You have to create a learning robot and teach it to think.
If you have to "teach" it to think, it isn't thinking. Nobody taught you to think, thought is built in. You're probably thinking even before you leave the womb. Thought is an emergent thing.
Long story short I spent 3.5 years on Linux as my primary desktop before I gave up the fight and switched to Win7.
Interesting. What were you fighting that made you want to switch back to Windows? I haven't looked back since I discovered Mandrake (I'm on kubuntu now). Were you using Gnome, or a server distro for a desktop? Either one would exlain it (I hate Gnome).
40? Pah. I'm 55 and we've just had twins. Sure, its hard. Physically exhausting, nope.
Well no, not if it's your wife who has to get up at 3:00 AM to feed the baby. But most modern men are a lot better than that. You can say with a straight face that you can get up in the middle of the night and still be productive at work? I did it at 35 and it was hell.
When I worked at Disney, a fellow I worked with was a retired police officer. He referred to himself as an "ex-cop". A musician I met once named Dwayne Mahoney also referred to himself as an "ex-cop", he had resigned his police job in New York to seek fame in California (he did later).
"Ex" simply refers to "used to be". As in "I used to be married to my ex-wife".
A little checking finds no dictionary definition (except the urban dictionary, which isn't a real dictionar in my eyes), ask.com says "No such thing. Once a Marine, always a Marine."
The US marine birthplace memorial web site says
Once a Marine, Always a Marine: This truism was adopted as the official motto of the Marine Corps League. The origin of the statement is credited to a gung-ho Marine Corps Master Sergeant, Paul Woyshner. During a barroom argument he shouted, "Once a Marine, always a Marine!" MSgt. Woyshner was right. Once the title "U.S. Marine" has been earned, it is retained. There are no ex-Marines or former-Marines. There are (1) active duty Marines, (2) retired Marines, (3) reserve Marines, and (4) Marine veterans. Nonetheless, once one has earned the title, he remains a Marine for life.
So one doesn't have to be fired from the police force to be an ex-cop, you can split peacefully from your ex-wife (it happens sometimes), but you can't be an ex-marine.
Excuse me, Mr Strawman, but nobody is blaming Microsoft for what third party apps are doing to your computer. And Adobe Flash crashes at least four times a day on my Windows box, I always click the link to send an error report, but guess what? Nothing has been fixed. Yet you actually believe MS is going to do anything about third part apps? Or that they even CAN?
Now new technology comes along and offers a more diverse music repertoire and the possibility of buying that single song
Gees, you kids today... the single was introduced in 1949. They came on roughly CD-sized platters (well, slightly larger than a CD).
and *GASP* radio jockeys that aren't yoked into playing the same goddamn song over and over again.
And yet this, too, came from the past. In the 1950s it was illegal for a record company to pay to have songs played, yet the labels bribed disk jockeys all the time. There was a big scandal about that called "payola" when I was a kid. To someone my age, the idea that a radio station would have to pay to play a labels' song is really, really weird and backwards. It's like a TV station having to pay Ford to run Ford commercials. If nobody hears your song, nobody is going to buy your song. Airplay is advertising.
Why are you dumb kids letting the MAFIAA win? Stand up, damn it!
Actually, the anti-vaxxer movement could be a fantastic way of getting dumbfuck retards out of the gene pool.
Where your reasoning fails is that most mental retardation is not the result of genetics, but instead the result of pregnancy complications. The mentally retarded seldom have children of their own.
And on top of that, none of these diseases kill every victim. I have a friend who caught polio right about the time the Sauk vaccine was being developed, and he's still around, although he has a couple of disabilities.
And in every place I've seen, public school systems won't let an unvaccinated child attend, although that probably doesn't apply to private and religious schools.
There is nothing artificial about a neural network's intelligence.
True, but the intelligence doesn't come from complexity, it's the designers' and programmer's intelligence that makes it seem intelligent. The Encyclopedia Britannica is full of facts and data, but a book is not intelligent.
A house fly, dog, or penguin doesn't have as complex a neural network as you likely do, but this does not make them Artificially Intelligent simply because their degree of intellect and awareness is less than your own.
No, but they are still not only intelligent to some degree, but sentient as well. Computers are not.
Your brains are not special.
Of course they are. All brains are. Thought from a chemical reaction is, as far as anyone can tell, incredibly special.
Any sufficiently complex interaction is indistinguishable from sentience, because that IS what sentience is.
I cannot prove my own sentience, nor can I prove anyone else's sentience. I think, therefore I am, but the fact that I think is unprovable. And if "Any sufficiently complex interaction is indistinguishable from sentience," then the galaxy itself is sentient, because it's far, far more complex than you or I. The statement "complexity == intelligence" is simply absurd on the face of it.
You can simulate an atomic explosion, but it's a simulation. There is no real radiation and no real blast, simply a simulated blast with simulated radiation. It's not real. It's not even an artificial explosion, its simply a simulated explosion. Simulation is not reality.
Thought is a chemical reaction. You're not going to duplicate a chemical reaction of any kind using electronics no matter what kind of electronics you use. Blade Runner's replicants are sentient, Star Trek's Data is not. If you knew anything at all about how computers actually work (down to the level of the gates on the chip and yes, I've studied it) or about neurology (which I know relatively little about) you would know that the idea of an intelligent computer is absurd.
Mod parent up? Mod parent DOWN. WTF is jstor.org? The Penn State U would have been a good one had it actually addressed the subject, which it did not. But how about the definitive citation?
Definition of STUPID 1a : slow of mind : obtuse b : given to unintelligent decisions or acts : acting in an unintelligent or careless manner c : lacking intelligence or reason : brutish 2: dulled in feeling or sensation : torpid 3: marked by or resulting from unreasoned thinking or acting : senseless 4a : lacking interest or point b : vexatious, exasperating â" stuÂpidÂly adverb â" stuÂpidÂness noun
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Definition of IGNORANT 1a : destitute of knowledge or education ; also : lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified b : resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence 2: unaware, uninformed â" igÂnoÂrantÂly adverb â" igÂnoÂrantÂness noun
You can cure ignorance, but there's no cure for stupidity.
I don't stream music in my vehicle because it is not worth the hassle.
What hassle? Just plug the MP3 player (or phone or computer) into your cassette adaptor, put it in the cassette, and listen. Gees, if that's a hassle, driving to work must be a REAL pain in the ass for you!
Yes, a cassette adapter and bluethooth plugin would solve it, but I'm not interested
That's so illogical it's retarded.
Oh, and it is a chore - a genuine chore - to find anything new that is interesting.
Dude, either you're having a real bad day like your dog died or something or you're clinically depressed. It seems like every tiny little thing is a chore and not worth the hassle.
Not everything needs an evolutionary advantage to exist.
Are you sure of that? I can't think of any other trait in any species that doesn't help survival and reproduction. A trait that isn't selected for would surely die out after enough generations. And music is so powerful for us now, it couldn't simply be the result of one minor mutation.
Music may have co evolved with the structures required for language
But as I pointed out, language evolved long before we were human. Of course, it could have co-evolved with something else.
Whalesong" redirects here. For the student newspaper, see University of Alaska Southeast#Publications.
Humpback whales are well known for their songs[citation needed]Whale sounds are the sounds made by whales and which are used for different kinds of communication.[1]
The mechanisms used to produce sound vary from one family of cetaceans to another. Marine mammals, such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises, are much more dependent on sound for communication and sensation than are land mammals, because other senses are of limited effectiveness in water.... The word "song" is used to describe the pattern of regular and predictable sounds made by some species of whales, notably the Humpback Whale. This is included with or in comparison with music, and male humpback whales have been described as "inveterate composers" of songs that are "'strikingly similar' to human musical traditions".[3] Male Humpback whales sing only on calving grounds and only in the mating period and humpback songs are similar, almost identical, within a single population. It has been suggested that humpback songs communicate male fitness to female whales.[4] The click sounds made by Sperm whales and dolphins are not strictly song, but the clicking sequences have been suggested to be individualized rhythmic sequences that communicate the identity of a single whale to other whales in its group and allows the groups to coordinate foraging activities.[5]
Until very recently it was thought that birds sing, but a recent study showed that isn't the case. AFAIK no similar study has been done on whale song.
Cat ownership is linked to cats. People who don't own cats are far less likely to come in contact with their excrement. If cat owners have no more cancers than non-cat owners, then you can't say there's a link between cats and cancer, which is exactly what TFA said.
Provably by the same standard that all other political discussions are proved -- based upon available data.
That was my point -- just like the metric of "how many people smoke pot" there are no good data on charitable giving. Consider, though, that a synonym for "liberal" is "generous" (liberal portions) and a synonym for "conservative" is "stingy". Of course, that's only one of many differring synonyms for each word.
Collecting 100% of the income from the rich, would not come close to eliminating the deficit.
True. It shows that spending cuts AND more taxes are needed. Unless they get in another war or spending frenzy, revenue goes up in boom times because the more people are employed, the more they're paying taxes. We're paying for two of the longest wars in our history right now, which is the principal cause of the defecit; notice the budget was balanced until 911?
I wouldn't want to see taxes as high for the rich as they were under Truman, but 15% for a stock market gambler in a safe air conditioned office is WAY too low, considering a roofer risking his life in the hot sun and actually creating wealth rather than shuffling it from hand to hand pays far more in tax is insane.
Your Heritage Foundation link is firewalled off for "politics/opinion". Perhaps you have a less biased link? Like the New York Times ("By this measure, federal taxes are at their lowest level in more than 60 years") or CBS News ("High Taxes? Actually, They're at a 60-Year Low"). In fact, look at results from Google, with a few exceptions like dailykos, they're all highly respected mainstream outlets.
The Reagan tax *rate* cuts (and loophole elimination) greatly increased federal tax revenues
Think about that for a moment. Rate cuts reduce revenue. It was the loophole elimination that increased revenue.
Over two years (2010 and 2011), Romney's total income was $42.5 million. He paid $6.2 million in taxes in gave away $7 million to charity.
What he gave to charity has no bearing on his taxes, except that he can deduct it (and note this in his religion, he is demanded to tithe 10%, as opposed to most Christian faiths that merely suggest 10% and demand nothing). He said himself (you probably saw the clip youself) that he never paid less than 13% in the last ten years. He, himself said he paid 13%.
Also, don't forget that most of that income was capital gains, which are the funds that drive economic expansion. Sounds more than fair to me.
That's right. How are you going to expand economically without the roofer creating that wealth he's investing (or gambling, unless they are investments that are being held). Selling your stock does nothing to drive economic expansion, buying it does. Yet you don't get the break from buying, you get the break from selling. Taxing capital gains as income would reduce the incentive to simply be a parasitic gambler and ionstead be an incentive for long-term investing. These guys that buy 1000 shares of PG&E on Monday and sell them at a profit on Tuesday (or even a second later) are parasites.
Why do you think it's more moral to take money away from those that earned it rather than letting them keep it?
How do you consider gambling "earing your money"? I consider someone either producing wealth (the fry cook, programmer, roofer) or someone in a related, non-producing but necessary job (the IT staff, upper management, accountant) as earning their money.
When a guy buys a lottery ticket and wins, I don't consider that "earning". If a talented professional poker player comes home from the casino with $10k, he didn't earn it, either. The day trader is no different.
If you want to stimulate investment, reward the buying of shares (perhaps with a tax credit or dedu
I had the exact opposite experience. I felt just the slightest buzz and a woman I was going to give a ride to said she thought I was drunk, so I let her drive. She drove like a maniac! At a stop light I yanked the keys, got out of the car, and told her she wasn't driving any more. She refused to get out, so I hit the "panic" button on the remote.
I explained it to the cops when they showed up, and they tested us both. I had a.085, the cop said if I'd had half a beer less I could have driven home (my daughter had to come and get me and the car, she was PISSED). The woman who was driving my car had a BAC of.37 !
So now I know, tiny buzz = walk or call a cab. "Buzzed driving is drunk driving."
The breathalyzer at the bar you were at may have been defective, or calibrated low deliberately so as to avoid lawsuits. The cops have theirs calibrated for accuracy often. They were giving away BAC computers a few years ago, which were cardboard circles with marks and numbers that worked on the same principle as a slide rule. A 160 pound person who drinks three beers in an hour, five beers in two hours or six beers in three hours is borderline.
Then there's drug tolerance. I know a woman who walked to the hospital with a BAC over.4, that's twice enough alcohol to kill most people, but she was a heavy whiskey drinker. She wouldn't even feel a buzz after a six pack in an hour, but she'd be legally drunk. She would have been more dangerous driving with a 0.0 because of the DTs.
Levels of PC literacy among the young have been dropping sharply for a decade.
Interesting, I hadn't heard that. Do you have a link?
Percentage of households with a traditional PC are down almost 16%
How would they determine that metric? Are you sure it's not sales of new PCs are down 16%? That is a metric that can be measured, and it makes sense -- there have been no new "killer apps" that require a better computer for a long time. But it's hard to believe that 16% of households are just throwing their perfectly functional computers away.
PC replacement cycle is up from about 2-3 years to 5-7 years and still increasing.
Yes, for the reason I mentioned. If you already have a computer that does everything you want it to, why would you replace it?
Software replacement cycles are now increasing with fewer people willing to pay for later versions.
This is logical as well. If it ain't broke, why fix it? The only reason to upgrade your MS Office is because the other guy did and now you can't read his documents any more, and folks may be getting wise. Ten or fifteen years ago, an upgrade usually brought you a better product, but it's pretty much mature by now. What new features could you put in a word processor that would actually be useful?
In many households, tablets and phones make the need for a PC moot, which might explain some of it, but you're not going to see PCs replaced in businesses any time soon. But as with the home user, they're not going to upgrade unless they really need to.
I'm willing to bet real money that if you took a sampling of 1000 prisoners (guilty of robbery) and showed them the video, 990 would believe it was a real laser security system.
You realize that the ones in prison are the dumbest 10% of the criminals? That leaves the 90% who are smart enough to not get caught.
If the criminal was sophisticated enough to know better, chances are they would walk into the place in broad daylight and use social engineering instead.
If this was for a business rather than a home, they'll have additional security (like a real alarm system). Now tell me, how is a stranger going to social engineer his way into your home?
I have a wireless mouse/keyboard combo from them, and it's worked fine for ten years now. The keyboard is having some problems, but that's because I left the batteries in so long they crystalized and leaked; I'm going to have to disassemble it, but it's my own fault. I should have removed the batteries.
No, it's much more complex than that. There isn't an on-off electrical signal like a computer, there are different chemicals in varying quantities passing info from one neuron to another. The harder I squeeze your hand, the higher the quantity of neurotransmitter travels through the nerve. It is analog. Thought is a complex chemical reaction, not a bunch of and/or gates.
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You have to create a learning robot and teach it to think.
If you have to "teach" it to think, it isn't thinking. Nobody taught you to think, thought is built in. You're probably thinking even before you leave the womb. Thought is an emergent thing.
Long story short I spent 3.5 years on Linux as my primary desktop before I gave up the fight and switched to Win7.
Interesting. What were you fighting that made you want to switch back to Windows? I haven't looked back since I discovered Mandrake (I'm on kubuntu now). Were you using Gnome, or a server distro for a desktop? Either one would exlain it (I hate Gnome).
40? Pah. I'm 55 and we've just had twins. Sure, its hard. Physically exhausting, nope.
Well no, not if it's your wife who has to get up at 3:00 AM to feed the baby. But most modern men are a lot better than that. You can say with a straight face that you can get up in the middle of the night and still be productive at work? I did it at 35 and it was hell.
When I worked at Disney, a fellow I worked with was a retired police officer. He referred to himself as an "ex-cop". A musician I met once named Dwayne Mahoney also referred to himself as an "ex-cop", he had resigned his police job in New York to seek fame in California (he did later).
"Ex" simply refers to "used to be". As in "I used to be married to my ex-wife".
A little checking finds no dictionary definition (except the urban dictionary, which isn't a real dictionar in my eyes), ask.com says "No such thing. Once a Marine, always a Marine."
The US marine birthplace memorial web site says
So one doesn't have to be fired from the police force to be an ex-cop, you can split peacefully from your ex-wife (it happens sometimes), but you can't be an ex-marine.
Did the X-Men all get sex change operations?
Excuse me, Mr Strawman, but nobody is blaming Microsoft for what third party apps are doing to your computer. And Adobe Flash crashes at least four times a day on my Windows box, I always click the link to send an error report, but guess what? Nothing has been fixed. Yet you actually believe MS is going to do anything about third part apps? Or that they even CAN?
But then isn't mutation the key to natural evolution?
Yes, but for every beneficial mutation, there are twn thousand dangerous ones and a million that have no discernable effect on the organism at all.
Now new technology comes along and offers a more diverse music repertoire and the possibility of buying that single song
Gees, you kids today... the single was introduced in 1949. They came on roughly CD-sized platters (well, slightly larger than a CD).
and *GASP* radio jockeys that aren't yoked into playing the same goddamn song over and over again.
And yet this, too, came from the past. In the 1950s it was illegal for a record company to pay to have songs played, yet the labels bribed disk jockeys all the time. There was a big scandal about that called "payola" when I was a kid. To someone my age, the idea that a radio station would have to pay to play a labels' song is really, really weird and backwards. It's like a TV station having to pay Ford to run Ford commercials. If nobody hears your song, nobody is going to buy your song. Airplay is advertising.
Why are you dumb kids letting the MAFIAA win? Stand up, damn it!
Actually, the anti-vaxxer movement could be a fantastic way of getting dumbfuck retards out of the gene pool.
Where your reasoning fails is that most mental retardation is not the result of genetics, but instead the result of pregnancy complications. The mentally retarded seldom have children of their own.
And on top of that, none of these diseases kill every victim. I have a friend who caught polio right about the time the Sauk vaccine was being developed, and he's still around, although he has a couple of disabilities.
And in every place I've seen, public school systems won't let an unvaccinated child attend, although that probably doesn't apply to private and religious schools.
LOL @ your flamebait. The average has an IQ of 100 no matter what group you're testing.
don't really make allot of sense
That sentence didn't make a lot of sense. In fact, it's unparsable.
You don't read much except blogs by other people who also never read anything but aliterate blogs, do you?
There is nothing artificial about a neural network's intelligence.
True, but the intelligence doesn't come from complexity, it's the designers' and programmer's intelligence that makes it seem intelligent. The Encyclopedia Britannica is full of facts and data, but a book is not intelligent.
A house fly, dog, or penguin doesn't have as complex a neural network as you likely do, but this does not make them Artificially Intelligent simply because their degree of intellect and awareness is less than your own.
No, but they are still not only intelligent to some degree, but sentient as well. Computers are not.
Your brains are not special.
Of course they are. All brains are. Thought from a chemical reaction is, as far as anyone can tell, incredibly special.
Any sufficiently complex interaction is indistinguishable from sentience, because that IS what sentience is.
I cannot prove my own sentience, nor can I prove anyone else's sentience. I think, therefore I am, but the fact that I think is unprovable. And if "Any sufficiently complex interaction is indistinguishable from sentience," then the galaxy itself is sentient, because it's far, far more complex than you or I. The statement "complexity == intelligence" is simply absurd on the face of it.
You can simulate an atomic explosion, but it's a simulation. There is no real radiation and no real blast, simply a simulated blast with simulated radiation. It's not real. It's not even an artificial explosion, its simply a simulated explosion. Simulation is not reality.
Thought is a chemical reaction. You're not going to duplicate a chemical reaction of any kind using electronics no matter what kind of electronics you use. Blade Runner's replicants are sentient, Star Trek's Data is not. If you knew anything at all about how computers actually work (down to the level of the gates on the chip and yes, I've studied it) or about neurology (which I know relatively little about) you would know that the idea of an intelligent computer is absurd.
I suggest you read about the Chinese Room.
And lest you think I have something against technology, the device implanted in my left eye makes me a cyborg. I'm not 100% human.
I know this is a joke, but yes, they do, It's called "downgrade rights"
I thought it was called "Linux," or in other words, upgrade rights.
Mod parent up? Mod parent DOWN. WTF is jstor.org? The Penn State U would have been a good one had it actually addressed the subject, which it did not. But how about the definitive citation?
.
You can cure ignorance, but there's no cure for stupidity.
I don't stream music in my vehicle because it is not worth the hassle.
What hassle? Just plug the MP3 player (or phone or computer) into your cassette adaptor, put it in the cassette, and listen. Gees, if that's a hassle, driving to work must be a REAL pain in the ass for you!
Yes, a cassette adapter and bluethooth plugin would solve it, but I'm not interested
That's so illogical it's retarded.
Oh, and it is a chore - a genuine chore - to find anything new that is interesting.
Dude, either you're having a real bad day like your dog died or something or you're clinically depressed. It seems like every tiny little thing is a chore and not worth the hassle.
Not everything needs an evolutionary advantage to exist.
Are you sure of that? I can't think of any other trait in any species that doesn't help survival and reproduction. A trait that isn't selected for would surely die out after enough generations. And music is so powerful for us now, it couldn't simply be the result of one minor mutation.
Music may have co evolved with the structures required for language
But as I pointed out, language evolved long before we were human. Of course, it could have co-evolved with something else.
Wikipedia seems to disagree with you.
Until very recently it was thought that birds sing, but a recent study showed that isn't the case. AFAIK no similar study has been done on whale song.
Cat ownership is linked to cats. People who don't own cats are far less likely to come in contact with their excrement. If cat owners have no more cancers than non-cat owners, then you can't say there's a link between cats and cancer, which is exactly what TFA said.
You are correct, I don't know how I made that error. Maybe what my mom calls a "senior moment" and what samzepus calls "cerebreal flatulence."
Provably by the same standard that all other political discussions are proved -- based upon available data.
That was my point -- just like the metric of "how many people smoke pot" there are no good data on charitable giving. Consider, though, that a synonym for "liberal" is "generous" (liberal portions) and a synonym for "conservative" is "stingy". Of course, that's only one of many differring synonyms for each word.
Collecting 100% of the income from the rich, would not come close to eliminating the deficit.
True. It shows that spending cuts AND more taxes are needed. Unless they get in another war or spending frenzy, revenue goes up in boom times because the more people are employed, the more they're paying taxes. We're paying for two of the longest wars in our history right now, which is the principal cause of the defecit; notice the budget was balanced until 911?
I wouldn't want to see taxes as high for the rich as they were under Truman, but 15% for a stock market gambler in a safe air conditioned office is WAY too low, considering a roofer risking his life in the hot sun and actually creating wealth rather than shuffling it from hand to hand pays far more in tax is insane.
Your Heritage Foundation link is firewalled off for "politics/opinion". Perhaps you have a less biased link? Like the New York Times ("By this measure, federal taxes are at their lowest level in more than 60 years") or CBS News ("High Taxes? Actually, They're at a 60-Year Low"). In fact, look at results from Google, with a few exceptions like dailykos, they're all highly respected mainstream outlets.
The Reagan tax *rate* cuts (and loophole elimination) greatly increased federal tax revenues
Think about that for a moment. Rate cuts reduce revenue. It was the loophole elimination that increased revenue.
Over two years (2010 and 2011), Romney's total income was $42.5 million. He paid $6.2 million in taxes in gave away $7 million to charity.
What he gave to charity has no bearing on his taxes, except that he can deduct it (and note this in his religion, he is demanded to tithe 10%, as opposed to most Christian faiths that merely suggest 10% and demand nothing). He said himself (you probably saw the clip youself) that he never paid less than 13% in the last ten years. He, himself said he paid 13%.
Also, don't forget that most of that income was capital gains, which are the funds that drive economic expansion. Sounds more than fair to me.
That's right. How are you going to expand economically without the roofer creating that wealth he's investing (or gambling, unless they are investments that are being held). Selling your stock does nothing to drive economic expansion, buying it does. Yet you don't get the break from buying, you get the break from selling. Taxing capital gains as income would reduce the incentive to simply be a parasitic gambler and ionstead be an incentive for long-term investing. These guys that buy 1000 shares of PG&E on Monday and sell them at a profit on Tuesday (or even a second later) are parasites.
Why do you think it's more moral to take money away from those that earned it rather than letting them keep it?
How do you consider gambling "earing your money"? I consider someone either producing wealth (the fry cook, programmer, roofer) or someone in a related, non-producing but necessary job (the IT staff, upper management, accountant) as earning their money.
When a guy buys a lottery ticket and wins, I don't consider that "earning". If a talented professional poker player comes home from the casino with $10k, he didn't earn it, either. The day trader is no different.
If you want to stimulate investment, reward the buying of shares (perhaps with a tax credit or dedu
I had the exact opposite experience. I felt just the slightest buzz and a woman I was going to give a ride to said she thought I was drunk, so I let her drive. She drove like a maniac! At a stop light I yanked the keys, got out of the car, and told her she wasn't driving any more. She refused to get out, so I hit the "panic" button on the remote.
I explained it to the cops when they showed up, and they tested us both. I had a .085, the cop said if I'd had half a beer less I could have driven home (my daughter had to come and get me and the car, she was PISSED). The woman who was driving my car had a BAC of .37 !
So now I know, tiny buzz = walk or call a cab. "Buzzed driving is drunk driving."
The breathalyzer at the bar you were at may have been defective, or calibrated low deliberately so as to avoid lawsuits. The cops have theirs calibrated for accuracy often. They were giving away BAC computers a few years ago, which were cardboard circles with marks and numbers that worked on the same principle as a slide rule. A 160 pound person who drinks three beers in an hour, five beers in two hours or six beers in three hours is borderline.
Then there's drug tolerance. I know a woman who walked to the hospital with a BAC over .4, that's twice enough alcohol to kill most people, but she was a heavy whiskey drinker. She wouldn't even feel a buzz after a six pack in an hour, but she'd be legally drunk. She would have been more dangerous driving with a 0.0 because of the DTs.
Levels of PC literacy among the young have been dropping sharply for a decade.
Interesting, I hadn't heard that. Do you have a link?
Percentage of households with a traditional PC are down almost 16%
How would they determine that metric? Are you sure it's not sales of new PCs are down 16%? That is a metric that can be measured, and it makes sense -- there have been no new "killer apps" that require a better computer for a long time. But it's hard to believe that 16% of households are just throwing their perfectly functional computers away.
PC replacement cycle is up from about 2-3 years to 5-7 years and still increasing.
Yes, for the reason I mentioned. If you already have a computer that does everything you want it to, why would you replace it?
Software replacement cycles are now increasing with fewer people willing to pay for later versions.
This is logical as well. If it ain't broke, why fix it? The only reason to upgrade your MS Office is because the other guy did and now you can't read his documents any more, and folks may be getting wise. Ten or fifteen years ago, an upgrade usually brought you a better product, but it's pretty much mature by now. What new features could you put in a word processor that would actually be useful?
In many households, tablets and phones make the need for a PC moot, which might explain some of it, but you're not going to see PCs replaced in businesses any time soon. But as with the home user, they're not going to upgrade unless they really need to.
I'm willing to bet real money that if you took a sampling of 1000 prisoners (guilty of robbery) and showed them the video, 990 would believe it was a real laser security system.
You realize that the ones in prison are the dumbest 10% of the criminals? That leaves the 90% who are smart enough to not get caught.
If the criminal was sophisticated enough to know better, chances are they would walk into the place in broad daylight and use social engineering instead.
If this was for a business rather than a home, they'll have additional security (like a real alarm system). Now tell me, how is a stranger going to social engineer his way into your home?
I have a wireless mouse/keyboard combo from them, and it's worked fine for ten years now. The keyboard is having some problems, but that's because I left the batteries in so long they crystalized and leaked; I'm going to have to disassemble it, but it's my own fault. I should have removed the batteries.
IIRC I paid $75 for it. Money well spent.
Brains operate using strings of binary pulses.
No, it's much more complex than that. There isn't an on-off electrical signal like a computer, there are different chemicals in varying quantities passing info from one neuron to another. The harder I squeeze your hand, the higher the quantity of neurotransmitter travels through the nerve. It is analog. Thought is a complex chemical reaction, not a bunch of and/or gates.
Please don't feed the troll, he's too fat already.