Slashdot Mirror


User: 2short

2short's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,854
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,854

  1. Re:Papers please! on Going to Yosemite? Get Your Passport Ready! · · Score: 1

    You made some unsupported assertions about Democratic *candidates* (and irrelevant ones to their policy positions or governing ability), but your original assertion that I asked about was that the personalities of some Democratic *supporters* caused you to not vote Democratic. This I am still having trouble understanding.

    The only thing I've really deduced about your positions is that you seem very concerned that someone else might think you were unintelligent. It's interesting that you're so focused on this.

  2. Re:Papers please! on Going to Yosemite? Get Your Passport Ready! · · Score: 1

    I described myself as arrogant, but have yet to offer any opinion about you. So I can't say where you're getting your "ignorant rube"/"dumb farm animal" self-description. I admit that given your continuing inability to parse my simple query, I'm rather short of reasons to disagree.

  3. Re:Wound't really call it a 'rocket'... on Rocket-Powered Bionic Arm Successfully Tested · · Score: 1

    It is not in any sense a fuel cell. Fuel cells produce electricity directly from a chemical reaction, consuming one or both reactants.

    This uses a chemical reaction to produce steam which pushes pistons. It is a steam engine. It is a very odd steam engine in that the steam is produced directly by a chemical reaction; they've replaced the usual boiler with something that is arguably a rocket.

  4. Re:Papers please! on Going to Yosemite? Get Your Passport Ready! · · Score: 1

    I would think everyone ought to be "open-minded", but that doesn't mean I can't decide people are wrong. I never said I dismissed people because their opinions were different than mine. After hearing peoples opinions and their arguments for them, I may reach the considered conclusion that the person in question is an idiot.

    So I asked why a dislike of the personality some Democratic supporters would cause you to not vote Democratic, and your only answer is to call me "intellectually lazy"? That's actually kind of funny.

  5. Re:Papers please! on Going to Yosemite? Get Your Passport Ready! · · Score: 1

    "I might lean more Democrat if not for the fact that people like you seem to think that their (and by association your) ideology demonstrates a superior intellect"

    I wouldn't say a liberal ideology demonstrates a superior intellect. I mean, numerous studies have shown a strong correlation between higher IQ and/or education level and voting Democratic, so I might say it suggests a superior intellect, but "demonstrates" is clearly too strong.

    So before you say it, yes, I'm an arrogant liberal who looks down on people who disagree with me because I think they're less intelligent. Now my question is why does that effect your opinion of who the best leaders of your country are? I'm a semi-anonymous stranger on the internet; is being against whatever I'm for because you don't like me really an important enough factor to sway your vote? I've heard reasons to vote Republican I thought were really stupid, but that takes the cake.

  6. Re:Following in the footsteps of hitlers volkswago on US Army Unveils Hybrid-Electric Propulsion System · · Score: 2, Informative


    The Volkswagon was not initially a military vehicle. It was designed by Ferdinand Porsche (at Hitlers request) as a car even factory workers could afford. This was slightly before WWII. During the war, they produced military variants, but the original design was for what it once again became afterwards: a super-inexpensive civilian car.

    As far as your larger point, the military has always been in the vehicle design business. Jeep, Hummer, etc.

  7. Re:What is "intelligence" on 10 Years After Big Blue Beat Garry Kasparov · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm the ancestor that claimed that. The ancestor before me mentioned that people dismiss the Turing test as a toy problem (I can't imagine why, since nobody is remotely close to passing it, it would appear to be rather hard), and then you spoke of complex math problems, which the Turing test is not, so I was trying to explain what it is.

    Really, Turing was saying that if you can't distinguish between entities you consider intelligent and those you do not solely by communicating with them, your definition of intelligence is flawed.

    Doing that communication in text in English is not a requirement, unless you want to actually perform the experiment, which was not the point for Turing. For what it's worth, various people have done so, generally giving the potential AIs some sort of (enormous) leg up by restricting the subject matter of the conversation, and the AIs blow it anyway; they're nowhere close.

    A binary test for intelligence will prove illusive as intelligence is not a binary quality, nor even a well defined one.

    While some people might actually claim jaguars were not intelligent in the way humans are, the Turing test does not. Jaguars cannot communicate in any way that would allow the test to be performed in the first place. Assuming we had some meaningful way of communicating with jaguars, I would guess that I could tell whether I was communicating with a jaguars or a human. If that were the case, then the Turing test would not reject a definition of intelligence that distinguished between jaguars and humans. That's all the Turing test does, is reject definitions of intelligence that distinguish between entities that you can't distinguish between via communication.

    As for hunting, I reject any test of intelligence that says some ants are intelligent but Steven Hawking is not.

  8. Re:What is "intelligence" on 10 Years After Big Blue Beat Garry Kasparov · · Score: 1


    My semi-literate, gun-nut neighbor is a far better hunter than Steven Hawking. Which is more intelligent? Heck, quite a few insects are arguably more effective hunters/migrators than most humans.

  9. Re:Not quite accurate on 10 Years After Big Blue Beat Garry Kasparov · · Score: 1

    Decent Chess players pretty much never play all the way to checkmate. If you can both see it is inevitable, mechanically grinding though the last few moves is uninteresting.

  10. Re:What is "intelligence" on 10 Years After Big Blue Beat Garry Kasparov · · Score: 1

    The Turing Test is not a complex math problem.

    To perform the Turing test, you have a conversation with something via some medium like text. (You can't see it or hear it's voice) You can talk about whatever you like, and ask whatever questions you like. If, by doing this, you cannot determine whether you are talking to a human or not, then Turing says you must accept that it is intelligent, no matter what it turns out to be.

    This strikes me as a much fairer way to judge intelligence than looking for things entirely specific to human development.

  11. Re:If they are so good... on Novell Proclaims 'We're Not SCO' and We Won't Sue · · Score: 0, Redundant

    "Even if they 'promise' next minute they could turn around and screw everyone."

    No, they can't. Look up "Promissory Estoppel". Short form: If you promise not to sue someone, you can't.

  12. Re:Parallel computing on Optical Solution For an NP-Complete Problem? · · Score: 1

    Well, we can't ask him, he's dead. (I peeked)

  13. Re:With all respect... on The Future of C++ As Seen By Its Creator · · Score: 1

    "But good things and good directions aren't exactly 'in fashion' in today's IT..."

    Or yesterdays, or the day before that... It's amazing just how long "fashion" has kept the ultimate programming language from gaining any traction.

  14. Re:Parallel computing on Optical Solution For an NP-Complete Problem? · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Algorithmically, this is nothing. They're just saying, "What if we had hardware that could perform an unlimited number of calculations simultaneously, and thus render time-complexity of certain algorithms irrelevant?" To which I say: "That would be spiffy, but you don't have such hardware, and Heisenberg says you never will."

  15. Re:Vast exaggeration on Bank Run in Second Life · · Score: 1

    "Look I agree debts can be useful, but there's no particular reason that money has to be based on it"

    If you can't use it to settle debts, it's not money.

    "'As long as people know the approximate range by which it will expand the money supply, they will demand an interest rate on their lending that eliminates this effect.'

    Fine if you're in a position to buy government bonds. For the rest of humanity though? The waitress waiting tables for minimum wage."

    Yeah, life under the gold standard was a workers paradise.

  16. Re:Vast exaggeration on Bank Run in Second Life · · Score: 1

    "go look up 'fractional reserve banking' "

    Assuming you have looked this up yourself, why do you persist in pretending the governments borrowing of money is anything like "printing" it?

    Mind you, irresponsible borrowing of money is a really stupid idea. But it is an entirely different stupid idea than the government creating new money and spending it, assuming the currency system were set up in such a way that that were possible, which it is not.

    Something being in limited supply does not make it valuable unless there is some demand for it. There is demand for US Dollars only because people will accept it as payment for debts.

  17. Re:Fiat currencies have several problems. on Bank Run in Second Life · · Score: 1

    "It allows the government the ability to pay for anything it likes..."

    The gold standard has nothing to do with this. The government pays for things it can't afford by borrowing money, not by printing it. When the money supply is increased, the government doesn't get the money.

  18. Re:Is it crashed or not? on Bring Down Internet Explorer In Six Words · · Score: 1

    Then your office is wrong relative to the rest of the world, where:

    Crash = Program unexpectedly terminates.
    Hang = Program becomes unresponsive (unexpectedly).

    I have known less technical persons to use "crash" in both cases.

  19. Re:9th Circus ?!? It will be reversed on Vote Swapping Ruled Legal · · Score: 1

    These facts do correlate linearly. The number of cases heard by circuit courts of appeals correlates closely and linearly to the population of their jurisdictions.

    Any decent statistician will not mention irrelevant combinatoric effects that have no bearing on the discussion at hand.

  20. Re:9th Circus ?!? It will be reversed on Vote Swapping Ruled Legal · · Score: 1


    Honestly, I think it works a lot better than you'd think based on what you read in the news. When someone complains that some politically motivated Judge has twisted the law for their own ends, 9 times out of ten the judge is correctly applying a perfectly clear law. The law just doesn't say what the complainer wishes it did, and they're disappointed the Judge *didn't* twist the law. So while you hear a lot of people talking about a politicized judiciary, I think a lot are just annoyed it's not politicized toward their position.

    Also note that the Circuit Courts of Appeals we're discussing in this thread are the second-highest courts. They make lots and lots of decisions, most of which the Supreme Court never even reviews. The Supreme Court only reviews the cases it chooses to, so it's hardly surprising they overturn a lot of them; they just don't review the ones they agree with. It's actually impressive they only overturned 75% of the 9th circuit cases they heard; It means a quarter of the time they thought some decision by the 9th needed further examination, when they did so they eventually concluded the 9th got it right after all.

    Which is not to say I don't think certain recent SCOTUS decisions to be abominably misguided...

    I do think the American system of government as a whole tends to encourage political polarization over centrism as compared to the British system; but that's primarily in the Legislative/Executive branches, and only filters out to Judges more indirectly.

  21. Re:9th Circus ?!? It will be reversed on Vote Swapping Ruled Legal · · Score: 1

    I said the population of the 9th district was responsible for how many cases it heard, as opposed to their intentionally hearing more cases for whatever nefarious reasons the other poster was implying.

    As far as why the SCOTUS reviews them disproportionately, I should think it were obvious: In recent years the 9th circuit has been dominated by Democratic appointees, and in any case, Senate confirmation process rules encourage appointment of district Judges whose politics are roughly similar to the residents of their district, which in this case includes a heck of a lot of liberal Califonians. Meanwhile the SCOTUS is 7-2 Republican appointees.

  22. Re:9th Circus ?!? It will be reversed on Vote Swapping Ruled Legal · · Score: 1

    "They hear more because..."

    Out of 12 courts of appeals, more than a fifth of the population lives in the jurisdiction of the 9th circuit.

    The number of cases heard by appeals courts correlates so closely to the districts population as to render any other proposed explanation obvious reaching. (Not counting the DC Circuit)

  23. Re:Sale.. on In Australia, An Ebay Sale is a Sale · · Score: 1

    "Simply because they say it does not make it legally binding"

    Sure it does. If both parties freely understand and represent that they are entering into a contract, that contract is legally binding. By the time you make a bid on Ebay, they've told you several times that you should consider that bid to be making a contract with the seller. Thus a reasonable person could be expected to understand they are entering into such a contract. Just because there is a third party broker involved as well doesn't mean you and the seller aren't making contract or that you can't sue one another for non-performance.

    I'm not sure what you see as the difficulty here; it's, well, basic contract law and common sense.

  24. Re:Not an idiot, but still evil on Schneier Talks to the Head of TSA · · Score: 1

    "they take a lot of crap for enforcing policies over which they have no control."

    Kip Hawley is the head of the TSA. He has the control. They are his crap policies, made by him, and by people he has the power to fire.

    If fracking agency heads are to be let off the hook for "just doing what they're told" who in the hell do you propose we actually hold accountable for anything?

  25. Exactly on In Search of the Cheap Linux Laptop · · Score: 1

    Just give it some more screen real estate and it will be perfect for me. The only thing I use a laptop for is as a remote front end for more powerful machines somewhere else.

    Given the price and size/weight, I think I'll have to at least see the 10" model, but I don't think that I can handle it; I'm too spoiled by nice big screens.