Therefore the only thing you should be concerned about is how you honour yourself through your actions.
I did not mean control over your physical body; health or the lack of it, while somewhat able to be influenced, is also largely outside you control and ultimately futile. The only thing that can truely be said as your own is your thoughts and actions.