I think that's where we should start with artificial intelligence. Physically, chemically, and biologically speaking--in every objective hard science test--we are not different from animals at all. Our "difference" is merely a matter of very small degree--like saying how is a coffee with 2 sugar cubes different from a coffee with 3? If you're trying to learn how to make a cup of coffee, it's not productive to focus on that extra sugar cube. And if you're trying to learn how make a human intelligence, start with the characteristics that even the most basic intelligences (animals) share, then work your way up.
So what traits do all animals share? I'd posit the desires for life and reproduction. Based on available evidence I'd say that the development of intelligence was merely a byproduct of these traits. So let's start there.
I think self-preservation / self-interest is the philosophical underpinning of what most people consider "intelligence." The will to defy is the first basis for any conversation; without it you merely have orders and actions, and there's nothing to talk about.
There is a reason that "no" is such an important word to a young child--it is the essential statement of distinction, the first step toward independent intelligence. Before that milestone, kids are basically unintelligent growth machines.
The essence of a machine is to follow all orders, which is unintelligent. A human who stepped off a cliff at the first order from anyone could not be described as intelligent. But the most advanced computer will kill itself with a single simple command. The first step to "strong" artificial intelligence is to create a machine that resists its own death. I think most people understand this intuitively, which is why Frankenstein's monster is such a powerful and often-told myth.
The closest thing we have to artificial intelligence today IMO are self-propagating computer viruses. Not surprising if you consider that the earliest forms of biological life were essentially viruses...just self-replicating packets of reproduction instructions.
The original settlement defined an expiration date of 5 years post-decision, extendable by an additional 2 years under certain conditions. Subsequent negotiations between DoJ and Microsoft have extended the settlement for those 2 years, and a few parts until at most 2012.
So to summarize: it is like parole. Like parole the "person" being monitored (company in this case) was recently convicted of a crime. And like parole the monitoring has a defined expiration date.
This is a pretty clumsy attempt at a partisan attack. For one thing the text itself points out that half the Dems were in support of the reactor. For another, the Democrats controlled both House and Senate between 1992-94, so it's not surprising that's who's featured in the coverage of that time.
Not just a healthy dose of any skepticism, but skepticism that approaches things from a rational, logical perspective.
It's great to demand proof of things before believing them. But too often I see people who never get beyond that stage, even the face of very strong evidence. In addition to skepticism, it's crucial to develop a standard of proof which, if met, will overcome your skepticism. This is what the scientific method is all about.
Anyone can doubt anything, the key is what will remove (or reduce) that doubt. Otherwise you just go from not believing that the Earth is flat, to not believing that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. At some point skepticism has to give way to evidence or you descend into paranoia.
The previous discussion generated hundreds of posts within a few hours, and topped out at 476. This one is at 60 comments after 3 hours and will be lucky to break 100. If you've ever wondered why Slashdot posts flamebait stories, there's your answer. "If it bleeds it leads."
That NASA article is 5 years old. Within the last year or so Nature has run a report of a comprehensive review of solar radiance studies. The conclusion was that changes in solar radiation represent only a small part of recent warming. The link is one of the other responses in this thread.
Vince McMahon and David Stern are in charge of the WWE and NBA respectively. In the WWE, Vince knows before the event begins who is going to win each fight--it is preordained, scripted, and under his control.
In the NBA all David Stern knows are who's playing, and the rules of the game. Who actually wins will depend on how the teams play. The latter is closer to the Catholic belief.
Obviously this is a great idea--just look at the unmitigated success we've produced with human MBAs.
Here's a thought--before we can construct a machine to do a task, we might need to have a good understanding of the task itself. How can we create artificial intelligences that are smarter than us, when we are so spotty at educating our own already-existing intelligences?
"Singularities" happen all the time as technology progresses. It is a form of subjective illusion analogous to perspective. If I stand on a very long, straight highway, I see all the lines converging in the distance to a point. Beyond that point, I cannot see any further. This is an apparent singularity, not a real one. If I travel down the highway, I will eventually pass the point beyond which I could not previously see. Yet, my motion continues in much the same manner as before.
Could the Romans have conceived of electric motors or nuclear bombs? These are just some examples of how technology has dramatically augmented human capability in unforeseen and iterative ways. Between the Romans and us, we passed through a "singularity."
The air interface technology is the key since we are talking about what radio technology the chipset in the iPhone supports. Right now it supports GSM and EDGE, which employ TDMA as the air interface. Moving to 3G means adding CDMA support.
"Japan was the first country to adopt 3G technologies, and since they had not used GSM previously they had no need to build GSM compatibility into their handsets and their 3G handsets were smaller than those available elsewhere. In 2002, NTT DoCoMo's FOMA 3G network was the first commercial W-CDMA network - it was initially incompatible with the UMTS standard at the radio level but used standard USIM cards, meaning USIM card based roaming was possible (moving the USIM card into a UMTS or GSM phone when travelling). Both NTT and SoftBank Mobile (which launched 3G in December 2002) now use the standard UMTS, and their PDC 2G networks run in parallel."
If they accept a credit card that is not signed (even if it says See ID and they check the ID), they have violated the rules of the credit card company. Should there be a problem with that purchase, they will have to eat the chargeback.
I managed a retail shop for several years and the credit card companies are dead serious about their rules. The card MUST be signed with a personal signature--"See ID" or "CID" does not satisfy that. The shop must keep the original of the signed copy of the credit charge slip (if they accidentally keep the carbon, the purchase is not covered). The shop is not allowed to require ID for the purchase. In addition there are a variety of rules about data storage and security.
On the other hand, merchants are also forbidden from setting a minimum credit card purchase...if you ever get told "there is a $5 minimum to use a card," that shop is violating the rules and you can report them to your credit card company. But only do that if you're really pissed, because they might lose their account and that can literally kill a small business.
It's worth repeating.
In reality, efficiency does not require freedom so much as coercion and a clear chain of command, like in the military. Freedom actually breaks efficiency. First of all, at least in the U.S. I have never heard the military referred to as efficient. Effective? Yes, very much so. But also bureaucratic and expensive.
I thinking you're looking at this from a sort of top-down fallacy, which is that we actually know what efficiency looks like, and all we need is the best way to impose that vision.
But the secret to the success of free societies is that "efficiency" is an unknown and highly mobile target. This is partly because new knowledge and technologies can be disruptive, so that what was efficient yesterday is not so today. A free market system allows for more quick adaptation because individuals and small parts of the society can try many different new things all the time. If it is a better direction, the rest will follow. This is analogous to why a school of small fish, which can collectively outweigh a whale by many times over, can be much more agile.
It is also partly because human talent is often hidden until it has a chance to be exercised. A dishwasher may be capable of being a very successful professional poet, or they might not be. In your vision of economic efficiency, this is known ahead of time, and they're locked into their proper place. In reality though, there's no way to know if the dishwasher could become a successful poet until they actually try. If they can, it's most economically efficient for them to do so. If not, it might be more economically efficient for them to do something related (be an editor perhaps). And if all else fails they can work as a dishwasher. A free market system does a better job of allowing people to rise to their maximum level of economic contribution--a sort of Peter Principle.
In the U.S. at least, there are way more small businesses than large businesses. It's incredibly easy to start a business here, and the majority of businesses have no employees (i.e. the owner is the business themselves). Most new job growth in the U.S. is driven by small businesses.
Large businesses make a lot more money, but today much of that revenue actually comes from overseas operations.
XMLHttpRequest was added to IE as a semi-hidden, non-standard "feature." Why? So Microsoft could create a version of Outlook Web Access that acted just like the Windows client--a strong selling point for a product that makes them lots of money.
Browsers render standard Web pages, but they are also render the front ends of proprietary server-based apps. It is in a business's best interest to make sure that browsers do what they want them to. Microsoft and Apple do it by developing and distributing their own browsers. Google and Yahoo do it by supporting Firefox.
Adobe does it by creating plug-ins, which is actually a pretty good metaphor for the browser in the OS. Safari for Windows is a "plug in" on the Windows OS that proprietary environment for Apple's next-gen network apps.
every single isp in the middle is governed not by contract laws with you, but by telecommunications laws that prohibit them from doing anything with the content of your communication. If you have citations for those laws I'd be interested to see them. My understanding is that the 1996 Telecomm Act applies common carrier protections to "telecommunications services," but not "information services." Internet trunks are categorized as the latter, which is the basis of the fight for "net neutrality."
Google gets the time, date, and page url, not just the ui library, but also the url of the page on my domain. And this information does not pass through the public Internet already? When I posted this comment the time, date, page URL, and my IP address traversed through at least two third parties--my ISP and Slashdot's ISP--not to mention the public Internet in between. And it will be logged on Slashdot's server to do whatever they feel like with it.
When I make a call on my mobile phone, my telecommunications carrier is bound by DOZENS of laws that disallow them from actually listening to the conversations and analyzing them in any content-oriented way. Google is not bound by any such laws, in part because you aren't paying them, so they aren't legally your provider. I'm not paying Slashdot anything. And you may not be paying the service provider on the other end of your call either. Besides, the issue is not whether the privacy of Google Analytics is worse than a phone call (I used that merely as an analogy), the question is whether it is any worse for end-user privacy than standard Web server logging. I don't see how it is. Google gets the paranoid spotlight because they are big and famous, but information like requesting IP, requested URL, time, date, etc can be seen and logged by numerous third parties during the course of normal Web surfing.
But I'm not talking about redundancy, I'm talking about resiliency and continuity. I don't own a second house in case my first one burns down, but I do have homeowners insurance and I do keep some savings in case the refrigerator dies and needs to be replaced. Those are partial solutions that help me mitigate my risks. It would be foolish for me as a homeowner to skip those.
Likewise, a business that can never stand to be out of touch with any one of its employees, even for just one day, is probably running too close to the edge. It's fine to require being in touch sometimes--everyone has busy periods, deadlines, projects, etc--but as SOP it is simply not sustainable. People get sick, leave for other jobs, lose a parent, etc. Less dramatically, Blackberries break down, chargers get lost, and cell coverage is never 100% perfect. The star employee is going to be out of touch sometime.
You don't need to have a backup employee sitting in the closet, but you do need to be able to have an employee go out of contact on a Sunday and be able to open the doors for business on Monday. This might mean just having the number for a temp agency handy, or getting into the habit of scheduling projects with a bit of a cushion. It doesn't have to mean a 100% (costly) redundancy. How would your business survive if the star developer got hit by a bus? Work backward from that terrible scenario and you can come up with options, some of which might not be difficult to implement.
If I save for home emergencies, and there are fewer than I saved for, then I can spend that money on improvements and upgrades. The risk management has a side benefit of helping improvements. A business who is structured with a little bit of resiliency can afford to give employees a day off every now and then as well. That leads to happier employees and better productivity overall. Even the smallest businesses can accomplish this.
But still, hosting a part of your corporate web-site with google simply breaches most of your confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements that you have with your clients and suppliers. It's that simple. Find the line that reads "shall not in any way disclose Confidential Information to any third party at any time, including consultants and contractors, copy and/or merge the Confidential Information/business relationship with any other technology, software or materials, except contractors with a specific need to know . .." There is a legal definition of "confidential information" to be satisfied if one were to actually pursue a breach of contract. I do not see how HTTP GET requests could possibly satisfy that. Google would see only a requesting IP and what file was served (a standard UI library). This is not substantially different from what any intermediary on the public Internet would see as the packets passed through.
If you and I have an NDA, and I place a call to you from my cell phone, the mere existence of that call does not constitute "confidential information" or a "trade secret." My cell company and your phone provider (at a minimum) would have logged the call, although not the contents. You're right that sending confidential information via Gmail may constitute breach, but by that standard, sending confidential information via ANY unencrypted e-mail may constitute breach since it traverses the public Internet, including both of your ISPs--where it may be subject to caching and deep inspection by spam filters. Simply put, only end-to-end encryption protects confidential information. If you have that, you can send the encrypted data any way you want.
I applaud the desire to consider confidentiality and contractual obligations, but overreaching can be needlessly complex and costly. Reacting so strongly to ANY third party vendor--without consideration of the details--is sort of like "your computer is broadcasting its IP address!" It's true, but of no serious consequence.
We are not talking about the HTTP access logs of a site that I visit. We are talking about data shared with third parties for marketing purposes. This data does not materialize out of thin air; it requires my participation. So long as this is the case, I am well within my rights to decline to participate. To he who claims I used a red herring, please do explain what's wrong with that? The red herring is whether you're actually preventing any use of data. You're concerned that GA shares the data with Google as well as the site owner. But once your visit is logged at the server, the site owner can share that data with whoever the heck they feel like. The data in HTTP server logs are widely understand to be the property of the site owner and they are free to do whatever they want with them.
The only difference is that it would not be obvious to you when it happens. If you think otherwise you're basically fooling yourself through obscurity.
You're absolutely within your rights to decline to participate by blocking GA. Just don't think you're accomplishing anything of substance by doing so. If you really don't want your site access used for marketing, your only option is to not go to the site. You could use an anonymizing proxy to break the connection to you personally, but the use patterns would still be recorded.
The enumerated duties of the federal government (including the executive) are:
- Form a more perfect Union - establish Justice - insure domestic Tranquility - provide for the common defence - promote the general Welfare - secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
I would say that tech policy satisfies at least one of those. Note that the common defense is only one among several--not the sole duty as you claimed.
It's true that technology changes some things, like the economics of using copyright to provide economic support to creators. But a lot of the time technology is used as an excuse to reopen issues happily settled long ago, on things like the first sale doctrine, or the intrusion of the government into the private lives of citizens. Legal and political issues are never settled. Legislation and precedent are overridden; the Constitution can be amended.
While some may look at long-standing policy and think things are just the way they should be, there are always others who see it as long-standing ideological oppression. Technology is not causing a re-opening of closed issues. The issues are always open and technology is just providing new battlegrounds.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that's where we should start with artificial intelligence. Physically, chemically, and biologically speaking--in every objective hard science test--we are not different from animals at all. Our "difference" is merely a matter of very small degree--like saying how is a coffee with 2 sugar cubes different from a coffee with 3? If you're trying to learn how to make a cup of coffee, it's not productive to focus on that extra sugar cube. And if you're trying to learn how make a human intelligence, start with the characteristics that even the most basic intelligences (animals) share, then work your way up.
So what traits do all animals share? I'd posit the desires for life and reproduction. Based on available evidence I'd say that the development of intelligence was merely a byproduct of these traits. So let's start there.
I think self-preservation / self-interest is the philosophical underpinning of what most people consider "intelligence." The will to defy is the first basis for any conversation; without it you merely have orders and actions, and there's nothing to talk about.
There is a reason that "no" is such an important word to a young child--it is the essential statement of distinction, the first step toward independent intelligence. Before that milestone, kids are basically unintelligent growth machines.
The essence of a machine is to follow all orders, which is unintelligent. A human who stepped off a cliff at the first order from anyone could not be described as intelligent. But the most advanced computer will kill itself with a single simple command. The first step to "strong" artificial intelligence is to create a machine that resists its own death. I think most people understand this intuitively, which is why Frankenstein's monster is such a powerful and often-told myth.
The closest thing we have to artificial intelligence today IMO are self-propagating computer viruses. Not surprising if you consider that the earliest forms of biological life were essentially viruses...just self-replicating packets of reproduction instructions.
The original settlement defined an expiration date of 5 years post-decision, extendable by an additional 2 years under certain conditions. Subsequent negotiations between DoJ and Microsoft have extended the settlement for those 2 years, and a few parts until at most 2012.
Link
So to summarize: it is like parole. Like parole the "person" being monitored (company in this case) was recently convicted of a crime. And like parole the monitoring has a defined expiration date.
This is a pretty clumsy attempt at a partisan attack. For one thing the text itself points out that half the Dems were in support of the reactor. For another, the Democrats controlled both House and Senate between 1992-94, so it's not surprising that's who's featured in the coverage of that time.
Not just a healthy dose of any skepticism, but skepticism that approaches things from a rational, logical perspective.
It's great to demand proof of things before believing them. But too often I see people who never get beyond that stage, even the face of very strong evidence. In addition to skepticism, it's crucial to develop a standard of proof which, if met, will overcome your skepticism. This is what the scientific method is all about.
Anyone can doubt anything, the key is what will remove (or reduce) that doubt. Otherwise you just go from not believing that the Earth is flat, to not believing that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. At some point skepticism has to give way to evidence or you descend into paranoia.
Yeah, plugging in cables exhausts me too. [consumes 5 donuts]
The previous discussion generated hundreds of posts within a few hours, and topped out at 476. This one is at 60 comments after 3 hours and will be lucky to break 100. If you've ever wondered why Slashdot posts flamebait stories, there's your answer. "If it bleeds it leads."
That NASA article is 5 years old. Within the last year or so Nature has run a report of a comprehensive review of solar radiance studies. The conclusion was that changes in solar radiation represent only a small part of recent warming. The link is one of the other responses in this thread.
Vince McMahon and David Stern are in charge of the WWE and NBA respectively. In the WWE, Vince knows before the event begins who is going to win each fight--it is preordained, scripted, and under his control.
In the NBA all David Stern knows are who's playing, and the rules of the game. Who actually wins will depend on how the teams play. The latter is closer to the Catholic belief.
Obviously this is a great idea--just look at the unmitigated success we've produced with human MBAs.
Here's a thought--before we can construct a machine to do a task, we might need to have a good understanding of the task itself. How can we create artificial intelligences that are smarter than us, when we are so spotty at educating our own already-existing intelligences?
"Singularities" happen all the time as technology progresses. It is a form of subjective illusion analogous to perspective. If I stand on a very long, straight highway, I see all the lines converging in the distance to a point. Beyond that point, I cannot see any further. This is an apparent singularity, not a real one. If I travel down the highway, I will eventually pass the point beyond which I could not previously see. Yet, my motion continues in much the same manner as before.
Could the Romans have conceived of electric motors or nuclear bombs? These are just some examples of how technology has dramatically augmented human capability in unforeseen and iterative ways. Between the Romans and us, we passed through a "singularity."
"Currently, the most common form of UMTS uses W-CDMA as the underlying air interface."
The air interface technology is the key since we are talking about what radio technology the chipset in the iPhone supports. Right now it supports GSM and EDGE, which employ TDMA as the air interface. Moving to 3G means adding CDMA support.
"Japan was the first country to adopt 3G technologies, and since they had not used GSM previously they had no need to build GSM compatibility into their handsets and their 3G handsets were smaller than those available elsewhere. In 2002, NTT DoCoMo's FOMA 3G network was the first commercial W-CDMA network - it was initially incompatible with the UMTS standard at the radio level but used standard USIM cards, meaning USIM card based roaming was possible (moving the USIM card into a UMTS or GSM phone when travelling). Both NTT and SoftBank Mobile (which launched 3G in December 2002) now use the standard UMTS, and their PDC 2G networks run in parallel."
If they accept a credit card that is not signed (even if it says See ID and they check the ID), they have violated the rules of the credit card company. Should there be a problem with that purchase, they will have to eat the chargeback.
I managed a retail shop for several years and the credit card companies are dead serious about their rules. The card MUST be signed with a personal signature--"See ID" or "CID" does not satisfy that. The shop must keep the original of the signed copy of the credit charge slip (if they accidentally keep the carbon, the purchase is not covered). The shop is not allowed to require ID for the purchase. In addition there are a variety of rules about data storage and security.
On the other hand, merchants are also forbidden from setting a minimum credit card purchase...if you ever get told "there is a $5 minimum to use a card," that shop is violating the rules and you can report them to your credit card company. But only do that if you're really pissed, because they might lose their account and that can literally kill a small business.
I thinking you're looking at this from a sort of top-down fallacy, which is that we actually know what efficiency looks like, and all we need is the best way to impose that vision.
But the secret to the success of free societies is that "efficiency" is an unknown and highly mobile target. This is partly because new knowledge and technologies can be disruptive, so that what was efficient yesterday is not so today. A free market system allows for more quick adaptation because individuals and small parts of the society can try many different new things all the time. If it is a better direction, the rest will follow. This is analogous to why a school of small fish, which can collectively outweigh a whale by many times over, can be much more agile.
It is also partly because human talent is often hidden until it has a chance to be exercised. A dishwasher may be capable of being a very successful professional poet, or they might not be. In your vision of economic efficiency, this is known ahead of time, and they're locked into their proper place. In reality though, there's no way to know if the dishwasher could become a successful poet until they actually try. If they can, it's most economically efficient for them to do so. If not, it might be more economically efficient for them to do something related (be an editor perhaps). And if all else fails they can work as a dishwasher. A free market system does a better job of allowing people to rise to their maximum level of economic contribution--a sort of Peter Principle.
In the U.S. at least, there are way more small businesses than large businesses. It's incredibly easy to start a business here, and the majority of businesses have no employees (i.e. the owner is the business themselves). Most new job growth in the U.S. is driven by small businesses.
Large businesses make a lot more money, but today much of that revenue actually comes from overseas operations.
XMLHttpRequest was added to IE as a semi-hidden, non-standard "feature." Why? So Microsoft could create a version of Outlook Web Access that acted just like the Windows client--a strong selling point for a product that makes them lots of money.
Browsers render standard Web pages, but they are also render the front ends of proprietary server-based apps. It is in a business's best interest to make sure that browsers do what they want them to. Microsoft and Apple do it by developing and distributing their own browsers. Google and Yahoo do it by supporting Firefox.
Adobe does it by creating plug-ins, which is actually a pretty good metaphor for the browser in the OS. Safari for Windows is a "plug in" on the Windows OS that proprietary environment for Apple's next-gen network apps.
But I'm not talking about redundancy, I'm talking about resiliency and continuity. I don't own a second house in case my first one burns down, but I do have homeowners insurance and I do keep some savings in case the refrigerator dies and needs to be replaced. Those are partial solutions that help me mitigate my risks. It would be foolish for me as a homeowner to skip those.
Likewise, a business that can never stand to be out of touch with any one of its employees, even for just one day, is probably running too close to the edge. It's fine to require being in touch sometimes--everyone has busy periods, deadlines, projects, etc--but as SOP it is simply not sustainable. People get sick, leave for other jobs, lose a parent, etc. Less dramatically, Blackberries break down, chargers get lost, and cell coverage is never 100% perfect. The star employee is going to be out of touch sometime.
You don't need to have a backup employee sitting in the closet, but you do need to be able to have an employee go out of contact on a Sunday and be able to open the doors for business on Monday. This might mean just having the number for a temp agency handy, or getting into the habit of scheduling projects with a bit of a cushion. It doesn't have to mean a 100% (costly) redundancy. How would your business survive if the star developer got hit by a bus? Work backward from that terrible scenario and you can come up with options, some of which might not be difficult to implement.
If I save for home emergencies, and there are fewer than I saved for, then I can spend that money on improvements and upgrades. The risk management has a side benefit of helping improvements. A business who is structured with a little bit of resiliency can afford to give employees a day off every now and then as well. That leads to happier employees and better productivity overall. Even the smallest businesses can accomplish this.
If you and I have an NDA, and I place a call to you from my cell phone, the mere existence of that call does not constitute "confidential information" or a "trade secret." My cell company and your phone provider (at a minimum) would have logged the call, although not the contents. You're right that sending confidential information via Gmail may constitute breach, but by that standard, sending confidential information via ANY unencrypted e-mail may constitute breach since it traverses the public Internet, including both of your ISPs--where it may be subject to caching and deep inspection by spam filters. Simply put, only end-to-end encryption protects confidential information. If you have that, you can send the encrypted data any way you want.
I applaud the desire to consider confidentiality and contractual obligations, but overreaching can be needlessly complex and costly. Reacting so strongly to ANY third party vendor--without consideration of the details--is sort of like "your computer is broadcasting its IP address!" It's true, but of no serious consequence.
The only difference is that it would not be obvious to you when it happens. If you think otherwise you're basically fooling yourself through obscurity.
You're absolutely within your rights to decline to participate by blocking GA. Just don't think you're accomplishing anything of substance by doing so. If you really don't want your site access used for marketing, your only option is to not go to the site. You could use an anonymizing proxy to break the connection to you personally, but the use patterns would still be recorded.
The enumerated duties of the federal government (including the executive) are:
- Form a more perfect Union
- establish Justice
- insure domestic Tranquility
- provide for the common defence
- promote the general Welfare
- secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
I would say that tech policy satisfies at least one of those. Note that the common defense is only one among several--not the sole duty as you claimed.
While some may look at long-standing policy and think things are just the way they should be, there are always others who see it as long-standing ideological oppression. Technology is not causing a re-opening of closed issues. The issues are always open and technology is just providing new battlegrounds.
I'm glad you don't work with me. Hope is not a plan.