That is "fantasy AI." Or, as I like to call it, "Turing completeness." I think we recognize many things that wouldn't pass a Turing test as still being real AIs.
"At a certain point..." You mean the point when Islam becomes the dominant religion in the United States, the political leadership of the US is largely made up of people with a conservative interpretation of Islam, and a fundamentalist reading of Sharia law becomes the basis for American jurisprudence? So, right after up becomes down, they've squared the circle, and Uwe Boll wins an Oscar. Got it, I'm shivering in my boots.
You're right. People in the West really have deluded themselves into thinking that they don't have an arbitrary culture, it's everyone else that does. Of course you cover your penis, testicles, vagina and anus: that's just natural! Of course only women cover their breasts, unless on a beach in France or on spring break in Mexico - that's reasonable and natural! But that women should have their hair covered - well, that's repression! Oh, and men will need to shave for at least the first 10 to 15 years of their careers if they want to be taken seriously in the corporate world - that's just normal... etc.
In fact, many of the things we take as conventional have "repressive" origins, but we've integrated them into everyday life as simple conventions and habits of basic modesty. That so many people don't understand how this could possibly be the case for Muslims is discouraging.
There are many spheres of life, too, where women do better when they segregate themselves from men. Because of the tendency of boys to monopolize attention and resources in K-8 math and sciences education, girls do much better in those subjects when taught in all-girl environments. Unsurprisingly, then, a disproportionate number of women scientists and engineers went to all-girl schools: the shocker is that there are more women (by percentage) studying engineering in the Arab world than in the US! (Recognizing the reality of discrimination in the job markets in those countries, however: most come to Europe or the US to work.)
There is xenophobia and chauvinism in Japan, yes, but considering their density, I think they're right to be skeptical of immigration as a response to this need. Japan is a very crowded country.
There is, despite the "graying of Japan", an ongoing recession and widespread youth unemployment. What is needed is the creation of frameworks to produce jobs caring for the elderly. That's not an easy problem to solve.
When the Kinetix was hacked to support the PC, Microsoft not only didn't get legal: they celebrated the achievement. MS has not made a practice of suing its customers. They do check the integrity of your system before allowing you to play online - that strikes me as completely reasonable, as part of a TOS for an online service - but they don't sue you if you hack your system, nor force your system to upgrade if you don't want to.
Oddly enough, I think that shutting off mass communications makes the opposition stronger (and, conversely, that resistance movements that rely on these technologies tend to be weak and brittle.) With no electronic networks, people organize physically, managing territory, creating local bodies of provisional authority, etc. The Egyptian protestors are now flying "under the radar" - they have systems of command and control which have more to do with the physical layout of neighborhoods. This will make them stronger.
The value of the internet as a tool for resistance is greatly overrated, I think this has shown.
However, it is often content that sells platforms. Rightly or wrongly, game developers think of the Android market as one where people do not want to pay money for premium content: a buck or two for an addictive casual game is alright, but is anyone going to download a copy of Kingdom Hearts: Droid for $20?
Given that there still is a market for $20, $30, even $40 handheld games (though a risky one with shrinking margins), what is the best kind of platform for selling titles in that market? I'm honestly not sure.
It's Sony. Nintendo doesn't have to worry - it just has to stay out of the way while Sony self-destructs due to internal conflicts, dead-end media formats mandated by other Sony divisions, unrealistic price-points, market-alienating legal maneuvers, and the like.
Nintendo needs to worry about Microsoft: now that Xbox and Kinect are the golden children in Redmond - and seeing how much better Microsoft is in dealing with the global market than either of the Japanese companies are - the next gen could belong to MS. Nintendo has to "open the kimono" a little bit if it wants to continue on the successes of the Wii and the DS.
Executive function ("self control") is associated with imaginative play: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=76838288 for the pop summary. Imaginative play, in which kids grab relative raw "things" and make things out of them and make stories with those things (i.e., more like turning a stone into a building and a twig into a person than Legos or Playmobil toys) and unsupervised play are deeply on the decline.
The chilling fact: they recently repeated some tests for executive function that had been administered to children over 60 years ago. Contemporary 5 year olds show the same executive function as 3 year olds in the 1940s (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514) Say what platitudes you like about "new" kinds of intelligence and information processing and cognitive multitasking: a decline in the ability to do basic self-control is going to be a massive problem. Perhaps this also has something to do with the fact that college students study 40% less now than they did 40 years ago... and nearly half learn almost nothing in their first 2 years of college (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much)
I do not use the giveaways in and of themselves as the basis for observing low morale at Google. You're right: they generally have done this every year. However, they are still the kind of thing intended to boost morale: they are not evidence of high morale.
The real basis for the call of low morale is the stream of defections to new start-ups or competitors, especially Facebook, and the failure of many Google products and projects, especially Google TV, Google Wave,and Google Buzz. And the various statements by industry analysts, often with inside, high level sources, that morale is low.
There may be other reasons to give money, gadgets etc away than a need to boost morale. But those giveaways are definitely not a sign of high morale in themselves, and they are, in fact, something companies do when they need to boost morale.
Perhaps because Google has been playing catch-up for too long, and Schmidt's strategy has been too caution, too safe, too corporate. There have been a lot of failures and disappointments coming out of the Googleplex recently, and Google needs to recover some of the optimism and energy of its earlier years. Morale is rather low; a lot of their best researchers have left. The "always in beta" aspect doesn't work anymore, because it contradicts their "the cloud is ready for primetime" narrative.
A big change was needed. I'm just surprised they did it.
Your impression is incorrect on many levels. Almost no one fails to learn English by the second generation - and most Hispanic first-gen immigrants do much better than previous immigrants did (largely due to the ubiquity of English media.) The "little Mexicos" are much, much more like other American neighbhorhoods than they are like Mexican neighborhoods. And the most important integration is economic: when you go out to eat, your food is probably being made by someone from Mexico or Central America; the grounds and facilities of the places you work and study might be maintained by someone with those origins, who now lives in the same region you do, buys food, goods and services in your region (including, possibly, from you.)
I am in full support of enforcing minimum wages, and of punitive measures against people who try to hire people for less than minimum wage, whatever their status. The question is orthogonal, by your own admission. Downward pressure in wages occurs in all sectors when supply increases, it's true - but 1. if people knew that they could get big settlements of they sued after getting paid less than minimum, almost no employers would do that (which means it is the very illegal status of the employees which protects the employers) and 2.if all else is equal, someone with good English skills will be more attractive in the market place than someone without them.
In other words, if wage pressure is really the issue for you, amnesty and a more open immigration policy is the only option.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the unc. vall. is specific to vision (and the visual perception of motion) - don't think voice comes into it.
Brain-fart, I mean "Turing-test complete."
That is "fantasy AI." Or, as I like to call it, "Turing completeness." I think we recognize many things that wouldn't pass a Turing test as still being real AIs.
Ahem: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-neurobiologists-weak-electrical-fields-brain.html
The brain may be more than just a squishy neural network.
OK, I have no productive contribution here, but the phrases "Hubble trumping" and "trouble humping" are now echoing through my head.
"At a certain point..." You mean the point when Islam becomes the dominant religion in the United States, the political leadership of the US is largely made up of people with a conservative interpretation of Islam, and a fundamentalist reading of Sharia law becomes the basis for American jurisprudence? So, right after up becomes down, they've squared the circle, and Uwe Boll wins an Oscar. Got it, I'm shivering in my boots.
Stop being daft, of course it's voluntary.
You're right. People in the West really have deluded themselves into thinking that they don't have an arbitrary culture, it's everyone else that does. Of course you cover your penis, testicles, vagina and anus: that's just natural! Of course only women cover their breasts, unless on a beach in France or on spring break in Mexico - that's reasonable and natural! But that women should have their hair covered - well, that's repression! Oh, and men will need to shave for at least the first 10 to 15 years of their careers if they want to be taken seriously in the corporate world - that's just normal... etc.
In fact, many of the things we take as conventional have "repressive" origins, but we've integrated them into everyday life as simple conventions and habits of basic modesty. That so many people don't understand how this could possibly be the case for Muslims is discouraging.
There are many spheres of life, too, where women do better when they segregate themselves from men. Because of the tendency of boys to monopolize attention and resources in K-8 math and sciences education, girls do much better in those subjects when taught in all-girl environments. Unsurprisingly, then, a disproportionate number of women scientists and engineers went to all-girl schools: the shocker is that there are more women (by percentage) studying engineering in the Arab world than in the US! (Recognizing the reality of discrimination in the job markets in those countries, however: most come to Europe or the US to work.)
An unholy necrophiliac liaison between a Nintendo DS and the rotting corpse of a Nokia N-Gage has begat - this.
I suspect viral marketing.
There is xenophobia and chauvinism in Japan, yes, but considering their density, I think they're right to be skeptical of immigration as a response to this need. Japan is a very crowded country.
There is, despite the "graying of Japan", an ongoing recession and widespread youth unemployment. What is needed is the creation of frameworks to produce jobs caring for the elderly. That's not an easy problem to solve.
When the Kinetix was hacked to support the PC, Microsoft not only didn't get legal: they celebrated the achievement. MS has not made a practice of suing its customers. They do check the integrity of your system before allowing you to play online - that strikes me as completely reasonable, as part of a TOS for an online service - but they don't sue you if you hack your system, nor force your system to upgrade if you don't want to.
Oddly enough, I think that shutting off mass communications makes the opposition stronger (and, conversely, that resistance movements that rely on these technologies tend to be weak and brittle.) With no electronic networks, people organize physically, managing territory, creating local bodies of provisional authority, etc. The Egyptian protestors are now flying "under the radar" - they have systems of command and control which have more to do with the physical layout of neighborhoods. This will make them stronger.
The value of the internet as a tool for resistance is greatly overrated, I think this has shown.
However, it is often content that sells platforms. Rightly or wrongly, game developers think of the Android market as one where people do not want to pay money for premium content: a buck or two for an addictive casual game is alright, but is anyone going to download a copy of Kingdom Hearts: Droid for $20?
Given that there still is a market for $20, $30, even $40 handheld games (though a risky one with shrinking margins), what is the best kind of platform for selling titles in that market? I'm honestly not sure.
As soon as its unlocked ;)
You mean 45 minutes after it's released?
It's Sony. Nintendo doesn't have to worry - it just has to stay out of the way while Sony self-destructs due to internal conflicts, dead-end media formats mandated by other Sony divisions, unrealistic price-points, market-alienating legal maneuvers, and the like.
Nintendo needs to worry about Microsoft: now that Xbox and Kinect are the golden children in Redmond - and seeing how much better Microsoft is in dealing with the global market than either of the Japanese companies are - the next gen could belong to MS. Nintendo has to "open the kimono" a little bit if it wants to continue on the successes of the Wii and the DS.
Or, um, are people with PTSD less likely to play games? That seems to be the most likely scenario to me.
There is more to the research than this, as well.
Executive function ("self control") is associated with imaginative play: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=76838288 for the pop summary. Imaginative play, in which kids grab relative raw "things" and make things out of them and make stories with those things (i.e., more like turning a stone into a building and a twig into a person than Legos or Playmobil toys) and unsupervised play are deeply on the decline.
The chilling fact: they recently repeated some tests for executive function that had been administered to children over 60 years ago. Contemporary 5 year olds show the same executive function as 3 year olds in the 1940s (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514) Say what platitudes you like about "new" kinds of intelligence and information processing and cognitive multitasking: a decline in the ability to do basic self-control is going to be a massive problem. Perhaps this also has something to do with the fact that college students study 40% less now than they did 40 years ago... and nearly half learn almost nothing in their first 2 years of college (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much)
I do not use the giveaways in and of themselves as the basis for observing low morale at Google. You're right: they generally have done this every year. However, they are still the kind of thing intended to boost morale: they are not evidence of high morale.
The real basis for the call of low morale is the stream of defections to new start-ups or competitors, especially Facebook, and the failure of many Google products and projects, especially Google TV, Google Wave,and Google Buzz. And the various statements by industry analysts, often with inside, high level sources, that morale is low.
There may be other reasons to give money, gadgets etc away than a need to boost morale. But those giveaways are definitely not a sign of high morale in themselves, and they are, in fact, something companies do when they need to boost morale.
Those are the steps of a business trying to improve morale, not the steps of a business with high morale.
Perhaps because Google has been playing catch-up for too long, and Schmidt's strategy has been too caution, too safe, too corporate. There have been a lot of failures and disappointments coming out of the Googleplex recently, and Google needs to recover some of the optimism and energy of its earlier years. Morale is rather low; a lot of their best researchers have left. The "always in beta" aspect doesn't work anymore, because it contradicts their "the cloud is ready for primetime" narrative.
A big change was needed. I'm just surprised they did it.
Thank you for the briefing, Ambassador Obvious of the Planet Literal.
On the other hand, Plants vs Zombies would be a great game to try this on. Mmmmn, lavender. Ewwwww, putrescence.
Your impression is incorrect on many levels. Almost no one fails to learn English by the second generation - and most Hispanic first-gen immigrants do much better than previous immigrants did (largely due to the ubiquity of English media.) The "little Mexicos" are much, much more like other American neighbhorhoods than they are like Mexican neighborhoods. And the most important integration is economic: when you go out to eat, your food is probably being made by someone from Mexico or Central America; the grounds and facilities of the places you work and study might be maintained by someone with those origins, who now lives in the same region you do, buys food, goods and services in your region (including, possibly, from you.)
I am in full support of enforcing minimum wages, and of punitive measures against people who try to hire people for less than minimum wage, whatever their status. The question is orthogonal, by your own admission. Downward pressure in wages occurs in all sectors when supply increases, it's true - but 1. if people knew that they could get big settlements of they sued after getting paid less than minimum, almost no employers would do that (which means it is the very illegal status of the employees which protects the employers) and 2.if all else is equal, someone with good English skills will be more attractive in the market place than someone without them.
In other words, if wage pressure is really the issue for you, amnesty and a more open immigration policy is the only option.