I am currently in Malaysia for business, Kuala Lumpur. Had planned to take a new tablet back; not for major work but minor stuff, reading mail, light gaming, when on the road. KL is a good place for such things. Saw a really beautiful RT. Sorry, I am a Linux person, an MS-hater, but it looked good to me. Smooth, bright. Nice keyboard. Nice build-quality. RM 1099. Could fit my bill. Nice to touch as well. Next to it a Surface. To me as a non-Windows person, the same as the RT (I know, I know, I know the difference). RM 2700. On the next table an Asus Fonepad. RM 749. I know, I know, this is different. 7" instead of 10" or whatnot. But also great build-quality. I went out with the Fonepad. No, not a single sen comes my way for this comment. However, I do think that this is what the current market is all about. Most customers with a limited budget will do likewise, as long as a tablet is not a full replacement for a desktop. And since the tablet market is not a market like Office Suite with MS having a stranglehold, MS is pretty much "cooked" as the French say.
I understand your position and yet, I cannot perceive it to be very logically founded. The mistake that we humans tend to make, is to stick too much to the crude philosophy of 'when something is good, just use more of it'. Food without salt is lousy. Some grains of salt make it nice. An overdose of salt is dangerous, if not lethal. A nice sip on a good wine brings my spirits up. Though if I wanted to increase this state of uplifting by gulping down a few more glasses, the intended effect would not occur. On the contrary, I'd suffer from a hangover the next day. I see the progress of medicine likewise. Eliminate suffering, allow us a life free of pain, with the ability to savour each and every day of the rest of our lives. And allow us - okay, at least me - to die gracefully when the natural time is up. I simply cannot imagine that someone born in the Elisabeth-en age would actually enjoy sitting through all the changes, famines, wars, centuries in order to still be alive today. Though I might be wrong. As of today, I wouldn't be happy to know I have to continue working for a living, endure an ever increasing hostility in the global world, ever more competition, and - worst - activities by our Big Brother, for some more centuries. Anything wrong with retirement?
This is actually a very good question. Thanks for asking it. It is because I don't see any progress if it could be achieved. Imagine an ever increasing amount of biomass being used up for an ever increasing number of human beings. At times, old age and death is a great contributor to human progress. Stalin and Mugabe spring into mind. If we were here for eternity all my stereotypes, my convictions, my undue biases would be there forever. However, me dying opens space for someone to pick up from me, and maybe improve on my shortcomings. And what a boring life this would be. I am convinced that we'd be ending up with the same boredom like you can make out here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/ Death is the greatest factor in human advancements of all. In the Indian tradition, often Shiva is considered the greatest of the major three gods, because without destruction, nothing new can be created.
I would very much prefer to help with efforts to allow all human beings to lead their limited life-span in a decent manner. I would very much prefer to help with efforts to allow cancer patients to lead a life with little to no suffering until their final breath.
We all have to go one day, untimely or not, and that is about the best decisions some god, respectively mother nature, have taken for us. Actually, if need be I'd help with all efforts to prevent humans from living for eternity. Aging - I am close to 60 - is a part of life that I would actually not want to miss. If only, for its changes on perspectives, which is yet another great learning experience.
As engineer, I have over 30 years of career been confronted with some problems, items to adjust and calibrate, etc. And I can vouch for the fact that in almost all cases, there was a trade-off. One parameter increasing, another would decline; e.g. MTBF. Or efficiency. Therefore, how can fiddling arbitrarily with parameters on a system constitute research? News at 11. Wake me up when a longer life is possible without side-effects.
While I have nothing against this laudable approach, I can't perceive it to be life-shattering. Teaching in a university, I had to learn the nature of the large majority in front of me. They wouldn't exactly be interested in the subject matter, and neither motivated to invest any more minute than absolutely necessary. Especially so in the material advocated as 'recommended reading'. Either it will be made easy-peasy, or the lim of the attrition rate for t towards the end of the course can be approximated by zero.
Oh yes, take the easy way out and mode me down (-1, negative teaching skills).
Personally, I think this stuff with the Start Button is a side show. Even if they reverted it back completely to the Win7 behavior, it wouldn't remedy the underlying problems with the OS and the MS software ecosystem in general. In particular: the persistent development of their own "standards" for the purposes of locking out competition, general dumbing down of the OS, poor CLI integration (please just build-in Bash), no multiple desktops, and why sometimes when I drag many large files into a new directory does Win 7 spend ages doing a copy then delete?
Okay, understood. Why not install a proper OS then?
I don't know where you go shopping, but I would like to know and join you. Because where I go, it is not about the yoghurt. It is about almost everything. From gherkins over to almost any non-mineral-water-drink to all and any precooked food.
Were you not an AC, you deserved +5 for insightful. It is the fructose and the glucose-syrup and friends. Sweeter than sugar. One of the seven deadly sins.
It's good to see that you never have RTFA. Though this is not expected in here. However, reading the summary before commenting would be recommended. I wonder were/. were going, if the comments were solely based on the very title. Wait, even the title itself - if read in its entity - does not necessarily warrant the conclusion that all grounds for obesity are found in what you made out.
Seems you're sitting on the wrong pot here. Windows RT run on ARM, and with an ARM there is not much chance to heat up. For you it'd be advisiable to wait for a sale-down of the Surface tablet to post this remark.
Thanks, AC! You hit the nail on the head. One of my friends is a researcher in AI (and when he reads this, will not be my friend any longer) in the recent years also deviated from the - what I consider - true course, and instead postulated a mechanism better in distinguishing visually a male mouse from a female mouse compared to a human as 'more intelligent' [as fictitious example]. It might be extreme, and yet it shows the vagueness of the approaches. If need actually be, I think that this Winograd test can also be programmed into a bot. A bot that passes it, I mean, and when you ask it about the length of the tail of Schroedinger's cat with respect to the circumference of an African swallow, it says 'No'. To me, and still this is not final and too vague, though an intelligent system would from some moment on start acquiring knowledge on its own, and process and store and most of all link it to existing knowledge - including from very different fields - on its own and somewhat individual account. Not information collection. Dr. Google is dumb as a dead doornail, yet it can provide factual information that makes it look like an IQ of 10^10^10.
Could you elaborate, or cite some papers that say differently? I don't mind accepting other ways of creating intelligence, but I am not content with just reading the statement. Has AI not been postulating this for 50+ years, and not really achieved it? I am just asking, since I wonder what you had in mind.
Let me consider this to contain a number of valid points. 'Digital' and 'networks' do work totally different from the human brain. Therefore, the old adage of 'just speeding it up' is like going into the wrong direction, albeit accelerating further, in the hope that speed can compensate the wrong direction. There is also the question about the definition of intelligence. Is there only one sort of intelligence, the human one? Then, of course, AI needs to mimic us humans. And then, what the underlying paper expresses would not be much different from the 2-generations old definition that AI has been achieved when a computer spontaneously laughs about a joke. However, if intelligence can have different incantations, we'd still have to define what intelligence is. I can see that many of the famous AI researchers tend to 'give up', and rather resort to 'compartmental intelligence', that is, defining their products as intelligent, if only these products mange to offer good results in a very narrow field of expertise. I cannot at all agree, since shifting the goalposts to suit our current, meager, results and yet to declare 'achievement' is simply lousy.
... or where is the angle for nerds and geeks in this? I for one would really appreciate to read news in here (/.), that I don't read everywhere else. Sorry.
Hmm. You don't fully convince me here. Of course, understanding what you read makes a huge difference. But Shakespeare - as an example - is not exactly something that lives from 'understanding'. It is not fantastic as plot as such. 'Understanding' the plot can easily distract from the intention. Man, we are not discussing technology here, but arts. The old Rembrandt is not 'understood' when you point out that it is a somewhat foggy image of a man with a hat. And the Tempest isn't a realistic voyage of a sailor who gets caught in a storm. I for one wished our schools were much more active in the non-business-oriented layer in between, the one that creates a deep link with arts.
Slashdot Mirror
I am currently in Malaysia for business, Kuala Lumpur.
Had planned to take a new tablet back; not for major work but minor stuff, reading mail, light gaming, when on the road.
KL is a good place for such things.
Saw a really beautiful RT. Sorry, I am a Linux person, an MS-hater, but it looked good to me. Smooth, bright. Nice keyboard. Nice build-quality. RM 1099. Could fit my bill. Nice to touch as well. Next to it a Surface. To me as a non-Windows person, the same as the RT (I know, I know, I know the difference). RM 2700. On the next table an Asus Fonepad. RM 749. I know, I know, this is different. 7" instead of 10" or whatnot. But also great build-quality.
I went out with the Fonepad. No, not a single sen comes my way for this comment. However, I do think that this is what the current market is all about. Most customers with a limited budget will do likewise, as long as a tablet is not a full replacement for a desktop. And since the tablet market is not a market like Office Suite with MS having a stranglehold, MS is pretty much "cooked" as the French say.
And when you post this comment as AC, who pays you?
I understand your position and yet, I cannot perceive it to be very logically founded. The mistake that we humans tend to make, is to stick too much to the crude philosophy of 'when something is good, just use more of it'. Food without salt is lousy. Some grains of salt make it nice. An overdose of salt is dangerous, if not lethal. A nice sip on a good wine brings my spirits up. Though if I wanted to increase this state of uplifting by gulping down a few more glasses, the intended effect would not occur. On the contrary, I'd suffer from a hangover the next day. I see the progress of medicine likewise. Eliminate suffering, allow us a life free of pain, with the ability to savour each and every day of the rest of our lives. And allow us - okay, at least me - to die gracefully when the natural time is up.
I simply cannot imagine that someone born in the Elisabeth-en age would actually enjoy sitting through all the changes, famines, wars, centuries in order to still be alive today. Though I might be wrong. As of today, I wouldn't be happy to know I have to continue working for a living, endure an ever increasing hostility in the global world, ever more competition, and - worst - activities by our Big Brother, for some more centuries. Anything wrong with retirement?
Why don't you help with anti-aging efforts?
This is actually a very good question. Thanks for asking it.
It is because I don't see any progress if it could be achieved. Imagine an ever increasing amount of biomass being used up for an ever increasing number of human beings. At times, old age and death is a great contributor to human progress. Stalin and Mugabe spring into mind. If we were here for eternity all my stereotypes, my convictions, my undue biases would be there forever.
However, me dying opens space for someone to pick up from me, and maybe improve on my shortcomings. And what a boring life this would be. I am convinced that we'd be ending up with the same boredom like you can make out here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070948/
Death is the greatest factor in human advancements of all. In the Indian tradition, often Shiva is considered the greatest of the major three gods, because without destruction, nothing new can be created.
I would very much prefer to help with efforts to allow all human beings to lead their limited life-span in a decent manner. I would very much prefer to help with efforts to allow cancer patients to lead a life with little to no suffering until their final breath.
We all have to go one day, untimely or not, and that is about the best decisions some god, respectively mother nature, have taken for us. Actually, if need be I'd help with all efforts to prevent humans from living for eternity. Aging - I am close to 60 - is a part of life that I would actually not want to miss. If only, for its changes on perspectives, which is yet another great learning experience.
As engineer, I have over 30 years of career been confronted with some problems, items to adjust and calibrate, etc.
And I can vouch for the fact that in almost all cases, there was a trade-off. One parameter increasing, another would decline; e.g. MTBF. Or efficiency. Therefore, how can fiddling arbitrarily with parameters on a system constitute research?
News at 11.
Wake me up when a longer life is possible without side-effects.
While I have nothing against this laudable approach, I can't perceive it to be life-shattering.
Teaching in a university, I had to learn the nature of the large majority in front of me. They wouldn't exactly be interested in the subject matter, and neither motivated to invest any more minute than absolutely necessary. Especially so in the material advocated as 'recommended reading'.
Either it will be made easy-peasy, or the lim of the attrition rate for t towards the end of the course can be approximated by zero.
Oh yes, take the easy way out and mode me down (-1, negative teaching skills).
It's not ethically challenging like drug testing, since you can always remediate after a bad lesson.
http://memexplex.com/meme/1746/
How is it that so many readers seem to be struck by an overwhelming duplication virus today?
Why does Apple have such a lock on the educational system that it's effectively created a duopoly with Microsoft?
Consider yourself modded up. I only have no points left.
Or an Android tablet with Maxima, a TI-... emulator, etc. pp.
Why in the world would you buy an iPad?
See, I corrected your minor error:
Personally, I think this stuff with the Start Button is a side show. Even if they reverted it back completely to the Win7 behavior, it wouldn't remedy the underlying problems with the OS and the MS software ecosystem in general. In particular: the persistent development of their own "standards" for the purposes of locking out competition, general dumbing down of the OS, poor CLI integration (please just build-in Bash), no multiple desktops, and why sometimes when I drag many large files into a new directory does Win 7 spend ages doing a copy then delete?
Okay, understood.
Why not install a proper OS then?
Giving me an uninstall feature and I might consider it. ;)
Try ubuntu.com.
Maybe like you can hoover the landing with a Siemens?
I don't know where you go shopping, but I would like to know and join you. Because where I go, it is not about the yoghurt. It is about almost everything. From gherkins over to almost any non-mineral-water-drink to all and any precooked food.
Absolutely correct. I wonder how - as of now - posting under your screen-name - +5 is not awarded.
Were you not an AC, you deserved +5 for insightful. It is the fructose and the glucose-syrup and friends. Sweeter than sugar. One of the seven deadly sins.
Were you not an AC, I'd reply and tell you that the parent is fully correct. Never mind.
It's good to see that you never have RTFA. Though this is not expected in here. /. were going, if the comments were solely based on the very title. Wait, even the title itself - if read in its entity - does not necessarily warrant the conclusion that all grounds for obesity are found in what you made out.
However, reading the summary before commenting would be recommended. I wonder were
Seems you're sitting on the wrong pot here. Windows RT run on ARM, and with an ARM there is not much chance to heat up.
For you it'd be advisiable to wait for a sale-down of the Surface tablet to post this remark.
Thanks, AC! You hit the nail on the head. One of my friends is a researcher in AI (and when he reads this, will not be my friend any longer) in the recent years also deviated from the - what I consider - true course, and instead postulated a mechanism better in distinguishing visually a male mouse from a female mouse compared to a human as 'more intelligent' [as fictitious example]. It might be extreme, and yet it shows the vagueness of the approaches. If need actually be, I think that this Winograd test can also be programmed into a bot. A bot that passes it, I mean, and when you ask it about the length of the tail of Schroedinger's cat with respect to the circumference of an African swallow, it says 'No'.
To me, and still this is not final and too vague, though an intelligent system would from some moment on start acquiring knowledge on its own, and process and store and most of all link it to existing knowledge - including from very different fields - on its own and somewhat individual account. Not information collection. Dr. Google is dumb as a dead doornail, yet it can provide factual information that makes it look like an IQ of 10^10^10.
Could you elaborate, or cite some papers that say differently? I don't mind accepting other ways of creating intelligence, but I am not content with just reading the statement.
Has AI not been postulating this for 50+ years, and not really achieved it? I am just asking, since I wonder what you had in mind.
Let me consider this to contain a number of valid points.
'Digital' and 'networks' do work totally different from the human brain. Therefore, the old adage of 'just speeding it up' is like going into the wrong direction, albeit accelerating further, in the hope that speed can compensate the wrong direction.
There is also the question about the definition of intelligence. Is there only one sort of intelligence, the human one? Then, of course, AI needs to mimic us humans. And then, what the underlying paper expresses would not be much different from the 2-generations old definition that AI has been achieved when a computer spontaneously laughs about a joke. However, if intelligence can have different incantations, we'd still have to define what intelligence is. I can see that many of the famous AI researchers tend to 'give up', and rather resort to 'compartmental intelligence', that is, defining their products as intelligent, if only these products mange to offer good results in a very narrow field of expertise. I cannot at all agree, since shifting the goalposts to suit our current, meager, results and yet to declare 'achievement' is simply lousy.
... or where is the angle for nerds and geeks in this?
I for one would really appreciate to read news in here (/.), that I don't read everywhere else.
Sorry.
Wow. And I have no mod points. :-(
Hmm. You don't fully convince me here.
Of course, understanding what you read makes a huge difference. But Shakespeare - as an example - is not exactly something that lives from 'understanding'. It is not fantastic as plot as such. 'Understanding' the plot can easily distract from the intention. Man, we are not discussing technology here, but arts. The old Rembrandt is not 'understood' when you point out that it is a somewhat foggy image of a man with a hat. And the Tempest isn't a realistic voyage of a sailor who gets caught in a storm.
I for one wished our schools were much more active in the non-business-oriented layer in between, the one that creates a deep link with arts.