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User: NoOneInParticular

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  1. Re:AI and the prevalence of bombast on Why Robots Will Not Be Smarter Than Humans By 2029 · · Score: 1

    The perceptron as used in the sixties had particular limits, namely that they could not do anything more when layered than when they were not. This was because the perceptrons in use were linear. Minsky pointed out this simple fact as a response to a number of outrageous claims from the NN community about the capabilities of those linear perceptrons. NN was done in by selling snake-oil. They did it again in the 90s, and they're again having a go at it now.

  2. Re:Judgment shouldn't matter on Copyright Ruling On Publishing Calculated Results: Common Sense Breaks Out · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think you've got a fair point. In this view, I would say that many accounting reports of the last few decades should be considered creative in nature and therefore copyrightable. It seems the banks agree.

  3. How do you know that that he isn't the prick that the media has made him out to be?

    Who cares? You're just shooting the messenger. The media is simply trying to cover up the fact that they seized to be ... the media. Now we depend on the likes of Assange to question the actions of the powerful. And you complain about Assange?

  4. Re: The day before Fukashima happened on Why Improbable Things Really Aren't · · Score: 1
    Actually, the million monkeys typing a million years is a point against things getting funky with time. Say Hamlet is 100,000 characters long, say the typewriters only consist of 52 characters (lower and uppercase, let's forget about punctuation). This means that a monkey typing a random 100,000 characters has a probability of 1 over 52 to the power of 100,000 to produce Hamlet. The monkey can bang away for a million years (10^6), he can invite a billion friends (10^9*10^6=10^15), they can bang away for a few trillion years (10^12*10^6), he can turn all atoms in the universe (10^85) into monkeys (with built in typewriters). They all can bang away for a trillion universe lifetimes (roughly a googol), and still the probability that they will produce anything like Hamlet is zilch. They wouldn't even produce the first page. Things absolutely don't get funky in that way.

    In short, you either need an infinite amount of monkeys, or an infinite amount of time to produce Hamlet.

  5. Re:Builder = Business != Individual on Ask Slashdot: Should Developers Fix Bugs They Cause On Their Own Time? · · Score: 1

    And we charge 20% maintenance fee to cover the cost of bug fixing.

  6. Re:If it's just "common sense and common courtesy" on House Committee Approves Bill Banning In-Flight Phone Calls · · Score: 1

    Given that everyone picks their airline based on price and price alone, this absolutely make sense. You get what you pay for.

  7. Re:How is presenting all theories a problem? on South Carolina Education Committee Removes Evolution From Standards · · Score: 1

    You might want to take a poll on the members of the education boards that favor creationism, and count the number of young earthians among them. The result will shock you. The political creationists in the US are absolutely insane.

  8. Re:Pull your head out on South Carolina Education Committee Removes Evolution From Standards · · Score: 1

    You would essentially treat Big Bang theory and Black Hole theory as a hypothesis. It's an informed hypothesis, but still an hypothesis. Also note that both Big Bang and black holes are relatively recent. They might not survive the century mark, and go the way of 'Ether' before it. Not all stuff scientists work on are things that make sense. Far from it. However, in the end, evidence prevails.

  9. Re:well i'm reassured! on Confessions Of an Ex-TSA Agent: Secrets Of the I.O. Room · · Score: 1

    So... this makes California not a Republic? Then who's the khalif of Calif?

  10. Re:well i'm reassured! on Confessions Of an Ex-TSA Agent: Secrets Of the I.O. Room · · Score: 1
    Interesting take on the difference between a Republic and a Democracy. Given that there is not a single country on earth that has an absolute democracy, you are essentially claiming that governments are either Republics or Monarchies. So China, India and the US are Republics, while the UK, Denmark, The Netherlands are monarchies. None are democracies.

    Look up the word 'representative democracy' to understand how silly this distinction is. I know this is doctrine in the US, but it is demonstrably wrong.

  11. Re:hero on Edward Snowden and the Death of Nuance · · Score: 2
    He betrayed his country by showing other countries how bad his country was. So he is a traitor. He did this to help his countrymen. So he's a hero.

    Something similar goes for the NSA. The are lying about what they do and they're treating the constitution as dirt. So they are traitors. They do this to help their countrymen against terrorist attack. so they are heroes.

    Two sides. Both correct to an extent. There is absolutely a middle position here. I'd go with Snowden 80% hero and NSA 70% traitor. Where are you?

  12. Re:Lincense wars in... on FSF's Richard Stallman Calls LLVM a 'Terrible Setback' · · Score: 2
    RMS has missed the boat. He's working under the assumption that open source code is written by brilliant volunteers that create fantastic software in their spare time. The reality is that the real good open source code is written by brilliant employees on the bosses time. What has happened is that many software corps allow their employees to contribute to open source software. But only if it is relevant to their business. So GPL software takes a backstep because employers are not stupid. Contributing to GPL code will make the work of their employers unusable. So nobody touches GPL software with a ten foot pole. What is done however is letting people, even on their employers time, contribute to MIT, BSD, or Apache license software. As they can sell their solutions using that software.

    So, the GPL is dying, if not dead.

  13. Re: Decreased Costs on Doctors Say Food Stamp Cuts Could Cause Higher Healthcare Costs · · Score: 1

    I think the point is that they are creating the system that produces welfare recipients, by depending on provably counterproductive moral principles such as abstinence and unlimited procreation in wedlock, regardless of income.

  14. Re:Bad call on Bill Nye To Debate Creationist Museum Founder Ken Ham · · Score: 1

    Atheists generally don't go on their knees and pray to a point of light.

  15. Re:Clemency? on Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency · · Score: 1

    I agree with you. However, we're talking about Snowden here, not the heads of the NSA.

  16. Re:There is no language superiority on "Clinical Trials" For Programming Languages? · · Score: 1
    I welcome you to see the merit of Brainfuck, Befunge, or any of a plethora of other programming languages that are objectively not suitable to solve any type of problem better than, say, C or Java. So your basic premise is false. It might be that Scala and Lisp both have their objective sweet spots, but it might equally well be that one is better than the other -- if tested correctly.

    And BTW, this post was a valid Whitespace program until your renderer ate my tabs.

  17. Re:human rights on Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency · · Score: 1

    I agree. But we're talking about Snowden here, not the NSA and the rest of the US government.

  18. Re:Frank Kaplan is a fascist on Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency · · Score: 1

    I agree. But we're talking about Snowden here, not the head of the NSA.

  19. Re: freedom on Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency · · Score: 1

    Where else would he have to go to trial? As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Snowden is just a US dissident. No crime in that.

  20. Re: freedom on Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency · · Score: 1

    With secret laws and secret courts in place, there's no telling what will happen to Snowden if he would come back. Try to get a guarantee from someone high up the chain that Snowden would be tried in a court of law. Do you think that will happen? The US is long past the point toward an authoritarian state.

  21. Re:Technically correct on Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency · · Score: 2

    Both sides are equally treasonous, as they play for the same team. Running myself is tricky, as I'm not a good speaker. Also, if everyone would run as themselves, how many votes would each one get? I think your solutions are stale. Democracy has been hacked, and we need to find a way to get it working again.

  22. Re:Bad call on Bill Nye To Debate Creationist Museum Founder Ken Ham · · Score: 1
    I think it's even worse. Evolution theory shows that with the right premise (heredity, variation, geographic separation, competition), speciation happens. Simple computer models show that this is the case in that simple mathematical objects will form completely unrelated structures that bear no resemblance to their ancestors or their neighbors, i.e., species. At this point, Creationists are effectively arguing that God is working actively against evolution to occur, as the math shows that it will if the process was left alone.

    I haven't however heard a cogent argument why God hates evolution so much to spend so much effort working against it.

  23. Re:Bad call on Bill Nye To Debate Creationist Museum Founder Ken Ham · · Score: 1

    They were obviously divinely inspired.

  24. Re:Incentive? on The New York Times Pushes For Clemency For Snowden · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It's actually an interesting point you bring up. With the rendition practices where people are either tortured directly by the CIA overseas or are being handed over to 'friendly' torturers, legally approved water-boarding torture in the US, and who knows what else goes on, the CIA runs the direct risk of what the secret policy in the soviet era has undergone. When the job requirements are such that only thugs like it, only thugs will apply.

    I'm pretty sure that this last decade, the CIA has gone through a transformation where people capable of doing actual intelligence work have left the bureau, and mostly people that know how to 'extract' info from others remain. Unfortunately, such info is typically useless, making the CIA just another device for oppression of brown people worshiping the wrong god, as intelligence they will not gather anymore.

  25. Re:All or nothing on US Justice Blocks Implementation of ACA Contraceptive Mandate · · Score: 1

    Lack of contraception leads to more babies, leads to additional health costs. It's a cost-cutting measure.