Certainly. The ability to use free-form introspection to consider one's own evaluative processes, current thinking, memory and sensory inputs, and develop opinions and feelings about them, which can then be used to refine same -- or not -- based on the current gestalt.
Intelligence is the ability to formulate an effective initial response to a novel situation.
So your vehicle's suspension is "intelligent" when it hits a pothole of completely new topology? Your toothbrush is "intelligent" when it is used to brush the teeth of -- your cat? The "Eliza" program is "intelligent" when it provides a novel response based on novel input?
Even if you want to be very narrow about what "formulate" means (require it to be computed, for instance, instead an action recommended or performed by a pre-configured problem solving mechanism), you're still trying to argue that a any math program that can add two arbitrary numbers together is "intelligent" ("problem solving", as you said), which seems unduly generous to me, frankly.
That does not require "self-awareness" or any other ill-defined mumbo-jumbo.
Even if you are unable to define it, doesn't mean that it is ill-defined, or that others cannot do so. It just means you don't have a good handle on the issues at this time.
See that guy in the cubicle next to yours? Prove that he is "self-aware".
Easily done. I'd just ask him or her questions until I've determined if the ability for free-form introspection is present, and that such introspection is related to the individual's state of mind.
Intelligence is a behavioral characteristic
No. When intelligence is present, it drives behavior, it isn't a product of it.
If something behaves intelligently, then it is intelligent. The internal mechanism is irrelevant.
Agreed. It's just the definition of intelligence you've missed the boat on.
Well, no, they don't, but I'll agree that some do. Even so, they're in the position that television marketers are when telling consumers they can buy a "3D Television"; it's not three-D because there are only two dimensions reproduced. If it were three-D, you'd be able to change your observing position and the view would change. It's stereo vision, and nothing more. Basically a View-Master toy with the advantage of sequential frames.
If you (and/or anyone else) wants to call stereo vision "3D" and clever applications "AI", then I simply submit to you that you are going to find yourselves feeling a bit silly when actual 3D and AI arrive on the scene.
Calling what we have now "AI" is like calling the ISS an "interstellar outpost" or someone who lives to 110 an "immortal."
When I was a kid, my father advised me not to swear. He explained that if I made a habit of it, I'd have nothing of sufficient impact to say when swearing was actually called for. Always thought that was great advice. Perhaps you should consider the general implications of his point.
Just remember that with modern technology, only the first unit will likely require teaching. The second to Nth units can be straight-up copies, given only that the design allows for load, save and transfer of state. And frankly, with such a system, I can't see the design team Not providing for all three.
If it isn't self-aware, it isn't AI. It's just a useful application.
When it becomes intelligent, it will be able to reason, to use induction, deduction, intuition, speculation and inference in order to pursue an avenue of thought; it will understand and have its own take on the difference between right and wrong, correct and incorrect, be aware of the difference between downstream conclusions and axioms, and the potential volatility of the latter. It will establish goals and pursue behaviors intended to reach them. This is certainly true if we continue to aim at a more-or-less human/animal model of intelligence, but I think it likely to be true even if we manage to create an intelligence based on other principles. Once the ability to reason is present, the rest, it would appear to me, falls into a quite natural sequence of incidence as a consequence of being able to engage in philosophical speculation. In other words, if it can think generally, it will think generally.
He's right, though, about the confusion between intelligence and autonomous action. What goals are directly achievable are definitely constrainable specifically by the degree of autonomy allowed to such an entity. If you give it human-like effectors and access, then there will be no limits you couldn't say apply to any particular human in general, and likely, fewer. If you don't allow autonomy, and you control its access to all networks, say as input only with output limited to vocal output to humans in its immediate locality, and then you select those humans carefully and provide effective oversight, there's every reason to think that you could limit the ability of an entity to achieve goals, no matter how clever the entity is.
Now as to whether we are smart enough or cautious enough to so restrain a new life form of this type, that's a whole different question. Ethicists will be eagerly trying to weigh in, and I would speculate that the whole question will become quite a mess, quite rapidly. In the midst of such a process, we may find the questions have become moot. There is a potential problem of easy replicability with an AI constructed from computing systems, and just because one group has announced and is open to debate on the issue, doesn't mean there isn't another operating entirely without oversight somewhere else.
Within the bounds of the human/animal model, it'll be a few years yet before we can build to a practical neural density sufficient to support a conscious intelligence. Circuit density is trucking right along and the curve will clearly get us there, just not yet. So I don't expect this problem to arise in this context quite yet, although I do think it is inevitable within the next few decades, presuming only we continue on as a technically advancing civilization. Now, in a non-human/animal model, we really can't make any trustworthy time estimates. If such an effort succeeds, it'll surprise the heck out of everyone (except, perhaps, its developers) and we'd best be pretty quick off the starting line to decide exactly how much access we want to allow. Assuming we even get the chance.
The first issue with AI that has autonomy is the same as the issue with Ghandi, Hitler and your beer-swilling neighbors. A highly motivated and/or fortunate individual can get into the system and change it radically just using social tools. Quickly, too.
The second issue is that such an entity might very likely have computer skills that far exceed any human's; if so, this likely represents a new type of leverage, where we have only so far seen just the barest hints of just how far such leverage could exert forces of change. In such a circumstance, everyone would be wise to listen to the dystopians if for no other reason than we don't like what they're saying.
Best to see what it is we have created before we allow that creation to run free. I'm all for freedom when the entities involved have like-minded goals and concerns. But there's a non-zero and not-insignificant possibility here that what we create will not, in fact, be like-minded.
Again, no. There's nothing about non-drone operation that says you have to take prisoners. There's nothing about drone operations that says you can't. Furthermore, the CIA is not constrained to drone operations, no matter what you might want to imagine. The CIA engages in extensive operations in other countries, and that has not changed in the slightest "because drones."
Look, I am not telling you Obama is a blameless, perfect person or president. I'm just saying it was a good thing for him to issue an executive order early on to stop the torture. This is about who we are as a nation. Do you want to be considered by others as someone who supports torture, right up to and including rape, sexual assault, and murder? Do you actually want to be that kind of person, supporting torture? Is that your vision of our identity? I'm strongly convinced that the America we thought we had in the 60's, you know, the one where we decried torture as something debased, criminal countries would do, is the America we should (still / again) be striving to be.
When I was a young man, a US army general came to my high school to speak/ They allowed us to ask questions. The Viet Nam war was in full swing, and the backlash against it was strong growing. This general was asked "What makes us different from them? What gives us the right to interfere?" He looked the questioner right in the eyes and he said, "Those people torture. We don't."
I never thought that was a good answer to why we should be interfering with Viet Nam, south or north or as a whole, but I *did* accept it as one of the fundamentally important differences between our nation's approach to liberty and justice, as compared to what I thought were inherently lesser nations as they could not claim that same distinction.
Going back a little further, we hung the Japanese for war crimes when we found them guilty of water-boarding, sexual assault, rape, and murder (among other things.)
I am *appalled* that we have fallen so far, and not in the least impressed with the fear-based arguments for its supposed necessity. I am, however, very encouraged by Obama's public and official refusal to continue these practices, by the fact that there actually *was* a report issued that brought some of this to light, and I do hope for more.
Let's not get all confused and say these steps are worthless because "other bad stuff Obama." That's just buillshit. We need every positive step we can get the government to take at ANY level to be taken, and we should cheer when it happens, if for no other reason than to show we bloody mean it when we boo about the other things.
No. This is what you get when you allow a corrupt government to continue operating in a corrupt manner, despite continuous and direct evidence of its corruption.
Stop thinking the guys in the trenches bear primary responsibility for the commands of their political masters. Are the interrogators, lower courts, and lawyers guilty? You bet they are. But their crimes pale in comparison to the federal legislature, the supreme court, and the heads of the various TLA operations. That's the root of the problem -- corrupt leadership -- and as no one is in the least proposing to address it, all finger-pointing at the lower echelons is strictly in line with exactly what they want you to do: See to it that all blame falls on scapegoats, while those who bear the responsibility of authorizing these practices continue to operate as per usual. You watch. There will be exactly ZERO fallout at the level of those who made these choices. ZERO.
While we're at it here, let's give Obama an attaboy for saying "fuck no" to the whole disgusting mess. He surely isn't perfect, but he got this exactly right.
Yes, ML *is* taken: By Machine Language. Doesn't mean squat that some johnny-come-lately tried to usurp it. LIke Flex. Flex is a 6800/6809/68000 OS. Someone adopting a duplicate name later to mean something else is just muddying the water to no one's benefit. Until the namespace is full, duplication is a bad idea. And the namespace is NOT full, brothers and sisters.
Yep. c++ = larger executables; slower executables; less comprehensible code; less clear code (what is the CPU likely to be doing here? No bloody idea.)
c is the bomb. c++ is just a bomb. A crutch. Anything you want to do in c++, you could have done in c, the primary difference being that as a c programmer, you would have -- had to have, in fact -- actually understood what it was you were doing.
c++ is building kits from nasty little pre-molded pieces. c is carving your own pieces, where, if you like, every one can be a work of art and YOU control how they all fit together. You even get to make your own glue.:)
Of course, if you can't carve, have an irrational phobia re glue, and can't design the pieces you need... well, time to drag the crutches out.
Here's the thing about c. If you're good enough to use it well (rare, I admit), the results can be made to be faster, more efficient, and more *clear*, meaning, you can actually see what's happening, while still remaining reasonably portable, than any other language. Even in the largest applications. Perhaps especially in the largest applications.
Until someone comes with something faster, c is *the* goto language for high performance coding.
As soon as you start sticking generalized objects in generalized boxes, as soon as you decide you can't manage your own memory, as soon as you decide you must have generalized abstraction (as opposed to specific, high-efficiency custom abstraction, boxes and objects), you're sacrificing performance, and you're probably sacrificing size and efficiency at the same time.
If what you're writing is a word processor, well, so what. But if you're writing real time goodness, or something truly CPU bound (like almost any AI undertaking, or SDR, or speech recognition, or object recognition, etc.), not using c is a mistake. Not to mention a waste of the eventual end user's resources. Just because there are CPU cycles available doesn't mean that it's OK to chew them all up, likewise available RAM. Operating systems can do more than one thing -- if they're not choked to death by some lumbering, clumsily implemented hunk of crap.
c is awesome. c is simple. But c is difficult, because you really have to know what you are doing. All that power at your fingertips means its 1000x easier to drive straight into a tree. You have to truly understand, on an intuitive level: stacks, memory management, objects, abstraction, how c statements likely map to CPU activity and instructions, and how to write clear code and documentation and a bunch of other stuff -- because it's up to you to manage all that stuff, and a failure in any of those areas is very likely to negate all the other advantages, or worse.
The only thing better is assembler, where you can *really* be efficient and produce ultra-fast code. But assembler isn't portable, and that, sadly, is usually the end of that.
Pizza hut's crust is awful; the thin, too thin, the thick, too thick. The cheese is devoid of all pizza-y goodness by skim and evaporation, dry and not stretchy even when still hot -- nothing like the real Mozzarella you'd find in the cheese combination that tops an honest NY pizza. They use salad mushrooms -- uncooked, raw, stiff things -- that they top the pizzas with, instead of cooked mushrooms. I mean, heck, if your palate demands salad mushrooms, fine, but they don't even offer correct pizza 'shrooms. Yes, of course that would be my favorite topping. Sheesh.
I've tried them many times over the years, and I just can't accept that what pizza hut has been producing is actually what pizza is supposed to be like. Terrible stuff. I've had better all over NY, NJ, and somewhat NE of there. Once I found good pizza in Florida, too, but as it turned out, the guy had just moved down after running a pizzeria on Broadway in Manhattan, so I'm not sure it really counts.
At best, there's a forum where you can post bugs that most likely will be ignored and rarely acknowledged even if accepted and fixed..
No, at best there's a forum and direct email contact and the bugs do get fixed, and many suggestions are implemented.
I give my (very niche, very complicated, very feature-full, high performance, real-time, multi-platform) app away, with the extremely rare exception of those who donate via paypal (over thirteen thousand current users, and to date, 12 (twelve) paypal donations.)
I support it very well, in terms of fixes and updates and through extensive documentation, docs that I update more or less live as people make suggestions; but I keep the source for the app closed. I write the code because I am highly entertained the area the app addresses, and I use the app myself each and every day. Beyond that, I am delighted my users get to share my work product. I am not, however, interested in either sharing my actual coding skills or teaching anyone to code.
Open source is a choice. Closed source is choice. Neither one is good or bad intrinsically. Bad support is bad support no matter if you've got some fancy bug tracking system (I'm looking at Apple, the QT people, and the Wine people in particular) or if you do it all in your head. Likewise good support is good support no matter how it is achieved. If the product starts out as reasonably reliable and as-advertised, then you have a chance to keep up with the bugs as they come in. Not that such an attempt is commonly made, but it does happen.
I think it boils down to just a few things: Does it do what you told people it would do? If it does, good. If not, users are about to measure you by your support. Will you fix it at all? If you do, how long will it take? Did you leave a bunch of people behind because you "had" to use some new OS features? Well, for about 99.99% of "had" claims, that's utter nonsense. You're almost certainly just a lazy twerp (or a bunch of them) who wanted to play with the new toys, and you kicked over your users to get there (looking *again* at Apple*: Aperture... PPC... busted broadcast networking... busted console message handling... busted browsers... oh, but I did notice Apple keeps iTunes up to date, funny exception, that one, eh? Can't imagine why...)
But hey. What do I know? I've only been writing large, well supported applications with excellent compatibility back to the original release environment for what, I guess it's about thirty years now. I'm sure I'm missing something, and the RIGHT way to go about this is do whatever you want and never mind the end user, right? Right?
* FYI: Not picking on Apple in order to make Microsoft or anyone else look good. Back in the day, I well remember submitting obvious, horrific bugs to MS and seeing them never get fixes. It's just that Apple has been biting me personally in a continuous, really, really annoying manner with extremely poor support for years now, while MS is just a(nother) bad memory.
My grandmother was a concert pianist. My parents arranged for a few lessons -- I wanted to be outside, playing. They let me make that choice. I still can't play keyboards worth a damn, though I'm quite musically inclined. And do I ever regret it. Just immensely.
I did not go that way with my children. Specifically because of the above. They took lessons. Martial arts, music, drawing, math, science, etc. They got to play, too, don't get me wrong, but I'd say more lessons than play, in retrospect. Looking at them today, I'm going to go with for whatever good nurture does, it was a decent choice.
Nearing 60, I am pretty much exhausted, learning-wise. I wish I could deny it, I certainly regret it, but there it is.
Troll? Au contraire. There is zero contemporaneous evidence for the existence of Jesus. Everything, and I mean everything, is some kind of report from people who never met Jesus, either by timing of birth against the story (Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, etc.) or as a consequence of first being introduced within the context of a story in a cobbled-together book, no part of which can we trace back any further than about 200 years after the story it tells about him ends.
On top of that, the cult that claims he existed has destroyed any customary grant of credibility they might have gained by reporting other historical events accurately, by inserting reports of walking on water, turning water into (copious amounts of) wine, magical healing (we *still* can't heal leprosy), raising the dead, and so on.
I am definitely outside the bounds of politically correct speech. Especially in the overwhelmingly superstitious USA. But I am in no way trolling. I'm just reporting the facts. If the facts upset you, perhaps you should do some additional thinking.
I'm saying people can take shorthand faster than we can form cogent thoughts and pop them out of our vocal apparatus, yes. No crack involved. No thinking, either, in the sense of forming words and sentences the way you do when you need to speak a new thought.
Ever watch a decent lead guitarist? Think you could say the notes as fast as they can play them? No, of course not. Neither can they. Ever watch a decent martial artist? Think you could name all the techniques they use as fast as they can use them? No need to worry about it, the answer is a resounding no. And again, neither can they.
Dedicated, trained classification-to-reaction operations are faster than high level cognition. Our minds go slower when reasoning, as compared to executing previously learned tasks. Human reaction time for a trained, non-thinking but specific response to a stimulus is about 30 ms. Verbalization... slower. Verbalization plus reasoning... even slower yet.
The numbers: courtroom shorthand: About 225 wpm to qualify for the job (NJ, USA standard.) Normal speech: About 150 wpm.
Remember learning to ride a bike? It was tough, eh? That's because you were trying to think, to reason your way through it. This happens, then that reaction implemented. Which is too slow to deal with the physics that are involved and must be dealt with.
But once you'd trained a non-verbal, non-thinking part of your brain to solve the problem directly -- inner ear input, body motion output, etc. -- you became amazingly stable, and you don't need to apply reason to the task at all. Dedicated networks form in response to learning particular repeated tasks, and once they do, that's where your speed and accuracy comes from.
Speaking, by the way, as a guitarist, martial artist, and AI researcher.
I pity the US, but don't worry, there are still secular states in existence where religion has no say in science.
Well, just keep in mind that the US's military is both the best funded in the word, and also better funded than the next few most powerful nations added together. The fact that your politics seem to be somewhat more sane might be a somewhat of a lightweight data point to justify "not worrying."
Kidnappers should go to jail. For quite a long time, IMHO. However, if they've completed their sentences (presuming they are completable... actual life sentences, well, there you go) and they are walking around free, they should have the same rights you have.
This retribution-based mania to punish everyone forever does not serve us well at all. I can think of quite a few situations where it will do us real harm. Generally speaking, when you take the prospect of rehabilitation from a person, you have no reason to expect rehabilitation. Ever. Creating a disadvantaged, permanently held-to-the-bottom-rung underclass from those who have had run-ins with the legal system is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Without hope, all it takes is one spark to set that particular fire ablaze. I honestly expect to read about that spark in the news any day now.
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly. The ability to use free-form introspection to consider one's own evaluative processes, current thinking, memory and sensory inputs, and develop opinions and feelings about them, which can then be used to refine same -- or not -- based on the current gestalt.
So your vehicle's suspension is "intelligent" when it hits a pothole of completely new topology? Your toothbrush is "intelligent" when it is used to brush the teeth of -- your cat? The "Eliza" program is "intelligent" when it provides a novel response based on novel input?
Even if you want to be very narrow about what "formulate" means (require it to be computed, for instance, instead an action recommended or performed by a pre-configured problem solving mechanism), you're still trying to argue that a any math program that can add two arbitrary numbers together is "intelligent" ("problem solving", as you said), which seems unduly generous to me, frankly.
Even if you are unable to define it, doesn't mean that it is ill-defined, or that others cannot do so. It just means you don't have a good handle on the issues at this time.
Easily done. I'd just ask him or her questions until I've determined if the ability for free-form introspection is present, and that such introspection is related to the individual's state of mind.
No. When intelligence is present, it drives behavior, it isn't a product of it.
Agreed. It's just the definition of intelligence you've missed the boat on.
Well, no, they don't, but I'll agree that some do. Even so, they're in the position that television marketers are when telling consumers they can buy a "3D Television"; it's not three-D because there are only two dimensions reproduced. If it were three-D, you'd be able to change your observing position and the view would change. It's stereo vision, and nothing more. Basically a View-Master toy with the advantage of sequential frames.
If you (and/or anyone else) wants to call stereo vision "3D" and clever applications "AI", then I simply submit to you that you are going to find yourselves feeling a bit silly when actual 3D and AI arrive on the scene.
Calling what we have now "AI" is like calling the ISS an "interstellar outpost" or someone who lives to 110 an "immortal."
When I was a kid, my father advised me not to swear. He explained that if I made a habit of it, I'd have nothing of sufficient impact to say when swearing was actually called for. Always thought that was great advice. Perhaps you should consider the general implications of his point.
Just remember that with modern technology, only the first unit will likely require teaching. The second to Nth units can be straight-up copies, given only that the design allows for load, save and transfer of state. And frankly, with such a system, I can't see the design team Not providing for all three.
If it isn't self-aware, it isn't AI. It's just a useful application.
When it becomes intelligent, it will be able to reason, to use induction, deduction, intuition, speculation and inference in order to pursue an avenue of thought; it will understand and have its own take on the difference between right and wrong, correct and incorrect, be aware of the difference between downstream conclusions and axioms, and the potential volatility of the latter. It will establish goals and pursue behaviors intended to reach them. This is certainly true if we continue to aim at a more-or-less human/animal model of intelligence, but I think it likely to be true even if we manage to create an intelligence based on other principles. Once the ability to reason is present, the rest, it would appear to me, falls into a quite natural sequence of incidence as a consequence of being able to engage in philosophical speculation. In other words, if it can think generally, it will think generally.
He's right, though, about the confusion between intelligence and autonomous action. What goals are directly achievable are definitely constrainable specifically by the degree of autonomy allowed to such an entity. If you give it human-like effectors and access, then there will be no limits you couldn't say apply to any particular human in general, and likely, fewer. If you don't allow autonomy, and you control its access to all networks, say as input only with output limited to vocal output to humans in its immediate locality, and then you select those humans carefully and provide effective oversight, there's every reason to think that you could limit the ability of an entity to achieve goals, no matter how clever the entity is.
Now as to whether we are smart enough or cautious enough to so restrain a new life form of this type, that's a whole different question. Ethicists will be eagerly trying to weigh in, and I would speculate that the whole question will become quite a mess, quite rapidly. In the midst of such a process, we may find the questions have become moot. There is a potential problem of easy replicability with an AI constructed from computing systems, and just because one group has announced and is open to debate on the issue, doesn't mean there isn't another operating entirely without oversight somewhere else.
Within the bounds of the human/animal model, it'll be a few years yet before we can build to a practical neural density sufficient to support a conscious intelligence. Circuit density is trucking right along and the curve will clearly get us there, just not yet. So I don't expect this problem to arise in this context quite yet, although I do think it is inevitable within the next few decades, presuming only we continue on as a technically advancing civilization. Now, in a non-human/animal model, we really can't make any trustworthy time estimates. If such an effort succeeds, it'll surprise the heck out of everyone (except, perhaps, its developers) and we'd best be pretty quick off the starting line to decide exactly how much access we want to allow. Assuming we even get the chance.
The first issue with AI that has autonomy is the same as the issue with Ghandi, Hitler and your beer-swilling neighbors. A highly motivated and/or fortunate individual can get into the system and change it radically just using social tools. Quickly, too.
The second issue is that such an entity might very likely have computer skills that far exceed any human's; if so, this likely represents a new type of leverage, where we have only so far seen just the barest hints of just how far such leverage could exert forces of change. In such a circumstance, everyone would be wise to listen to the dystopians if for no other reason than we don't like what they're saying.
Best to see what it is we have created before we allow that creation to run free. I'm all for freedom when the entities involved have like-minded goals and concerns. But there's a non-zero and not-insignificant possibility here that what we create will not, in fact, be like-minded.
Again, no. There's nothing about non-drone operation that says you have to take prisoners. There's nothing about drone operations that says you can't. Furthermore, the CIA is not constrained to drone operations, no matter what you might want to imagine. The CIA engages in extensive operations in other countries, and that has not changed in the slightest "because drones."
Look, I am not telling you Obama is a blameless, perfect person or president. I'm just saying it was a good thing for him to issue an executive order early on to stop the torture. This is about who we are as a nation. Do you want to be considered by others as someone who supports torture, right up to and including rape, sexual assault, and murder? Do you actually want to be that kind of person, supporting torture? Is that your vision of our identity? I'm strongly convinced that the America we thought we had in the 60's, you know, the one where we decried torture as something debased, criminal countries would do, is the America we should (still / again) be striving to be.
When I was a young man, a US army general came to my high school to speak/ They allowed us to ask questions. The Viet Nam war was in full swing, and the backlash against it was strong growing. This general was asked "What makes us different from them? What gives us the right to interfere?" He looked the questioner right in the eyes and he said, "Those people torture. We don't."
I never thought that was a good answer to why we should be interfering with Viet Nam, south or north or as a whole, but I *did* accept it as one of the fundamentally important differences between our nation's approach to liberty and justice, as compared to what I thought were inherently lesser nations as they could not claim that same distinction.
Going back a little further, we hung the Japanese for war crimes when we found them guilty of water-boarding, sexual assault, rape, and murder (among other things.)
I am *appalled* that we have fallen so far, and not in the least impressed with the fear-based arguments for its supposed necessity. I am, however, very encouraged by Obama's public and official refusal to continue these practices, by the fact that there actually *was* a report issued that brought some of this to light, and I do hope for more.
Let's not get all confused and say these steps are worthless because "other bad stuff Obama." That's just buillshit. We need every positive step we can get the government to take at ANY level to be taken, and we should cheer when it happens, if for no other reason than to show we bloody mean it when we boo about the other things.
Would you have prefer that he had continued the practice?
No, the attaboy is definitely called for. Encourage right action, discourage wrong action. Don't confuse the one with the other.
It's an oligarchy. Fiat rule of the powerful. Obviously. Look it up.
No. This is what you get when you allow a corrupt government to continue operating in a corrupt manner, despite continuous and direct evidence of its corruption.
Stop thinking the guys in the trenches bear primary responsibility for the commands of their political masters. Are the interrogators, lower courts, and lawyers guilty? You bet they are. But their crimes pale in comparison to the federal legislature, the supreme court, and the heads of the various TLA operations. That's the root of the problem -- corrupt leadership -- and as no one is in the least proposing to address it, all finger-pointing at the lower echelons is strictly in line with exactly what they want you to do: See to it that all blame falls on scapegoats, while those who bear the responsibility of authorizing these practices continue to operate as per usual. You watch. There will be exactly ZERO fallout at the level of those who made these choices. ZERO.
While we're at it here, let's give Obama an attaboy for saying "fuck no" to the whole disgusting mess. He surely isn't perfect, but he got this exactly right.
Yes, ML *is* taken: By Machine Language. Doesn't mean squat that some johnny-come-lately tried to usurp it. LIke Flex. Flex is a 6800/6809/68000 OS. Someone adopting a duplicate name later to mean something else is just muddying the water to no one's benefit. Until the namespace is full, duplication is a bad idea. And the namespace is NOT full, brothers and sisters.
Yep. c++ = larger executables; slower executables; less comprehensible code; less clear code (what is the CPU likely to be doing here? No bloody idea.)
c is the bomb. c++ is just a bomb. A crutch. Anything you want to do in c++, you could have done in c, the primary difference being that as a c programmer, you would have -- had to have, in fact -- actually understood what it was you were doing.
c++ is building kits from nasty little pre-molded pieces. c is carving your own pieces, where, if you like, every one can be a work of art and YOU control how they all fit together. You even get to make your own glue. :)
Of course, if you can't carve, have an irrational phobia re glue, and can't design the pieces you need... well, time to drag the crutches out.
Here's the thing about c. If you're good enough to use it well (rare, I admit), the results can be made to be faster, more efficient, and more *clear*, meaning, you can actually see what's happening, while still remaining reasonably portable, than any other language. Even in the largest applications. Perhaps especially in the largest applications.
Until someone comes with something faster, c is *the* goto language for high performance coding.
As soon as you start sticking generalized objects in generalized boxes, as soon as you decide you can't manage your own memory, as soon as you decide you must have generalized abstraction (as opposed to specific, high-efficiency custom abstraction, boxes and objects), you're sacrificing performance, and you're probably sacrificing size and efficiency at the same time.
If what you're writing is a word processor, well, so what. But if you're writing real time goodness, or something truly CPU bound (like almost any AI undertaking, or SDR, or speech recognition, or object recognition, etc.), not using c is a mistake. Not to mention a waste of the eventual end user's resources. Just because there are CPU cycles available doesn't mean that it's OK to chew them all up, likewise available RAM. Operating systems can do more than one thing -- if they're not choked to death by some lumbering, clumsily implemented hunk of crap.
c is awesome. c is simple. But c is difficult, because you really have to know what you are doing. All that power at your fingertips means its 1000x easier to drive straight into a tree. You have to truly understand, on an intuitive level: stacks, memory management, objects, abstraction, how c statements likely map to CPU activity and instructions, and how to write clear code and documentation and a bunch of other stuff -- because it's up to you to manage all that stuff, and a failure in any of those areas is very likely to negate all the other advantages, or worse.
The only thing better is assembler, where you can *really* be efficient and produce ultra-fast code. But assembler isn't portable, and that, sadly, is usually the end of that.
Obviously, it's .50 "3-d's" per cell. Otherwise, it would be six bits. And kudos to them for going for two significant digits of accuracy.
This.
Pizza hut's crust is awful; the thin, too thin, the thick, too thick. The cheese is devoid of all pizza-y goodness by skim and evaporation, dry and not stretchy even when still hot -- nothing like the real Mozzarella you'd find in the cheese combination that tops an honest NY pizza. They use salad mushrooms -- uncooked, raw, stiff things -- that they top the pizzas with, instead of cooked mushrooms. I mean, heck, if your palate demands salad mushrooms, fine, but they don't even offer correct pizza 'shrooms. Yes, of course that would be my favorite topping. Sheesh.
I've tried them many times over the years, and I just can't accept that what pizza hut has been producing is actually what pizza is supposed to be like. Terrible stuff. I've had better all over NY, NJ, and somewhat NE of there. Once I found good pizza in Florida, too, but as it turned out, the guy had just moved down after running a pizzeria on Broadway in Manhattan, so I'm not sure it really counts.
Thank you. Appreciate you taking the time to look. :)
No, at best there's a forum and direct email contact and the bugs do get fixed, and many suggestions are implemented.
I give my (very niche, very complicated, very feature-full, high performance, real-time, multi-platform) app away, with the extremely rare exception of those who donate via paypal (over thirteen thousand current users, and to date, 12 (twelve) paypal donations.)
I support it very well, in terms of fixes and updates and through extensive documentation, docs that I update more or less live as people make suggestions; but I keep the source for the app closed. I write the code because I am highly entertained the area the app addresses, and I use the app myself each and every day. Beyond that, I am delighted my users get to share my work product. I am not, however, interested in either sharing my actual coding skills or teaching anyone to code.
Open source is a choice. Closed source is choice. Neither one is good or bad intrinsically. Bad support is bad support no matter if you've got some fancy bug tracking system (I'm looking at Apple, the QT people, and the Wine people in particular) or if you do it all in your head. Likewise good support is good support no matter how it is achieved. If the product starts out as reasonably reliable and as-advertised, then you have a chance to keep up with the bugs as they come in. Not that such an attempt is commonly made, but it does happen.
I think it boils down to just a few things: Does it do what you told people it would do? If it does, good. If not, users are about to measure you by your support. Will you fix it at all? If you do, how long will it take? Did you leave a bunch of people behind because you "had" to use some new OS features? Well, for about 99.99% of "had" claims, that's utter nonsense. You're almost certainly just a lazy twerp (or a bunch of them) who wanted to play with the new toys, and you kicked over your users to get there (looking *again* at Apple*: Aperture... PPC... busted broadcast networking... busted console message handling... busted browsers... oh, but I did notice Apple keeps iTunes up to date, funny exception, that one, eh? Can't imagine why...)
But hey. What do I know? I've only been writing large, well supported applications with excellent compatibility back to the original release environment for what, I guess it's about thirty years now. I'm sure I'm missing something, and the RIGHT way to go about this is do whatever you want and never mind the end user, right? Right?
* FYI: Not picking on Apple in order to make Microsoft or anyone else look good. Back in the day, I well remember submitting obvious, horrific bugs to MS and seeing them never get fixes. It's just that Apple has been biting me personally in a continuous, really, really annoying manner with extremely poor support for years now, while MS is just a(nother) bad memory.
My grandmother was a concert pianist. My parents arranged for a few lessons -- I wanted to be outside, playing. They let me make that choice. I still can't play keyboards worth a damn, though I'm quite musically inclined. And do I ever regret it. Just immensely.
I did not go that way with my children. Specifically because of the above. They took lessons. Martial arts, music, drawing, math, science, etc. They got to play, too, don't get me wrong, but I'd say more lessons than play, in retrospect. Looking at them today, I'm going to go with for whatever good nurture does, it was a decent choice.
Nearing 60, I am pretty much exhausted, learning-wise. I wish I could deny it, I certainly regret it, but there it is.
and thank you for your kind words. :)
Troll? Au contraire. There is zero contemporaneous evidence for the existence of Jesus. Everything, and I mean everything, is some kind of report from people who never met Jesus, either by timing of birth against the story (Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, etc.) or as a consequence of first being introduced within the context of a story in a cobbled-together book, no part of which can we trace back any further than about 200 years after the story it tells about him ends.
On top of that, the cult that claims he existed has destroyed any customary grant of credibility they might have gained by reporting other historical events accurately, by inserting reports of walking on water, turning water into (copious amounts of) wine, magical healing (we *still* can't heal leprosy), raising the dead, and so on.
I am definitely outside the bounds of politically correct speech. Especially in the overwhelmingly superstitious USA. But I am in no way trolling. I'm just reporting the facts. If the facts upset you, perhaps you should do some additional thinking.
I'm saying people can take shorthand faster than we can form cogent thoughts and pop them out of our vocal apparatus, yes. No crack involved. No thinking, either, in the sense of forming words and sentences the way you do when you need to speak a new thought.
Ever watch a decent lead guitarist? Think you could say the notes as fast as they can play them? No, of course not. Neither can they. Ever watch a decent martial artist? Think you could name all the techniques they use as fast as they can use them? No need to worry about it, the answer is a resounding no. And again, neither can they.
Dedicated, trained classification-to-reaction operations are faster than high level cognition. Our minds go slower when reasoning, as compared to executing previously learned tasks. Human reaction time for a trained, non-thinking but specific response to a stimulus is about 30 ms. Verbalization... slower. Verbalization plus reasoning... even slower yet.
The numbers: courtroom shorthand: About 225 wpm to qualify for the job (NJ, USA standard.) Normal speech: About 150 wpm.
Remember learning to ride a bike? It was tough, eh? That's because you were trying to think, to reason your way through it. This happens, then that reaction implemented. Which is too slow to deal with the physics that are involved and must be dealt with.
But once you'd trained a non-verbal, non-thinking part of your brain to solve the problem directly -- inner ear input, body motion output, etc. -- you became amazingly stable, and you don't need to apply reason to the task at all. Dedicated networks form in response to learning particular repeated tasks, and once they do, that's where your speed and accuracy comes from.
Speaking, by the way, as a guitarist, martial artist, and AI researcher.
Perhaps we need an "old dudes who frequent slashdot" club or icon or something.
My suggestion for the sigil is a field of grass, deux shotguns croisés, beneath a hoveround-rampant.
Shows what YOU know
Well, just keep in mind that the US's military is both the best funded in the word, and also better funded than the next few most powerful nations added together. The fact that your politics seem to be somewhat more sane might be a somewhat of a lightweight data point to justify "not worrying."
Well, but the Easter bunny does. Because just like Christ, there's no evidence it ever existed outside of books of fiction and nutbar cults.
Kidnappers should go to jail. For quite a long time, IMHO. However, if they've completed their sentences (presuming they are completable... actual life sentences, well, there you go) and they are walking around free, they should have the same rights you have.
This retribution-based mania to punish everyone forever does not serve us well at all. I can think of quite a few situations where it will do us real harm. Generally speaking, when you take the prospect of rehabilitation from a person, you have no reason to expect rehabilitation. Ever. Creating a disadvantaged, permanently held-to-the-bottom-rung underclass from those who have had run-ins with the legal system is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Without hope, all it takes is one spark to set that particular fire ablaze. I honestly expect to read about that spark in the news any day now.
Actually, yes, they are. LMGTFY