No offence, but it is you who is "all confused". As I say, I am more familiar with the UK/Australian common law position, but I imagine that the law in most US states would be similar.
You could, and would, succeed in all but the most ridiculously minor trespass actions, irrespective of whether the intention of the trespasser was good, bad, or merely ignorant. The whole point is that it is actionable without proof of damage ("per se"). That is to say, the bare fact that someone encroaches onto privately held land is the essence of the cause of action. Whether they do any damage (in the ordinary sense of the word) is not the point, and is not relevant to the question of whether a trespass is made out.
Indeed, there are cases where the mere fact of an object - not even a person - touching another's property amounted to a trespass.
The two main exceptions to the foregoing are, firstly, where there is a statutory entitlement to enter onto land (e.g. the police would have this in some circumstances, limited to a valid purpose), and secondly, where you enter onto the land for the purpose of seeking permission to remain on the land.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that trespass is a purely criminal concept, which is incorrect. It is also a civil tort, and therefore actionable by a private party against another. You would not have to call the police to take legal action.
And, as stated, the purpose of damages for trespass is not so much to directly compensate the party whose land has been interfered with for a specific loss so much as to enforce the concept that they are entitled to enjoy their land exclusively. You are still looking for what has been "lost" in a tangible way, but the answer will usually be "nothing" - this has no bearing on whether a trespass has been committed. The tort responds to the simple fact of unauthorised entry onto land, not to some specific damage occasioned to a person or to the property.
An analagous criminal offence would be battery, which can lead to sanctions notwithstanding that a victim suffers no actual harm. Merely placing a hand on someone can amount to battery, yet there is no actual harm suffered.
I don't know about the US, but in the UK and Australia trespass is actionable per se, that is, without proof of damage. That is because it protects your exclusive right to enjoy your property. As such, damages are essentially intangible and punitive, rather than reflecting the quantum of a proved, tangible loss.
Sorry, IAAL. But you don't always have to "lose" $X to be entitled to recover $X.
The way you write, it would seem to be the case that you have a problem with 'wasting' 50% of your unused ram. Unless you're in a special situation and trying to use absolutely minimal power or whatnot, RAM is a 'free' resource unless it's being claimed by an active program. I paid for all of my RAM and my processor already; if it makes my computer perform faster (subjectively, after the smoke and mirrors) then I absolutely want 100% of my RAM storing relevant information and 100% of my processor cycles calculating things that may prove useful...
Not at all. I am a programmer and fully understand that I am not "wasting" RAM by having it sit there full of junk. But at the same time, I also understand that it is pretty well impossible to predict what I will want to do when I boot my computer up, and I don't need Windows to expend any resources (particularly reading from disk) to try to "figure out" what I am going to do next. And I DEFINITELY don't need it to expend resources monitoring what I am running as I run it. Programs load plenty quick enough on a dual core machine without needing to worry about pre-caching random bits and pieces in an attempt to make them load slightly quicker.
Perhaps I just have less faith in Windows' ability to re-allocate RAM to programs that actually need it. Somehow when I load Crysis and the system only has 500-1000 megs free I suspect that it will not run as well as it would if the system had 2000-2500 megs free... unless it happens to be the day of the week when Vista has prognosticated that I will be playing that particular game, of course. And this is borne out by my experience of Vista - it loaded serious games and other heavyweight programs slowly and ran them poorly compared to XP.
Finally, the power issue is more significant that you are suggesting. A laptop which sits there loading a random crapload of stuff into RAM and then gradually loading new stuff over the top of it as time passes is clearly going to chew through quite a bit more power than one which sits there quietly waiting for instructions.
Maybe it's a personal preference, in the end. I don't want my OS to be "helpful". I want it to do exactly what I say, when I say.
Probably, but I don't know that speed is everything to the average user. They'll put up with a bit of slowdown for an OS that feels powerful, looks pretty and has lots of neat little toys. And Linux has certainly had issues with looking pretty, which is understandable as talented designers aren't as generous as programmers,
Agreed, but as someone who has just painstakingly managed to install Windows XP on a Dell XPS 1530 (which is officially Vista-only) I can attest to the fact that it's not "a bit of slowdown" - it's an imprecise measure but I'd say my laptop now "feels" at least two times faster/more responsive. We are talking about a pretty zippy dual core machine with 3 gigs of RAM and a powerful video card, too (256MB DDR3 nvidia 8600gt), which ran like treacle with Vista on it.
I have since played with another, similar Vista laptop trying to figure out what is doing all the damage. The worst individual offenders seem to be the (well documented) user account control bullshit which interferes with every aspect of the operation of the computer, and "supercache", which would have to be in the top 5 worst Microsoft innovations of all time.
For the uninitiated, supercache watches everything you do and records a log of what you cause to be loaded into memory and at what time/date it happens (this automatically introduces an overhead into every single memory related operation because Vista has to spend some resources on surveilling you). It then attempts to predict what you are going to use at a given point in time, and pre-caches as much of it as it considers to be reasonable. So for example, if I played Quake III every Wednesday night between 7-8pm, Vista would start grinding away at about 7pm on Wednesdays loading the texture files into RAM. Supercache apparently considers about 1.5 gigabytes on a system with 3 gigabytes of RAM to be a reasonable amount of physical memory to use for this process.
The net effect of all of the above is that Vista spends a hell of a lot of time sitting there churning away using your disks and RAM to load "stuff" into memory that you "might" need. All of this for the 1-2 seconds you are likely saving by not having to load Word or Quake III or whatever from disk should you happen to want to use it.
Turning UAC and Supercache off (both pretty straightforward once you know where to look) improves performance a lot - but not enough. Vista still has an offensively huge footprint and runs like a dog compared to XP.
Which returns me to the original point - XP is already a challenge to get running with some newer hardware. But if hardware manufacturers have the guts to stand up to Microsoft and keep producing XP versions of their hardware drivers (which should be trivial if they are doing 32 bit Vista drivers) then there's really very little we need from Microsoft.* XP is a stable, solid, mature OS which does what it does pretty well. I for one intend to keep using it into the foreseeable future.
* This is the main issue at the moment - most laptop manufacturers in particular have abandoned XP support on newer machines.
They were supposed to fly into Japanese cities and sleep in the eaves of houses before exploding and burning the place down. It worked quite well - to the extent that the bats managed to destroy most of the R&D facility. The success of the Manhattan Project ultimately ended the experiment... or did it?
it's not a leap of logic, it's a sufficient (and necessary?) condition for a proposed equivalence between humans and machines that Alan Turing used. Either you agree with Turing or you don't, but it's not a fallacy unless someone tries to sneak it in as a premise.
Well, the highlighted word is critical I suppose. It may be one condition, but (depending on your criteria, etc etc) it is not what I would consider the defining aspect of intelligence. So in this regard I agree that:
that obviously depends on your personal beliefs regarding intelligence.
However, I prefer not to consider the issue in the context of personal beliefs - there is plenty of empirical evidence from which we can attempt to deduce at least some of the key elements of intelligence. Perhaps where you and I diverge is that to me, non-deterministic behaviour is an essential part of what distinguishes "intelligence" of the kind exhibited by humans from the already established ability of machines to respond "logically" to particular input. In other words: free will. Do you believe in it? This will naturally affect your view of the relevance of the Turing test.
So I suppose my original suggestion could be put as follows: the Turing test cannot reliably distinguish between a highly complex but ultimately deterministic AI and a genuinely non-deterministic AI. That is what I am driving at by saying that to simulate something, even to a very, very high degree of accuracy, will not necessarily result in equivalence.
so if we can show equivalence between a machine and a human, that's sufficient to show the machine to be intelligent.
Agreed, but the point remains that the Turing test only demonstrates one kind of equivalence, and in my view not the critical one.
I am too lazy now to properly express them properly, but there are other key aspects of human intelligence which I believe cannot be properly tested by the Turing test. For example, human intelligence involves taking pleasure and feeling pain in an entirely subjective way which need never be communicated, expressed, or used to govern behaviour. When I listen to a particularly moving piece of music there is far more than an appreciation of skill or an analysis of content taking place: there is an extremely hard to define process in which the self is expressed and examined through a reaction to an entirely objective piece of information.
Similarly, humans have the capacity to choose between multiple, equally (logically) valid or invalid sets of beliefs based on entirely non-practical values and other factors. A machine could pass the Turing test but be unable to (genuinely) decide for itself whether Catholocism or Anglicanism was 'better'. And on and on - innumerable examples of behaviour, decision making and experience which are not able to be expressed in a purely deterministic way.
And don't even get me started about the human capacity to accept and operate within a context known to be provably irrational...
All of this comes back to your point, which I agree with, that Turing is *a* condition precedent for human intelligence, but it is not "the test" of human intelligence as it is often described.
But it will demonstrate that past a certain point we won't know the difference between real intelligence and something attempting to appear intelligent. And this demonstrates what, exactly?
I have always regarded this leap of logic as the biggest problem with the Turing test. Just because you can't tell the difference between two things in particular circumstances doesn't mean they are the same, or functionally the same in all circumstances. An AI could simulate a human perfectly, down to the smallest detail, and still have no actual intelligence whatsoever.
For example, the use of 3D animation to simulate (say) an image of an aeroplane in a film doesn't mean that a 3D animated plane is the same as a real plane. But to an audience in a cinema there is no difference. To me, this is how the Turing test appears to work (or should I say, not work) (footage of real plane = test human; footage of CGI plane = test AI; method of projecting film = Turing's text conversation restriction; audience = tester).
If we can't tell the difference maybe there isn't one. Are you intelligent? Or are you just sufficiently complex enough that you simulate it well? Again, where is the actual reasoning behind this? The above criticism still applies.
Another fundamental problem with Turing is this: why does a computer have to display human intelligence? An intelligent alien lifeform would fail the Turing test too. Expecting a deliberately designed bundle of wires and microchips to exhibit the same variety of intelligence as a highly evolved monkey which is adapted to hunting mammoth, reproducing to make more monkeys and killing other highly evolved monkeys is totally unrealistic.
As others have pointed out, we need a better definition of intelligence. "Able to mimic a human" just doesn't cut it.
The story here is that the defendant tried to pull some hard-core legalistic intimidation bullshit in response to the original lawsuit, and the plaintiff still stood his ground and pushed forward.
Nevertheless, if the story were in essence reversed and it was about a faceless company suing an unrepresented guy and getting a hefty award of damages for some relatively minor IP infringement, we'd get a bunch of bearded geek hippies rambling on about how "information wants to be free" and "I don't believe in imaginary property" and so on.
Not disagreeing that this is a good outcome, or with the bearded geek hippies per se. Just sayin'.
...courtesy certainly is a novel invention in the US of A.*
Now if IBM could just patent a method for pumping it into the tubes of the intarweb, we'd really be getting somewhere.
* I'm kidding - I've met plenty of polite Americans, like the nice policeman who asked me to "please step out of the car" and the nice TSA lady who told me that without even asking I'd been placed on some kind of list that got me extra special treatment at the airport.
You know precisely squat about the American legal system, don't you?
And neither do you, despite (or perhaps because of) your pompous and arrogant tone.
It is NOT acceptable to make unjustified threats of legal proceedings. In fact, it may amount to an abuse of process in some circumstances. In addition, in an IP context there are typically provisions which deal with precisely that scenario - a person making unjustified threats based on alleged infringement - which can lead to serious consequences for the jackass making the unjustified threats.
If you actually knew what the fuck you were talking about, you'd know that the way to start a legal 'conversation' would not be to send an aggressive cease and desist letter and thereby immediately limit the possibility of a reasonable compromise. But then, clearly, you don't.
I imagine a strong basis for correlation would be "target is a member of armed forces engaged in hostile occupation of foreign country invaded on false pretences for strategic reasons." E.g. America in Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Russia in Afghanistan, Germany in France.
In other words, the best way to reduce these types of attacks is to avoid invading other countries without (at least) the invitation of the citizens. Compare, for example, UN peacekeeping forces in Kosovo who are not subject to constant random attacks precisely because the general populace wanted them there.
America needs to learn to address the underlying disease, not the symptoms. Likewise terrorism: remove the underlying motivation (hint: it's not "terrorists hate freedom") and resolve the problem.
What does a machine have to do with whether you use single or double quotes? It's also convention to switch from one to the other when nesting quotes.
"According to one reader, there has 'never, ever, ever been' correct grammar or punctuation on Slashdot."
Thank you for your sane answer to the original question, nevertheless, if I ever, ever got mod points I'd mod you up. Although you appear to be conflating "journalism" and "stuff posted on Slashdot", which might be the source of the initial confusion...
...that the expression is "changing tack" not "changing tact". But I thought I'd mention it anyway, as it seems to be yet another error which is in danger of becoming 'correct' by virtue of common usage.
I don't care if you take an english class, just don't force me to take one and tell me it's for my own good.
What about if it's for everyone else's good?
Because frankly, I find it somewhat frightening to see the number of people who think that art/literature is "empty" and a waste of their perfectly rational time. It's not about 'writing skills', it's about an ability to experience emotions and deal with ideas which go beyond your everyday experience.
Most art and literature is ultimately an attempt to express something about the subjective experience of living. When someone outright rejects (or refuses to try to understand) that expression, it raises some serious questions in my mind about their ability to empathise with other humans and their own lack of experience and expressiveness.
He doesn't say that the people in your network are more attractive but meeting them is more attractive which can mean because you most likely have people in your cell phone, address book, or IM lists that share similar interests as you then you want to meet them in person because it is usually more fun to share similar interests in person than not.
...they justify it and gain popular support/acquiescence using supposedly rational arguments, so it is a worthwhile expenditure of effort to criticise and dismantle those arguments.
So if some security expert idiot is wandering around convincing people that security "versus" privacy is a "zero sum game", then one effective counter-tactic is to explain how that is incorrect.
You are not reasoning with "them" as in, "the Federal Government". You are reasoning with "them" as in, "your fellow citizens, whose approval or at least inaction is needed to allow these things to happen."
Paradoxically, your cell phone, email, and Facebook networks are making it more attractive to meet people in the flesh.
Only because when people choose a picture for Facebook or Myspace, they always pick one which drastically misrepresents how attractive they are...
Personally, I'm not sure I accept/understand the underlying premise - why would we want to 'sprawl' and have less interaction anyway? Living in a city for me and many people I know has nothing to do with compulsion, it's because it's fun, interesting, and a centre for culture, entertainment, and humans generally. Most people actually WANT more human interaction, not the Unabomber life. As such, I'm not sure how this (supposed) effect is "paradoxical".
The only thing Ford is in the right about here is that they are perfectly allowed to send cease and desist letters to anybody they'd like, and they can even file suit. They would almost certainly lose, though.
Actually, in many jurisdictions it is an abuse of the court's processes to threaten legal proceedings when you know you have no basis to do so and with a collateral purpose (that is, not to assert genuine legal rights but to obtain some commercial or other advantage). I'd say this satisfies both of those criteria.
I must say I think that it is your position of speaking from (apparent) authority regarding 'manners' which is getting you modded up, rather than the correctness of your arguments.
You are being somewhat trite in your analysis of the situation in a restaurant or other 'public' private spaces. Yes, you are there at the invitation of the proprietor(s). No, you don't own the TV, the chair, whatever. However, there is clearly an implied social agreement that you are there to enjoy the space (enjoy in the more legal sense, rather than necessarily giving it a wholly positive connotation). You are there to use the facility, including its furnishings, toilets, decor - all of it. You are paying for this use.
Does this mean you can start renovating it as if you own it? No. You can't pull out a paintbrush and a can of paint and go crazy because you think it would look better in pastel pink. But it does imply a certain degree of latitude to do some things that you wouldn't do in a friend's house to adjust the environment to your liking.
For example, I can't believe that you honestly think it is "very rude" in a restaurant or cafe to take a chair from another unused table and add it to your own table. It's a RESTAURANT. They HAVE spare chairs. If they don't, and they really, really need that chair, they will tell you and you will have to give it back. But this is not "rude" under any variation of manners that I am familiar with - it is "practical" and "proactive". It does not "invalidate" anybody if the restaurant is already in the process of getting you a chair. They can put THAT chair in the space where you just removed the OTHER chair, restoring balance to the force. I also like the implication that you would rather be "very rude" to your companion, who is voluntarily accompanying you on a social basis, than to be "very rude" (as you see it) to a goddam commercial establishment which you are paying money to.
Similarly, it is not bad manners to take a glass, a piece of cutlery, the salt and pepper or anything else from an unused table, particularly if you advise your waiter after the fact. What do you think is worse for them, the minor inconvenience of having to get another fork for an empty table, or the major inconvenience of you being unable to eat the food they have carefully prepared for you because your fork is missing/dirty? And once again, which is worse, inconveniencing the restaurant, or inconveniencing a companion?
Another example - it is not rude to slightly adjust a curtain or blind in a cafe or restaurant if the sun in shining directly into your face, or alternatively if you would like to see the view. It is only rude if it directly affects someone else.
So, to the TV thing. Well, I have worked in a cafe where the proprietor insisted on having a TV or radio blaring at all times. Most of the patrons hated it, but none of them ever spoke up or turned it off out of "politeness". Instead, it just drove business away. I used to surreptitiously turn it down, much to everyone's relief. But he was convinced that he was providing a service to his customers.
All of what you have said really smacks of the silliest type of "free market" philosophy, i.e., "if you don't like it go somewhere else". To me, that is a silly, dehumanising way to treat your relationship with the particular place you are unhappy with. Surely there is more give and take than that? Surely your choices are not "eat on our terms exactly or get out"? Very few (sane) proprietors would wish to give that impression to their customers. Yes, ideally you should talk to your waiter or the proprietor - but I am willing to bet that most proprietors who really care about their business would rather their customers took minor, non-permanent steps to improve their own experience than simply left and didn't come back.
Now if someone is watching the TV in question, of course it is rude to turn it off. If no-one is paying any attention to it, then there is definitely scope for the discrimina
Corrupting a Windows install does NOT BRICK A GOD DAMNED LAPTOP. You can reinstall Windows and it will work. Therefore it is not a brick, it is not bricked, it has no aspect of brickishness, not even a hint of brickening.
What the HELL is wrong with you morons??? Do you even read Slashdot discussions? This has been pointed out over and over and over again.
Bricking involves killing something dead in such a way that it becomes, in effect, an expensive paperweight or 'brick' if you will. As you are clearly retarded, let me explain that a 'brick' is typically a rectangular piece of clay or similar material hardened in a furnace and used to construct buildings and other structures, and usually has no functionality beyond this. Unlike the device in this story, reinstalling Windows on an actual brick will not lead to increased capabilities.
The Protocol bans weapons which are designed, as their sole or one of their primary functions, to blind people with unenhanced vision (i.e. the naked eye):
Article 1
It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices. The High Contracting Parties shall not transfer such weapons to any State or non-State entity.
Article 2
In the employment of laser systems, the High Contracting Parties shall take all feasible precautions to avoid the incidence of permanent blindness to unenhanced vision. Such precautions shall include training of their armed forces and other practical measures.
Article 3
Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol.
Article 4
For the purpose of this protocol "permanent blindness" means irreversible and uncorrectable loss of vision which is seriously disabling with no prospect of recovery. Serious disability is equivalent to visual acuity of less than 20/200 Snellen measured using both eyes.
Not that the Geneva Conventions seem to have much relevance these days... sigh.
That quote, of course, has nothing to do with the question of whether it is morally justified to kill civilians being used as human shields. But thanks for commenting!
Slashdot Mirror
No offence, but it is you who is "all confused". As I say, I am more familiar with the UK/Australian common law position, but I imagine that the law in most US states would be similar.
You could, and would, succeed in all but the most ridiculously minor trespass actions, irrespective of whether the intention of the trespasser was good, bad, or merely ignorant. The whole point is that it is actionable without proof of damage ("per se"). That is to say, the bare fact that someone encroaches onto privately held land is the essence of the cause of action. Whether they do any damage (in the ordinary sense of the word) is not the point, and is not relevant to the question of whether a trespass is made out.
Indeed, there are cases where the mere fact of an object - not even a person - touching another's property amounted to a trespass.
The two main exceptions to the foregoing are, firstly, where there is a statutory entitlement to enter onto land (e.g. the police would have this in some circumstances, limited to a valid purpose), and secondly, where you enter onto the land for the purpose of seeking permission to remain on the land.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that trespass is a purely criminal concept, which is incorrect. It is also a civil tort, and therefore actionable by a private party against another. You would not have to call the police to take legal action.
And, as stated, the purpose of damages for trespass is not so much to directly compensate the party whose land has been interfered with for a specific loss so much as to enforce the concept that they are entitled to enjoy their land exclusively. You are still looking for what has been "lost" in a tangible way, but the answer will usually be "nothing" - this has no bearing on whether a trespass has been committed. The tort responds to the simple fact of unauthorised entry onto land, not to some specific damage occasioned to a person or to the property.
An analagous criminal offence would be battery, which can lead to sanctions notwithstanding that a victim suffers no actual harm. Merely placing a hand on someone can amount to battery, yet there is no actual harm suffered.
I don't know about the US, but in the UK and Australia trespass is actionable per se, that is, without proof of damage. That is because it protects your exclusive right to enjoy your property. As such, damages are essentially intangible and punitive, rather than reflecting the quantum of a proved, tangible loss.
Sorry, IAAL. But you don't always have to "lose" $X to be entitled to recover $X.
Not at all. I am a programmer and fully understand that I am not "wasting" RAM by having it sit there full of junk. But at the same time, I also understand that it is pretty well impossible to predict what I will want to do when I boot my computer up, and I don't need Windows to expend any resources (particularly reading from disk) to try to "figure out" what I am going to do next. And I DEFINITELY don't need it to expend resources monitoring what I am running as I run it. Programs load plenty quick enough on a dual core machine without needing to worry about pre-caching random bits and pieces in an attempt to make them load slightly quicker.
Perhaps I just have less faith in Windows' ability to re-allocate RAM to programs that actually need it. Somehow when I load Crysis and the system only has 500-1000 megs free I suspect that it will not run as well as it would if the system had 2000-2500 megs free... unless it happens to be the day of the week when Vista has prognosticated that I will be playing that particular game, of course. And this is borne out by my experience of Vista - it loaded serious games and other heavyweight programs slowly and ran them poorly compared to XP.
Finally, the power issue is more significant that you are suggesting. A laptop which sits there loading a random crapload of stuff into RAM and then gradually loading new stuff over the top of it as time passes is clearly going to chew through quite a bit more power than one which sits there quietly waiting for instructions.
Maybe it's a personal preference, in the end. I don't want my OS to be "helpful". I want it to do exactly what I say, when I say.
Agreed, but as someone who has just painstakingly managed to install Windows XP on a Dell XPS 1530 (which is officially Vista-only) I can attest to the fact that it's not "a bit of slowdown" - it's an imprecise measure but I'd say my laptop now "feels" at least two times faster/more responsive. We are talking about a pretty zippy dual core machine with 3 gigs of RAM and a powerful video card, too (256MB DDR3 nvidia 8600gt), which ran like treacle with Vista on it.
I have since played with another, similar Vista laptop trying to figure out what is doing all the damage. The worst individual offenders seem to be the (well documented) user account control bullshit which interferes with every aspect of the operation of the computer, and "supercache", which would have to be in the top 5 worst Microsoft innovations of all time.
For the uninitiated, supercache watches everything you do and records a log of what you cause to be loaded into memory and at what time/date it happens (this automatically introduces an overhead into every single memory related operation because Vista has to spend some resources on surveilling you). It then attempts to predict what you are going to use at a given point in time, and pre-caches as much of it as it considers to be reasonable. So for example, if I played Quake III every Wednesday night between 7-8pm, Vista would start grinding away at about 7pm on Wednesdays loading the texture files into RAM. Supercache apparently considers about 1.5 gigabytes on a system with 3 gigabytes of RAM to be a reasonable amount of physical memory to use for this process.
The net effect of all of the above is that Vista spends a hell of a lot of time sitting there churning away using your disks and RAM to load "stuff" into memory that you "might" need. All of this for the 1-2 seconds you are likely saving by not having to load Word or Quake III or whatever from disk should you happen to want to use it.
Turning UAC and Supercache off (both pretty straightforward once you know where to look) improves performance a lot - but not enough. Vista still has an offensively huge footprint and runs like a dog compared to XP.
Which returns me to the original point - XP is already a challenge to get running with some newer hardware. But if hardware manufacturers have the guts to stand up to Microsoft and keep producing XP versions of their hardware drivers (which should be trivial if they are doing 32 bit Vista drivers) then there's really very little we need from Microsoft.* XP is a stable, solid, mature OS which does what it does pretty well. I for one intend to keep using it into the foreseeable future.
* This is the main issue at the moment - most laptop manufacturers in particular have abandoned XP support on newer machines.
Link.
They were supposed to fly into Japanese cities and sleep in the eaves of houses before exploding and burning the place down. It worked quite well - to the extent that the bats managed to destroy most of the R&D facility. The success of the Manhattan Project ultimately ended the experiment... or did it?
Well, the highlighted word is critical I suppose. It may be one condition, but (depending on your criteria, etc etc) it is not what I would consider the defining aspect of intelligence. So in this regard I agree that:
However, I prefer not to consider the issue in the context of personal beliefs - there is plenty of empirical evidence from which we can attempt to deduce at least some of the key elements of intelligence. Perhaps where you and I diverge is that to me, non-deterministic behaviour is an essential part of what distinguishes "intelligence" of the kind exhibited by humans from the already established ability of machines to respond "logically" to particular input. In other words: free will. Do you believe in it? This will naturally affect your view of the relevance of the Turing test.
So I suppose my original suggestion could be put as follows: the Turing test cannot reliably distinguish between a highly complex but ultimately deterministic AI and a genuinely non-deterministic AI. That is what I am driving at by saying that to simulate something, even to a very, very high degree of accuracy, will not necessarily result in equivalence.
Agreed, but the point remains that the Turing test only demonstrates one kind of equivalence, and in my view not the critical one.
I am too lazy now to properly express them properly, but there are other key aspects of human intelligence which I believe cannot be properly tested by the Turing test. For example, human intelligence involves taking pleasure and feeling pain in an entirely subjective way which need never be communicated, expressed, or used to govern behaviour. When I listen to a particularly moving piece of music there is far more than an appreciation of skill or an analysis of content taking place: there is an extremely hard to define process in which the self is expressed and examined through a reaction to an entirely objective piece of information.
Similarly, humans have the capacity to choose between multiple, equally (logically) valid or invalid sets of beliefs based on entirely non-practical values and other factors. A machine could pass the Turing test but be unable to (genuinely) decide for itself whether Catholocism or Anglicanism was 'better'. And on and on - innumerable examples of behaviour, decision making and experience which are not able to be expressed in a purely deterministic way.
And don't even get me started about the human capacity to accept and operate within a context known to be provably irrational...
All of this comes back to your point, which I agree with, that Turing is *a* condition precedent for human intelligence, but it is not "the test" of human intelligence as it is often described.
But it will demonstrate that past a certain point we won't know the difference between real intelligence and something attempting to appear intelligent.
And this demonstrates what, exactly?
I have always regarded this leap of logic as the biggest problem with the Turing test. Just because you can't tell the difference between two things in particular circumstances doesn't mean they are the same, or functionally the same in all circumstances. An AI could simulate a human perfectly, down to the smallest detail, and still have no actual intelligence whatsoever.
For example, the use of 3D animation to simulate (say) an image of an aeroplane in a film doesn't mean that a 3D animated plane is the same as a real plane. But to an audience in a cinema there is no difference. To me, this is how the Turing test appears to work (or should I say, not work) (footage of real plane = test human; footage of CGI plane = test AI; method of projecting film = Turing's text conversation restriction; audience = tester).
If we can't tell the difference maybe there isn't one. Are you intelligent? Or are you just sufficiently complex enough that you simulate it well?
Again, where is the actual reasoning behind this? The above criticism still applies.
Another fundamental problem with Turing is this: why does a computer have to display human intelligence? An intelligent alien lifeform would fail the Turing test too. Expecting a deliberately designed bundle of wires and microchips to exhibit the same variety of intelligence as a highly evolved monkey which is adapted to hunting mammoth, reproducing to make more monkeys and killing other highly evolved monkeys is totally unrealistic.
As others have pointed out, we need a better definition of intelligence. "Able to mimic a human" just doesn't cut it.
Nevertheless, if the story were in essence reversed and it was about a faceless company suing an unrepresented guy and getting a hefty award of damages for some relatively minor IP infringement, we'd get a bunch of bearded geek hippies rambling on about how "information wants to be free" and "I don't believe in imaginary property" and so on.
Not disagreeing that this is a good outcome, or with the bearded geek hippies per se. Just sayin'.
...courtesy certainly is a novel invention in the US of A.*
Now if IBM could just patent a method for pumping it into the tubes of the intarweb, we'd really be getting somewhere.
* I'm kidding - I've met plenty of polite Americans, like the nice policeman who asked me to "please step out of the car" and the nice TSA lady who told me that without even asking I'd been placed on some kind of list that got me extra special treatment at the airport.
And neither do you, despite (or perhaps because of) your pompous and arrogant tone.
It is NOT acceptable to make unjustified threats of legal proceedings. In fact, it may amount to an abuse of process in some circumstances. In addition, in an IP context there are typically provisions which deal with precisely that scenario - a person making unjustified threats based on alleged infringement - which can lead to serious consequences for the jackass making the unjustified threats.
If you actually knew what the fuck you were talking about, you'd know that the way to start a legal 'conversation' would not be to send an aggressive cease and desist letter and thereby immediately limit the possibility of a reasonable compromise. But then, clearly, you don't.
Er... the fact that you funded and trained Al Qaeda's founders and supported the Taliban when they were conveniently fighting the Russians?
I imagine a strong basis for correlation would be "target is a member of armed forces engaged in hostile occupation of foreign country invaded on false pretences for strategic reasons." E.g. America in Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Russia in Afghanistan, Germany in France.
In other words, the best way to reduce these types of attacks is to avoid invading other countries without (at least) the invitation of the citizens. Compare, for example, UN peacekeeping forces in Kosovo who are not subject to constant random attacks precisely because the general populace wanted them there.
America needs to learn to address the underlying disease, not the symptoms. Likewise terrorism: remove the underlying motivation (hint: it's not "terrorists hate freedom") and resolve the problem.
What does a machine have to do with whether you use single or double quotes? It's also convention to switch from one to the other when nesting quotes.
"According to one reader, there has 'never, ever, ever been' correct grammar or punctuation on Slashdot."
Thank you for your sane answer to the original question, nevertheless, if I ever, ever got mod points I'd mod you up. Although you appear to be conflating "journalism" and "stuff posted on Slashdot", which might be the source of the initial confusion...
...that the expression is "changing tack" not "changing tact". But I thought I'd mention it anyway, as it seems to be yet another error which is in danger of becoming 'correct' by virtue of common usage.
Could you explain it??
What about if it's for everyone else's good?
Because frankly, I find it somewhat frightening to see the number of people who think that art/literature is "empty" and a waste of their perfectly rational time. It's not about 'writing skills', it's about an ability to experience emotions and deal with ideas which go beyond your everyday experience.
Most art and literature is ultimately an attempt to express something about the subjective experience of living. When someone outright rejects (or refuses to try to understand) that expression, it raises some serious questions in my mind about their ability to empathise with other humans and their own lack of experience and expressiveness.
Ah... joke? Hello?
...they justify it and gain popular support/acquiescence using supposedly rational arguments, so it is a worthwhile expenditure of effort to criticise and dismantle those arguments.
So if some security expert idiot is wandering around convincing people that security "versus" privacy is a "zero sum game", then one effective counter-tactic is to explain how that is incorrect.
You are not reasoning with "them" as in, "the Federal Government". You are reasoning with "them" as in, "your fellow citizens, whose approval or at least inaction is needed to allow these things to happen."
Only because when people choose a picture for Facebook or Myspace, they always pick one which drastically misrepresents how attractive they are...
Personally, I'm not sure I accept/understand the underlying premise - why would we want to 'sprawl' and have less interaction anyway? Living in a city for me and many people I know has nothing to do with compulsion, it's because it's fun, interesting, and a centre for culture, entertainment, and humans generally. Most people actually WANT more human interaction, not the Unabomber life. As such, I'm not sure how this (supposed) effect is "paradoxical".
Actually, in many jurisdictions it is an abuse of the court's processes to threaten legal proceedings when you know you have no basis to do so and with a collateral purpose (that is, not to assert genuine legal rights but to obtain some commercial or other advantage). I'd say this satisfies both of those criteria.
I must say I think that it is your position of speaking from (apparent) authority regarding 'manners' which is getting you modded up, rather than the correctness of your arguments.
You are being somewhat trite in your analysis of the situation in a restaurant or other 'public' private spaces. Yes, you are there at the invitation of the proprietor(s). No, you don't own the TV, the chair, whatever. However, there is clearly an implied social agreement that you are there to enjoy the space (enjoy in the more legal sense, rather than necessarily giving it a wholly positive connotation). You are there to use the facility, including its furnishings, toilets, decor - all of it. You are paying for this use.
Does this mean you can start renovating it as if you own it? No. You can't pull out a paintbrush and a can of paint and go crazy because you think it would look better in pastel pink. But it does imply a certain degree of latitude to do some things that you wouldn't do in a friend's house to adjust the environment to your liking.
For example, I can't believe that you honestly think it is "very rude" in a restaurant or cafe to take a chair from another unused table and add it to your own table. It's a RESTAURANT. They HAVE spare chairs. If they don't, and they really, really need that chair, they will tell you and you will have to give it back. But this is not "rude" under any variation of manners that I am familiar with - it is "practical" and "proactive". It does not "invalidate" anybody if the restaurant is already in the process of getting you a chair. They can put THAT chair in the space where you just removed the OTHER chair, restoring balance to the force. I also like the implication that you would rather be "very rude" to your companion, who is voluntarily accompanying you on a social basis, than to be "very rude" (as you see it) to a goddam commercial establishment which you are paying money to.
Similarly, it is not bad manners to take a glass, a piece of cutlery, the salt and pepper or anything else from an unused table, particularly if you advise your waiter after the fact. What do you think is worse for them, the minor inconvenience of having to get another fork for an empty table, or the major inconvenience of you being unable to eat the food they have carefully prepared for you because your fork is missing/dirty? And once again, which is worse, inconveniencing the restaurant, or inconveniencing a companion?
Another example - it is not rude to slightly adjust a curtain or blind in a cafe or restaurant if the sun in shining directly into your face, or alternatively if you would like to see the view. It is only rude if it directly affects someone else.
So, to the TV thing. Well, I have worked in a cafe where the proprietor insisted on having a TV or radio blaring at all times. Most of the patrons hated it, but none of them ever spoke up or turned it off out of "politeness". Instead, it just drove business away. I used to surreptitiously turn it down, much to everyone's relief. But he was convinced that he was providing a service to his customers.
All of what you have said really smacks of the silliest type of "free market" philosophy, i.e., "if you don't like it go somewhere else". To me, that is a silly, dehumanising way to treat your relationship with the particular place you are unhappy with. Surely there is more give and take than that? Surely your choices are not "eat on our terms exactly or get out"? Very few (sane) proprietors would wish to give that impression to their customers. Yes, ideally you should talk to your waiter or the proprietor - but I am willing to bet that most proprietors who really care about their business would rather their customers took minor, non-permanent steps to improve their own experience than simply left and didn't come back.
Now if someone is watching the TV in question, of course it is rude to turn it off. If no-one is paying any attention to it, then there is definitely scope for the discrimina
Corrupting a Windows install does NOT BRICK A GOD DAMNED LAPTOP. You can reinstall Windows and it will work. Therefore it is not a brick, it is not bricked, it has no aspect of brickishness, not even a hint of brickening.
What the HELL is wrong with you morons??? Do you even read Slashdot discussions? This has been pointed out over and over and over again.
Bricking involves killing something dead in such a way that it becomes, in effect, an expensive paperweight or 'brick' if you will. As you are clearly retarded, let me explain that a 'brick' is typically a rectangular piece of clay or similar material hardened in a furnace and used to construct buildings and other structures, and usually has no functionality beyond this. Unlike the device in this story, reinstalling Windows on an actual brick will not lead to increased capabilities.
I love you, BILLY EVERYTEEN
The Protocol bans weapons which are designed, as their sole or one of their primary functions, to blind people with unenhanced vision (i.e. the naked eye):
Not that the Geneva Conventions seem to have much relevance these days... sigh.
That quote, of course, has nothing to do with the question of whether it is morally justified to kill civilians being used as human shields. But thanks for commenting!