Ambition, desire, love, hate, or anything else. I didn't use the term "independently" in a very strict sense.
It's true that any kind of goal-setting can be traced back to some kind of external stimulus, but in the case of humans, the process is not entirely rational, or based on logic. This does not mean that true A.I. should be irrational, but it should have a degree of spontaneity.
How spontaneity is defined or implemented - that is difficult to say.
I agree; this has nothing to do with the 'Intelligent Robots' or androids envisioned by Asimov.
The kind of artificial intelligence that robots of today have is poor compared to that in Asimov's stories. A true AI would be able to independently set goals for itself, unlike mechanical bots that take orders, or perform one of many well-defined actions.
If someone tries to sell you a smart robot that "does A, B, C..." then rest assured that it is another boring bot. It is the unpredictability that lends credence to AI.
There are certain advantages to learning C# over Visual Basic. A beginner attempting to learn a language has to be taught concepts of programming, rather than syntax. No skilled programmer would have much difficulty picking up VB.NET or C#, because it is only a question of undestanding the syntax.
When you learn C#, you learn a programming paradigm based on the object-oriented top-down approach. In contrast VB.NET wavers between event-driven and object-oriented paradigms, although not as much as VB.
In fact, I would recommend learning C# without the help of the VS.NET IDE, at least for sometime in the beginning. At a later stage, productivity takes precedence over abilities, and the programmer can make use of whichever language is most convenient in the working environment.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen!
Moons are not rare per se, but moons that are a fourth of the planet's size are indeed rare.
Based on what?
Ambition, desire, love, hate, or anything else. I didn't use the term "independently" in a very strict sense.
It's true that any kind of goal-setting can be traced back to some kind of external stimulus, but in the case of humans, the process is not entirely rational, or based on logic. This does not mean that true A.I. should be irrational, but it should have a degree of spontaneity.
How spontaneity is defined or implemented - that is difficult to say.
I agree; this has nothing to do with the 'Intelligent Robots' or androids envisioned by Asimov.
The kind of artificial intelligence that robots of today have is poor compared to that in Asimov's stories. A true AI would be able to independently set goals for itself, unlike mechanical bots that take orders, or perform one of many well-defined actions.
If someone tries to sell you a smart robot that "does A, B, C..." then rest assured that it is another boring bot. It is the unpredictability that lends credence to AI.
There are certain advantages to learning C# over Visual Basic. A beginner attempting to learn a language has to be taught concepts of programming, rather than syntax. No skilled programmer would have much difficulty picking up VB.NET or C#, because it is only a question of undestanding the syntax.
When you learn C#, you learn a programming paradigm based on the object-oriented top-down approach. In contrast VB.NET wavers between event-driven and object-oriented paradigms, although not as much as VB.
In fact, I would recommend learning C# without the help of the VS.NET IDE, at least for sometime in the beginning. At a later stage, productivity takes precedence over abilities, and the programmer can make use of whichever language is most convenient in the working environment.
There's a major differnce between being available online and having a social life. Social interaction has a lot more involved than simply communicating in words. Here's my take on this: http://junkland.n3rds.net/archives/28-Communicatio n-In-A-Connected-World.html
Many people, and that includes me, can do perfectly well without a firewall, anti-spyware or anti-virus. These are hardly indicators of "security".
It's much more useful to think twice before opening weird emails or installing crappy software.