I just do not want to pay for this database through my taxes - much like the optional id card that looks like it will be illegal not to have quite soon.
... as long as it is carried out in public.
Very carry on:)
More seriously, one of the issues to date is that no-one knew what positions were taken in a stock by everyone else.
IIRC the Australians banned it a few years ago partly because it turned out short sellers had 'sold' 3 x as many shares of a mining company as actually existed, causing chaos as settlement date approached.
probably.
There are extensive threads on getting huwaei modems going - vodafone and 3 use this manufacturer.
The ones with a micro sd reader need a bit more fiddling - google usb_modeswitch
The K3520 on vodafone works just fine.
Management see physical engineers using a relatively small set of standard tools (screwdrivers and wrenches) that they can easily carry around and ask (quite reasonably) why isn't there a set of tools for developers that is like that? They make two mistakes (a) Yes there is, it is called a PC and a Word-Processor
(b) A programming language is not a tool in the sense that they think of tools. It, along with req. gathering, project planning, and testing tools is effectively the entire engineering dept. You choose the skill-mix in an engineering dept to suit the project in hand. The same should be true of the tools in the development chain.
Probably a very dumb question : If you get a PRS licence, do you still have to buy the CDs you listen to, or can you just play anything downloaded from anywhere?
...In the worst sense. Evolution only needed to be good enough to just about work, and then stops, does not tidy up behind itself and moves onto something else more interesting. This is why we have blind spots, and our backs ache.
The only reason anyone thinks that human brains are neat, logical is that that is how computers are and that is the only way we can get them to work.
I think we will get artificial minds, but not until we have reverse engineered by brute strength an increasingly complex series of real minds, starting at slugs and moving up. We don't really know the underlying rules behind a brain and it's organisation (however this weeks new scientist is interesting)
In relative terms, cave paintings started about 40000BC but the rules of perspective only came into general use in 14th (?) century Italy. I am not sure where we are on that scale as far as AI is concerned
There are a number of issues with what a singularity is
- A point where the rate of development is such that we cannot forsee the future I think that in that case, the singularity was passed when mankind managed to develop the concept of 'tomorrow'.
- A point where the rate of development is such that if you do not experience the singularity, you will never be able to catch up. This is the transcendental view, where those who experience the singularity change in some manner and 'move on'.
(please start most sentences with 'I think'... from now on). To me, the singularity is the point when we manage to produce a true machine intelligence that approximates ours, this is not easy. It is likely we will be able to plug a brain into a machine interface before we are able to contruct machine intelligences (solving this problem is a subset of the problem of creating a consciousness). It is more likely that we will create brute-force simulation of an intelligence before creating one from scratch. Most engineering advances start with us copying nature and then moving on - the current controversy in Europe with GM foods is a case in point - they are GM foods and not GC (Genetically Created) foods.
One concept of how the singularity happens is that we create a machine intelligence that successively improves itself, bootstrapping itself into weak or strong superhumanity (or godhood). Weak superhumanity is that the intelligence is faster than us but not qualitatively superior - in other words humans would get to the same answer, but slower. Strong superhumanity is that the intelligence is qualitatively superior. Unless the laws of physics have significant loopholes (for example acausality is allowed - so you can send the answer to yourself in the past) this is not too likely - however I would say that being human.
Kurzweil forecast that the singularity (whatever his definition is) would happen about 2045 and has produced a number of log log graphs which appear to illustrate this point with respect to technological progress and the value of money.
The idea of singularity also seems to get confused with the concept of personal immortality. I have no great expertise in that area and would not care to debate with Aubrey De Grey; however my partner is a consultant geriatrician (she specialises in the illnesses old people get) with over 20 years experience, and I have discussed the possibility of immortality with her and her colleagues. They are pretty clear that most people will not get past 100 in the bodies they have, and there is no real chance of that changing over the next 30 years.
He applied directly to companies. That seemed to work much better than general online search.
There are cultural differences. Canadians are actually more US in outlook than European (unsurprisingly). In the uk you would be a lot less forward. ymmv in Aus.
He actually went there on hols with family to interview companies. They liked that (and so did the prospecive employers).
I spoke to the people he went to work for for about 30m (I recruited him into the place he left). They did not ask anything I would not have thought of with positions reversed but I gained the sense that his main reason for moving - which was to provide a better life for family and thus the move is a long term one - counted for a lot.
I was told later that Canadians (well, Victorians (?) are much more family and community oriented than the Brits.
And it will fall still further. Time was a virus would either just pop up an annoying message or delete random data or reformat your PC. Effectively viruses and virus writers were hunters and once they had got the target they had no further interest.
Virus writers have now become 'civilised' farmers. They now get paid for their efforts. The writers have a tame herd (of infected PCs). They will spend their time trying to make sure the AV software will not interfere (to them these things are the infection). They spend their time tending their herd and catching 'wild' examples - other peoples virii (?) so they cross-breed.
One consquence of this (if correct) is that viruses may well start to remove other infections, and generally tune up your PC. After all, if your PC is working just fine, why would you bother keeping the AV scanner up to date?
Parent is correct. Normalisation is (at helicopter level) a way of arranging information so that if you want to Create/Update/Delete one item of information in a database this can be done through one SQL statement. This is a good thing. All applications that use the DB can use one common simple interface. This can make databases slow and complex in design.
The alternative is to have a simpler database and place some of the database design in the application. All applications that access that DB will now be more complex and will need to be amended if the database structure is amended.
My rule is
1 DB : 0 Applications accessing - who cares 1 DB : 1 Applicatons accessing - YMMV 1 DB : (n>1) Applications accessing - Normalise the database
Generally databases last longer and have less structural change than programs.
erm, the whole point was that if you lost the laptop, the data is elsewhere (nas/san/thin client apps) so that is ok and the laptop was cheap so that is not so painful (not that I live in the US, and so do not know what poison ivy feels like).
there is little need for these things, like coffee and doughnuts, and you could argue that instant access and response reduces the value of your communication, makes your reply more intellectually and functionally shallow, and I would agree with you:- ... but count the blackberries out there (not the ones in your garden:)
20 years ago I saw some strange people talking into these things the size of breezeblocks anw we all thought it was just perverse. We have call-boxes and phones in houses.
Now the current generation genuinely think differently When they call someone they automatically call that persons mobile when they buy a house they do not have a landline, they have broadband when they go out they do not meet at the kings head at 9 and stay there, they meet in the west end at some approximate time and move about. They do not necessarially need to be physically there, some will participate via text and if you ask later you will be told that X was there that night even if he/she was not physically there
There are many similarities between desktops and fixed-base phones:- why do I need to do use it here at this specific desk in this building? Why is the storage in this PC? Why are the apps there and not where I am? Citrix/ Thin Clients/ NAS/ Sans are all things that move us towards the place where the desktop no longer exists, the resource is where I am, wherever I am. This means laptops - and if I am paying, cheap ones.
I have a slight problem with 'singulariries' as Kurzweil describes.
Assuming the ultraintelligent computer cannot do magic, it will be bound by the same physical and logical laws we live by.
An unltraintelligent computer may think 10x faster than us, but not qualitatively 10x better. It will use the same basic logical steps to solve a problem, just faster and / or in parallel - and this may appear magical looking at the solution but if you sat down and examined the 'recipe', assuming it will tell you, it will be possible to follow the reasoning.
In some ways it could be argued that we have already passed some singularities, try properly understanding all the technology that goes into a modern car, the reasoning behind a mobile phone contract, the code behind ms-windows paperclip thing... well maybe not the last.
The operation of lots of well co-ordinated people working on a problem can act as a simulation for a 'more intelligent' intelligence. It seems a pity one of the achievements is a really good worm used for spam delivery.
that bad laws reduce the level of respect for all laws. Laws are followed and respected by most not because of the punishment, but because acting within the law is generaly agreed to be the right thing to do. When there is a lot of regulation that works against a lot of the population (prohibition springs to mind), those laws and any others any individual does not like (speeding, drug control, tax, dog control, pollution regulations) become someone elses laws and the general impression follows that you don't have to follow someone elses laws - they are not ones you signed up to. The reverse also occurs, where the courts and the media are used to 'prosecute' people and organisations for crimes that do not exist. Unfortunately people live in one country at a time and you cannot live in the US and opt for Danish(?) copyright laws. Over the last decade or so I have seen a gradual fraying of the web that binds people together and keeps society civil. This runs from the bush administration's legal twisting over Guantanamo, retroactive (and possibly still illegal) wiretaps, to the activities of corporates over accounting, tax and treatment of individuals (HP) to individuals who justify commiting a crime because it will prevent a larger 'moral crime'. People in this site, and others like it are more sensitive to these effects because we do sit next to someone in Germany or India in a sense. What's the answer? Ask Slashdot!
Slashdot Mirror
If MS starts threatening Mono with patents, simply move development and implementation out of the US.
If Mono is not very good, the US benefits.
If Mono is a good tool, the ROTW benefits.
This is is how Patents are an aid to innovation and job creation!
No, shurely vi?
There is more java about than c++ because it is easier to teach.
System development and construction are not similar disciplines.
Programming and Plumbing are similar in that they both start with P.
why is it that your mod points always expire just before you read something you want to mod up?
I just do not want to pay for this database through my taxes - much like the optional id card that looks like it will be illegal not to have quite soon.
... as long as it is carried out in public. :)
Very carry on
More seriously, one of the issues to date is that no-one knew what positions were taken in a stock by everyone else.
IIRC the Australians banned it a few years ago partly because it turned out short sellers had 'sold' 3 x as many shares of a mining company as actually existed, causing chaos as settlement date approached.
probably. There are extensive threads on getting huwaei modems going - vodafone and 3 use this manufacturer. The ones with a micro sd reader need a bit more fiddling - google usb_modeswitch The K3520 on vodafone works just fine.
shouldn't that be an XBOX 360
What quality of life does he expect someone aged 40 in 2008 to have when they reach 100 in 2048.
Assume they live a averagely healthy life (but do not die).
Please rate as an approximate percentage of what they experience now in 2008 for
Sight
Smell
Taste
Touch
Hearing
Mental faculties
Management see physical engineers using a relatively small set of standard tools (screwdrivers and wrenches) that they can easily carry around and ask (quite reasonably) why isn't there a set of tools for developers that is like that?
They make two mistakes
(a) Yes there is, it is called a PC and a Word-Processor
(b) A programming language is not a tool in the sense that they think of tools. It, along with req. gathering, project planning, and testing tools is effectively the entire engineering dept.
You choose the skill-mix in an engineering dept to suit the project in hand. The same should be true of the tools in the development chain.
Probably a very dumb question :
If you get a PRS licence, do you still have to buy the CDs you listen to, or can you just play anything downloaded from anywhere?
...In the worst sense.
Evolution only needed to be good enough to just about work, and then stops, does not tidy up behind itself and moves onto something else more interesting.
This is why we have blind spots, and our backs ache.
The only reason anyone thinks that human brains are neat, logical is that that is how computers are and that is the only way we can get them to work.
I think we will get artificial minds, but not until we have reverse engineered by brute strength an increasingly complex series of real minds, starting at slugs and moving up. We don't really know the underlying rules behind a brain and it's organisation (however this weeks new scientist is interesting)
In relative terms, cave paintings started about 40000BC but the rules of perspective only came into general use in 14th (?) century Italy.
I am not sure where we are on that scale as far as AI is concerned
Actually, average lifespan has increased by about 0.6 years for every 5 years that go by iirc.
You will die eventually.
There are a number of issues with what a singularity is
- A point where the rate of development is such that we cannot forsee the future
I think that in that case, the singularity was passed when mankind managed to develop the concept of 'tomorrow'.
- A point where the rate of development is such that if you do not experience the singularity, you will never be able to catch up.
This is the transcendental view, where those who experience the singularity change in some manner and 'move on'.
(please start most sentences with 'I think'... from now on).
To me, the singularity is the point when we manage to produce a true machine intelligence that approximates ours, this is not easy.
It is likely we will be able to plug a brain into a machine interface before we are able to contruct machine intelligences (solving this problem is a subset of the problem of creating a consciousness).
It is more likely that we will create brute-force simulation of an intelligence before creating one from scratch.
Most engineering advances start with us copying nature and then moving on - the current controversy in Europe with GM foods is a case in point - they are GM foods and not GC (Genetically Created) foods.
One concept of how the singularity happens is that we create a machine intelligence that successively improves itself, bootstrapping itself into weak or strong superhumanity (or godhood).
Weak superhumanity is that the intelligence is faster than us but not qualitatively superior - in other words humans would get to the same answer, but slower.
Strong superhumanity is that the intelligence is qualitatively superior. Unless the laws of physics have significant loopholes (for example acausality is allowed - so you can send the answer to yourself in the past) this is not too likely - however I would say that being human.
Kurzweil forecast that the singularity (whatever his definition is) would happen about 2045 and has produced a number of log log graphs which appear to illustrate this point with respect to technological progress and the value of money.
The idea of singularity also seems to get confused with the concept of personal immortality. I have no great expertise in that area and would not care to debate with Aubrey De Grey; however my partner is a consultant geriatrician (she specialises in the illnesses old people get) with over 20 years experience, and I have discussed the possibility of immortality with her and her colleagues.
They are pretty clear that most people will not get past 100 in the bodies they have, and there is no real chance of that changing over the next 30 years.
... He actually started looking for a job in Jan.
He applied directly to companies. That seemed to work much better than general online search.
There are cultural differences. Canadians are actually more US in outlook than European (unsurprisingly).
In the uk you would be a lot less forward.
ymmv in Aus.
He actually went there on hols with family to interview companies. They liked that (and so did the prospecive employers).
I spoke to the people he went to work for for about 30m (I recruited him into the place he left).
They did not ask anything I would not have thought of with positions reversed but I gained the sense that his main reason for moving - which was to provide a better life for family and thus the move is a long term one - counted for a lot.
I was told later that Canadians (well, Victorians (?) are much more family and community oriented than the Brits.
There was a really good Asimov short story about this IIRC
Plugins Tab
:)
Switch on Forbid Macromedia Flash
Switch on Apply these restrictions to trusted sites too
Click OK.
Say goodbye to YouTube
And it will fall still further.
Time was a virus would either just pop up an annoying message or delete random data or reformat your PC. Effectively viruses and virus writers were hunters and once they had got the target they had no further interest.
Virus writers have now become 'civilised' farmers. They now get paid for their efforts.
The writers have a tame herd (of infected PCs). They will spend their time trying to make sure the AV software will not interfere (to them these things are the infection). They spend their time tending their herd and catching 'wild' examples - other peoples virii (?) so they cross-breed.
One consquence of this (if correct) is that viruses may well start to remove other infections, and generally tune up your PC. After all, if your PC is working just fine, why would you bother keeping the AV scanner up to date?
Parent is correct.
Normalisation is (at helicopter level) a way of arranging information so that if you want to Create/Update/Delete one item of information in a database this can be done through one SQL statement.
This is a good thing.
All applications that use the DB can use one common simple interface.
This can make databases slow and complex in design.
The alternative is to have a simpler database and place some of the database design in the application. All applications that access that DB will now be more complex and will need to be amended if the database structure is amended.
My rule is
1 DB : 0 Applications accessing - who cares
1 DB : 1 Applicatons accessing - YMMV
1 DB : (n>1) Applications accessing - Normalise the database
Generally databases last longer and have less structural change than programs.
no. .txt :)
the most common format is
erm, the whole point was that if you lost the laptop, the data is elsewhere (nas/san/thin client apps) so that is ok and the laptop was cheap so that is not so painful (not that I live in the US, and so do not know what poison ivy feels like).
:-
... but count the blackberries out there (not the ones in your garden :)
there is little need for these things, like coffee and doughnuts, and you could argue that instant access and response reduces the value of your communication, makes your reply more intellectually and functionally shallow, and I would agree with you
20 years ago I saw some strange people talking into these things the size of breezeblocks anw we all thought it was just perverse.
We have call-boxes and phones in houses.
Now the current generation genuinely think differently
When they call someone they automatically call that persons mobile
when they buy a house they do not have a landline, they have broadband
when they go out they do not meet at the kings head at 9 and stay there, they meet in the west end at some approximate time and move about. They do not necessarially need to be physically there, some will participate via text and if you ask later you will be told that X was there that night even if he/she was not physically there
There are many similarities between desktops and fixed-base phones :- why do I need to do use it here at this specific desk in this building? Why is the storage in this PC? Why are the apps there and not where I am?
Citrix/ Thin Clients/ NAS/ Sans are all things that move us towards the place where the desktop no longer exists, the resource is where I am, wherever I am.
This means laptops - and if I am paying, cheap ones.
I have a slight problem with 'singulariries' as Kurzweil describes.
Assuming the ultraintelligent computer cannot do magic, it will be bound by the same physical and logical laws we live by.
An unltraintelligent computer may think 10x faster than us, but not qualitatively 10x better.
It will use the same basic logical steps to solve a problem, just faster and / or in parallel - and this may appear magical looking at the solution but if you sat down and examined the 'recipe', assuming it will tell you, it will be possible to follow the reasoning.
In some ways it could be argued that we have already passed some singularities, try properly understanding all the technology that goes into a modern car, the reasoning behind a mobile phone contract, the code behind ms-windows paperclip thing... well maybe not the last.
The operation of lots of well co-ordinated people working on a problem can act as a simulation for a 'more intelligent' intelligence. It seems a pity one of the achievements is a really good worm used for spam delivery.
... that should read spelt english sentences :)
more seriously the op you made was by far the most informative in this long list.
would you file the counternotice if it was you?
that bad laws reduce the level of respect for all laws.
Laws are followed and respected by most not because of the punishment, but because acting within the law is generaly agreed to be the right thing to do.
When there is a lot of regulation that works against a lot of the population (prohibition springs to mind), those laws and any others any individual does not like (speeding, drug control, tax, dog control, pollution regulations) become someone elses laws and the general impression follows that you don't have to follow someone elses laws - they are not ones you signed up to.
The reverse also occurs, where the courts and the media are used to 'prosecute' people and organisations for crimes that do not exist.
Unfortunately people live in one country at a time and you cannot live in the US and opt for Danish(?) copyright laws.
Over the last decade or so I have seen a gradual fraying of the web that binds people together and keeps society civil.
This runs from the bush administration's legal twisting over Guantanamo, retroactive (and possibly still illegal) wiretaps, to the activities of corporates over accounting, tax and treatment of individuals (HP) to individuals who justify commiting a crime because it will prevent a larger 'moral crime'.
People in this site, and others like it are more sensitive to these effects because we do sit next to someone in Germany or India in a sense.
What's the answer?
Ask Slashdot!