Why not? You sound as if only the latest-and-greatest is any good, and yesteryear's games are by definition crap just because they're old.
Nonsense! Only a tiny fraction is added each year to the library of existing games. Most of which is crap anyway - including new releases. But (popular) titles that stood the test of time:
Have most of the bugs ironed out
Are easy to run on today's systems. Not to mention storage requirements
Can be obtained (and played) complete in one go. Not bit-by-bit, or stored remotely in some it's-yours-but-not-really fashion, only to disappear without warning
For the most part, don't come with grinding / coin farming, pay-to-win, DRM or similar bullshit
And most importantly: can be just as fun as a modern game
Depends on whether you regard a specific robot as a sentient 'being', that is capable of reasoning about itself, its environment, and consequences of its actions. Similar question to whether you could build a meaningful relationship with an (advanced) robot.
If yes, then @ some point you might as well treat such robots like humans, hold them up to similar standards, and punish in similar ways when one steps out of bounds. An army that includes such robots then becomes a regular army of soldiers, some of which human, some of which robot.
If no, then such robots are 'just' tools, of the mass destruction type. Not much different from say, an atomic bomb where commander-in-chief makes the call, and someone pushes the button.
I hope they will be better quality than most of the stuff i'm forced to order from china.
The Chinese can build quality stuff just fine, as long as they're paid properly & those footing the bill know what to look for. The cheap crap they're known for, is just that: pay shit, get junk.
And how would this work for non-users? Presumably FB is building profiles on those too, you know. Subscribe to FB just to 'get some say' in how FB processes what it has on you?
Btw - ridiculous that this is a reasonable question in the first place. Imho CEO's should be taken out into the streets and shot, for collecting data about non-subscribers the way & on the scale FB does it.
A good analysis of Moore's law and computational power (..)
Not to mention that computational power will always hit fundamental resource limits. Say one could do storage by putting individual electrons into a 'field' of locations, where the presence or absence of that single electron represents a 0 or 1. Even then, moving that electron back & forth takes energy - no matter how little. It takes time - no matter how fast. And it takes space - no matter how small.
Since resources like energy / space / raw materials (and time) have practical limits, that puts a hard limit on how much computation you can do, given a set of those resources. Like the laws of physics, technological progress may allow to approach that limit, but can not ignore it.
If they don't harm humans or the environment, is that a bad modification?
It is if that modification makes it easier to do so - as in Gravis Zero's example.
Anyway I feel like science is moving towards a situation where DNA of all species currently on this planet serves as "software distribution v1.0", and where modified species are deployed at will to do some specific job. Kind of like how a carpenter picks a chisel or a hammer from his toolbox. Politics or public opinion aside, if it's technically possible & profitable, somebody will do it.
Rates would have to be reasonable, of course. Otherwise a whole cottage industry would pop up of 'home control service assistants' (read: people) that get called to someone's house, just to flip a few buttons and move some thermostat dials. Offering "flush toilet" and "put book back on the shelf" as value-added services.
Ridiculous, right? Never mind - you heard it here first!
Big satellites aren't much of a problem, they're easy to track or calculate their orbit. Probably more so in geostationary orbit (sitting above a fixed point on the equator).
Mini-satellites launched into a low orbit aren't much of an issue either: they will de-orbit and burn up in the upper atmosphere after a relatively short amount of time.
It's the stuff in between that's the problem: a wrench or a bolt lost by an astronaut during a spacewalk, a part or module that somehow comes loose from a satellite & goes its own way, etc. Many of such items too small to detect or keep track of, but big enough to do damage when it hits something at speed.
Sure, some javascript kiddies program purely for fun and to pad their github, not really solving anything, but that is an anomalous situation in the history of computing, by far not the majority.
Are you sure about that being an anomaly? For all I know, Windows 10 or Mozilla Firefox could have been coded by 'JavaScript kiddies' and few people would even notice...
Your comment implies the cost of this Juno mission was somehow wasted money. If talking about waste, start & compare with biggest / most wasteful use of resources. How about... the US defense budget?
Lifetime cost of the Juno mission: in the order of US$ 1,100,000,000. Year 2017 US defense budget: in the order of US$ 600,000,000,000. Did I get that number of 0's right, or should I add some more?;-)
So for the cost of 1 year's US defense budget, you could launch >500 Juno sized space missions. (numbers courtesy Wikipedia)
Who profits from this?
Juno: as with all scientific space missions: ultimately, everyone on this planet to some degree. Including the part of the world population that doesn't help foot the bill.
US defense: mostly a small clique of people in the vast military-industrial complex.
Results -
Juno: a better understanding of the universe we all live in. Yes, even if you don't feel or see it, Jupiter is part of that universe. And does/did have effect on mankind (for starters: us being here at all).
US defense: some good, sure. But a lot of it just the US acting like an 800p gor^H^H^H bully that forces other (sovereign) nations into submission. Often at the cost of many human lives.
As for new discoveries: there tends to be a lot of time between science missions that target a similar set of objectives. Like, decades. That means: much better instruments, much more & more detailed data coming out. That in itself is scientific progress - no matter what you make of that data. For humanity as a whole, 'small' missions like Juno are cheap. Especially the unmanned kind.
We're talking an 8M+ people city (according to Wikipedia), one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, subway operations under one umbrella (MTA) which is under the state/city's control, and still...
The proposed cuts will still leave the MTA with massive deficits, expected to hit nearly $1 billion a year by 2022
Ridiculous! Sounds like "doesn't work" to me... Maybe politics sucked the funds out of infrastructure and/or personnel? Far enough that you simply can't run a profitable operation, or service sucks no matter how hard you try.
Perhaps the MTA should just suspend operations for a couple of days, & see if that changes politician's minds about their support for NYC public transport.
Put "steal" between quotation marks, please. IP is a legal construct that creates government-assisted artificial scarcity. A relatively recent concept, with non-existing or shaky scientific foundation. For that reason, ignoring IP is not by definition immoral. One can have different views on that:
IP supporters base their p.o.v. on some unproven theory that IP has a net benefit to society. Even though it's obvious it is not serving its original purpose, IP law is largely written by a powerful lobby from rightsholders, and forced down the throat of other nations through hidden passages in trade agreements. Not to mention excesses like perpetual copyright terms, digital rights management, right-to-repair issues, or patent trolls - just to name a few. Or that copyright laws as they are, are supported by a minority of the population at best (see: lobbying).
Whereas views in most of the world tend towards "copy at will, where it helps make a better product". In this case emphasis shifts from legalities to practicalities: win in the market by producing more efficient, innovating faster than the competition, or offer some added-value service. Personally I prefer this over the lawyers. But either way isn't by definition 'good' or 'bad', just a different philosophy.
They use state subsidies and subpar working conditions to undercut our products (..) Their, "students" are usually tools of the Government.
In other words: state power is used to put the nation's interest as a whole, above the interests of individuals. Again one may argue this is 'bad' as it involves curtailing or ignoring rights of those individuals. And sure there'll be some Communist Party members & friends that took more than their fair share. But does it benefit society as a whole? In the case of China: probably yes (or at least it has, for a number of decades).
As for government: as long as China doesn't use military force to take from other nations what shouldn't be theirs, it's up to the Chinese people to deal with their own government. Note people != government, average Chinese person may have very different views / attitude than policies as enforced by government officials.
Is there some continuing delusion that cryptocurrency serves any real purpose?
Cryptocurrency != wasting electricity. That's a problem with -some- current coins, specifically Bitcoin.
I'd be happy to switch cash payments to some electronic equivalent, provided it comes with the same attributes as cash. Afaik such an e-coin doesn't exist yet (Bitcoin in its current form isn't it, that's for sure!). But I suspect that's only a matter of time. And when such an e-coin gains traction, traditional banks (and perhaps even governments) will be in trouble for sure.
The current crypto-currency craziness is kind of a Wild West shootout, where it's being figured out what works & what doesn't. Once that's fleshed out, the railroads will come, new towns will be built & bank robbery will be a rare occurrence. Figurative speaking, of course...
Then vote politicians in office that put that last mile under state or municipal control. So that people can be wired up @ reasonable prices. Then make the commercial competition a thing of what happens on the other end, on those wires. Infrastructure under people's control, content provided over that infrastructure = competition among commercial parties.
Same thought here. Sure there will be a few gamers who have a TR based rig. But that's just for show & boasting "bigger, better, faster" over their peers.
TR are workstation parts. Think physics simulations, complex 3D modelling, pro-level video processing etc, on a big box under your desk. Where any extra CPU power helps, a regular PC won't do, and (for whatever reason) cloud-based computing isn't desired or practical.
It makes no sense to say that A.I. fails to work if it arrives at a conclusion that some humans disagree with.
Sure it does - if that conclusion makes it fail at some job. Say you present some 'simple' task, like manipulating objects into some slots they fit in, using some control buttons & a camera feed as input. Some noise in the camera feed: humans aren't bothered much, AI gets confused.
"Fails to do the job at hand" (or succeeds at that job) sounds like a useful metric to me. That's essentially how newly hired personnel is evaluated throughout industry, right? If it looks silly but it works, then who cares - it works. If it's super-advanced but doesn't, then who cares - it's useless. Depending on the job, you may invest some more time to get things to work. Or just give it a few tries & -if unsuccessful- move on to the next applicant. Anything beside that is of academic interest only.
Slashdot Mirror
Anywhere a bachelor and masters degree of any value is going to cost way over 200k.
Just because the US education system is broken (specifically the financial side of it), don't assume that's the case elsewhere in the world.
Right because you play so many old games.
Why not? You sound as if only the latest-and-greatest is any good, and yesteryear's games are by definition crap just because they're old.
Nonsense! Only a tiny fraction is added each year to the library of existing games. Most of which is crap anyway - including new releases. But (popular) titles that stood the test of time:
Or worse: what does it first?
Depends on whether you regard a specific robot as a sentient 'being', that is capable of reasoning about itself, its environment, and consequences of its actions. Similar question to whether you could build a meaningful relationship with an (advanced) robot.
If yes, then @ some point you might as well treat such robots like humans, hold them up to similar standards, and punish in similar ways when one steps out of bounds. An army that includes such robots then becomes a regular army of soldiers, some of which human, some of which robot.
If no, then such robots are 'just' tools, of the mass destruction type. Not much different from say, an atomic bomb where commander-in-chief makes the call, and someone pushes the button.
I hope they will be better quality than most of the stuff i'm forced to order from china.
The Chinese can build quality stuff just fine, as long as they're paid properly & those footing the bill know what to look for. The cheap crap they're known for, is just that: pay shit, get junk.
No, more like Cider.
And how would this work for non-users? Presumably FB is building profiles on those too, you know. Subscribe to FB just to 'get some say' in how FB processes what it has on you?
Btw - ridiculous that this is a reasonable question in the first place. Imho CEO's should be taken out into the streets and shot, for collecting data about non-subscribers the way & on the scale FB does it.
(..) from 70 to 35 in 200 meters so something really too short.
For the safety of the public, please take your car to the garage. Your brakes need fixing.
First they ignore Tesla
Then they laugh at Tesla
Then they fight Tesla <--
Then Tesla wins
A good analysis of Moore's law and computational power (..)
Not to mention that computational power will always hit fundamental resource limits. Say one could do storage by putting individual electrons into a 'field' of locations, where the presence or absence of that single electron represents a 0 or 1. Even then, moving that electron back & forth takes energy - no matter how little. It takes time - no matter how fast. And it takes space - no matter how small.
Since resources like energy / space / raw materials (and time) have practical limits, that puts a hard limit on how much computation you can do, given a set of those resources. Like the laws of physics, technological progress may allow to approach that limit, but can not ignore it.
If they don't harm humans or the environment, is that a bad modification?
It is if that modification makes it easier to do so - as in Gravis Zero's example.
Anyway I feel like science is moving towards a situation where DNA of all species currently on this planet serves as "software distribution v1.0", and where modified species are deployed at will to do some specific job. Kind of like how a carpenter picks a chisel or a hammer from his toolbox. Politics or public opinion aside, if it's technically possible & profitable, somebody will do it.
Rates would have to be reasonable, of course. Otherwise a whole cottage industry would pop up of 'home control service assistants' (read: people) that get called to someone's house, just to flip a few buttons and move some thermostat dials. Offering "flush toilet" and "put book back on the shelf" as value-added services.
Ridiculous, right? Never mind - you heard it here first!
Big satellites aren't much of a problem, they're easy to track or calculate their orbit. Probably more so in geostationary orbit (sitting above a fixed point on the equator).
Mini-satellites launched into a low orbit aren't much of an issue either: they will de-orbit and burn up in the upper atmosphere after a relatively short amount of time.
It's the stuff in between that's the problem: a wrench or a bolt lost by an astronaut during a spacewalk, a part or module that somehow comes loose from a satellite & goes its own way, etc. Many of such items too small to detect or keep track of, but big enough to do damage when it hits something at speed.
15 Comments and still no one bothered to provide the correct link... sigh. Must be this one I assume:
The Decline of American Peyote
Sure, some javascript kiddies program purely for fun and to pad their github, not really solving anything, but that is an anomalous situation in the history of computing, by far not the majority.
Are you sure about that being an anomaly? For all I know, Windows 10 or Mozilla Firefox could have been coded by 'JavaScript kiddies' and few people would even notice...
Your comment implies the cost of this Juno mission was somehow wasted money. If talking about waste, start & compare with biggest / most wasteful use of resources. How about... the US defense budget?
Lifetime cost of the Juno mission: in the order of US$ 1,100,000,000. ;-)
Year 2017 US defense budget: in the order of US$ 600,000,000,000. Did I get that number of 0's right, or should I add some more?
So for the cost of 1 year's US defense budget, you could launch >500 Juno sized space missions. (numbers courtesy Wikipedia)
Who profits from this?
Juno: as with all scientific space missions: ultimately, everyone on this planet to some degree. Including the part of the world population that doesn't help foot the bill.
US defense: mostly a small clique of people in the vast military-industrial complex.
Results -
Juno: a better understanding of the universe we all live in. Yes, even if you don't feel or see it, Jupiter is part of that universe. And does/did have effect on mankind (for starters: us being here at all).
US defense: some good, sure. But a lot of it just the US acting like an 800p gor^H^H^H bully that forces other (sovereign) nations into submission. Often at the cost of many human lives.
As for new discoveries: there tends to be a lot of time between science missions that target a similar set of objectives. Like, decades. That means: much better instruments, much more & more detailed data coming out. That in itself is scientific progress - no matter what you make of that data. For humanity as a whole, 'small' missions like Juno are cheap. Especially the unmanned kind.
Global Thermonuclear War
what side do you want?
Whatever side (human, AI or otherwise) that's smart enough to play the winning move.
We're talking an 8M+ people city (according to Wikipedia), one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, subway operations under one umbrella (MTA) which is under the state/city's control, and still...
The proposed cuts will still leave the MTA with massive deficits, expected to hit nearly $1 billion a year by 2022
Ridiculous! Sounds like "doesn't work" to me... Maybe politics sucked the funds out of infrastructure and/or personnel? Far enough that you simply can't run a profitable operation, or service sucks no matter how hard you try.
Perhaps the MTA should just suspend operations for a couple of days, & see if that changes politician's minds about their support for NYC public transport.
Which is the much more difficulter problem? Speech Recognition or Natural Language Processing?
Spelling, obviously.
They steal intellectual property
Put "steal" between quotation marks, please. IP is a legal construct that creates government-assisted artificial scarcity. A relatively recent concept, with non-existing or shaky scientific foundation. For that reason, ignoring IP is not by definition immoral. One can have different views on that:
IP supporters base their p.o.v. on some unproven theory that IP has a net benefit to society. Even though it's obvious it is not serving its original purpose, IP law is largely written by a powerful lobby from rightsholders, and forced down the throat of other nations through hidden passages in trade agreements. Not to mention excesses like perpetual copyright terms, digital rights management, right-to-repair issues, or patent trolls - just to name a few. Or that copyright laws as they are, are supported by a minority of the population at best (see: lobbying).
Whereas views in most of the world tend towards "copy at will, where it helps make a better product". In this case emphasis shifts from legalities to practicalities: win in the market by producing more efficient, innovating faster than the competition, or offer some added-value service. Personally I prefer this over the lawyers. But either way isn't by definition 'good' or 'bad', just a different philosophy.
They use state subsidies and subpar working conditions to undercut our products (..) Their, "students" are usually tools of the Government.
In other words: state power is used to put the nation's interest as a whole, above the interests of individuals. Again one may argue this is 'bad' as it involves curtailing or ignoring rights of those individuals. And sure there'll be some Communist Party members & friends that took more than their fair share. But does it benefit society as a whole? In the case of China: probably yes (or at least it has, for a number of decades).
As for government: as long as China doesn't use military force to take from other nations what shouldn't be theirs, it's up to the Chinese people to deal with their own government. Note people != government, average Chinese person may have very different views / attitude than policies as enforced by government officials.
Is there some continuing delusion that cryptocurrency serves any real purpose?
Cryptocurrency != wasting electricity. That's a problem with -some- current coins, specifically Bitcoin.
I'd be happy to switch cash payments to some electronic equivalent, provided it comes with the same attributes as cash. Afaik such an e-coin doesn't exist yet (Bitcoin in its current form isn't it, that's for sure!). But I suspect that's only a matter of time. And when such an e-coin gains traction, traditional banks (and perhaps even governments) will be in trouble for sure.
The current crypto-currency craziness is kind of a Wild West shootout, where it's being figured out what works & what doesn't. Once that's fleshed out, the railroads will come, new towns will be built & bank robbery will be a rare occurrence. Figurative speaking, of course...
Then vote politicians in office that put that last mile under state or municipal control. So that people can be wired up @ reasonable prices. Then make the commercial competition a thing of what happens on the other end, on those wires. Infrastructure under people's control, content provided over that infrastructure = competition among commercial parties.
Oh US... politics crazy, you're fucked LOL
Same thought here. Sure there will be a few gamers who have a TR based rig. But that's just for show & boasting "bigger, better, faster" over their peers.
TR are workstation parts. Think physics simulations, complex 3D modelling, pro-level video processing etc, on a big box under your desk. Where any extra CPU power helps, a regular PC won't do, and (for whatever reason) cloud-based computing isn't desired or practical.
It makes no sense to say that A.I. fails to work if it arrives at a conclusion that some humans disagree with.
Sure it does - if that conclusion makes it fail at some job. Say you present some 'simple' task, like manipulating objects into some slots they fit in, using some control buttons & a camera feed as input. Some noise in the camera feed: humans aren't bothered much, AI gets confused.
"Fails to do the job at hand" (or succeeds at that job) sounds like a useful metric to me. That's essentially how newly hired personnel is evaluated throughout industry, right? If it looks silly but it works, then who cares - it works. If it's super-advanced but doesn't, then who cares - it's useless. Depending on the job, you may invest some more time to get things to work. Or just give it a few tries & -if unsuccessful- move on to the next applicant. Anything beside that is of academic interest only.