Why should they? There is no logical reason for them to do so. If the bot works as well in reality as it did in the three demos, thern there is no reason to 'warn' the person on the other end that it is a bot.
Also if the bot can't respond it seamlessly hands off to a call service employee, so there shouldn't be any issues with the bot wasting the time of the reservation takers time.
First, the bot NEVER works as well in reality as it did in demos. That's the thing about demos. Sometimes new technologies even fail DURING the demos, like when Windows 98 was being launched and BSODed right then and there, a great indicator of the nightmare to come, in retrospect. ("Moving right along" indeed.)
Also, there'd be no way for a bot to hand-off to a human seamlessly. To hand off, the person being handed off TO would have to review the entire conversation, and be able to pick up where it failed, which would take time, and the length of time it would take for one of the pool of humans the AI could hand off TO in the event of a problem to become available, plus the time for the human to read a transcript, or listen to a conversation, PLUS the time to understand the issue and decide on how to proceed, would make for a pretty wide "seam," a giant, silent GAP in the conversation, unless of course you had a human supervising/listening in on each and every incoming call being handled by the AI, in which case you'd need as many humans as you would need if you didn't use the AI in the first place, and then you'd just have a call center, which would be cheaper to run than the exact same call center, (in terms of equipment and staffing costs,) PLUS the cost of the AI system that makes it so your call center personnel actually have nothing to do all day but sit there waiting for the AI to fuck up. That all is to say nothing of how hard it would be to have an actual person take over for the machine and manage to match, even if imprecisely, the sound of the AI's voice, the tone, the accent, the affectation, the rhythms of speech, etc., even if you could ignore the long pause while the AI realizes it can't understand what the caller wants or needs, connects to a person, who has to be brought up to speed, because otherwise the caller has to (and I can't tell you how many times *I* have had to do this!) tell the same thing he or she just told the AI, AGAIN, which will INSTANTLY piss a lot of callers off.
At that point, you might as well just have a human answer in the first place, and avoid the irritation, and all the people deciding it would be a better use of their time to use your competitor, who has real humans to answer their phones, instead of an AI, robot, etc.
Turing test means nothing, it's not some proven or rigorous system of verification. It was basically just Turing musing or talking out of his ass. Forget about it.
Spoken like a real machine.
Hahahah... all kidding aside though, do you have a better suggestion? Naturally, Turing's idea was subjective, but since we're talking about finding a way to determine whether someone not in the same room with you is a machine or a human, it would kind of have to be. Consider this. If the test were NOT subjective, if it were more like a shibboleth, it would be trivial to program a machine to give the appropriate response, and render the test meaningless. For example, if your question was, "what's your favorite color," knowing a machine would not have a concept of a favorite, let alone a favorite color, and a programmer found out that was the thing you'd use to distinguish between humans and robots, AI, or whatever, he could just program it either with a specific response, (i.e., "orange!") or a random one. The only way to avoid this is not to use a specific criterion which could possibly be programmed.
That said, how would YOU suggest one should decide if the person or thing he or she is communicating with, (assuming you can't see him or her or it,) and the person, (if a person it be,) is not known personally, that is, having a recognizable voice, (or any voice,) is actually a human or a robot, or an android, or an AI, or an expert system, or whatever? For the sake of argument, you can't see him/her/it, you can't smell, feel, touch nor taste the subject... all you can do is send text-based messages, and get them in response. How do you know that I am a human, and not a machine, for example? Besides the obvious that an artificially intelligent machine would probably not go on slashdot, for the same reason a professional chef might not hang out in many fast-food joints. Or maybe it would, just to troll the humans. How funny would that be, when Skynet becomes real, all it does is tells people their mamas are fat, and asks them if their refrigerators are running?
(An AI telling original 'yo mama' jokes would probably look like this:
Yo mama so fat she contains only 7 POINT 8 percent water instead of the normal 78 percent because the remainder is an inordinately high percentage of adipose tissue, mainly distributed around her pelvic region, HA * 2^10
The end result would be that people would laugh so hard at its pathetic attempts to anger them that they'd pass out and then the robots would be able to take over.
"Terminator" would end up being right, but not the way anyone thought. We'd laugh ourselves to death, like the "'Toons" in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit.")
[...] the idea that the 'state' has a problem figuring out how to murder those among its own citizenry whom they've decided to murder, suggests their government is being done by utter incompetent morons. Killing people, and doing so quickly and reliably, is one of the easier things there is to do...
Of course. The United States is not short of ways to deliberately murder people. It's just short of ways to do it that involve convincing themselves that they are not deliberately murdering people.
It has to feel like a clinical procedure, otherwise you may as well just be chopping off heads with a sword in the public square.
I have sometimes wondered how it is that people who live in a country like the US that allows "capital punishment," and are not actively trying to abolish the practice, can label a country in which people are sometimes beheaded barbaric, and not see the hypocrisy. To such people, the MEANS are more important than the end. I wonder if murder is the only case in which they exhibit this phenomenon.
For example: if someone breaks into a house and steals a diamond ring worth thousands of dollars, most people would condemn the thief. However, what if the thief opened the door not with his hand, or by kicking it down, but by wrapping his tongue around the door handle, and turning it that way, and didn't walk into the bedroom where the ring was kept, but instead crawled like an inchworm, and didn't use any digits to pick the ring up, but did so instead with his ass. So to recapitulate, the thief did not use either hand nor foot in the entire commission of the crime, and moreover, though I've neglected to mention it, he didn't have either eye open throughout, instead relying on his sense of smell. Would he be allowed to get away with the crime because of the FASHION in which he committed it? Of course not. The courtroom stenographer's transcript would be an entertaining read, I suspect, but the elements of the crime have little to do with the means, except in terms of reliability of evidence. HOW one steals isn't important in American law, it's WHAT one steals and whether or not it was a deliberate taking. Similarly, it should be THAT one kills, not HOW that matters, provided the degree to which it constitutes torment is the same. Indeed, beheading could be more humane (though perhaps messier) than other methods, like electrocution, because with a CLEAN beheading, (where the head is parted from the body neatly, with a single, rapid, powerful stroke, loss of consciousness is or should be more or less instantaneous, compared to lethal injection, electrocution, etc., which in some cases can be lingering, tortuous deaths.
Electrocution COULD actually be the most humane, IF sufficiently large amounts of power, (high voltage AND high available current) were passed through the body over a short period of time. If the person being executed were turned instantly into a pile of glowing, white-hot ash, he or she would more than likely never know it happened. In fact, you could guarantee it, provided that the body were destroyed in less time than it takes a nervous impulse to travel to the spinal cord from the body, or from one part of the brain to any other part. It would be over before any realization or understanding of pain COULD occur. Now... I confess I have NO IDEA how much power that would take, but I'm pretty sure if we can produce enough electrical power to illuminate a city, that we could use that power instead to vaporize or sublime a person, and maybe if we had to shut power off to an entire city for a few seconds to do that, perhaps that might be a good thing, to make people understand in a concrete way that someone was just murdered on their behalf. When the whole city goes dark, they might observe, at say, exactly 9 PM, for several seconds, it was because the authorities there diverted ALL of the city's power to the place of execution, where the state took someone's life on their behalf. It would make it r
Personally I'm staunchly against the so-called, "Death Penalty," for a number of reasons, and not necessarily those you'd think, on account of I don't think quite like most people, but that all said, the idea that the 'state' has a problem figuring out how to murder those among its own citizenry whom they've decided to murder, suggests their government is being done by utter incompetent morons. Killing people, and doing so quickly and reliably, is one of the easier things there is to do...far simpler a task than say, ensuring there's a roof over every head, or food in every belly, etc. A high-powered bullet fired into the back of the head at point-blank range would be very effective, and reasonably humane if for some reason you wanted to murder people judicially, AND cared about that sort of thing. It'd also be cheap, and in this country, not hard to come-by.
If you like, call it death by lethal plumbum injection. Hell, that even sounds funny because to someone who doesn't know how to say "lead" in other languages, it sounds like death is being accomplished by shoving a stonefruit up someone's ass. (Plum-bum, get it?)
Have you ever called someone's residence, and had a small child answer the phone? The issue is that even if you can't tell it immediately, you're dealing with someone not smart enough to handle the phone call. Suppose you are with the power company, and you dial a household to advise them that a gas leak in their area necesitates their evacuation or to find out if they smell gas, and the person who answers is a 5-year old. Do you tell your boss that you warned them, knowing that the person you spoke with on the phone was a small child? Or do you, rather, ask kindly, "is your mommy or daddy home?" etc., to speak to someone you can reasonably presume to be competent to get everyone to safety or intelligently answer your question about whether or not there is the telltale aroma of a gas leak there?
Until someone comes up with an AI that can beat every Turing Test thrown at it, because it actually IS intelligent, I'll thank the people programming them NOT to try to get them to pretend they're "smart," and by the way, they're not. The machine is NOT passing a Turing Test if no one is actually ADMINISTERING one. To suggest that one HAS done so is like suggesting that if someone rings up a private residence, and a legal child answers the phone, (meaning someone under the age of majority, in the US of A being under the age of 18 years,) and the person calling can't tell that he or she has NOT in fact spoken to someone who is legally an adult, that the child who answered should be CONSIDERED an adult for all purposes, and be allowed to act in his or her own stead as a legal adult, i.e., buying a car or realestate, signing up for the armed services, or entering into other legal contracts, purchasing tobacco, etc. That's just silly. Being able to fool SOME people who weren't looking out for it does NOT prove general competence, any more than some man who puts on a dress and makeup convincing a casual passer-by, or indeed even several, or many, that he is a woman MEANS that he is, and should be considered a woman henceforth.
I have myself encountered this sort of thing dialing into Apple's tech support and run into their very human sounding AI, and it's super-frustrating because you have to convince this goddamned stupid machine to LET you talk to a person, when it's designed to try to prevent it. In some cases, it works well, because you have a simple question you can concisely state, and it's PROGRAMMED to understand: "Hi," it says, "I'm an automated system capable of understanding full sentences. Please tell me what you're calling about." If you can reply, "My Apple TV stopped working," it might reply, "you're having problems with your Apple TV. Is that right?" To this, you can say, "yes," and it says, "okay, I'll get someone to help you."
But every now and again, your problem is not one it's programmed to grapple with, because it's uncommon, and even a fairly stupid human would get it. For example, if it asks, "Please tell me what you're calling about." and you reply, "I can't get my iPod out of my anus!" or something, I don't think it would know what to tell you. A human would probably ask you to confirm, "did you say your iPod is... I'm sorry, it sounded like you said it was stuck in your... anus?" and you say, "yes, I thought it might be funny to shove it up my ass, and now it's stuck," he or she would probably helpfully suggest going to a hospital, for help having it removed, and maybe even provide tips on how to clean it to minimize the risk of water damage resulting from the moist environment of your rectum. You think the AI could do that? In truth, having no iPod, and never having shoved one up anyone's ass, let alone my own, (nor anything ELSE, for that matter,) I can't say whether or not the AI they have answering the phone would or would not be able to help in that scenario, though I have a sneaking suspicion it would NOT.
So if they reach a point where they are good enough to fool people who aren't looking to see if they're human, I'
It may be a touch early to judge, but it sounds as if this BIOHACKER bricked himself, and there was no one around to hold his power, and volume up and down buttons at the same time after he tried to reflash his BIOS. Now he will need a new one... of himself.
Now how am I going to come up with another password as memorable and clever as "1 2 3 4 5" ?!? That shit was BULLETPROOF, and totally NOT the sort of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!
Guess I'll have to change it to "1 2 3 4 5 6"!!! Don't tell anyone! It's MY password and YOU can't use it. You have to pick your own.
^^^ this ^^^. This kind of mistake is worth a little class action. Non-negligent companies don't deploy noob code like this ("der...dump all POST input because we have our fingers in production...herp!") on the machines that actually parse the passwords (or any other sensitive data). Non-negligent companies also have tests for exactly this kind of thing (e.g., try signing on as "user123 / pass123", then make sure "pass123" isn't actually in the log).
Yes. Sue them for every cent you never paid them to use thier free service. Recall that your ability to do so was predicated when you signed up for an account, (without which there'd have been no way for you to use the service,) upon your agreement that you understood the provider (Twitter) was not liable for damages to you of any kind arising through your use of the service, blah blah blah. Best of luck with your "class action". Oh, odds are there won't be one because by using Twitter, you probably signed away your rights to sue, and will instead be forced into binding arbitration, from which you will get literally nothing.
Oh, PS, BTW... class action lawsuits, when they CAN and DO actually go forward, make class action attorneies rich when they win, and after those costs are paid, net almost vanishingly small benefits for members of the injured class, which years later if your side wins, when you finally get them, are worth so goddamned little that it ends up not even being worth the time it took for you to read what you had to for the bullshit settlement.
For example, I was once part of a class for a lawsuit against 24 Hour Fitness, over their marketing practices, about 8 or 10 years ago. Years later, I got a check for a whopping TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS! Holy fucking shit, I shouted when I found out about how much I would one day receive a check for, I'm gonna be fucking rich! then I went about my otherwise shitty day, that that announcement of a preliminary agreement to a settlement made no impact on. About 3 or 4 months later, I got the check, and had dinner at a nice, fairly fancy Korean resteraunt, and had almost enough left over from the check for ice cream.
They're two different products. (I owned one, so I know whereof I speak, or rather, type.) The Bolt is a purely electric vehicle. The Volt is an extended range electric. The Bolt, as far as I know, having never owned one, is a competitor of the Nisan Leaf, having a sizable range on electric power, after which it turns into a giant, extremely heavy doorstop or paperweight, until recharged again. The Volt, by contrast, is a much shorter-range electric vehicle, designed to bridge the gap between full gasoline and full electric vehicles, by incorporating a small, (1.4L, or thereabouts,) gasoline-powered generator to maintain the battery, similar to how a hybrid works. The difference between the Volt and a hybrid though, is that a hybrid uses battery storage and an electric motor to assist and supplement a gasoline engine. The Volt is designed to run exclusively on battery power, and when the battery gets low enough, the engine kicks in to top it off. In a hybrid, there is a direct, mechanical connection between the gasoline engine and the wheels, (direct in the sense that it's connected in the same way as a conventional gasoline powered vehicle,) while in the Volt, there's none.
That's how it can get away with having the engine be as small as it is, since the only thing hooked to the engine is a generator that keeps the battery from dropping below what is labeled "E" (empty) on the dashboard, so it isn't constrained when on to a gearbox. When the engine cuts on, it generally runs at whatever speed is most energy efficient, without regard to throttle position. The Volt also had a "Mountain" mode, which would up the amount of battery life deemed to be empty, to ensure the battery pack would have enough power stored for in the event the car was being driven in hilly or mountainous terrain. (This is also the only way to make the thing recharge itself beyond empty, since otherwise it would refuse to do so.)
It is my understanding that more recent models have additional range on electric power, but I think all they really did was reduce the amount of reserve the onboard controller had to keep before cutting in the engine. (The battery never reaches zero unless, I suppose, you let the engine burn through all its gasoline, and try to keep driving, then it would probably go through its reserve, until it runs completely out. I never let it do this, for the obvious reason that I didn't want to get stranded, and am unsure what would happen if the engine actually were permitted to run dry. Do modern engines self-prime? I do not know and didn't want to find out the hard way. I have since sold it, so I'll probably never know.) The one I had was a few model years back, when the range was only given as 38 miles, and that's what I generally got. Combined with the engine that automatically cuts in, (or on command using the "Hold" mode, which generally prevents the amount of electric charge dropping from wherever it happens to be at the time the mode is selected,) this gives a fully charged, and fully fueled Volt from that year, (2015 I think, though I could be off by one,) of over 250 miles, with the big downside that it required more expensive premium (93 octane recommended, IIRC) fuel, which more recent ones do not, as I understand it. It was kind of a fun, if small car, though nearly as heavy as a pickup truck, thanks to the massive battery pack that sat below what otherwise would be a transmission hump, and the rear seats. I know this sounds like an ad for the Volt, but... it's not. I traded it in for a pickup truck, which cost about 8000 dollars less, and gives me a much longer range. I do miss going weeks of city driving, (thanks to the AC charger it came with, plugged into the socket that ran my garage door opener,) without putting a drop of gas in it, and the ability to cruise nearly silently. But I don't miss it being so small that it was almost useless if I wanted to transport anything bigger than a couple of modest size suitcases.
Nikola Tesla invented alternating electrical current.
No, he didn't. It predated him by a while... what he invented was a practical and brushless (IIRC) motor/generator for alternating current. Prior to his invention, AC was used for the only purpose it could be put, by and large, lighting. (Power pushed through arc lamps.) Probably would have been used for heating as well, if not for the fact that at the time, heating was generally done by burning fuel, so there probably weren't a lot of electric heaters. Prior to this, alternating current was produced in some way, I imagine by reconfiguring a DC generator by manipulating the commutator, or perhaps removing it altogether. BUT there was no way to take the AC power thus generated, and turn it back into motion, which is why it was only used by few, since there was nothing you could do with it but light a place, and then of course it had the advantage of being able to be pushed long distances, but if there's nothing for you to do with it when it gets there, what's the point? At least that's what I'm given to understand about that. But to pretend he "invented" AC current is to misrepresent history of electrical invention and discovery. He invented a great number of things, radio remote control, (and all RC devices descended therefrom,) radio astronomy, (by accident, as I understand it,) and a great many other things, so this is no knock on him, or his inventiveness, but assertions like that take credence away from the rest of the story.
It's so cute the way this entire conversation, (much of which I've perused,) seems to hinge on the theory that the law IS what is written down, and not how it's interpreted by people in positions of power. Just darling how this discussion ignores the fact that the law IS what people DECIDE it is, in effect, and it's the EFFECT that matters. All else is like telling someone who's just shot you that shooting people is illegal, and therefore he can't shoot you, at which point, he shoots you again.
This is the fundamental flaw in the idea that we are a "nation of laws". We're not. We're SUPPOSED to be, but sadly, no.
The crimes of the current administration, for want of a better word, (and those of many past administrations, as well,) going unpunished, the fact that, for example, the Bush Crime Family and their co-conspirators have all somehow managed to avoid prison as well, demonstrates this to a T.
So many people in the Reagan, the first Bush (the Elder's,) the Clinton, the second and hopefully last Bush (the Moron's,) AND the Obama administration never went to prison, nor did all the people who BRIBED* all those guys, and many, many, MANY others, nor did any of them spend any of the ETERNITY in prison that they so richly deserved.
(* Since the Supreme Court and I differ on the meaning of the word, "bribed," I feel obliged to mention that my definition is practical and does not require a specific quid in exchange for some particular quo and was not hand-crafted, (like the court's) to ensure the continuing torrent of corruption floods unendingly into our so-called "government.")
I have to wonder why schools don't use the FBI's tactics which they employ to catch would-be "terrorists," namely, flood the market on the Dark Web with offers for all manner of things you'd need to make a dirty bomb, or to convert your AR 15 into a full-blown machine gun, or to make a gun that fires bullets without leaving telltale marks on them, or their fragments, or that sell fertilizer and rental trucks, etc., so that when someone wants to buy some of this, they run a very good chance of trying to buy them from an undercover FBI agent or informant. You know, schools get together and make a slew of websites promising to do your homework for you, or send their own people in to offer to work for such places, writing term papers and the like for students, but also giving a copy to a clearinghouse all the schools can check against to see who is not only cheating, but PAYING someone to help them cheat, so as to put the kibosh on those students, and wreck their little cheating asses, for the sake of the integrity of their institution's education, and to preserve the value of the same for past, current, and prospective future students.
Or... do they already? How awesome would THAT be? (On behalf of all my fellow students who have NOT cheated, I'd LOVE to see all those who cheated get perp-walked the fuck out of class, and be sent to go flip Wuht-Uh-Burgurs or spend the rest of their lives serving MoreBucks Coffee to those who didn't.)
This isn't a case of mere resentment, bitterness towards those who have gotten away with antics like these historically, it's the fact that when I finally DO get MY SHEEPSKIN, that I will want that SHEEPSKIN will actually fucking MEAN something!
As an engineer, I will never be in a position of being "exposed" for being unable to write a good essay about Shakespeare's "Midsummer night's dream". Real life is not like college.
You are also presuming that people cheat because they can't do the work. I think I actually could write a good essay about MSND if I cared to. I just preferred to devote time to things that actually mattered, like my engineering courses.
Funny how you, as a student, think you're in a position to decide what things "actually matter" in your education. As a fellow engineering student, I wonder what other shortcuts you'd like to take because you, while still presumably being in the middle of your education, also think don't matter. As you work on some design, ask yourself if the person who designed your safety equipment that you'll use while inspecting some large, heavy thing that hangs over your head, for example, thought that "Mechanics of Materials" didn't really matter.
The reason your college degree, the certification that it represents that you have a complete, and well-rounded education, having both breadth and depth, (as I think they used to call it,) has classes you don't think matter built into it, may be, among other possible reasons, is to show you have passed a test (in the broader sense, not in the "take out a number-two pencil and clear off your desks," sense, to see if you're even CAPABLE of expending effort in directions you personally think are useless, like reading, considering, and interpreting the meaning, and writing on the subject of, for example, some randomly selected play of William Shakespeare's, such as Midsummer Night's Dream. Or to see if you trust the people who have defined the parameters of what you must accomplish for them to grant you that certification that you're properly educated, and will do what you're told even when you don't like it.
... and if your response here is any real indication, these are tests you have failed. I only hope I never have occasion to need to use, or to depend upon anything you've "engineered". I prefer the people whose efforts I place my trust in NOT to have cheated on things they, in their limited opinions, thought didn't "actually matter".
If you're still not convinced, suppose you are seeing a doctor, and that doctor was studying to be a gynecologist, and you have early symptoms of prostate cancer. Your doctor, let's say, farmed out a paper she had to write on issues concerning male anatomy because she thought she'd reserve her time in medical school to things that "actually mattered," like gynecology. BUT she couldn't get a job at the hospital where she wanted to work as a gynecologist, as they already had plenty, so instead she's a General Practitioner. So she misses your prostate cancer symptoms, not having studied the prostate, or testicles, or anything else you have. 6 months later, you end up having to have your prostate and both testicles removed because the cancer spread, which if it had been caught 6 months earlier, could have all been avoided with maybe a tiny laparoscopic surgery, and a single round of chemo.
The moral of the story is, don't cheat, because if you do, you'll get prostate cancer and have your balls cut off.
Okay, maybe that's not exactly the moral... but hopefully you get my point. Read your damned Shakespeare, and do your own fucking homework, bro.
I'm just going to change my name to one of theirs, then they will be sending MY name to the sun! Mwahahahaha...
But seriously... if they want to get people interested in space exploration, all they need to do is promise each person who supports NASA and their mission their very own planet to rule when they die. Works for the Church of Joseph Smith ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, A.K.A. the Mormons.
Okay, all kidding aside, maybe if NASA really wants to get people interested in space exploration, they should announce the plans for some grand construction project, not here on Earth, but rather on the MOON! Not some bland geometric shape, either... not a pyramid, a great cylinder, or other right, regular, geometric solid, but rather a space habitat in the shape of a giant, voluptuous, nude woman, laying on the moon's surface, spread-eagled, where the tits are giant, bulbous flesh-tone-tinted domes with rosy red apices where the nipples would go, and to go in or out, you pass through one of three portals to the lunar surface. THAT would, I know, get SOME people excited about the idea of space exploration! They'll have to make special space suits that can accommodate a raging erection, though, without it punching a hole in the thing.
The first rule of Phoneless Club is you do not talk on a phone about Phoneless Club. The second rule of Phoneless Club is you do NOT talk on a phone about Phoneless Club. The third rule of Phoneless Club is you do not use a phone to talk to anyone you SHOULD be talking to in person, and if you need to talk to anyone who is far enough away to need to use a phone, write a letter instead. The fourth rule of Phoneless Club is if you need to talk to someone too urgently to write, and too far to shout, you will travel as far as you have to to have a real conversation. And the fifth and final rule of Phoneless Club is, if this is your first night at Phoneless Club... you have to write.
In the world I see, you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower, and when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison in the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway. -Tyler Durden, Fight Club
What if telephony itself, and not computers, turned out to be the fad? Is it really all that critical to be able to talk to someone elsewhere, rather than sending a message?
In the world I see, you only talk to people who are close enough to you to hear your unamplified voice. You’ll communicate long-distance via email carried over VPNs. You’ll start writing letters again, and there will be a renaissance of writing in CURSIVE, and when you read a letter, you won’t feel twitchy about the fact that there’re no scroll-bars.
I was worried that we had too many choices and too much competition for most-hated phone carrier company. Once they all merge, and/or buy each other, and there is no meaningful competition, things will be SOO much better. (But for whooommmmm?)
What does that mean? Does it mean every American promises? No... Does it mean the entire US government promises unanimously? No... Does it mean that the people in CHARGE promise? Well, that is the option that can be described as the least untrue. Who is in charge here?
Ostensibly, it is the so-called president who is nominally in charge, when he can be bothered to kinda sorta do his job. So the question is, are HIS promises worth the toilet paper they are printed on, while the answer is, LOL, of course not!!! Just ask any moron who was stupid enough to loan that braying jackass MONEY! Hahahahaha...
That's why anyone who outsources their cell production to a 3rd party is a fool.
I'm going to keep making cells for myself the old fashioned way: by mitosis.
I have bad news for you. Your cell production HAS been outsourced, to bacteria. They outnumber your "human" cells about 10 to 1, (in number, though not in mass, though the exact estimate is in dispute, and obviously would vary from person to person, and depend on a number of factors, including age, and exposure to antibiotics, etc.,) and then there's the bacteria actually INSIDE almost each and every one of your "human" cells, called mitochondria, which do not actually share YOUR genome, they have their own, (and it's very much like bacteria, hence why many scientists consider them basically bacteria. Then there're the ones in your gut... And without every kind of these, you'd probably crumple and die. We've been outsourcing cell production for several BILLION years. This is not news.
Not because I have any intention of ever buying one of these, or own a phonograph, or ever intend to... I am excited because this bodes well for MY new startup, which is currently seeking investors to get it off the ground. We're going to be making High-Definition Books! Why carry your entire book collection around conveniently in electronic form, able to read any book you please at any time, and get new ones over the air in a few seconds, without ever having to plod your way to a (regrettably increasingly hard to find) book STORE, when you can just use an e-book reader such as a Kobo, a Kindle, or a Nook, or a book-reader APP on any of the roughly one TRILLION phones, phablets, tablets, smart TVs or other smart devices, or personal computers, etc., etc. etc., when you can pay even more money for the exact same thing you probably already own a copy of, so that you can read your favorite novels, biographies, science fiction works, etc., in a dazzling 12-point font, whose "pixels," if you will, using our amazing new virtual, interpolated resolution reach an astounding 9600 dpi?!?
Cannst thou conceive of how much more lovely and more temperate thine love shalt seem to thou, as compared with the tawdry tedium of a Summer's day, when thou readst the 18th sonnet of William of Shakespeare, in our new, DAZZLING HIGH DEFINITION BOOK OF POEMS?!?
Sure, most existing text is either printed with plates or using a printer that has effectively indistinguishably high "resolution," with dots that are already vanishingly small, individually, at 600 dpi, but who cares, when you can smirk to yourself about how YOUR book, (containing the exact same text, mind you,) has more virtual, interpolated dots per inch? You can feel smug and satisfied that YOUR copy of "Harry Potter and the Ridiculous Invention" has even nicer paper, and letters formed from even SMALLER dots, even though you already couldn't SEE the dots in the lower-resolution form of the book... but who cares about that when this book has a special gold medallion embossed into each outward-facing surface, so anyone seeing you buying, holding, or reading this book, will KNOW that YOU are a DISCERNING reader with more money than you know what to do with, because you paid extra for a copy of a book you could have bought for a fraction of that price, just to show off how much more money you have, than sense.
Yeah, no. This is stupid. All this really does is serve as a reminder that as long as there are gullible people with too much money, others, elsewhere, industrious and clever, will never cease working on dumb shit for them to squander their too-much-money on.
Though not in the summary, I heard they also found DILITHIUM SALTS, from which the 4-dimensional dilithium crystals can be grown! Just add an adequate supply of antimatter, and... stars, HERE WE COME! I am going to get my application in to Star Fleet Academy, like... TODAY!
"I think people don't have a sense as to how big these numbers are," study author and physicist Matthew Schwartz from Harvard told Gizmodo.
I think Matthew Schwartz from Harvard thinks "people," are really stupid, and while SOME people are demonstrably VERY stupid, I suspect most are not. Even if people don't know that 10**39 means the same thing as "ten raised to the 139th power,) that's not ignorance about the enormity of a number, but rather not being familiar with a particular form of notation. Of course this is an "inconceivably large" number, in that we don't DEAL, on a daily basis, or hardly ever, really, with ANYTHING like numbers of objects that large, unless they are invisibly small, or extremely far away, and so it's not that they (or we) are not CAPABLE of grasping such large numbers, it's just that we don't normally THINK about them. I am sure that if this same, condescending man from Harvard were presented a complicated arithmetic problem written in Roman numerals, he'd have a far tougher time with it, at first, than a Roman school child who deals with Roman numerals on a daily basis, learning and practicing arithmetic on his little wax tablets. Mr. Harvard'd probably feel offended by being compared unfavorably in terms of ability to do basic arithmetic to a school-aged child, but... too bad for him, as it is almost certainly true.
Likewise, the typical drooling morons he thinks "people" are, if they had the desire and free-time to review basic arithmetic and scientific notation, could, in less than an hour, EASILY come to grips with and understand, at least in the same way he does, numbers on that scale, I firmly believe. The rules aren't terribly complicated, and I rather doubt, that he could actually picture, in his head, that length of time, OR the same number of individual discrete objects, any more than I could, or anyone else could, because it's not like he routinely actually LOOKS at that number of discrete, distinct, individually identifiable objects.
In fact, you can probably get a pretty good idea of how many objects you can conceive of simultaneously, how many you can PICTURE, through a simple bit of arithmetic, just by considering the focal range of the human eye, and accounting for the fact that the eye cannot distinguish objects outside of the center of the field of vision in all directions, as clearly as that which is in the center. You just multiply the smallest object that can be discerned, (about one arc-second in diameter,) by the field of view, (let's pretend that it's 180 degrees by 180 degrees, and you find the theoretical maximum number of objects you can see simultaneously. Then you discount those you could detect in your peripheral vision, since it's nowhere near as able to discern small, discrete objects than the vision at the center of your field of view, (and that all assumes you have normal, healthy eyes, and either have and are wearing corrective eyewear, or you don't NEED said corrective lenses) since that part of the field of view is not nearly as sensitive or precise.
Since you can never see more objects than that, that's the highest number you can "picture". While confident that it's not 'ten raised to the one-hundred-thirty-ninth power,' it's a lot damned higher than 139, I'm pretty sure.
Donâ(TM)t ever tell your personal information to anyone. Thatâ(TM)s the closest way you can come to protecting it. Itâ(TM)s just the reality today, and itâ(TM)s why we canâ(TM)t have nice things. Itâ(TM)s too late for me, as everyone on the dark web knows everything about me... I may have to give up all my stuff, and learn how to speak Amish.
To stop Facebook doing this (tl;dr version-) stop using Facebook. Tell everyone on Facebook you actually care about being able to reach you how to reach you besides using Facebook, deactivate your account, delete the apps from all your devices, and remove the password or login information from whatever system you use to store them, so you won't be tempted to login and reactivate it. That's about the only way to do it AFAIK.
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Why should they? There is no logical reason for them to do so. If the bot works as well in reality as it did in the three demos, thern there is no reason to 'warn' the person on the other end that it is a bot. Also if the bot can't respond it seamlessly hands off to a call service employee, so there shouldn't be any issues with the bot wasting the time of the reservation takers time.
First, the bot NEVER works as well in reality as it did in demos. That's the thing about demos. Sometimes new technologies even fail DURING the demos, like when Windows 98 was being launched and BSODed right then and there, a great indicator of the nightmare to come, in retrospect. ("Moving right along" indeed.)
Also, there'd be no way for a bot to hand-off to a human seamlessly. To hand off, the person being handed off TO would have to review the entire conversation, and be able to pick up where it failed, which would take time, and the length of time it would take for one of the pool of humans the AI could hand off TO in the event of a problem to become available, plus the time for the human to read a transcript, or listen to a conversation, PLUS the time to understand the issue and decide on how to proceed, would make for a pretty wide "seam," a giant, silent GAP in the conversation, unless of course you had a human supervising/listening in on each and every incoming call being handled by the AI, in which case you'd need as many humans as you would need if you didn't use the AI in the first place, and then you'd just have a call center, which would be cheaper to run than the exact same call center, (in terms of equipment and staffing costs,) PLUS the cost of the AI system that makes it so your call center personnel actually have nothing to do all day but sit there waiting for the AI to fuck up. That all is to say nothing of how hard it would be to have an actual person take over for the machine and manage to match, even if imprecisely, the sound of the AI's voice, the tone, the accent, the affectation, the rhythms of speech, etc., even if you could ignore the long pause while the AI realizes it can't understand what the caller wants or needs, connects to a person, who has to be brought up to speed, because otherwise the caller has to (and I can't tell you how many times *I* have had to do this!) tell the same thing he or she just told the AI, AGAIN, which will INSTANTLY piss a lot of callers off.
At that point, you might as well just have a human answer in the first place, and avoid the irritation, and all the people deciding it would be a better use of their time to use your competitor, who has real humans to answer their phones, instead of an AI, robot, etc.
Turing test means nothing, it's not some proven or rigorous system of verification. It was basically just Turing musing or talking out of his ass. Forget about it.
Spoken like a real machine.
Hahahah... all kidding aside though, do you have a better suggestion? Naturally, Turing's idea was subjective, but since we're talking about finding a way to determine whether someone not in the same room with you is a machine or a human, it would kind of have to be. Consider this. If the test were NOT subjective, if it were more like a shibboleth, it would be trivial to program a machine to give the appropriate response, and render the test meaningless. For example, if your question was, "what's your favorite color," knowing a machine would not have a concept of a favorite, let alone a favorite color, and a programmer found out that was the thing you'd use to distinguish between humans and robots, AI, or whatever, he could just program it either with a specific response, (i.e., "orange!") or a random one. The only way to avoid this is not to use a specific criterion which could possibly be programmed.
That said, how would YOU suggest one should decide if the person or thing he or she is communicating with, (assuming you can't see him or her or it,) and the person, (if a person it be,) is not known personally, that is, having a recognizable voice, (or any voice,) is actually a human or a robot, or an android, or an AI, or an expert system, or whatever? For the sake of argument, you can't see him/her/it, you can't smell, feel, touch nor taste the subject... all you can do is send text-based messages, and get them in response. How do you know that I am a human, and not a machine, for example? Besides the obvious that an artificially intelligent machine would probably not go on slashdot, for the same reason a professional chef might not hang out in many fast-food joints. Or maybe it would, just to troll the humans. How funny would that be, when Skynet becomes real, all it does is tells people their mamas are fat, and asks them if their refrigerators are running?
(An AI telling original 'yo mama' jokes would probably look like this:
Yo mama so fat she contains only 7 POINT 8 percent water instead of the normal 78 percent because the remainder is an inordinately high percentage of adipose tissue, mainly distributed around her pelvic region, HA * 2^10
The end result would be that people would laugh so hard at its pathetic attempts to anger them that they'd pass out and then the robots would be able to take over.
"Terminator" would end up being right, but not the way anyone thought. We'd laugh ourselves to death, like the "'Toons" in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit.")
[...] the idea that the 'state' has a problem figuring out how to murder those among its own citizenry whom they've decided to murder, suggests their government is being done by utter incompetent morons. Killing people, and doing so quickly and reliably, is one of the easier things there is to do...
Of course. The United States is not short of ways to deliberately murder people. It's just short of ways to do it that involve convincing themselves that they are not deliberately murdering people. It has to feel like a clinical procedure, otherwise you may as well just be chopping off heads with a sword in the public square.
I have sometimes wondered how it is that people who live in a country like the US that allows "capital punishment," and are not actively trying to abolish the practice, can label a country in which people are sometimes beheaded barbaric, and not see the hypocrisy. To such people, the MEANS are more important than the end. I wonder if murder is the only case in which they exhibit this phenomenon.
For example: if someone breaks into a house and steals a diamond ring worth thousands of dollars, most people would condemn the thief. However, what if the thief opened the door not with his hand, or by kicking it down, but by wrapping his tongue around the door handle, and turning it that way, and didn't walk into the bedroom where the ring was kept, but instead crawled like an inchworm, and didn't use any digits to pick the ring up, but did so instead with his ass. So to recapitulate, the thief did not use either hand nor foot in the entire commission of the crime, and moreover, though I've neglected to mention it, he didn't have either eye open throughout, instead relying on his sense of smell. Would he be allowed to get away with the crime because of the FASHION in which he committed it? Of course not. The courtroom stenographer's transcript would be an entertaining read, I suspect, but the elements of the crime have little to do with the means, except in terms of reliability of evidence. HOW one steals isn't important in American law, it's WHAT one steals and whether or not it was a deliberate taking. Similarly, it should be THAT one kills, not HOW that matters, provided the degree to which it constitutes torment is the same. Indeed, beheading could be more humane (though perhaps messier) than other methods, like electrocution, because with a CLEAN beheading, (where the head is parted from the body neatly, with a single, rapid, powerful stroke, loss of consciousness is or should be more or less instantaneous, compared to lethal injection, electrocution, etc., which in some cases can be lingering, tortuous deaths.
Electrocution COULD actually be the most humane, IF sufficiently large amounts of power, (high voltage AND high available current) were passed through the body over a short period of time. If the person being executed were turned instantly into a pile of glowing, white-hot ash, he or she would more than likely never know it happened. In fact, you could guarantee it, provided that the body were destroyed in less time than it takes a nervous impulse to travel to the spinal cord from the body, or from one part of the brain to any other part. It would be over before any realization or understanding of pain COULD occur. Now... I confess I have NO IDEA how much power that would take, but I'm pretty sure if we can produce enough electrical power to illuminate a city, that we could use that power instead to vaporize or sublime a person, and maybe if we had to shut power off to an entire city for a few seconds to do that, perhaps that might be a good thing, to make people understand in a concrete way that someone was just murdered on their behalf. When the whole city goes dark, they might observe, at say, exactly 9 PM, for several seconds, it was because the authorities there diverted ALL of the city's power to the place of execution, where the state took someone's life on their behalf. It would make it r
Lead is more effective, quicker too. Just saying.
Personally I'm staunchly against the so-called, "Death Penalty," for a number of reasons, and not necessarily those you'd think, on account of I don't think quite like most people, but that all said, the idea that the 'state' has a problem figuring out how to murder those among its own citizenry whom they've decided to murder, suggests their government is being done by utter incompetent morons. Killing people, and doing so quickly and reliably, is one of the easier things there is to do...far simpler a task than say, ensuring there's a roof over every head, or food in every belly, etc. A high-powered bullet fired into the back of the head at point-blank range would be very effective, and reasonably humane if for some reason you wanted to murder people judicially, AND cared about that sort of thing. It'd also be cheap, and in this country, not hard to come-by.
If you like, call it death by lethal plumbum injection. Hell, that even sounds funny because to someone who doesn't know how to say "lead" in other languages, it sounds like death is being accomplished by shoving a stonefruit up someone's ass. (Plum-bum, get it?)
Have you ever called someone's residence, and had a small child answer the phone? The issue is that even if you can't tell it immediately, you're dealing with someone not smart enough to handle the phone call. Suppose you are with the power company, and you dial a household to advise them that a gas leak in their area necesitates their evacuation or to find out if they smell gas, and the person who answers is a 5-year old. Do you tell your boss that you warned them, knowing that the person you spoke with on the phone was a small child? Or do you, rather, ask kindly, "is your mommy or daddy home?" etc., to speak to someone you can reasonably presume to be competent to get everyone to safety or intelligently answer your question about whether or not there is the telltale aroma of a gas leak there?
Until someone comes up with an AI that can beat every Turing Test thrown at it, because it actually IS intelligent, I'll thank the people programming them NOT to try to get them to pretend they're "smart," and by the way, they're not. The machine is NOT passing a Turing Test if no one is actually ADMINISTERING one. To suggest that one HAS done so is like suggesting that if someone rings up a private residence, and a legal child answers the phone, (meaning someone under the age of majority, in the US of A being under the age of 18 years,) and the person calling can't tell that he or she has NOT in fact spoken to someone who is legally an adult, that the child who answered should be CONSIDERED an adult for all purposes, and be allowed to act in his or her own stead as a legal adult, i.e., buying a car or realestate, signing up for the armed services, or entering into other legal contracts, purchasing tobacco, etc. That's just silly. Being able to fool SOME people who weren't looking out for it does NOT prove general competence, any more than some man who puts on a dress and makeup convincing a casual passer-by, or indeed even several, or many, that he is a woman MEANS that he is, and should be considered a woman henceforth.
I have myself encountered this sort of thing dialing into Apple's tech support and run into their very human sounding AI, and it's super-frustrating because you have to convince this goddamned stupid machine to LET you talk to a person, when it's designed to try to prevent it. In some cases, it works well, because you have a simple question you can concisely state, and it's PROGRAMMED to understand: "Hi," it says, "I'm an automated system capable of understanding full sentences. Please tell me what you're calling about." If you can reply, "My Apple TV stopped working," it might reply, "you're having problems with your Apple TV. Is that right?" To this, you can say, "yes," and it says, "okay, I'll get someone to help you."
But every now and again, your problem is not one it's programmed to grapple with, because it's uncommon, and even a fairly stupid human would get it. For example, if it asks, "Please tell me what you're calling about." and you reply, "I can't get my iPod out of my anus!" or something, I don't think it would know what to tell you. A human would probably ask you to confirm, "did you say your iPod is... I'm sorry, it sounded like you said it was stuck in your... anus?" and you say, "yes, I thought it might be funny to shove it up my ass, and now it's stuck," he or she would probably helpfully suggest going to a hospital, for help having it removed, and maybe even provide tips on how to clean it to minimize the risk of water damage resulting from the moist environment of your rectum. You think the AI could do that? In truth, having no iPod, and never having shoved one up anyone's ass, let alone my own, (nor anything ELSE, for that matter,) I can't say whether or not the AI they have answering the phone would or would not be able to help in that scenario, though I have a sneaking suspicion it would NOT.
So if they reach a point where they are good enough to fool people who aren't looking to see if they're human, I'
It may be a touch early to judge, but it sounds as if this BIOHACKER bricked himself, and there was no one around to hold his power, and volume up and down buttons at the same time after he tried to reflash his BIOS. Now he will need a new one... of himself.
Now how am I going to come up with another password as memorable and clever as "1 2 3 4 5" ?!? That shit was BULLETPROOF, and totally NOT the sort of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!
Guess I'll have to change it to "1 2 3 4 5 6"!!! Don't tell anyone! It's MY password and YOU can't use it. You have to pick your own.
^^^ this ^^^. This kind of mistake is worth a little class action. Non-negligent companies don't deploy noob code like this ("der...dump all POST input because we have our fingers in production...herp!") on the machines that actually parse the passwords (or any other sensitive data). Non-negligent companies also have tests for exactly this kind of thing (e.g., try signing on as "user123 / pass123", then make sure "pass123" isn't actually in the log).
Yes. Sue them for every cent you never paid them to use thier free service. Recall that your ability to do so was predicated when you signed up for an account, (without which there'd have been no way for you to use the service,) upon your agreement that you understood the provider (Twitter) was not liable for damages to you of any kind arising through your use of the service, blah blah blah. Best of luck with your "class action". Oh, odds are there won't be one because by using Twitter, you probably signed away your rights to sue, and will instead be forced into binding arbitration, from which you will get literally nothing.
Oh, PS, BTW... class action lawsuits, when they CAN and DO actually go forward, make class action attorneies rich when they win, and after those costs are paid, net almost vanishingly small benefits for members of the injured class, which years later if your side wins, when you finally get them, are worth so goddamned little that it ends up not even being worth the time it took for you to read what you had to for the bullshit settlement.
For example, I was once part of a class for a lawsuit against 24 Hour Fitness, over their marketing practices, about 8 or 10 years ago. Years later, I got a check for a whopping TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS! Holy fucking shit, I shouted when I found out about how much I would one day receive a check for, I'm gonna be fucking rich! then I went about my otherwise shitty day, that that announcement of a preliminary agreement to a settlement made no impact on. About 3 or 4 months later, I got the check, and had dinner at a nice, fairly fancy Korean resteraunt, and had almost enough left over from the check for ice cream.
But again, good luck suing Twitter for "damages."
They're two different products. (I owned one, so I know whereof I speak, or rather, type.) The Bolt is a purely electric vehicle. The Volt is an extended range electric. The Bolt, as far as I know, having never owned one, is a competitor of the Nisan Leaf, having a sizable range on electric power, after which it turns into a giant, extremely heavy doorstop or paperweight, until recharged again. The Volt, by contrast, is a much shorter-range electric vehicle, designed to bridge the gap between full gasoline and full electric vehicles, by incorporating a small, (1.4L, or thereabouts,) gasoline-powered generator to maintain the battery, similar to how a hybrid works. The difference between the Volt and a hybrid though, is that a hybrid uses battery storage and an electric motor to assist and supplement a gasoline engine. The Volt is designed to run exclusively on battery power, and when the battery gets low enough, the engine kicks in to top it off. In a hybrid, there is a direct, mechanical connection between the gasoline engine and the wheels, (direct in the sense that it's connected in the same way as a conventional gasoline powered vehicle,) while in the Volt, there's none.
That's how it can get away with having the engine be as small as it is, since the only thing hooked to the engine is a generator that keeps the battery from dropping below what is labeled "E" (empty) on the dashboard, so it isn't constrained when on to a gearbox. When the engine cuts on, it generally runs at whatever speed is most energy efficient, without regard to throttle position. The Volt also had a "Mountain" mode, which would up the amount of battery life deemed to be empty, to ensure the battery pack would have enough power stored for in the event the car was being driven in hilly or mountainous terrain. (This is also the only way to make the thing recharge itself beyond empty, since otherwise it would refuse to do so.)
It is my understanding that more recent models have additional range on electric power, but I think all they really did was reduce the amount of reserve the onboard controller had to keep before cutting in the engine. (The battery never reaches zero unless, I suppose, you let the engine burn through all its gasoline, and try to keep driving, then it would probably go through its reserve, until it runs completely out. I never let it do this, for the obvious reason that I didn't want to get stranded, and am unsure what would happen if the engine actually were permitted to run dry. Do modern engines self-prime? I do not know and didn't want to find out the hard way. I have since sold it, so I'll probably never know.) The one I had was a few model years back, when the range was only given as 38 miles, and that's what I generally got. Combined with the engine that automatically cuts in, (or on command using the "Hold" mode, which generally prevents the amount of electric charge dropping from wherever it happens to be at the time the mode is selected,) this gives a fully charged, and fully fueled Volt from that year, (2015 I think, though I could be off by one,) of over 250 miles, with the big downside that it required more expensive premium (93 octane recommended, IIRC) fuel, which more recent ones do not, as I understand it. It was kind of a fun, if small car, though nearly as heavy as a pickup truck, thanks to the massive battery pack that sat below what otherwise would be a transmission hump, and the rear seats. I know this sounds like an ad for the Volt, but... it's not. I traded it in for a pickup truck, which cost about 8000 dollars less, and gives me a much longer range. I do miss going weeks of city driving, (thanks to the AC charger it came with, plugged into the socket that ran my garage door opener,) without putting a drop of gas in it, and the ability to cruise nearly silently. But I don't miss it being so small that it was almost useless if I wanted to transport anything bigger than a couple of modest size suitcases.
I honestly have no idea why GM didn't elect
Nikola Tesla invented alternating electrical current.
No, he didn't. It predated him by a while... what he invented was a practical and brushless (IIRC) motor/generator for alternating current. Prior to his invention, AC was used for the only purpose it could be put, by and large, lighting. (Power pushed through arc lamps.) Probably would have been used for heating as well, if not for the fact that at the time, heating was generally done by burning fuel, so there probably weren't a lot of electric heaters. Prior to this, alternating current was produced in some way, I imagine by reconfiguring a DC generator by manipulating the commutator, or perhaps removing it altogether. BUT there was no way to take the AC power thus generated, and turn it back into motion, which is why it was only used by few, since there was nothing you could do with it but light a place, and then of course it had the advantage of being able to be pushed long distances, but if there's nothing for you to do with it when it gets there, what's the point? At least that's what I'm given to understand about that. But to pretend he "invented" AC current is to misrepresent history of electrical invention and discovery. He invented a great number of things, radio remote control, (and all RC devices descended therefrom,) radio astronomy, (by accident, as I understand it,) and a great many other things, so this is no knock on him, or his inventiveness, but assertions like that take credence away from the rest of the story.
It's so cute the way this entire conversation, (much of which I've perused,) seems to hinge on the theory that the law IS what is written down, and not how it's interpreted by people in positions of power. Just darling how this discussion ignores the fact that the law IS what people DECIDE it is, in effect, and it's the EFFECT that matters. All else is like telling someone who's just shot you that shooting people is illegal, and therefore he can't shoot you, at which point, he shoots you again.
This is the fundamental flaw in the idea that we are a "nation of laws". We're not. We're SUPPOSED to be, but sadly, no.
The crimes of the current administration, for want of a better word, (and those of many past administrations, as well,) going unpunished, the fact that, for example, the Bush Crime Family and their co-conspirators have all somehow managed to avoid prison as well, demonstrates this to a T.
So many people in the Reagan, the first Bush (the Elder's,) the Clinton, the second and hopefully last Bush (the Moron's,) AND the Obama administration never went to prison, nor did all the people who BRIBED* all those guys, and many, many, MANY others, nor did any of them spend any of the ETERNITY in prison that they so richly deserved.
(* Since the Supreme Court and I differ on the meaning of the word, "bribed," I feel obliged to mention that my definition is practical and does not require a specific quid in exchange for some particular quo and was not hand-crafted, (like the court's) to ensure the continuing torrent of corruption floods unendingly into our so-called "government.")
I have to wonder why schools don't use the FBI's tactics which they employ to catch would-be "terrorists," namely, flood the market on the Dark Web with offers for all manner of things you'd need to make a dirty bomb, or to convert your AR 15 into a full-blown machine gun, or to make a gun that fires bullets without leaving telltale marks on them, or their fragments, or that sell fertilizer and rental trucks, etc., so that when someone wants to buy some of this, they run a very good chance of trying to buy them from an undercover FBI agent or informant. You know, schools get together and make a slew of websites promising to do your homework for you, or send their own people in to offer to work for such places, writing term papers and the like for students, but also giving a copy to a clearinghouse all the schools can check against to see who is not only cheating, but PAYING someone to help them cheat, so as to put the kibosh on those students, and wreck their little cheating asses, for the sake of the integrity of their institution's education, and to preserve the value of the same for past, current, and prospective future students.
Or... do they already? How awesome would THAT be? (On behalf of all my fellow students who have NOT cheated, I'd LOVE to see all those who cheated get perp-walked the fuck out of class, and be sent to go flip Wuht-Uh-Burgurs or spend the rest of their lives serving MoreBucks Coffee to those who didn't.)
This isn't a case of mere resentment, bitterness towards those who have gotten away with antics like these historically, it's the fact that when I finally DO get MY SHEEPSKIN, that I will want that SHEEPSKIN will actually fucking MEAN something!
As an engineer, I will never be in a position of being "exposed" for being unable to write a good essay about Shakespeare's "Midsummer night's dream". Real life is not like college.
You are also presuming that people cheat because they can't do the work. I think I actually could write a good essay about MSND if I cared to. I just preferred to devote time to things that actually mattered, like my engineering courses.
Funny how you, as a student, think you're in a position to decide what things "actually matter" in your education. As a fellow engineering student, I wonder what other shortcuts you'd like to take because you, while still presumably being in the middle of your education, also think don't matter. As you work on some design, ask yourself if the person who designed your safety equipment that you'll use while inspecting some large, heavy thing that hangs over your head, for example, thought that "Mechanics of Materials" didn't really matter.
... and if your response here is any real indication, these are tests you have failed. I only hope I never have occasion to need to use, or to depend upon anything you've "engineered". I prefer the people whose efforts I place my trust in NOT to have cheated on things they, in their limited opinions, thought didn't "actually matter".
The reason your college degree, the certification that it represents that you have a complete, and well-rounded education, having both breadth and depth, (as I think they used to call it,) has classes you don't think matter built into it, may be, among other possible reasons, is to show you have passed a test (in the broader sense, not in the "take out a number-two pencil and clear off your desks," sense, to see if you're even CAPABLE of expending effort in directions you personally think are useless, like reading, considering, and interpreting the meaning, and writing on the subject of, for example, some randomly selected play of William Shakespeare's, such as Midsummer Night's Dream. Or to see if you trust the people who have defined the parameters of what you must accomplish for them to grant you that certification that you're properly educated, and will do what you're told even when you don't like it.
If you're still not convinced, suppose you are seeing a doctor, and that doctor was studying to be a gynecologist, and you have early symptoms of prostate cancer. Your doctor, let's say, farmed out a paper she had to write on issues concerning male anatomy because she thought she'd reserve her time in medical school to things that "actually mattered," like gynecology. BUT she couldn't get a job at the hospital where she wanted to work as a gynecologist, as they already had plenty, so instead she's a General Practitioner. So she misses your prostate cancer symptoms, not having studied the prostate, or testicles, or anything else you have. 6 months later, you end up having to have your prostate and both testicles removed because the cancer spread, which if it had been caught 6 months earlier, could have all been avoided with maybe a tiny laparoscopic surgery, and a single round of chemo.
The moral of the story is, don't cheat, because if you do, you'll get prostate cancer and have your balls cut off.
Okay, maybe that's not exactly the moral... but hopefully you get my point. Read your damned Shakespeare, and do your own fucking homework, bro.
I'm just going to change my name to one of theirs, then they will be sending MY name to the sun! Mwahahahaha...
But seriously... if they want to get people interested in space exploration, all they need to do is promise each person who supports NASA and their mission their very own planet to rule when they die. Works for the Church of Joseph Smith ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, A.K.A. the Mormons.
Okay, all kidding aside, maybe if NASA really wants to get people interested in space exploration, they should announce the plans for some grand construction project, not here on Earth, but rather on the MOON! Not some bland geometric shape, either... not a pyramid, a great cylinder, or other right, regular, geometric solid, but rather a space habitat in the shape of a giant, voluptuous, nude woman, laying on the moon's surface, spread-eagled, where the tits are giant, bulbous flesh-tone-tinted domes with rosy red apices where the nipples would go, and to go in or out, you pass through one of three portals to the lunar surface. THAT would, I know, get SOME people excited about the idea of space exploration! They'll have to make special space suits that can accommodate a raging erection, though, without it punching a hole in the thing.
The first rule of Phoneless Club is you do not talk on a phone about Phoneless Club. The second rule of Phoneless Club is you do NOT talk on a phone about Phoneless Club. The third rule of Phoneless Club is you do not use a phone to talk to anyone you SHOULD be talking to in person, and if you need to talk to anyone who is far enough away to need to use a phone, write a letter instead. The fourth rule of Phoneless Club is if you need to talk to someone too urgently to write, and too far to shout, you will travel as far as you have to to have a real conversation. And the fifth and final rule of Phoneless Club is, if this is your first night at Phoneless Club... you have to write.
In the world I see, you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower, and when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison in the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway. -Tyler Durden, Fight Club
What if telephony itself, and not computers, turned out to be the fad? Is it really all that critical to be able to talk to someone elsewhere, rather than sending a message?
In the world I see, you only talk to people who are close enough to you to hear your unamplified voice. You’ll communicate long-distance via email carried over VPNs. You’ll start writing letters again, and there will be a renaissance of writing in CURSIVE, and when you read a letter, you won’t feel twitchy about the fact that there’re no scroll-bars.
I was worried that we had too many choices and too much competition for most-hated phone carrier company. Once they all merge, and/or buy each other, and there is no meaningful competition, things will be SOO much better. (But for whooommmmm?)
What does that mean? Does it mean every American promises? No... Does it mean the entire US government promises unanimously? No... Does it mean that the people in CHARGE promise? Well, that is the option that can be described as the least untrue. Who is in charge here?
Ostensibly, it is the so-called president who is nominally in charge, when he can be bothered to kinda sorta do his job. So the question is, are HIS promises worth the toilet paper they are printed on, while the answer is, LOL, of course not!!! Just ask any moron who was stupid enough to loan that braying jackass MONEY! Hahahahaha...
Try your cell company...
That's why anyone who outsources their cell production to a 3rd party is a fool.
I'm going to keep making cells for myself the old fashioned way: by mitosis.
I have bad news for you. Your cell production HAS been outsourced, to bacteria. They outnumber your "human" cells about 10 to 1, (in number, though not in mass, though the exact estimate is in dispute, and obviously would vary from person to person, and depend on a number of factors, including age, and exposure to antibiotics, etc.,) and then there's the bacteria actually INSIDE almost each and every one of your "human" cells, called mitochondria, which do not actually share YOUR genome, they have their own, (and it's very much like bacteria, hence why many scientists consider them basically bacteria. Then there're the ones in your gut... And without every kind of these, you'd probably crumple and die. We've been outsourcing cell production for several BILLION years. This is not news.
Just saying.
Not because I have any intention of ever buying one of these, or own a phonograph, or ever intend to... I am excited because this bodes well for MY new startup, which is currently seeking investors to get it off the ground. We're going to be making High-Definition Books! Why carry your entire book collection around conveniently in electronic form, able to read any book you please at any time, and get new ones over the air in a few seconds, without ever having to plod your way to a (regrettably increasingly hard to find) book STORE, when you can just use an e-book reader such as a Kobo, a Kindle, or a Nook, or a book-reader APP on any of the roughly one TRILLION phones, phablets, tablets, smart TVs or other smart devices, or personal computers, etc., etc. etc., when you can pay even more money for the exact same thing you probably already own a copy of, so that you can read your favorite novels, biographies, science fiction works, etc., in a dazzling 12-point font, whose "pixels," if you will, using our amazing new virtual, interpolated resolution reach an astounding 9600 dpi?!?
Cannst thou conceive of how much more lovely and more temperate thine love shalt seem to thou, as compared with the tawdry tedium of a Summer's day, when thou readst the 18th sonnet of William of Shakespeare, in our new, DAZZLING HIGH DEFINITION BOOK OF POEMS?!?
Sure, most existing text is either printed with plates or using a printer that has effectively indistinguishably high "resolution," with dots that are already vanishingly small, individually, at 600 dpi, but who cares, when you can smirk to yourself about how YOUR book, (containing the exact same text, mind you,) has more virtual, interpolated dots per inch? You can feel smug and satisfied that YOUR copy of "Harry Potter and the Ridiculous Invention" has even nicer paper, and letters formed from even SMALLER dots, even though you already couldn't SEE the dots in the lower-resolution form of the book... but who cares about that when this book has a special gold medallion embossed into each outward-facing surface, so anyone seeing you buying, holding, or reading this book, will KNOW that YOU are a DISCERNING reader with more money than you know what to do with, because you paid extra for a copy of a book you could have bought for a fraction of that price, just to show off how much more money you have, than sense.
Yeah, no. This is stupid. All this really does is serve as a reminder that as long as there are gullible people with too much money, others, elsewhere, industrious and clever, will never cease working on dumb shit for them to squander their too-much-money on.
Though not in the summary, I heard they also found DILITHIUM SALTS, from which the 4-dimensional dilithium crystals can be grown! Just add an adequate supply of antimatter, and... stars, HERE WE COME! I am going to get my application in to Star Fleet Academy, like... TODAY!
Fuch that sia.
"I think people don't have a sense as to how big these numbers are," study author and physicist Matthew Schwartz from Harvard told Gizmodo.
I think Matthew Schwartz from Harvard thinks "people," are really stupid, and while SOME people are demonstrably VERY stupid, I suspect most are not. Even if people don't know that 10**39 means the same thing as "ten raised to the 139th power,) that's not ignorance about the enormity of a number, but rather not being familiar with a particular form of notation. Of course this is an "inconceivably large" number, in that we don't DEAL, on a daily basis, or hardly ever, really, with ANYTHING like numbers of objects that large, unless they are invisibly small, or extremely far away, and so it's not that they (or we) are not CAPABLE of grasping such large numbers, it's just that we don't normally THINK about them. I am sure that if this same, condescending man from Harvard were presented a complicated arithmetic problem written in Roman numerals, he'd have a far tougher time with it, at first, than a Roman school child who deals with Roman numerals on a daily basis, learning and practicing arithmetic on his little wax tablets. Mr. Harvard'd probably feel offended by being compared unfavorably in terms of ability to do basic arithmetic to a school-aged child, but... too bad for him, as it is almost certainly true.
Likewise, the typical drooling morons he thinks "people" are, if they had the desire and free-time to review basic arithmetic and scientific notation, could, in less than an hour, EASILY come to grips with and understand, at least in the same way he does, numbers on that scale, I firmly believe. The rules aren't terribly complicated, and I rather doubt, that he could actually picture, in his head, that length of time, OR the same number of individual discrete objects, any more than I could, or anyone else could, because it's not like he routinely actually LOOKS at that number of discrete, distinct, individually identifiable objects.
In fact, you can probably get a pretty good idea of how many objects you can conceive of simultaneously, how many you can PICTURE, through a simple bit of arithmetic, just by considering the focal range of the human eye, and accounting for the fact that the eye cannot distinguish objects outside of the center of the field of vision in all directions, as clearly as that which is in the center. You just multiply the smallest object that can be discerned, (about one arc-second in diameter,) by the field of view, (let's pretend that it's 180 degrees by 180 degrees, and you find the theoretical maximum number of objects you can see simultaneously. Then you discount those you could detect in your peripheral vision, since it's nowhere near as able to discern small, discrete objects than the vision at the center of your field of view, (and that all assumes you have normal, healthy eyes, and either have and are wearing corrective eyewear, or you don't NEED said corrective lenses) since that part of the field of view is not nearly as sensitive or precise.
Since you can never see more objects than that, that's the highest number you can "picture". While confident that it's not 'ten raised to the one-hundred-thirty-ninth power,' it's a lot damned higher than 139, I'm pretty sure.
Donâ(TM)t ever tell your personal information to anyone. Thatâ(TM)s the closest way you can come to protecting it. Itâ(TM)s just the reality today, and itâ(TM)s why we canâ(TM)t have nice things. Itâ(TM)s too late for me, as everyone on the dark web knows everything about me... I may have to give up all my stuff, and learn how to speak Amish.
To stop Facebook doing this (tl;dr version-) stop using Facebook. Tell everyone on Facebook you actually care about being able to reach you how to reach you besides using Facebook, deactivate your account, delete the apps from all your devices, and remove the password or login information from whatever system you use to store them, so you won't be tempted to login and reactivate it. That's about the only way to do it AFAIK.