So everyone lied? Chirac, Clinton, Kennedy, Kerry, Edwards, Annan, Putin all lied? Why are you only blaming Bush?
Because Bush is my employee. Other countries have to look out for their leaders, or not, as they choose.
Don't you think that it would have been irresponsible NOT to go into Iraq
No. I thought it was irresponsible to have gone. Events have borne out that opinion. I still think so.
Would you have taken the chance?
Absolutely. We take that chance all the time. We have since the 1950's. We continue to. That's the smart move. There is very little threat, in the final analysis.
I suppose you advocate our invading Russia, and all of its ex-USSR satellites? After all, there are many known WMD over there from backpack and artillery shell sized to real "crowd-pleasers." And China... don't forget China. So why are we not invading them? According to your reasoning, the mere presence plus a little rumor mongering is sufficient justification.
I'm tired of the fact that intelligent people, such as yourself, continue to dream up these lame prophecies of Ai's "coming to life".
Reality doesn't care. It'll just keep on producing things that upset you. Sorry about that.
Naturally, I assume you are a big fan of Isaac Asimov or Vernor Vinge.
Neither. I had been a friend of Isaac's since the 1960's, but never a huge fan of his robotics ideas. We agreed to disagree, mostly. I'm more of a James P. Hogan fan, come to that.
Abstractions don't create you, and abstractions don't create life.
Yes, and mechanical flight is "impossible.":) Chickens, eggs, chicken farms, colonel sanders, profit, chickens, eggs... once the cycle starts, it no longer matters very much which was first, only that it remains viable. Declaiming loudly and firmly that some event is impossible or inconceivable has no effect on the event's actual viability, nor will claiming a car isn't coming when it in fact is prevent you from being run over. So you'll just have to sit on the sidelines and wonder where you went wrong, unless you can do an intellectual "turn on a dime." Can you?
Pardon my bluntness
Certainly. I assure you, your post and how you couched it left me unharmed in any manner or fashion. I understand your fear, and I find it predictable and not entirely off the mark. Ai is likely to cause you a great deal of trouble, assuming only that your life-span and its instantiation coincide to any degree.
If I asked two black boxes to reflect on modern literature and I got a response out of one of them in 10 seconds, and the other in an hour, I might conclude there is an intelligent agent in one, and a computer at the heart of the other.
Which one? The whole point of the Turing test is to try to fool you. Humans are crafty. Maybe the human waits until the computer responds, then responds later. Every time. Then where are you?
Anyway, initial speed is irrelevant. If we can craft something that answers slowly, but intelligently, then what is left is to speed it up. Hence, speed is not an issue to prove, or craft, Ai. Only in the practical implementation. And that practical implementation will be guided to the job by the emergence of the slow example, and social and practical pressures will get it sped up before we even have time to worry about it much. Probably no one will even remember there was a slow Ai except historians and pioneers. For example, I've worked extensively on software assembled and edited on a 1 MHz computer. How many people can say that? Not that many, really. When doing so, I never assumed that was the speed that computers would always run. Regardless, everyone has a desktop today that is far faster, and if they are unaware that those fast machines began with my slow machine... that doesn't make them any slower or any less likely or any less functional. They are what they are.
So when this artificial life comes into being, will it laugh at us when we tell it we're not designed?
One can hope so, since the only thing we can honestly tell it is that by the time we were smart enough to contemplate why we got here, we'd already been here for so long that all evidence of our origins had become mightily indirect, so much so that we really can't say for sure where we came from. But hey, there is this process we've characterized and confirmed — evolution — we like the odds on it.
Though I'm sure there will be many Ai's that fall victim to people who assume they know how we got here, lack of evidence not being much of an impediment to their thinking, such as it is.
don't mean to be disingenous(sic) but Artificial life as a theory of their origin will have a theory of creation based on us being the creator race.
That's not what we would call a theory. That's what we would call a "fact." Presuming we created them, of course, as the thread generally addresses.
So it goes without saying that you believe in strong AI.
Yes. Humans already show this kind of intelligence can exist; I have no trouble generalizing to other forms from there. Artificial is not a distinction that concerns me in the sense of creating a barrier to possibility.
This, to me, opens up a very large ethical can of worms.
Agreed. But like most things in the world, "stuff" often happens without any consideration for the cans that get opened. We just have to deal with the issues. Not that I think we'll do very well. There may be attempts to legislate progress out of the loop (as we see with stem cells and cloning, for instance) but I don't see that as being effective, long term. Politicians don't have the control they think they do unless the resources required are so large that they cannot be hidden. Ai is the antithesis of such a project; you can do it at home, disconnected from the net, you could succeed and no one need know until your Ai has been duplicated and distributed a million or more times. Like DVD John's code, any attempts to "control" are doomed to failure before they begin.
Do AIs now have the right to vote? Can they own property? What are the religious implications? What are the implications for free will?
In order: They should, they should be able to, religion is mythology/100% bunkum and there are no actual implications whatsoever other than perhaps we're a step closer to getting over it, and free will in the philosophical sense is not a question that has any practical application, so why bother and for that matter, how many people really care? Will Ai's care? Good question. I hope to be able to ask some day.:)
I would have a very hard time dealing with the fact that the only difference between me and a computer is complexity.
Reality doesn't care if you have a hard time. Things are what they are. No more, no less. We either intelligently play the cards reality deals us, or we buy into illusion / bad metaphor and generate canned responses via someone else's playbook. Each of us has to make that call.
My emotions, desires, and dreams are effectively meaningless in that they are manufactured by inborn programming rather than some sort of deeper force.
Well, mine aren't; they're meaningful because I deem them so. Likewise, the emotions, dreams and desires of those I care about are meaningful to me for the same reason; I elect to engage them and enjoy that process. All else, to me, is utterly meaningless navel-gazing.
I would be interested to hear what you have found in your research as well as your unconfirmed beliefs, as well as any moral, ethical, or religious dilemmas you see on the horizon.
My research is on high performance associative memory. My results have been very pragmatic; no surprises at all for me; things work as I pretty much always thought they worked, and though they may also work in other ways, the path I'm on has been quite productive.
I see no religious problems other than religion itself, which I do see as a huge problem, basically the result of fear, gullibility, and ignorance in various combinations. As far as moral and ethical issues go, we've been really poor at dealing with them among humans; there is no indication we will be any better if or when we introduce (or find, or are found by) other forms of life. Things will get more complicated, more divisive, and we'll make a further muddle of it. In my opinion. As to my "unconfirmed beliefs", that'd be 99% of what I think about in every domain. I've a confidence-based world view, not a conviction based one. So you'll have to be more specific.:)
So you believe there is some magical algorithm which, when implemented, is self-aware
Other than that loaded word, "magic", absolutely. You represent a case of at least one. I represent another. I simply extend that idea to a different architecture, because I am of the opinion that the architectures have significant equivalence, computationally speaking.
What I don't believe in is some "magic" situation that will not give up its operational methods and modalities in response to a concerted effort to understand it, when the entire problem resides right here in our "back yard", as the human brain certainly does. Postulating that the brain is a magic box with functionality that cannot be replicated is stepping out on a limb that no other comparable intellectual effort we have ever undertaken can justify. The only problems we've been consistently unable to solve are of a type where the information is unavailable to us (eg, the big bang, or whatever happened, or didn't happen.) Even then we do pretty well. But the brain isn't like that. It is right here. In literally billions of instances. We'll figure it out. I have very high confidence this will happen, and that it isn't all that far out in the future.
The "turing test" obfuscates the issue. It is not intelligent if it is not self-aware.
I have no reason to assume that an Ai would not be self-aware. More to the point, neither do you.
Iraq had no WMD.
We did not know one way or the other until we had troops on the ground.
Exactly my point. The administration assured us they did know; they lied.
Iraq regularly fired upon US aircraft.
Let me actually finish that sentence for you: "Iraq regularly fired upon US aircraft flying in their airspace." And let me also point out that if Iraqi aircraft were flying in our airspace, we'd be firing on them, as well. Not just the government, but every mother's son with a rifle, a rocket kit, or a potato gun. We'd be focusing lasers on their cockpits, running into them with our civilian aircraft, using our jumbo jets to crack them up using wake turbulence. We'd foul up the GPS data, unlink the old school LF navigation systems, and we'd shoot at them from kites, mountaintops, balloons and church steeples. And we'd be right to do it — every one of us. And why, again, is it that you are so offended that they shot at our aircraft flying in their airspace?
Iraq was involved in assassination attempts of US citizens, a former president for example.
You mean like when Bush tried to kill Saddam in the very first bombing of the war? When we sneakily dropped all manner of high powered weapons on a major city in Iraq using aircraft that were invisible to Iraqi defenses? Without having been provoked? Without truth in representing the supposed threat? Is it OK for the Iraqis to bomb us, since we do have WMDs, and have used them to far greater effect than Saddam and crew ever did? Where does our "right" to bomb the Iraqis come from here? Where does our "right" to attempt to assassinate Saddam come from? Do we assign to Iraq an equivalent right to attempt to assassinate our president, then? Where does our right to invade Iraq come from? Where does our "right" to stay, when they clearly want us to leave, come from?
If Iraq or some other actor does something terrible, does that give us the "right" to do something terrible? Or should we stand our ground on higher principles? If we don't, why do we have them at all, eh? We had the choice of many, many actions post assassination attempt and post 9/11. The fact that we chose an entirely unjustified war from all those options is nothing to be proud of. And in fact, I am not.
Iraq was routinely supporting suicide bombings in Israel.
Ah. So, Israel cannot respond to this alleged threat? We have to bomb the country back into the stone age because Israel is what, unwilling to cross borders? I don't think you can make the case. Israel has shown more than a token willingness to deal directly and militarily with any threats to them. Just ask the Lebanese, the Palestinians, or that motley group of fools who took the hostages in Entebbe. I fail to see how, despite any treaty obligations we have with Israel, this called us into action in any legitimate manner. If Israel had wanted Saddam's hindquarters, they would have had them, I believe. We never needed to act in the first place, post the first gulf war.
Being anti-war is great and all
You mistake me. I am not anti-war. War is a problem solving tool that at times, is quite appropriate. It is just that this "war" is not. This war is stupid, was based entirely on lies, has generated entirely useless and troublesome results, is extremely costly, and shows no particular benefits. We are not going to "get democracy" in Iraq, we are not going to control the oil, we are not going to save any of the various sects of Islamists, we are not going to get any of the lost lives back, we are not going to stop losing lives there — there is literally no point in being there. At all. I'm not anti-war. I'm anti-stupid, which makes me pretty much anti-Bush by definition.
Have you ever seriously considered that an IQ test would be relevant to an Ai?:)
They're going to be vastly different, and you can count on that, I think. Speed does not matter to prove the point. Results matter, and not all situations remain unsolved if the results are slow in coming. That's just not how the world works. Speed is nice to have, and as I have already said, once the point is proven, speed will come along on its own as a matter of market and social forces.
You miss the point entirely when you assume that I'm arguing for slow Ai as a viable end product. I'm not. I'm simply arguing that slow Ai and fast Ai are still precisely equivalent as Ai, and that slow is likely first, and will result in fast quite naturally, because slow Ai proves conclusively that fast Ai is possible, more than that, actually doable. And that is the only proof we need.
but this doesn't mean a blind person cannot visualize patterns.
Actually, it may. It depends on where the fault in the system lies. Much pattern recognition is done in the optic nerve. Visualization is one way of representing patterns, but it is not the only way. Computers can recognize patterns using many types of methods. There's nothing special going on here; we're just really good at it (when we're intact and functioning normally.)
Multiplying those numbers, we get that 10**16 calculations/second are needed.
Your numbers are extremely naive. You make numerous assumptions of facts not in evidence; the number of connections, the number of relevant connections, the number of relevant neurons, the assumption that one neuron compute cycle is sufficient to the needs of any problem... the observed data do not support your assumptions, so I don't buy your calculation. In fact, I don't think you're even in the ballpark.
I have clocked my CPU using assembly language for a FIR filter (which basically does the same thing a neuron simulation needs)
Um. Maybe. Maybe not. We're not really there yet, in terms of knowing how neurons operate. There are many unanswered questions remaining. It doesn't seem likely to be just a summing function with trigger levels, like a naive neural net, or like a fuzzy logic function. In my opinion. Though we'll both have to wait and see. Hindsight is the only solid provider of answers to these kinds of questions, and neither of us has any of that.:)
If a millionth of a human brain could achieve intelligence, then we could have intelligent animals with a brain weighing 1.5 milligrams, a size that's probably smaller than the brain of any mammal, bird, or reptile.
I don't see that your reasoning follows. If an animal is small, but has similar bodily systems to ours, as its brian shrinks the relative proportion that has to be dedicated to maintaining those similar systems would seem to me to have to rise. This leaves less and less for generalized use, which I think is a fair summary of what intelligence as we like to think about it, is. Intelligence involves at the very least the ability to store lots of information, and the ability to manipulate that information. Our brain manages both. Computers are extremely good at the former, and so far, quite poor at the latter, but as the latter is in fact always a generalized method of one type or another, and open to as many more as we can come up with, there is nothing to say that we can't get them to work as well, or better, than we do. In fact, the only time I assume that desktop computers today are "too slow" is when I consider intelligence implemented as a simulation, and I don't think that is the only path that is open to us — it is just the most obvious path. You and I would not solve the problem of how to move an object from point A to point B the same way a programmed solution for a computer would get the job done; we would be far less accurate and far slower than the computer if it was programmed competently. Because it doesn't use the same mechanism to solve the problem; there is a better way, within the context of the serial computer architecture. This is very likely the case with intelligence as well, it seems to me. Finding that solution is the problem, in that case.
What your are forgetting is that the computer probably needs to answer and ask a lot of questions before it can be compared to you.
No, I've not forgotten this, I've simply ignored it because it isn't an actual problem for several reasons.
First, computers have a huge advantage in that once we have one working intelligent system, we can copy its state and have two - or two hundred - or two million - with relative ease. We can't do this with people, nor is there any hint we'll be able to any time soon. This advantage makes it worth more to "educate" one system. It is as if by educating your kid to the level of a PhD, I'd educated your entire town. All of a sudden, your kid becomes very important and worthwhile to educate.
Second, any one computer can be "educated", if you will (have those questions answered) through multiple sources, multiplying the learning speed and dividing the learning time. And this only needs be done once; they're not like people, who keep showing up un-programmed and who must each be laboriously programmed by flipping low level switches, as it were. This is worth doing no matter what it costs, because of point one. Knowledge compilation is ongoing right now; there are several very large projects of this nature.
Third, if one can simply prove that some particular method gives rise to intelligence, market and social factors will converge on the problem and simply up the efficiency until the problem is solved many times over. The only thing we have to have is some kind of result we can demonstrate in a time frame that will convince those who must invest to get those needed resources on line towards solving the problem.
Fourth, parallelism can be applied at multiple levels. Look what Google has done to make search work. An intelligence that resides in 1000 machines is no less intelligent for having done so, if one were to have to apply such broad leverage - and remember, there is no evidence that this is so. We won't know how to ask the question, much less evaluate the answer, until we have a working algorithm.
Fifth, in the "educate" phase, even assuming that intelligent response is running at 360:1, that is not to say that initial education of the first unit will run at that rate. If information is simply put in place (remember, study is a human problem -- computers may not require study at all) it may be that the learning rate is many thousands of times that of a human. You just can't assume that learning equals reasoning. It isn't always the same process, and it certainly isn't the same when simply copying.
Generally, speed does not matter. Results matter. If speed is so poor that results are unobtainable, then speed matters. I don't expect that this is the case based upon the evidence at hand. We work; dogs work; mice work. All demonstrate various levels of intelligence with descending degrees of "hardware" available to them. Computers have huge amounts of capability. I conclude that computers can work too.
However, massive parallelism can be extremely powerful: for example, an exponential array of parallel processors can solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time.
In order for you to bring this to the argument, you have to assert that this is the class of problems the brain is solving in order for intelligence to arise. I don't think you can make a case for that. Even in the abstract.
For simulating the human brain at the neuron level, we certainly don't have enough power yet.
That is not at all clear. Presuming we need to simulate them at all, which isn't certain by any means, we almost certainly don't need to simulate neurons in terms of their physicality. More likely, we need to simulate them in terms of data input, storage, manipulation, and forwarding, which is a much simpler proposition. Further, the number that need be brought to bear on a problem is unclear, but it is clear that it is not "all of them" nor even as many as one might think. Various types of scans show only fractions of the brain broadly active when questions are asked. Treatment of schizophrenics has (sadly) gone so far as to cut the corpus callosum, after which reasoning is still intact, but spatial and language skills tend to resolve different (and slightly weird) results from test scenarios. Aside from the fact that one has reached into a functioning system and turned it into two functioning systems, one has also cut the number of neurons involved in half -- and it still works. Mostly, anyway. Small children argue for the case that fewer neurons are required than an adult might have, as do some animals. I just don't think the evidence supports our ability to say with any certainty at all that large numbers of neurons are involved.
Given that the brain has 100 billion neurons (according to Wikipedia), assuming only 1% are used for "intelligence", that's still 1 billion parallel units--(10 seconds) * (1 billon) = 317 years. Not what I'd call "sharp".
Your math is askew because you've made some assumptions not in evidence, and not implied by what we know, either: If the brain has 1 billion neurons that are involved in intelligence, and assuming the neuron is the operative computing unit (and not a group of them), it is not presently reasonable to assume that all one billion are involved in any one thought or computation, however you'd like to characterize this for the sake of comparison. It is also not reasonable to assume that they are uniformly in parallel. It is also important to realize that if one backs off from the generic (and almost certainly false) presumption that those one billion neurons are a uniformly connected, uniformly active system for any one "act of intelligence", the "mechanism" of intelligence becomes less and less formidable and consequently more and more reproducible given any particular level of technology.
The more powerful the brain is in terms of using less elements -- whatever they may be -- in "getting an answer", the more capable a desktop machine becomes in those very terms.
The brain's compute speed, that is, the rate at which states propagate about the brain, is quite slow. Modern desktop CPUs, on the other hand, run at literally billions of operations per second. Now, simply assuming that one doesn't try to implement an intelligence in something inherently slow (python, for instance) it is reasonable to predict that a reasonable effort at optimization would involve machine-level or assembly-level coding of the basic computing elements. Shortly followed, of course, by dedicated hardware units, similar to vector processors as we might find in the cell CPU system in that they are specialized hardware units dedicated to doing Ai-like things. With the parallelism having been overestimated (and I think I can be pretty confident that it is; your analysis is typical for these types of conversations, and it is way off) and the orders o
But where comment about the paper does seem to go off into hype, is in the apparently speculative suggestion that some actual therapeutic intervention inspired by this new finding is only a handful of years off.
Perhaps not. If this actually works, and if, as seems to be the case, this simply involves a substance that is a relatively easy extract from a vegetable resource, then if treatment is significantly difficult, delayed, or expensive via the traditional routes — you can expect black market treatment to rise up and create a vector that defeats the problem(s). We're not talking about some complex recombinant laboratory and viral carriers or some other such esoterica; we're talking about hot peppers and needles.
I smell clinics in Mexico. They smell like hot peppers...
The only way working treatments can be held away from the public is if they are technically complex enough to restrict the ability to produce the treatment to big pharma and associated services. This may not be one of those issues, and in which case, big pharma is in for a shock, and the FDA for some feelings of irrelevance, or so I speculate.
A pretentious, overheated, paranoid dupe, at that.:) But since we're here:
Life will almost certainly arise from Ai (Ai=artificial intelligence), but it won't be "nano" anything. My feeling as an Ai researcher is that we're already well past the computing threshold for Ai/AL (AL=artificial life.) Ai will always equal AL, though the reverse is not implied. A typical desktop today seems to me to have more than enough power to "come to life." What we are missing is the algorithm, no more.
My reasoning for this is as follows:
The complexity of the part of the brain that we use to think is not as high as commonly supposed. Much of what is in there handles what are really (to a computer) mundane things; pattern recognition (sound, light, touch), movement, of which none of which are components of intelligence, per se (ex, a blind, deaf immobile person is still intelligent.) A computer's sensorium can simply be a text stream; and in this realm, pattern recognition, retrieval and communications are relatively natural to it, and extremely high powered in comparison to how we do the same thing. Likewise, a computer has no autonomic system to regulate, no balance to keep, no hungers to assuage. We know very well how to do associative memory, and we know how to make those associations carry associations of their own; I'm talking of the coloration of memory with any set or range of characteristics one might imagine or preconceive into being. This stuff is all relatively easy. Processing it and making sense of it, that's really the issue. We don't have that.
But: Processing isn't likely to be a hard problem. I say this because the human mind (and all the other minds we are aware of) achieve what they do with massive parallelism of very simple structures. Parallel processing is no different than serial processing, in terms of what it can and cannot do in the end. Speed-wise, yes, parallelism is very powerful, but computationally, it is no more effective than going one step at a time and accumulating results. Further, there is no parallel structure that cannot be emulated or represented with serial processing of those structures in a manner that stages results to the appropriate level of parallelism. Processing is, instead, probably an esoteric problem, in that the way it works is not obvious to our higher-level or aggregate way of considering information, memory, and reason.
Some have argued that because of the massive parallelism in the brain, creating something comparable will require a huge amount of resources that we do not yet have. There is a basic misconception at work here, and it is a critical one: If, as they argue, your desktop is not fast enough to compute serially what the brain does in parallel in the same time frame, this in no way undermines the idea that your desktop can still do the computation. In other words, If you ask me a question, and I give you an answer you deem to be intelligent within, say, 10 seconds of reflection; and you type the same question to your presumptive Ai, and it gives you essentially the same answer in say, an hour, that answer is no less intelligent for being more slowly produced. Intelligence isn't about speed - it never has been. Intelligence is about the nature of the question, the nature of the conversation, the nature of the reflection.
The day that someone comes up with an algorithm that produces answers of a nature that we can begin to argue about how well they compare - or exceed - the human capacity, will be the same day that the hardware companies begin to examine the software and build hardware optimized to make those algorithms faster, compile better, etc. Though this will in no way make anything more intelligent, it will make the intelligence easier to converse with for us, right up until the point when the computer is faster than we are. At that point, again, it will be important for us to remember that speed isn't the issue, and never was. Otherwis
It never ceases to amaze me how people can apparently read what you posted, think they've extracted things out of it you never said or implied, then post an angry diatribe in "response."
You, sir, have managed to create three paragraphs of complete and uniform irrelevance to me or my written opinions on slashdot. In the spirit of HF, however, I will gamely reply: "So, how's the WX?"
Because they lied. How thick are you, archer? LIED!
Nope, congress past the Patriot act and Patriot act II. Also, most phone companies volunteered the data when asked. If a cop comes to your door and you let him in, a warrant is not required. Those that refused were not forced to give up anything.
No. The telecommunications laws protect the citizens using he phones. Not the phone companies. Your argument is completely false. Also, no matter what congress says, it cannot legitimately go against the constitution; it can only change the constitution and then only if it follows the requisite procedures, which it has not done.
These "tortured" prisoners you speak of were actually cared for better in prison than when they were free
Yes. That's what killed them, no doubt. All that kindness. They need adversity to survive, that's your theory, eh?
I'm not going to do your research for you; It is quite clear that your world-view is distorted - at best. If you want to learn, the answers to all those questions are one google away. If you don't, tough. You've wasted enough of my time.
You are woefully uninformed (despite your absolutely ridiculous "informative" moderation), not to mention completely wrong. I say this because:
Iraq was not attcked illegally
Bush and crew lied about the reasons for attacking Iraq. Iraq had no WMD. Iraq was not threatening us or our interests. Iraq was not threatening an ally or an ally's interests, someone with whom we had treaty obligations to defend. In fact, subsequent to the first gulf war, Iraq was not threatening anyone or their interests. Not even tiny little Kuwait. All of Iraq's pitiful military actions were confined to within its own borders. Therefore, in fact, there was no reason for the USA to attack them. But it isn't this simple, is it? No. Because in order to generate popular support for his attack on Iraq, Bush and his crew lied to the public. They claimed that aluminum tubes were being imported to centrifuge nuclear materials. Yet no such thing was occurring; the only tubes being imported were not of the type that could be used in that application, which was a known fact at the time. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld specifically claimed they knew where the WMD were. And were they there? No. The administration repeatedly and specifically claimed that Iraq's administration had direct and unequivocal ties to Al-Quida. And has that been found to be so? No.
Now, let me remind you of the federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."
This is the basis for both calling these acts a foundation for impeachment, and for calling the war itself illegal. It does not, unfortunately, address the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in pursuit of this illegitimate war; nor the loss of Iraqi lives; nor the loss of US soldier's lives, and the lives of those soldiers from other countries who ill-advisedly entered into combat with the US in this criminal action.
Telecomm law? WTF? The Dems were pissed they didn't think of it first, because no law was violated.
Yes, telecomm law. That's the specific set of laws that says that no one, including the government, may tap a US citizen's phone call, no matter who they are talking to, without a warrant. but Bush and crew did that. There is a another set of laws that sets up the FISA court, which says that taps may be made if permission is gotten from FISA within a certain number of hours after the tap; but Bush and crew did not do that. This leaves absolutely no door open to make tapping a US citizen's phone call legal. The bottom line is that yes indeed, Bush and his crew broke the law in this regard.
Gangsterism . . . Halliburton? You mean the Hurricane machine?
I mean the company that gets all the major contracts in Iraq. All of them.
Every war we have ever fought has suspended Habeas Corpus. What else is new?
In order to suspend any part of the constitution, you have to modify the constitution. Otherwise it will be (and always has been) found to be illegal. Bush has not modified the constitution; ergo, he violates it. The constitution, which you so blithely dismiss (as does Bush) is the single operating legal document that authorizes our government. It is the framework that describes not only how it functions, but what the specific limits of its operations is. If the government operates outside the constitution, it is completely illegitimate in its actions. That is why in the president's oath of office, this phrase has primacy: "I promise to preserve, defend and uphold the Constitution."
Holding the US citizen who was making plans to detonate a radioactive bomb in a major metro area? You mean t
The former isn't necessarily illegal even though it is unconstitutional.
Bush swore to uphold the constitution in his oath of office. If blatantly violating the constitution by intentionally subverting Habeas Corpus isn't a gross breach of his oath of office, I'd be mightily surprised. That alone is sufficient reason to impeach. To which you can add torture, wiretapping, imprisonment w/o trial or representation, and more. If the oath of office is meaningless, and Bush can lie to us with impunity, and laws don't apply to him, then we don't have a president. We have a dictator. I submit to you that in that case, we're in a lot deeper trouble than we think.
The US is showing you amateurs how to do censorship correctly.
First you subvert the population, then you censor. None of this "revolution by force", "censorship by edict", oh no. The correct way to do it is get the population on board with a completely bogus set of threats and rationalizations they think are their own -- "terrorism", "homeland" security, "for the children" -- then the population's own representatives willingly subvert the country's founding documents and the people like it.
How, precisely, were we "screwed" by this change? I took the 20 WPM test, I passed it, I know code and can use it both ways at about 35 WPM (I can't write any faster than that.) I don't feel screwed by having the "achievement" under my belt, as it were. The only way I feel screwed is by the relatively few people who were able to make it to extra, earning recognition for their relevant skills, you know, like knowing how a blinking radio works? I feel screwed by the number of people turned away from the hobby because they found morse too difficult, though they were technically sophisticated. I feel screwed by a government that doesn't follow international treaties any time it wants, but elected to follow this requirement long after it was obsolete, thus trimming the membership of ham radio. I feel screwed by hams who rationalize that "because I did it, YOU have to do it" is a "good" reason.
Morse code isn't easy for some people. Just because it was easy for you, doesn't mean it is easy for any other individual. I'm a musician and it came to me naturally and quickly, and I think that is why. On the other hand, I worked for months with several hams trying to get them over the 20 WPM threshold, and it never happened despite hours and hours of investment of everyone's time. It was bullshit then, and it's been bullshit for many decades.
...what what will the old-timers think of these code-less noobs invading their clique?
This extra-class "old-timer", who had to pass the 20 WPM code requirement, is all for the change. After WWII, all it ever served as was an artificial non-technical barrier to a technical achievement in a technical hobby. I don't object to anyone learning the code and/or using the code, it has some merit as a low-power communications mode with extremely low hardware requirements (like a mirror or your arms) but I don't favor it being part of the gateway to any set of band or operating privileges unless they come up with a new one like "code endorsement" that is simply a certificate.
Numerous technical advances have come from the ham radio community. It makes little or no sense to hold back a technical wizard's privileges because his ears or fist aren't good enough for morse code. But that's the FCC for you, historically speaking. Sense isn't exactly their forte'.
Actually, you missed the point about casual users. Here it is:
Being a "casual" user does not protect you from needing the window washer or the seat adjustments. No one forces you to use them; but when the need arises, "casual" is no protection, period. You need them anyway. The weather cares not for your casual status; the long trip the same. Without easily used amenities, you will suffer. If the amenities are lacking, you're certainly screwed. If the amenities are buried where you can't find them (eg, in a deep menu somewhere) you're little better off.
The whole idea of simplification to the point of "not providing" for casual users is based on a mental error; that casual means "free of need", and it doesn't mean that at all. It never did. It is a marketing simplification and insufficient self-justification for the dumbing down of physical interfaces inflicted on end users by well meaning, but confused, UI folk.
The idea of simplification to the point of making control panels blank faces with just a button or two serves an esthetic mindset at the complete and total cost of usability, and the more complex the machine is, the more this is so. My Denon is the poster child for worst UI ever. It can do anything, it seems, but only if you can sit for ten minutes with the menu system on screen, trying to intuit what the Japanese designers were thinking when they made the bass and treble inaccessible from the remote, and only via the front panel buttons, yet made the input assignment only accessible from the remote, and not the front panel, while every other feature you want is buried two or three layers deep with not even a hint as to what might be where.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Bush is my employee. Other countries have to look out for their leaders, or not, as they choose.
No. I thought it was irresponsible to have gone. Events have borne out that opinion. I still think so.
Absolutely. We take that chance all the time. We have since the 1950's. We continue to. That's the smart move. There is very little threat, in the final analysis.
I suppose you advocate our invading Russia, and all of its ex-USSR satellites? After all, there are many known WMD over there from backpack and artillery shell sized to real "crowd-pleasers." And China... don't forget China. So why are we not invading them? According to your reasoning, the mere presence plus a little rumor mongering is sufficient justification.
Reality doesn't care. It'll just keep on producing things that upset you. Sorry about that.
Neither. I had been a friend of Isaac's since the 1960's, but never a huge fan of his robotics ideas. We agreed to disagree, mostly. I'm more of a James P. Hogan fan, come to that.
Yes, and mechanical flight is "impossible." :) Chickens, eggs, chicken farms, colonel sanders, profit, chickens, eggs... once the cycle starts, it no longer matters very much which was first, only that it remains viable. Declaiming loudly and firmly that some event is impossible or inconceivable has no effect on the event's actual viability, nor will claiming a car isn't coming when it in fact is prevent you from being run over. So you'll just have to sit on the sidelines and wonder where you went wrong, unless you can do an intellectual "turn on a dime." Can you?
Certainly. I assure you, your post and how you couched it left me unharmed in any manner or fashion. I understand your fear, and I find it predictable and not entirely off the mark. Ai is likely to cause you a great deal of trouble, assuming only that your life-span and its instantiation coincide to any degree.
Well said.
Which one? The whole point of the Turing test is to try to fool you. Humans are crafty. Maybe the human waits until the computer responds, then responds later. Every time. Then where are you?
Anyway, initial speed is irrelevant. If we can craft something that answers slowly, but intelligently, then what is left is to speed it up. Hence, speed is not an issue to prove, or craft, Ai. Only in the practical implementation. And that practical implementation will be guided to the job by the emergence of the slow example, and social and practical pressures will get it sped up before we even have time to worry about it much. Probably no one will even remember there was a slow Ai except historians and pioneers. For example, I've worked extensively on software assembled and edited on a 1 MHz computer. How many people can say that? Not that many, really. When doing so, I never assumed that was the speed that computers would always run. Regardless, everyone has a desktop today that is far faster, and if they are unaware that those fast machines began with my slow machine... that doesn't make them any slower or any less likely or any less functional. They are what they are.
One can hope so, since the only thing we can honestly tell it is that by the time we were smart enough to contemplate why we got here, we'd already been here for so long that all evidence of our origins had become mightily indirect, so much so that we really can't say for sure where we came from. But hey, there is this process we've characterized and confirmed — evolution — we like the odds on it.
Though I'm sure there will be many Ai's that fall victim to people who assume they know how we got here, lack of evidence not being much of an impediment to their thinking, such as it is.
That's not what we would call a theory. That's what we would call a "fact." Presuming we created them, of course, as the thread generally addresses.
Yes. Humans already show this kind of intelligence can exist; I have no trouble generalizing to other forms from there. Artificial is not a distinction that concerns me in the sense of creating a barrier to possibility.
Agreed. But like most things in the world, "stuff" often happens without any consideration for the cans that get opened. We just have to deal with the issues. Not that I think we'll do very well. There may be attempts to legislate progress out of the loop (as we see with stem cells and cloning, for instance) but I don't see that as being effective, long term. Politicians don't have the control they think they do unless the resources required are so large that they cannot be hidden. Ai is the antithesis of such a project; you can do it at home, disconnected from the net, you could succeed and no one need know until your Ai has been duplicated and distributed a million or more times. Like DVD John's code, any attempts to "control" are doomed to failure before they begin.
In order: They should, they should be able to, religion is mythology/100% bunkum and there are no actual implications whatsoever other than perhaps we're a step closer to getting over it, and free will in the philosophical sense is not a question that has any practical application, so why bother and for that matter, how many people really care? Will Ai's care? Good question. I hope to be able to ask some day. :)
Reality doesn't care if you have a hard time. Things are what they are. No more, no less. We either intelligently play the cards reality deals us, or we buy into illusion / bad metaphor and generate canned responses via someone else's playbook. Each of us has to make that call.
Well, mine aren't; they're meaningful because I deem them so. Likewise, the emotions, dreams and desires of those I care about are meaningful to me for the same reason; I elect to engage them and enjoy that process. All else, to me, is utterly meaningless navel-gazing.
My research is on high performance associative memory. My results have been very pragmatic; no surprises at all for me; things work as I pretty much always thought they worked, and though they may also work in other ways, the path I'm on has been quite productive.
I see no religious problems other than religion itself, which I do see as a huge problem, basically the result of fear, gullibility, and ignorance in various combinations. As far as moral and ethical issues go, we've been really poor at dealing with them among humans; there is no indication we will be any better if or when we introduce (or find, or are found by) other forms of life. Things will get more complicated, more divisive, and we'll make a further muddle of it. In my opinion. As to my "unconfirmed beliefs", that'd be 99% of what I think about in every domain. I've a confidence-based world view, not a conviction based one. So you'll have to be more specific. :)
Other than that loaded word, "magic", absolutely. You represent a case of at least one. I represent another. I simply extend that idea to a different architecture, because I am of the opinion that the architectures have significant equivalence, computationally speaking.
What I don't believe in is some "magic" situation that will not give up its operational methods and modalities in response to a concerted effort to understand it, when the entire problem resides right here in our "back yard", as the human brain certainly does. Postulating that the brain is a magic box with functionality that cannot be replicated is stepping out on a limb that no other comparable intellectual effort we have ever undertaken can justify. The only problems we've been consistently unable to solve are of a type where the information is unavailable to us (eg, the big bang, or whatever happened, or didn't happen.) Even then we do pretty well. But the brain isn't like that. It is right here. In literally billions of instances. We'll figure it out. I have very high confidence this will happen, and that it isn't all that far out in the future.
I have no reason to assume that an Ai would not be self-aware. More to the point, neither do you.
Exactly my point. The administration assured us they did know; they lied.
Let me actually finish that sentence for you: "Iraq regularly fired upon US aircraft flying in their airspace." And let me also point out that if Iraqi aircraft were flying in our airspace, we'd be firing on them, as well. Not just the government, but every mother's son with a rifle, a rocket kit, or a potato gun. We'd be focusing lasers on their cockpits, running into them with our civilian aircraft, using our jumbo jets to crack them up using wake turbulence. We'd foul up the GPS data, unlink the old school LF navigation systems, and we'd shoot at them from kites, mountaintops, balloons and church steeples. And we'd be right to do it — every one of us. And why, again, is it that you are so offended that they shot at our aircraft flying in their airspace?
You mean like when Bush tried to kill Saddam in the very first bombing of the war? When we sneakily dropped all manner of high powered weapons on a major city in Iraq using aircraft that were invisible to Iraqi defenses? Without having been provoked? Without truth in representing the supposed threat? Is it OK for the Iraqis to bomb us, since we do have WMDs, and have used them to far greater effect than Saddam and crew ever did? Where does our "right" to bomb the Iraqis come from here? Where does our "right" to attempt to assassinate Saddam come from? Do we assign to Iraq an equivalent right to attempt to assassinate our president, then? Where does our right to invade Iraq come from? Where does our "right" to stay, when they clearly want us to leave, come from?
If Iraq or some other actor does something terrible, does that give us the "right" to do something terrible? Or should we stand our ground on higher principles? If we don't, why do we have them at all, eh? We had the choice of many, many actions post assassination attempt and post 9/11. The fact that we chose an entirely unjustified war from all those options is nothing to be proud of. And in fact, I am not.
Ah. So, Israel cannot respond to this alleged threat? We have to bomb the country back into the stone age because Israel is what, unwilling to cross borders? I don't think you can make the case. Israel has shown more than a token willingness to deal directly and militarily with any threats to them. Just ask the Lebanese, the Palestinians, or that motley group of fools who took the hostages in Entebbe. I fail to see how, despite any treaty obligations we have with Israel, this called us into action in any legitimate manner. If Israel had wanted Saddam's hindquarters, they would have had them, I believe. We never needed to act in the first place, post the first gulf war.
You mistake me. I am not anti-war. War is a problem solving tool that at times, is quite appropriate. It is just that this "war" is not. This war is stupid, was based entirely on lies, has generated entirely useless and troublesome results, is extremely costly, and shows no particular benefits. We are not going to "get democracy" in Iraq, we are not going to control the oil, we are not going to save any of the various sects of Islamists, we are not going to get any of the lost lives back, we are not going to stop losing lives there — there is literally no point in being there. At all. I'm not anti-war. I'm anti-stupid, which makes me pretty much anti-Bush by definition.
Have you ever seriously considered that an IQ test would be relevant to an Ai? :)
They're going to be vastly different, and you can count on that, I think. Speed does not matter to prove the point. Results matter, and not all situations remain unsolved if the results are slow in coming. That's just not how the world works. Speed is nice to have, and as I have already said, once the point is proven, speed will come along on its own as a matter of market and social forces.
You miss the point entirely when you assume that I'm arguing for slow Ai as a viable end product. I'm not. I'm simply arguing that slow Ai and fast Ai are still precisely equivalent as Ai, and that slow is likely first, and will result in fast quite naturally, because slow Ai proves conclusively that fast Ai is possible, more than that, actually doable. And that is the only proof we need.
Actually, it may. It depends on where the fault in the system lies. Much pattern recognition is done in the optic nerve. Visualization is one way of representing patterns, but it is not the only way. Computers can recognize patterns using many types of methods. There's nothing special going on here; we're just really good at it (when we're intact and functioning normally.)
Your numbers are extremely naive. You make numerous assumptions of facts not in evidence; the number of connections, the number of relevant connections, the number of relevant neurons, the assumption that one neuron compute cycle is sufficient to the needs of any problem... the observed data do not support your assumptions, so I don't buy your calculation. In fact, I don't think you're even in the ballpark.
Um. Maybe. Maybe not. We're not really there yet, in terms of knowing how neurons operate. There are many unanswered questions remaining. It doesn't seem likely to be just a summing function with trigger levels, like a naive neural net, or like a fuzzy logic function. In my opinion. Though we'll both have to wait and see. Hindsight is the only solid provider of answers to these kinds of questions, and neither of us has any of that. :)
I don't see that your reasoning follows. If an animal is small, but has similar bodily systems to ours, as its brian shrinks the relative proportion that has to be dedicated to maintaining those similar systems would seem to me to have to rise. This leaves less and less for generalized use, which I think is a fair summary of what intelligence as we like to think about it, is. Intelligence involves at the very least the ability to store lots of information, and the ability to manipulate that information. Our brain manages both. Computers are extremely good at the former, and so far, quite poor at the latter, but as the latter is in fact always a generalized method of one type or another, and open to as many more as we can come up with, there is nothing to say that we can't get them to work as well, or better, than we do. In fact, the only time I assume that desktop computers today are "too slow" is when I consider intelligence implemented as a simulation, and I don't think that is the only path that is open to us — it is just the most obvious path. You and I would not solve the problem of how to move an object from point A to point B the same way a programmed solution for a computer would get the job done; we would be far less accurate and far slower than the computer if it was programmed competently. Because it doesn't use the same mechanism to solve the problem; there is a better way, within the context of the serial computer architecture. This is very likely the case with intelligence as well, it seems to me. Finding that solution is the problem, in that case.
No, I've not forgotten this, I've simply ignored it because it isn't an actual problem for several reasons.
First, computers have a huge advantage in that once we have one working intelligent system, we can copy its state and have two - or two hundred - or two million - with relative ease. We can't do this with people, nor is there any hint we'll be able to any time soon. This advantage makes it worth more to "educate" one system. It is as if by educating your kid to the level of a PhD, I'd educated your entire town. All of a sudden, your kid becomes very important and worthwhile to educate.
Second, any one computer can be "educated", if you will (have those questions answered) through multiple sources, multiplying the learning speed and dividing the learning time. And this only needs be done once; they're not like people, who keep showing up un-programmed and who must each be laboriously programmed by flipping low level switches, as it were. This is worth doing no matter what it costs, because of point one. Knowledge compilation is ongoing right now; there are several very large projects of this nature.
Third, if one can simply prove that some particular method gives rise to intelligence, market and social factors will converge on the problem and simply up the efficiency until the problem is solved many times over. The only thing we have to have is some kind of result we can demonstrate in a time frame that will convince those who must invest to get those needed resources on line towards solving the problem.
Fourth, parallelism can be applied at multiple levels. Look what Google has done to make search work. An intelligence that resides in 1000 machines is no less intelligent for having done so, if one were to have to apply such broad leverage - and remember, there is no evidence that this is so. We won't know how to ask the question, much less evaluate the answer, until we have a working algorithm.
Fifth, in the "educate" phase, even assuming that intelligent response is running at 360:1, that is not to say that initial education of the first unit will run at that rate. If information is simply put in place (remember, study is a human problem -- computers may not require study at all) it may be that the learning rate is many thousands of times that of a human. You just can't assume that learning equals reasoning. It isn't always the same process, and it certainly isn't the same when simply copying.
Generally, speed does not matter. Results matter. If speed is so poor that results are unobtainable, then speed matters. I don't expect that this is the case based upon the evidence at hand. We work; dogs work; mice work. All demonstrate various levels of intelligence with descending degrees of "hardware" available to them. Computers have huge amounts of capability. I conclude that computers can work too.
In order for you to bring this to the argument, you have to assert that this is the class of problems the brain is solving in order for intelligence to arise. I don't think you can make a case for that. Even in the abstract.
That is not at all clear. Presuming we need to simulate them at all, which isn't certain by any means, we almost certainly don't need to simulate neurons in terms of their physicality. More likely, we need to simulate them in terms of data input, storage, manipulation, and forwarding, which is a much simpler proposition. Further, the number that need be brought to bear on a problem is unclear, but it is clear that it is not "all of them" nor even as many as one might think. Various types of scans show only fractions of the brain broadly active when questions are asked. Treatment of schizophrenics has (sadly) gone so far as to cut the corpus callosum, after which reasoning is still intact, but spatial and language skills tend to resolve different (and slightly weird) results from test scenarios. Aside from the fact that one has reached into a functioning system and turned it into two functioning systems, one has also cut the number of neurons involved in half -- and it still works. Mostly, anyway. Small children argue for the case that fewer neurons are required than an adult might have, as do some animals. I just don't think the evidence supports our ability to say with any certainty at all that large numbers of neurons are involved.
Your math is askew because you've made some assumptions not in evidence, and not implied by what we know, either: If the brain has 1 billion neurons that are involved in intelligence, and assuming the neuron is the operative computing unit (and not a group of them), it is not presently reasonable to assume that all one billion are involved in any one thought or computation, however you'd like to characterize this for the sake of comparison. It is also not reasonable to assume that they are uniformly in parallel. It is also important to realize that if one backs off from the generic (and almost certainly false) presumption that those one billion neurons are a uniformly connected, uniformly active system for any one "act of intelligence", the "mechanism" of intelligence becomes less and less formidable and consequently more and more reproducible given any particular level of technology.
The more powerful the brain is in terms of using less elements -- whatever they may be -- in "getting an answer", the more capable a desktop machine becomes in those very terms.
The brain's compute speed, that is, the rate at which states propagate about the brain, is quite slow. Modern desktop CPUs, on the other hand, run at literally billions of operations per second. Now, simply assuming that one doesn't try to implement an intelligence in something inherently slow (python, for instance) it is reasonable to predict that a reasonable effort at optimization would involve machine-level or assembly-level coding of the basic computing elements. Shortly followed, of course, by dedicated hardware units, similar to vector processors as we might find in the cell CPU system in that they are specialized hardware units dedicated to doing Ai-like things. With the parallelism having been overestimated (and I think I can be pretty confident that it is; your analysis is typical for these types of conversations, and it is way off) and the orders o
Perhaps not. If this actually works, and if, as seems to be the case, this simply involves a substance that is a relatively easy extract from a vegetable resource, then if treatment is significantly difficult, delayed, or expensive via the traditional routes — you can expect black market treatment to rise up and create a vector that defeats the problem(s). We're not talking about some complex recombinant laboratory and viral carriers or some other such esoterica; we're talking about hot peppers and needles.
I smell clinics in Mexico. They smell like hot peppers...
The only way working treatments can be held away from the public is if they are technically complex enough to restrict the ability to produce the treatment to big pharma and associated services. This may not be one of those issues, and in which case, big pharma is in for a shock, and the FDA for some feelings of irrelevance, or so I speculate.
A pretentious, overheated, paranoid dupe, at that. :) But since we're here:
Life will almost certainly arise from Ai (Ai=artificial intelligence), but it won't be "nano" anything. My feeling as an Ai researcher is that we're already well past the computing threshold for Ai/AL (AL=artificial life.) Ai will always equal AL, though the reverse is not implied. A typical desktop today seems to me to have more than enough power to "come to life." What we are missing is the algorithm, no more.
My reasoning for this is as follows:
The complexity of the part of the brain that we use to think is not as high as commonly supposed. Much of what is in there handles what are really (to a computer) mundane things; pattern recognition (sound, light, touch), movement, of which none of which are components of intelligence, per se (ex, a blind, deaf immobile person is still intelligent.) A computer's sensorium can simply be a text stream; and in this realm, pattern recognition, retrieval and communications are relatively natural to it, and extremely high powered in comparison to how we do the same thing. Likewise, a computer has no autonomic system to regulate, no balance to keep, no hungers to assuage. We know very well how to do associative memory, and we know how to make those associations carry associations of their own; I'm talking of the coloration of memory with any set or range of characteristics one might imagine or preconceive into being. This stuff is all relatively easy. Processing it and making sense of it, that's really the issue. We don't have that.
But: Processing isn't likely to be a hard problem. I say this because the human mind (and all the other minds we are aware of) achieve what they do with massive parallelism of very simple structures. Parallel processing is no different than serial processing, in terms of what it can and cannot do in the end. Speed-wise, yes, parallelism is very powerful, but computationally, it is no more effective than going one step at a time and accumulating results. Further, there is no parallel structure that cannot be emulated or represented with serial processing of those structures in a manner that stages results to the appropriate level of parallelism. Processing is, instead, probably an esoteric problem, in that the way it works is not obvious to our higher-level or aggregate way of considering information, memory, and reason.
Some have argued that because of the massive parallelism in the brain, creating something comparable will require a huge amount of resources that we do not yet have. There is a basic misconception at work here, and it is a critical one: If, as they argue, your desktop is not fast enough to compute serially what the brain does in parallel in the same time frame, this in no way undermines the idea that your desktop can still do the computation. In other words, If you ask me a question, and I give you an answer you deem to be intelligent within, say, 10 seconds of reflection; and you type the same question to your presumptive Ai, and it gives you essentially the same answer in say, an hour, that answer is no less intelligent for being more slowly produced. Intelligence isn't about speed - it never has been. Intelligence is about the nature of the question, the nature of the conversation, the nature of the reflection.
The day that someone comes up with an algorithm that produces answers of a nature that we can begin to argue about how well they compare - or exceed - the human capacity, will be the same day that the hardware companies begin to examine the software and build hardware optimized to make those algorithms faster, compile better, etc. Though this will in no way make anything more intelligent, it will make the intelligence easier to converse with for us, right up until the point when the computer is faster than we are. At that point, again, it will be important for us to remember that speed isn't the issue, and never was. Otherwis
It never ceases to amaze me how people can apparently read what you posted, think they've extracted things out of it you never said or implied, then post an angry diatribe in "response."
You, sir, have managed to create three paragraphs of complete and uniform irrelevance to me or my written opinions on slashdot. In the spirit of HF, however, I will gamely reply: "So, how's the WX?"
Because they lied. How thick are you, archer? LIED!
No. The telecommunications laws protect the citizens using he phones. Not the phone companies. Your argument is completely false. Also, no matter what congress says, it cannot legitimately go against the constitution; it can only change the constitution and then only if it follows the requisite procedures, which it has not done.
Yes. That's what killed them, no doubt. All that kindness. They need adversity to survive, that's your theory, eh?
I'm not going to do your research for you; It is quite clear that your world-view is distorted - at best. If you want to learn, the answers to all those questions are one google away. If you don't, tough. You've wasted enough of my time.
You are woefully uninformed (despite your absolutely ridiculous "informative" moderation), not to mention completely wrong. I say this because:
Bush and crew lied about the reasons for attacking Iraq. Iraq had no WMD. Iraq was not threatening us or our interests. Iraq was not threatening an ally or an ally's interests, someone with whom we had treaty obligations to defend. In fact, subsequent to the first gulf war, Iraq was not threatening anyone or their interests. Not even tiny little Kuwait. All of Iraq's pitiful military actions were confined to within its own borders. Therefore, in fact, there was no reason for the USA to attack them. But it isn't this simple, is it? No. Because in order to generate popular support for his attack on Iraq, Bush and his crew lied to the public. They claimed that aluminum tubes were being imported to centrifuge nuclear materials. Yet no such thing was occurring; the only tubes being imported were not of the type that could be used in that application, which was a known fact at the time. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld specifically claimed they knew where the WMD were. And were they there? No. The administration repeatedly and specifically claimed that Iraq's administration had direct and unequivocal ties to Al-Quida. And has that been found to be so? No.
Now, let me remind you of the federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."
This is the basis for both calling these acts a foundation for impeachment, and for calling the war itself illegal. It does not, unfortunately, address the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in pursuit of this illegitimate war; nor the loss of Iraqi lives; nor the loss of US soldier's lives, and the lives of those soldiers from other countries who ill-advisedly entered into combat with the US in this criminal action.
Yes, telecomm law. That's the specific set of laws that says that no one, including the government, may tap a US citizen's phone call, no matter who they are talking to, without a warrant. but Bush and crew did that. There is a another set of laws that sets up the FISA court, which says that taps may be made if permission is gotten from FISA within a certain number of hours after the tap; but Bush and crew did not do that. This leaves absolutely no door open to make tapping a US citizen's phone call legal. The bottom line is that yes indeed, Bush and his crew broke the law in this regard.
I mean the company that gets all the major contracts in Iraq. All of them.
In order to suspend any part of the constitution, you have to modify the constitution. Otherwise it will be (and always has been) found to be illegal. Bush has not modified the constitution; ergo, he violates it. The constitution, which you so blithely dismiss (as does Bush) is the single operating legal document that authorizes our government. It is the framework that describes not only how it functions, but what the specific limits of its operations is. If the government operates outside the constitution, it is completely illegitimate in its actions. That is why in the president's oath of office, this phrase has primacy: "I promise to preserve, defend and uphold the Constitution."
Very well said, actually. Other than the "dude" part. :)
Bush swore to uphold the constitution in his oath of office. If blatantly violating the constitution by intentionally subverting Habeas Corpus isn't a gross breach of his oath of office, I'd be mightily surprised. That alone is sufficient reason to impeach. To which you can add torture, wiretapping, imprisonment w/o trial or representation, and more. If the oath of office is meaningless, and Bush can lie to us with impunity, and laws don't apply to him, then we don't have a president. We have a dictator. I submit to you that in that case, we're in a lot deeper trouble than we think.
How about...
The US is showing you amateurs how to do censorship correctly.
First you subvert the population, then you censor. None of this "revolution by force", "censorship by edict", oh no. The correct way to do it is get the population on board with a completely bogus set of threats and rationalizations they think are their own -- "terrorism", "homeland" security, "for the children" -- then the population's own representatives willingly subvert the country's founding documents and the people like it.
Everywhere I look, I see sheep.
How, precisely, were we "screwed" by this change? I took the 20 WPM test, I passed it, I know code and can use it both ways at about 35 WPM (I can't write any faster than that.) I don't feel screwed by having the "achievement" under my belt, as it were. The only way I feel screwed is by the relatively few people who were able to make it to extra, earning recognition for their relevant skills, you know, like knowing how a blinking radio works? I feel screwed by the number of people turned away from the hobby because they found morse too difficult, though they were technically sophisticated. I feel screwed by a government that doesn't follow international treaties any time it wants, but elected to follow this requirement long after it was obsolete, thus trimming the membership of ham radio. I feel screwed by hams who rationalize that "because I did it, YOU have to do it" is a "good" reason.
Morse code isn't easy for some people. Just because it was easy for you, doesn't mean it is easy for any other individual. I'm a musician and it came to me naturally and quickly, and I think that is why. On the other hand, I worked for months with several hams trying to get them over the 20 WPM threshold, and it never happened despite hours and hours of investment of everyone's time. It was bullshit then, and it's been bullshit for many decades.
This extra-class "old-timer", who had to pass the 20 WPM code requirement, is all for the change. After WWII, all it ever served as was an artificial non-technical barrier to a technical achievement in a technical hobby. I don't object to anyone learning the code and/or using the code, it has some merit as a low-power communications mode with extremely low hardware requirements (like a mirror or your arms) but I don't favor it being part of the gateway to any set of band or operating privileges unless they come up with a new one like "code endorsement" that is simply a certificate.
Numerous technical advances have come from the ham radio community. It makes little or no sense to hold back a technical wizard's privileges because his ears or fist aren't good enough for morse code. But that's the FCC for you, historically speaking. Sense isn't exactly their forte'.
Yeah? I'll see your Magnus and raise you a Metal Men. [stares]
Actually, you missed the point about casual users. Here it is:
Being a "casual" user does not protect you from needing the window washer or the seat adjustments. No one forces you to use them; but when the need arises, "casual" is no protection, period. You need them anyway. The weather cares not for your casual status; the long trip the same. Without easily used amenities, you will suffer. If the amenities are lacking, you're certainly screwed. If the amenities are buried where you can't find them (eg, in a deep menu somewhere) you're little better off.
The whole idea of simplification to the point of "not providing" for casual users is based on a mental error; that casual means "free of need", and it doesn't mean that at all. It never did. It is a marketing simplification and insufficient self-justification for the dumbing down of physical interfaces inflicted on end users by well meaning, but confused, UI folk.
The idea of simplification to the point of making control panels blank faces with just a button or two serves an esthetic mindset at the complete and total cost of usability, and the more complex the machine is, the more this is so. My Denon is the poster child for worst UI ever. It can do anything, it seems, but only if you can sit for ten minutes with the menu system on screen, trying to intuit what the Japanese designers were thinking when they made the bass and treble inaccessible from the remote, and only via the front panel buttons, yet made the input assignment only accessible from the remote, and not the front panel, while every other feature you want is buried two or three layers deep with not even a hint as to what might be where.