My girlfriend's laptop was not booting. In fact, I could not get into BIOS setup so booting from an alternative medium was not an option. The simple things I tried (remove DIMM, remove HDD, reset CMOS,...) didn't worked. I am a software guy so I figured out that my time was too expensive to continue the investigation and that we'll pay some "professional". Geek Squad was conveniently located so I brought it there. I was really stupid that I have not read their reviews before that.
They asked nearly $100 for a "diagnostic" that looked something like this:
"No signal from keyboard" - read: F1 won't enter BIOS setup (that was why we brought the laptop to them in the first place)
"No signal from CD ROM" - read: our diagnostic CD doesn't boot (again, that was why we brought the laptop to them)
"Hard Drive OK" - strange, we removed HDD before giving the laptop to them
"RAM OK" - the only thing they have done with the laptop was trying another DIMM (if they were not lying on that one too)
"Motherboard error" - they implied that exchanging it would be too expensive and the laptop is not worth repairing.
(BTW I was able to fix the laptop with some help of Google afterward. The problem was short-circuited wires in a broken USB slot. The laptop still works well 1 yr after the "incident".)
I was furious so I spent really long time arguing with them. They repeated several times that they ran "series of diagnostic test" but when I pressed the manager he had to admit that they couldn't run the tests because they couldn't boot their diagnostic CD. At that point, the manager denied they lied to me about the "series of diagnostics" and started calling his technician (who was not there at that point) "a mysterious man who told you something".
My girlfriend never seen her money again. I filled a complaint at their corporate support line. They told me they will handle it but they will not tell me about the outcome (WTF?). All I could do was to call again the next day to check that the complain was in their system and it had assigned a tracking id.
I was seriously considering taking some further steps because I consider this preying on a layman public bordering with a fraud. But at the end I just gave up.
Given the previous claims by Zuckerberg [citation needed] he is not willing to give out the control over Facebook. I bet that if they are discussing anything than it is a sell of only a minor share.
I watch the personalities and, sad to say, make the weakest one my bitch. Once I do that then I'm on my way to acceptance. It's how they play, it's how I have to play.
No, this is not how "they" play, this is how you play and I find that highly disgusting.
As for respect, please. management doesn't give a shit about anybody, what makes you so special?
Good IT workers can leave and find other place with better management that actually cares about people. Even at these times, Competent IT workers are very hard to find...
From what I have heard and seen, auditors do a very lousy job. I very much hate the fact that they get a lot money while they are generally not responsible for the quality of their work.
On the other hand, it is clear that auditors can not find all possible problems, therefore it doesn't make sense to make them responsible for all incidents. This just would not work.
Visual sensation is what's going on in the brain. We don't know enough to speculate about it reasonably. End of story.
The information that it happens in the brain is not that much useful to understand it. It is a very interesting (and very old) problem we should try to solve. If we do not know enough we should try to learn more.
And if you want to make unreasonable speculations go ahead but leave me alone - I prefer science.
First, we should try to define the problem. I believe that qualia (although somebody would call this phenomenon differently) is key to defining consciousness. Once we have a correct definition we can start what you call "science". For me trying to define a problem is part of science. Don't get too distracted by the fact that many philosophers speak crap.
This is not end of story. We are at the very beginning.
The difference is that he is studying a special case of a neural network. namely the best model of mammalian brain (more specificaly cortex and thalamus) we can put together with the current knowledge.
If your brain were somehow rewired so that you see red as blue, then your brain would adapt to the change over time and you would start identifying red colors correctly again
You brain would adapt in the sense that you would start to associate (your subjective) blue with things like fruits, warmth, aggression (and other things not-rewired people do associate red color). Yes, you would adapt and start responding to colors correctly.
But would you see the red as red or blue? And what does it mean to "see red as red" anyway? It is not that easy as you might think, see qualia. These are "feelings" in their "raw form". Where do they arise from? People like D. Dennet argue they are just "illusions". But what does "illusion" means then (renaming the problem doesn't solve it). I can feel them [qualias], therefore I want to know what they are, be they called feelings, qualia or illusions.
Wow, long post. But you have not got the parent post right. Of course, brain is a quantum system. The same way as you car travels according to Einsteins special relativity. But I assume that your car moves at speeds where using Newtonian mechanics makes more sense.
The same holds for your brain, there is no evidence so far that its function can not be accurately described solely in the terms of electric potentials (no quantum mechanics involved).
In fact TFA is about modeling the brain as a relatively simple (although very large) electric circuit. Of course consciousness is still a mystery, but this doesn't prove that brain is a quantum system, there is probably something much deeper (information?) in play.
All right, we probably basically agree with each other;-) Just let me elaborate a bit about what I mean.
I found only two reasons to believe that other people are conscious (by which I mean they are not philosophical zombies or equivalently that they have qualias ["feelings"]):
I know I am conscious, therefore I assume that similar beings are conscious too.
Other people have "independently" (of me) coined the term, therefore I assume they feel conscious (which is just different way of saying they are conscious).
The first argument would not convince me for machines (although it convinces me that at least mammals are conscious).
The second argument is quite problematic because of this damn "independently". Of course philosophers have coined the term independently of me, but I do not use it independently of them. Still, I believe I would have these feelings even if I didn't learned this concept.
So yes, I totally agree that a best way to assess whether someone or something is conscious is simply to ask the "right questions" (preferably the test subject was never exposed to notions like feelings, qualia and consciousness before). I just didn't called this "Turing test" (which is on one side too strict and on the other side can be cheated surprisingly easily), but it is just a terminology.
OK, the "weakness" section is irrelevant. But it is still a valid point that Turing test doesn't test for consciousness.
The problem is that consciousness is subjective "by definition" (of course we do not have a proper definition), which makes objective testing difficult at least.
The only test I can think of is this one: I an AI can independently (by introspection) come to a notion equivalent to "consciousness" (or better yet "qualia") it probably has these (subjective) traits.
"Red" is what your parents told you it is. A name arbitrarily assigned to a specific visual sensation, which is defined by the physical makeup of your eye.
Yes, but the fundemantal qeustion is: What is this "visual sensation"? In other words: What is qualia?
Otherwise, I do agree with you, you parent post is mostly gibberish.
No, Turing test should decide whether a machine is intelligent (you should read the links you provide). The test also has very severe weaknesses, see Weaknesses of the test
This might be actually much faster for the following reasons:
HW acceleration
Neural networks are probabilistic and self-organizing, thus errors in the underlying HW are acceptable (much to the contrary to classical computing). It is much easier to build chips if they need not be 100% error-free.
Once we understand the brain we might be able to wire the logic much more efficiently then it is done in real brains.
Pandora is certainly not a scam, they already have our money but they are still working. It might be a vaporware but I don't think it will be since it is a Linux device fairly compatible with Beagleboard and I am sure there will be enough enthusiast who will port new software to this device.
I am really tired of this. Some blogger/journalist shares with us his ingenious thoughts what is Linux doing wrong and how it can get better. The crowd disagrees, discussion under the blog/article turns to flameware and nothing is accomplished.
The blogger/journalist is angry that the crowd didn't agreed and developers didn't "fixed" the "obvious" failures he has pointed out. So he writes another blog/article how "these Linux guys" do not like critics.
Dear blogger/journalist, everyone "has great ideas" and everyone "knows how to fix the world". But at the end of the day it is the doers who change the world while nobody cares about blogs.
So next time please, either spend money for some commercial distro and write your suggestions/criticism to them or keep using your free of charge Ubuntu (at least it seems according to TFA that this is what you were using) and help the community to improve the product, there are plenty of tasks even for non-programmers. But do not keep saying "they" should improve that, "they" should listen to my criticism...
Sorry, we can't. We just have an chip that has the same number number of neurons. But the thing is that we suspect that the real neurons are much more complex than the classical Hebbian model. We also have no clue how to organize the neurons to do anything non-trivial and make use such a hign number of neurons.
Nevertheless, this is a great achievement. And it is good to know that once the "software" problems are solved we will have a good hardware too.
This scheme seems to me very similar to audio/video watermarking, combined with on-line check how many copies with the same watermark are played at one time.
The on-line check part seems to me very DRM-ish, but the watermarking part seems to be quite reasonable.
Have you clicked the
full report link?
I think, a 52 site document
(PDF version) is not something you dash off in a half hour.
They had
12 different testers (all Windows experienced). It is realy more than a casual "grandma" test. But you are free to send them your own proposals and observations. Yes there are usability issues. To describe them is the first step to solve them.
I like Ximian but it is only GNOME Desktop distribution. It "sits on" some Linux distribution. Unfortunately the integration with the leading distros is poor (I explain it later).
So the qestion is: Are you going to cooperate with some Linux distro more?
Explanation what concerns me (I currently use Debian, RedHat, Mandrake on different comps for different purposes -- all with Ximian desktop):
With Ximian I have basicaly two sets of config tool -- one from distro (in distro menus) the second one from GNOME/Ximian (in Ximian menus) -- neither of these sets is complete. This is the main Ximian stopper for me.
Two different menu systems. Some application are accesed from distro menus another from Ximian menus.
It seems to me it would be logical if RedHat and Ximian cooperate. (but I'm gonna to change distro if Ximan chooses somebody else:)
Look at
GNOME usability project. Very extensive tests were sponsored by SUN (click "User testing") -- unfortunately is it already one year old stuff.
I think GNOME guys realy take care about non-geek (l)users. Nearly every problem from the SUN usability study were fixed. And much more is comming at GNOME2.
Yes Mozilla is superb project! But what is even better is the Gecko engine. Check the
galeon
browser you simply must fall in love, even if you do not prefer Gnome.
Slashdot Mirror
My girlfriend's laptop was not booting. In fact, I could not get into BIOS setup so booting from an alternative medium was not an option. The simple things I tried (remove DIMM, remove HDD, reset CMOS, ...) didn't worked. I am a software guy so I figured out that my time was too expensive to continue the investigation and that we'll pay some "professional". Geek Squad was conveniently located so I brought it there. I was really stupid that I have not read their reviews before that.
They asked nearly $100 for a "diagnostic" that looked something like this:
"No signal from keyboard" - read: F1 won't enter BIOS setup (that was why we brought the laptop to them in the first place)
"No signal from CD ROM" - read: our diagnostic CD doesn't boot (again, that was why we brought the laptop to them)
"Hard Drive OK" - strange, we removed HDD before giving the laptop to them
"RAM OK" - the only thing they have done with the laptop was trying another DIMM (if they were not lying on that one too)
"Motherboard error" - they implied that exchanging it would be too expensive and the laptop is not worth repairing.
(BTW I was able to fix the laptop with some help of Google afterward. The problem was short-circuited wires in a broken USB slot. The laptop still works well 1 yr after the "incident".)
I was furious so I spent really long time arguing with them. They repeated several times that they ran "series of diagnostic test" but when I pressed the manager he had to admit that they couldn't run the tests because they couldn't boot their diagnostic CD. At that point, the manager denied they lied to me about the "series of diagnostics" and started calling his technician (who was not there at that point) "a mysterious man who told you something".
My girlfriend never seen her money again. I filled a complaint at their corporate support line. They told me they will handle it but they will not tell me about the outcome (WTF?). All I could do was to call again the next day to check that the complain was in their system and it had assigned a tracking id.
I was seriously considering taking some further steps because I consider this preying on a layman public bordering with a fraud. But at the end I just gave up.
Given the previous claims by Zuckerberg [citation needed] he is not willing to give out the control over Facebook. I bet that if they are discussing anything than it is a sell of only a minor share.
I watch the personalities and, sad to say, make the weakest one my bitch. Once I do that then I'm on my way to acceptance. It's how they play, it's how I have to play.
No, this is not how "they" play, this is how you play and I find that highly disgusting.
As for respect, please. management doesn't give a shit about anybody, what makes you so special?
Good IT workers can leave and find other place with better management that actually cares about people. Even at these times, Competent IT workers are very hard to find...
From what I have heard and seen, auditors do a very lousy job. I very much hate the fact that they get a lot money while they are generally not responsible for the quality of their work.
On the other hand, it is clear that auditors can not find all possible problems, therefore it doesn't make sense to make them responsible for all incidents. This just would not work.
If you're serious about this, then release it under a Free software license.
I do not necessarily need the source code, but a technical description of the algorithms would be nice. I read most of TFA and it is quite shallow.
Visual sensation is what's going on in the brain. We don't know enough to speculate about it reasonably. End of story.
The information that it happens in the brain is not that much useful to understand it. It is a very interesting (and very old) problem we should try to solve. If we do not know enough we should try to learn more.
And if you want to make unreasonable speculations go ahead but leave me alone - I prefer science.
First, we should try to define the problem. I believe that qualia (although somebody would call this phenomenon differently) is key to defining consciousness. Once we have a correct definition we can start what you call "science". For me trying to define a problem is part of science. Don't get too distracted by the fact that many philosophers speak crap.
This is not end of story. We are at the very beginning.
The difference is that he is studying a special case of a neural network. namely the best model of mammalian brain (more specificaly cortex and thalamus) we can put together with the current knowledge.
If your brain were somehow rewired so that you see red as blue, then your brain would adapt to the change over time and you would start identifying red colors correctly again
You brain would adapt in the sense that you would start to associate (your subjective) blue with things like fruits, warmth, aggression (and other things not-rewired people do associate red color). Yes, you would adapt and start responding to colors correctly.
But would you see the red as red or blue? And what does it mean to "see red as red" anyway? It is not that easy as you might think, see qualia. These are "feelings" in their "raw form". Where do they arise from? People like D. Dennet argue they are just "illusions". But what does "illusion" means then (renaming the problem doesn't solve it). I can feel them [qualias], therefore I want to know what they are, be they called feelings, qualia or illusions.
Wow, long post. But you have not got the parent post right. Of course, brain is a quantum system. The same way as you car travels according to Einsteins special relativity. But I assume that your car moves at speeds where using Newtonian mechanics makes more sense.
The same holds for your brain, there is no evidence so far that its function can not be accurately described solely in the terms of electric potentials (no quantum mechanics involved).
In fact TFA is about modeling the brain as a relatively simple (although very large) electric circuit. Of course consciousness is still a mystery, but this doesn't prove that brain is a quantum system, there is probably something much deeper (information?) in play.
All right, we probably basically agree with each other ;-) Just let me elaborate a bit about what I mean.
I found only two reasons to believe that other people are conscious (by which I mean they are not philosophical zombies or equivalently that they have qualias ["feelings"]):
The first argument would not convince me for machines (although it convinces me that at least mammals are conscious).
The second argument is quite problematic because of this damn "independently". Of course philosophers have coined the term independently of me, but I do not use it independently of them. Still, I believe I would have these feelings even if I didn't learned this concept.
So yes, I totally agree that a best way to assess whether someone or something is conscious is simply to ask the "right questions" (preferably the test subject was never exposed to notions like feelings, qualia and consciousness before). I just didn't called this "Turing test" (which is on one side too strict and on the other side can be cheated surprisingly easily), but it is just a terminology.
OK, the "weakness" section is irrelevant. But it is still a valid point that Turing test doesn't test for consciousness.
The problem is that consciousness is subjective "by definition" (of course we do not have a proper definition), which makes objective testing difficult at least.
The only test I can think of is this one: I an AI can independently (by introspection) come to a notion equivalent to "consciousness" (or better yet "qualia") it probably has these (subjective) traits.
"Red" is what your parents told you it is. A name arbitrarily assigned to a specific visual sensation, which is defined by the physical makeup of your eye.
Yes, but the fundemantal qeustion is: What is this "visual sensation"? In other words: What is qualia?
Otherwise, I do agree with you, you parent post is mostly gibberish.
No, Turing test should decide whether a machine is intelligent (you should read the links you provide). The test also has very severe weaknesses, see Weaknesses of the test
Pandora is certainly not a scam, they already have our money but they are still working. It might be a vaporware but I don't think it will be since it is a Linux device fairly compatible with Beagleboard and I am sure there will be enough enthusiast who will port new software to this device.
I am really tired of this. Some blogger/journalist shares with us his ingenious thoughts what is Linux doing wrong and how it can get better. The crowd disagrees, discussion under the blog/article turns to flameware and nothing is accomplished.
The blogger/journalist is angry that the crowd didn't agreed and developers didn't "fixed" the "obvious" failures he has pointed out. So he writes another blog/article how "these Linux guys" do not like critics.
Dear blogger/journalist, everyone "has great ideas" and everyone "knows how to fix the world". But at the end of the day it is the doers who change the world while nobody cares about blogs.
So next time please, either spend money for some commercial distro and write your suggestions/criticism to them or keep using your free of charge Ubuntu (at least it seems according to TFA that this is what you were using) and help the community to improve the product, there are plenty of tasks even for non-programmers. But do not keep saying "they" should improve that, "they" should listen to my criticism...
We can do insect brains now.
Sorry, we can't. We just have an chip that has the same number number of neurons. But the thing is that we suspect that the real neurons are much more complex than the classical Hebbian model. We also have no clue how to organize the neurons to do anything non-trivial and make use such a hign number of neurons.
Nevertheless, this is a great achievement. And it is good to know that once the "software" problems are solved we will have a good hardware too.
This scheme seems to me very similar to audio/video watermarking, combined with on-line check how many copies with the same watermark are played at one time. The on-line check part seems to me very DRM-ish, but the watermarking part seems to be quite reasonable.
Maybe you need less stupid computer users?
But, aren't these Windows designed for completly non-techie users?
Do not this user-friendly interface ecourage you to click everithing you see without thinking?
Have you clicked the full report link? I think, a 52 site document (PDF version) is not something you dash off in a half hour.
They had 12 different testers (all Windows experienced). It is realy more than a casual "grandma" test. But you are free to send them your own proposals and observations. Yes there are usability issues. To describe them is the first step to solve them.
I like Ximian but it is only GNOME Desktop distribution. It "sits on" some Linux distribution. Unfortunately the integration with the leading distros is poor (I explain it later).
So the qestion is: Are you going to cooperate with some Linux distro more?
Explanation what concerns me (I currently use Debian, RedHat, Mandrake on different comps for different purposes -- all with Ximian desktop):
With Ximian I have basicaly two sets of config tool -- one from distro (in distro menus) the second one from GNOME/Ximian (in Ximian menus) -- neither of these sets is complete. This is the main Ximian stopper for me.
Two different menu systems. Some application are accesed from distro menus another from Ximian menus.
It seems to me it would be logical if RedHat and Ximian cooperate. (but I'm gonna to change distro if Ximan chooses somebody else :)
Look at GNOME usability project. Very extensive tests were sponsored by SUN (click "User testing") -- unfortunately is it already one year old stuff. I think GNOME guys realy take care about non-geek (l)users. Nearly every problem from the SUN usability study were fixed. And much more is comming at GNOME2.
Yes Mozilla is superb project! But what is even better is the Gecko engine. Check the galeon browser you simply must fall in love, even if you do not prefer Gnome.