The benefits of embracing this fundamental shift in how IT delivers its services will be astounding....
The security of a company's IT systems will improve tenfold by enabling software patches to be implemented in minutes around the world.
But, what happens when someone cracks the patch server? The way things are now, many systems don't always get upgraded with the latest patches, which can leave them open to attack. But with automatic patching, if someone cracked the patch server, they'd immediately compromise all systems running the software who's server they cracked. Somehow, this doesn't sound like an improvement.
Brains are computational, because they work based on the same fundamental physics, which is computational
How do you know this? Even if, as is apparently the case, you don't believe in God, and aliveness being something special and immaterial, there is still the fact that Quantum Mechanics is considered at least somewhat noncomputable, due to the Uncertainty Principle. Brains are very intricate and complex, and not well understood. How do you know that they aren't affected by this, making them impossible to digitize?
Regarding 'understanding' -- there's nothing mysterious about this term -- it is simply a certain level of familiarity with a subject, and being able to answer to some detail 'how' and 'why' questions about it;
Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, there seems to be a difficulty with teaching 'understanding' to computers, else there'd be little/no need for human tech support call-center staffing.
The Turing test is not supposed to measure consciousness, it is supposed to measure 'intelligence'. And because of the way it is designed, it really only tests for knowledge of a specific subject, with minimal conversational abilities (think, souped-up ALICE-bot).
Now, why do assume it is even possible to have an "AI life form"? One problem of many is that things that are alive (alive like animals are alive, not like plants are alive) are indeterministic (they do what they want to (free will)), and computers are deterministic. And why do you assume it would be equivalent to a person? Fleas are definitely alive, but they have exactly NO rights.
Open source ultimately is about concessions and cooperation, which may negate this type of centrist control.
No, what open source is ultimately about is, if your program is pretty good but had one really annoying (to me) feature, I can change my copy for my use, to be what I want it to be.
If I were to write a program and supply the source code on my website, it would be an open source program, even if I were to completely ignore any and all suggustions and input from other people.
Similarly, if I were to write a program, and follow every suggustion given me, but not supply the code, it would still be closed source.
The article suggests not including important parts of the source, to prevent copying, while still allowing people to inspect the quality of (most of) the code. Why, exactly, would I want to inspect the code of a program for problems, if I can't change it and recompile to fix the problems? If I can't use the source, then there is no reason for me to want to have the source.
How's this for an idea. Copyright is granted automatically for a period of 30 years. (Yeah, there's that arbitrary number I just bitched about. But in this case, I picked it because it's more-or-less one generation.) If you want to extend your copyright, you're free to do so for some sort of proportional, sliding-scale fee. The justification would be that the copyright holder is doing society a minor but nontrivial harm by holding on to his work, but that that harm could be offset by the additional revenue to the government. If Disney wants to hold on to the copyright for "Steamboat Willie" forever, they're free to do so if they can cough up the greenbacks.
It would probably take a Constitutional amendment to make an idea like that one legal, but stranger things have happened.
As long as we're discussing the highly improbable, how's this:
Have copyrights/patents last 5 years, and instead of giving exclusive rights to produce something, give the right to collect a 10% fee on profits resulting from the use whatever is copyrighted/patented, perhaps with a minimum of $1 or so. 5 years because this should be long enough for the producer/inventor to make a profit, and the right to collect a fee instead of the exclusive right to produce, to make it easier for people to build on the work of others.
Yeah, and exactly the same thing happened in California right? There was all this demand for electricity and the private companies supplied it without govt. intervention.
Exactly right. Back when CA was trying to "deregulate", the electricity retailers lobbied for -- and got -- fixed retail prices, and laws saying that wholesale electricity could only be bought short-term (spot market only, no contracts). Demand went up far faster than they predicted, and instead of making a killing from low wholesale/high retail, they got hosed from high retail/higher wholesale. Since they were losing money, they couldn't buy the electricity they needed from out-of-state producers.
The electricity shortage in california was caused by electricity distributors trying to legislate themselve a profit, without getting caught. That problem was caused by government interference; I see no reason that not having the government "encourage" telcos to provide broadband would cause a similar situation.
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Tim
Tim
Now, why do assume it is even possible to have an "AI life form"? One problem of many is that things that are alive (alive like animals are alive, not like plants are alive) are indeterministic (they do what they want to (free will)), and computers are deterministic. And why do you assume it would be equivalent to a person? Fleas are definitely alive, but they have exactly NO rights.
Tim
If I were to write a program and supply the source code on my website, it would be an open source program, even if I were to completely ignore any and all suggustions and input from other people.
Similarly, if I were to write a program, and follow every suggustion given me, but not supply the code, it would still be closed source.
Tim
Tim
Have copyrights/patents last 5 years, and instead of giving exclusive rights to produce something, give the right to collect a 10% fee on profits resulting from the use whatever is copyrighted/patented, perhaps with a minimum of $1 or so. 5 years because this should be long enough for the producer/inventor to make a profit, and the right to collect a fee instead of the exclusive right to produce, to make it easier for people to build on the work of others.
Tim
The electricity shortage in california was caused by electricity distributors trying to legislate themselve a profit, without getting caught. That problem was caused by government interference; I see no reason that not having the government "encourage" telcos to provide broadband would cause a similar situation.
Tim