Haha, awesome... this is like geek S&M--getting off from near-impossible transcoding tasks, or maybe finding or building incomprehensibly insane adapters, like HDMI-to-Virtual Boy plugs.
The computer pets of which you speak don't "simulate" emotions -- they model the visible effects of emotions, which very easily affect us, and communicate emotively to us. But there's no underlying mechanism that these simulated emotional signifiers are a result of. You use the word "implement," which to me suggests the use of a model or algorithm to simulate an effect, as opposed to building the actual machine itself (easier said than done, I'm well aware). When we able to construct a fully developed, very large scale neural net, I suspect that "emotions," which stem from the same basis as everything else we call "intelligence," will be a natural result of the mechanism.
But anyway, I appreciate and agree with the essence of your comment, but perhaps for different reasons. I always thought it was interesting and funny that people took so readily to the idea that androids, which are capable of every other human ability, lack for some reason the ability to "feel" or "emote." Fascinating assumption, really. I wonder if it's kind of a natural protective element--maybe it's too scary for people to imagine that if you can make a machine that thinks and perceives like a human, it will naturally "feel" the same way a human does. So saying that robots can't feel--cry, commiserate, comfort, get angry, hate, etc.--is a way of keeping that division between humanity and the shadowy maybe-humanity that we could very well be on the verge of discovering (-slash- inventing).
I agree-- when I started reading it, I was expecting the worst. Through the first half, though, I thought, "Hey, maybe I was wrong after all!" It seemed like it might be interesting and exciting in the way the old ones were. But then somewhere along the line it just took a dive, both into implausibility and downright silliness. By the end it was clear he had just given up the effort. Oh well.
If you want spin doctoring, his comment about disincentives is hilarious. Seriously--
tremendous disincentives to content owners who need to invest in new content NEED? Good god, what kind of monumental bullshit is that!? "I NEED the new season of Banal Sitcom #3421!!!" Sigh.
Right here -- though something broke on it a looong time ago. I must have stopped using it by that time because I never tried very hard to see what was wrong with it. I got mine while I worked at an Office Depot in high school... and let's just say it was... heavily discounted;)
I'll chime in here on the digital camera portion. I was looking for a highly compact camera that offered full manual operation (as I'm a photographer as well as designer) and I'll tell you what--the Samsung NV10 I got has been fantastic. Excellent, excellent device in all ways and has a very innovative, fast and functional interface. For the price I honestly don't think it can be beat. I highly recommend it all around.
A hash is derived from a data set, but can't be used to generate/(re)construct a data set... so I can't imagine how possessing a hash has any illegal basis. Depending on the kind of hash, I guess...
Honestly, I will never understand why people who identify as {geeks | techies | IT workers | etc} undervalue or often deliberately devalue creativity, as though it's useless, functionless, unimportant. It's true that it's hard and takes practice and work, but that's never stopped us before. If there is one thing I wish I could teach the world, it's that creativity is a good thing, and that it can be learned. But as long as so many people think of it as some kind of impregnable domain of "artists," instead of an ability open to anyone, I won't hold my breath.
Science does require faith for the same reason that accepting the Bible as describing spiritual events requires faith: people do not, for the most part, directly experience the things they read about or are told. I used to think this too, briefly, but then I remembered that, if I go to the source of the experiment, or I do go ahead and perform an experiment myself, I'll reproduce exactly the same results as the original experiment. Or, if results vary, I will have either made a mistake or contributed to our greater scientific understanding of the problem.
So while, yes, I take it on a kind of faith that various scientific theories are accurate models of reality, there are some pretty damn good reasons that I trust them. Religious people have, by definition, no reason to trust god. There is no evidence, and what evidence some religious people might dig up would never be reproduceable or verifiable. Or if someone were to say, "the evidence is all around you," their model of reality still offers no logical explanation of why or how.
Anyway, I (once again) no longer use the word faith with regard to science because faith implies belief without evidence or reason.
Come on, who modded this insightful? You can convince yourself of ANYTHING with very little effort, if you WANT to be convinced of something. What we need a "chain of logical arguments" for is to PROVE something. So if you don't care about proving the existence of god or your husband's love because you just know it, great! But you'll run into problems real quick when asked to prove those things exist. That's where those "chain[s] of logical arguments" come in really handy--at least with the love thing you seem to have some evidence to start with; I'm not so sure about the evidence of god.
Amazingly enough, being a scientist does not automatically meant that I must be 100% logical in all things What the hell kind of scientist is that!? Seriously, good luck with your research with that attitude. I'm not trying to flame here, but I'm pretty disturbed by that remark.
Man, I'm glad to read your post--I work in mixed environments all the time, and mix a broad range of everyday tasks (from motion graphics to programming to remote administration of linux boxes, etc etc) and every day I'm impressed how easily I can shuffle all this on OS X. I know lots of professional programmers who swear by macs as development platforms. Hear hear!
Seriously-- I can't help but think that the people who tag this as "wasteoftime" are the same people who sit in their basements consuming instead of creating, who convince themselves that any activity beyond console games and doritos are a waste of time. Sigh.
Uh, heh, if you're obtaining copyrighted music, the law obligates you to obtain the license for it, which most often obligates you to pay for it. If you refuse to pay for it, you're breaking the law. That's not boycotting. Now if you believe the law to be fundamentally unjust, then it's civil disobedience to break that law. What were you missing?
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting... i have to admit, I'm curious what task you might be referring to in OS X.
Haha, awesome... this is like geek S&M--getting off from near-impossible transcoding tasks, or maybe finding or building incomprehensibly insane adapters, like HDMI-to-Virtual Boy plugs.
*wipes tear from eye* oh man. hahahaha. thank you.
Kindly note that I never claimed they didn't. I asked for substantiation. Get a grip.
The computer pets of which you speak don't "simulate" emotions -- they model the visible effects of emotions, which very easily affect us, and communicate emotively to us. But there's no underlying mechanism that these simulated emotional signifiers are a result of. You use the word "implement," which to me suggests the use of a model or algorithm to simulate an effect, as opposed to building the actual machine itself (easier said than done, I'm well aware). When we able to construct a fully developed, very large scale neural net, I suspect that "emotions," which stem from the same basis as everything else we call "intelligence," will be a natural result of the mechanism.
But anyway, I appreciate and agree with the essence of your comment, but perhaps for different reasons. I always thought it was interesting and funny that people took so readily to the idea that androids, which are capable of every other human ability, lack for some reason the ability to "feel" or "emote." Fascinating assumption, really. I wonder if it's kind of a natural protective element--maybe it's too scary for people to imagine that if you can make a machine that thinks and perceives like a human, it will naturally "feel" the same way a human does. So saying that robots can't feel--cry, commiserate, comfort, get angry, hate, etc.--is a way of keeping that division between humanity and the shadowy maybe-humanity that we could very well be on the verge of discovering (-slash- inventing).
I agree-- when I started reading it, I was expecting the worst. Through the first half, though, I thought, "Hey, maybe I was wrong after all!" It seemed like it might be interesting and exciting in the way the old ones were. But then somewhere along the line it just took a dive, both into implausibility and downright silliness. By the end it was clear he had just given up the effort. Oh well.
You'd better substantiate how they "kill" people.
Right here -- though something broke on it a looong time ago. I must have stopped using it by that time because I never tried very hard to see what was wrong with it. I got mine while I worked at an Office Depot in high school... and let's just say it was... heavily discounted ;)
"Now this is made from a space-age fabric specially designed for Elvis. Sweat actually cleans this suit!"
X-D
--ted
I'll chime in here on the digital camera portion. I was looking for a highly compact camera that offered full manual operation (as I'm a photographer as well as designer) and I'll tell you what--the Samsung NV10 I got has been fantastic. Excellent, excellent device in all ways and has a very innovative, fast and functional interface. For the price I honestly don't think it can be beat. I highly recommend it all around.
Heh, I originally meant that as a marijuana joke, but yes, good point X-)
A hash is derived from a data set, but can't be used to generate/(re)construct a data set... so I can't imagine how possessing a hash has any illegal basis. Depending on the kind of hash, I guess...
--tedb0t
Honestly, I will never understand why people who identify as {geeks | techies | IT workers | etc} undervalue or often deliberately devalue creativity, as though it's useless, functionless, unimportant. It's true that it's hard and takes practice and work, but that's never stopped us before. If there is one thing I wish I could teach the world, it's that creativity is a good thing, and that it can be learned. But as long as so many people think of it as some kind of impregnable domain of "artists," instead of an ability open to anyone, I won't hold my breath.
:-/
--Tedb0t
Yay! I'd mod you if I had 'em :)
Dammit, and all this time I've been decrying the impossible magical 3-d photo processing in Blade Runner! Curse my skepticism!
--Tedb0t
Brilliant! I love it! X-D
Yes. In addition to the links in the above responses, also see: http://www.instructables.com/id/Interactive-Multitouch-Display/, which uses that exact method.
Simple and effective!
So while, yes, I take it on a kind of faith that various scientific theories are accurate models of reality, there are some pretty damn good reasons that I trust them. Religious people have, by definition, no reason to trust god. There is no evidence, and what evidence some religious people might dig up would never be reproduceable or verifiable. Or if someone were to say, "the evidence is all around you," their model of reality still offers no logical explanation of why or how.
Anyway, I (once again) no longer use the word faith with regard to science because faith implies belief without evidence or reason.
--Ted
Man, I'm glad to read your post--I work in mixed environments all the time, and mix a broad range of everyday tasks (from motion graphics to programming to remote administration of linux boxes, etc etc) and every day I'm impressed how easily I can shuffle all this on OS X. I know lots of professional programmers who swear by macs as development platforms. Hear hear!
Seriously-- I can't help but think that the people who tag this as "wasteoftime" are the same people who sit in their basements consuming instead of creating, who convince themselves that any activity beyond console games and doritos are a waste of time. Sigh.
Hahahaha, I can totally appreciate that. Sad to see the tag didn't make it ;)
Uh, heh, if you're obtaining copyrighted music, the law obligates you to obtain the license for it, which most often obligates you to pay for it. If you refuse to pay for it, you're breaking the law. That's not boycotting. Now if you believe the law to be fundamentally unjust, then it's civil disobedience to break that law. What were you missing?
--Ted
Holy shit, that seriously made me laugh out loud. FTW! --ted