The question is; why do people buy so much widescreens?
As another poster said, side-by-side windows. I never bought into dual monitors, but I love widescreen. I also use it to watch movies and play console games.
it's installers and a couple other apps you'd expect which need admin rights.
Don't you think it's a problem that the installer for an application needs admin rights? You're giving admin rights to application code, even if it is "just" for the install.
The picture you painted, one of conspiratorial sound editing to take down politician because of his policies, is not supported. The reason for the different versions is stated right in the article you linked to:
"The television crews recording the event plug into an audio source picking up Dean's microphone, not the sound of the room. The cameras focus in to a tight shot of the candidate, not the rest of the room.... The Iowa speech has become a problem because Dean's aides either failed to recognize or failed to convince their candidate that when he speaks to a roomful of people, he is not speaking to a roomful of people: he is speaking to a television camera. That camera might pick up an entire speech, but it will only disseminate sound bites; quick, interesting, entertaining, news-making sound bites."
And that's true for any candidate. The news guys always play to the sound bites. And that speech, punctuated by that scream, was one hell of a sound bite.
his campaign was derailed by carefully applying sound editing to a campaign speech he made in Iowa to make it look like he was some sort of wild crazy man
I've never heard of any such allegation of sound editing. Do you have a credible source for this? It should be easy to prove. There must have been multiple recordings from different news outlets.
Does FSF buy hardware from companies who distribute hardware without source? How can they do that if they're following their principles?
They are the Free Software Foundation. The difference between software and hardware is that software can be changed by the end user. It's a reasonable place to draw a line, even if they probably would prefer to have the hardware opened too.
If PC's adopted an OpenFirmware-like model the distros could push the job of firmware updates off to the end-user/manufacturer relationship with an appropriate toolkit. FSF would be a natural entity to lobby for such change.
I can't see them lobbying for such a change if the end result is more devices without source code for the software. One of the early motivations behind the FSF was Stallman not being able to get the source code for a printer driver.
FSF's non-blob criteria is incompatible with being able to boot modern PC's on modern CPU's.
A binary blob is a binary blob. If there's source code behind that blob, then how could they follow their principles and say it's ok? Debian has finally stopped shipping binary blobs too, by the way.
If this was really a concern they'd work hard on advancing the PC architecture to the point that it didn't need such reliance on firmware uploaders.
What you say makes sense, but from a practical perspective we want to keep information that we have already gained, instead of having it turn into random data. So in the sense that information is a particular instance of a collection of bits, the thermodynamic entropy of the universe acts against that information.
I don't know if it's enough or not if the robot learns in a human environment. I'm just giving the most compelling example of a robot that I would consider sentient and thinking.
How many humans ask that question on their own without first hearing some varient from someone else or from a book?
I would suspect a lot. I remember as a child pondering my existence, certainly before I read any philosophy books, and I don't recall hearing it from somebody else. Consider that, as far as I know, every culture has some sort of religion or mythology that tries to explain existence. It seems a natural question that falls out of "why?", applied to self.
If an expert system is fed a load of philosophy books and come out with that as a request for additional information when you pose it a problem does that count?
No, because existential angst is one of the backbones of philosophy. Let's say the machine intelligence evolved from a primitive state in a simulated environment, without being fed human ideas. Examples would be robots learning to play soccer on their own, or robots eating "food" and avoiding "poison".
The problem is that people insist on making up special labels to distinguish themselves from other machines and then make those labels recursive.
None of the definitions you gave mentioned a human requirement.
the definitions of thought and conciousness are even recursive.
You'll find that's true for every definition in the dictionary.
So how do we know when we've created a machine consciousness?
As I said, a machine coming up with the question of "what is the meaning of my existence" on its own would be proof enough for me, and I suspect for most people as well. I suspect even you would hesitate to dismiss it so easily if faced with such a reality.
How many people died prematurely thanks to living in unhealthy condition under US-backed governments in Africa alone?
I'm still waiting for your numbers and citations.
Even Cuban missile crisis was not in any way worse than US placing its missiles across the border from USSR in friendly Turkey
I never said US wasn't meddling in a similar fashion. However, the USSR did meddle in Cuba by trying to place those missiles there.
Afghanistan, on the other hand, was across the border from USSR, and was a direct threat to USSR territory
Ridiculous. Direct threat implies they were going to invade the USSR. No such thing was going to happen. It's like the United States invading Mexico while it is having a revolution, claiming there is a "direct threat". See how easy it is to make excuses for your own government's behavior?
What US is doing there is somewhere on the scale between "pointless" and "colonialism".
The US was attacked by a terrorist network enjoying the full sanction of the Taliban.
But of course even good expert systems are just running an algorithm, there's nothing special going on. No thinking.
And you're brain is just a machine, an algorithm, made from atoms, firing off electrons. Just like the robot built to swim, the machine can be built to think.
Which people, especially the programmers who know what's going on underneath, generally don't accept.
It's a matter of debate. There is no generally accepted position on the matter.
Maybe you didn't. However, your comment was very similar to this one:
valeo 21-Aug-10 8:11am "At issue is Dalvik, the unique, Java-based runtime at the heart of Google's Android smartphone OS."
Since when is Dalvik Java-based? Hint: it's not. It's a virtual machine that executes Android's (or rather Google's) own bytecode format. It does not execute Java bytecode, so labelling it as Java-based is at best misleading, and pure Oracle-supporting FUD at worst.
What's the point in reading the rest of the article when its author can't even do some minimal research and get correct facts in to the first sentence of the article?
Thanks for reminding me why I'm no longer an InfoWorld subscriber.
Three points of similarity, if worded differently:
"What's the point in reading the rest of the article" -> "stopped reading"
"It does not execute Java bytecode" -> "It doesn't even run Java byte codes"
asking if a computer can think is like asking if a machine can swim.
That's a corrupted version of Dijkstra's talking about the irrelevance of asking if submarines swim. I raise this point because let's say you built a human robot that swam using the same mechanics as humans. Of course then people would say it was swimming. Hence a machine can swim.
Similarly, if a machine appears to be doing something that we would call thinking, then there's no reason to say it isn't thinking.
If a machine comes up with the question "what is the meaning of my existence" on it's own, would you claim it wasn't sentient?
Slashdot Mirror
Methyl hydrate apocalypse averted?
Wasn't this the ecological disaster foretold in Ergo Proxy?
The question is; why do people buy so much widescreens?
As another poster said, side-by-side windows. I never bought into dual monitors, but I love widescreen. I also use it to watch movies and play console games.
it's installers and a couple other apps you'd expect which need admin rights.
Don't you think it's a problem that the installer for an application needs admin rights? You're giving admin rights to application code, even if it is "just" for the install.
The nice thing about GRUB2 is that it can support higher resolution images for the boot menu background.
Of all the features I'd be looking for in a boot loader, this is not one of them.
The picture you painted, one of conspiratorial sound editing to take down politician because of his policies, is not supported. The reason for the different versions is stated right in the article you linked to:
"The television crews recording the event plug into an audio source picking up Dean's microphone, not the sound of the room. The cameras focus in to a tight shot of the candidate, not the rest of the room. ... The Iowa speech has become a problem because Dean's aides either failed to recognize or failed to convince their candidate that when he speaks to a roomful of people, he is not speaking to a roomful of people: he is speaking to a television camera. That camera might pick up an entire speech, but it will only disseminate sound bites; quick, interesting, entertaining, news-making sound bites."
And that's true for any candidate. The news guys always play to the sound bites. And that speech, punctuated by that scream, was one hell of a sound bite.
(Going against my rule, and replying even though it will risk my karma a lot)...
I wish people would just make their posts without playing the karma card.
his campaign was derailed by carefully applying sound editing to a campaign speech he made in Iowa to make it look like he was some sort of wild crazy man
I've never heard of any such allegation of sound editing. Do you have a credible source for this? It should be easy to prove. There must have been multiple recordings from different news outlets.
Ok, those are good examples.
Does FSF buy hardware from companies who distribute hardware without source? How can they do that if they're following their principles?
They are the Free Software Foundation. The difference between software and hardware is that software can be changed by the end user. It's a reasonable place to draw a line, even if they probably would prefer to have the hardware opened too.
If PC's adopted an OpenFirmware-like model the distros could push the job of firmware updates off to the end-user/manufacturer relationship with an appropriate toolkit. FSF would be a natural entity to lobby for such change.
I can't see them lobbying for such a change if the end result is more devices without source code for the software. One of the early motivations behind the FSF was Stallman not being able to get the source code for a printer driver.
FSF's non-blob criteria is incompatible with being able to boot modern PC's on modern CPU's.
A binary blob is a binary blob. If there's source code behind that blob, then how could they follow their principles and say it's ok? Debian has finally stopped shipping binary blobs too, by the way.
If this was really a concern they'd work hard on advancing the PC architecture to the point that it didn't need such reliance on firmware uploaders.
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw
I don't know just how much you expect out of the FSF. I don't think they have the resources to do much else.
What you say makes sense, but from a practical perspective we want to keep information that we have already gained, instead of having it turn into random data. So in the sense that information is a particular instance of a collection of bits, the thermodynamic entropy of the universe acts against that information.
Hmm, ok. It just seems counter-intuitive to call random data information.
We know that the entropy of the universe always increases. Therefore the information in the universe also increases.
Shouldn't that be that information decreases?
There was a /. story not long ago about a white-hat company that utterly destroyed a botnet.
If you're thinking if this story, it was a research professor, and the botnet was eventually allowed to be retaken.
I don't know if it's enough or not if the robot learns in a human environment. I'm just giving the most compelling example of a robot that I would consider sentient and thinking.
How many humans ask that question on their own without first hearing some varient from someone else or from a book?
I would suspect a lot. I remember as a child pondering my existence, certainly before I read any philosophy books, and I don't recall hearing it from somebody else. Consider that, as far as I know, every culture has some sort of religion or mythology that tries to explain existence. It seems a natural question that falls out of "why?", applied to self.
If an expert system is fed a load of philosophy books and come out with that as a request for additional information when you pose it a problem does that count?
No, because existential angst is one of the backbones of philosophy. Let's say the machine intelligence evolved from a primitive state in a simulated environment, without being fed human ideas. Examples would be robots learning to play soccer on their own, or robots eating "food" and avoiding "poison".
The problem is that people insist on making up special labels to distinguish themselves from other machines and then make those labels recursive.
None of the definitions you gave mentioned a human requirement.
the definitions of thought and conciousness are even recursive.
You'll find that's true for every definition in the dictionary.
So how do we know when we've created a machine consciousness?
As I said, a machine coming up with the question of "what is the meaning of my existence" on its own would be proof enough for me, and I suspect for most people as well. I suspect even you would hesitate to dismiss it so easily if faced with such a reality.
More like 70 millions, actually.
As I said, estimates vary widely.
How many people died prematurely thanks to living in unhealthy condition under US-backed governments in Africa alone?
I'm still waiting for your numbers and citations.
Even Cuban missile crisis was not in any way worse than US placing its missiles across the border from USSR in friendly Turkey
I never said US wasn't meddling in a similar fashion. However, the USSR did meddle in Cuba by trying to place those missiles there.
Afghanistan, on the other hand, was across the border from USSR, and was a direct threat to USSR territory
Ridiculous. Direct threat implies they were going to invade the USSR. No such thing was going to happen. It's like the United States invading Mexico while it is having a revolution, claiming there is a "direct threat". See how easy it is to make excuses for your own government's behavior?
What US is doing there is somewhere on the scale between "pointless" and "colonialism".
The US was attacked by a terrorist network enjoying the full sanction of the Taliban.
But of course even good expert systems are just running an algorithm, there's nothing special going on. No thinking.
And you're brain is just a machine, an algorithm, made from atoms, firing off electrons. Just like the robot built to swim, the machine can be built to think.
Which people, especially the programmers who know what's going on underneath, generally don't accept.
It's a matter of debate. There is no generally accepted position on the matter.
Maybe you didn't. However, your comment was very similar to this one:
valeo 21-Aug-10 8:11am
"At issue is Dalvik, the unique, Java-based runtime at the heart of Google's Android smartphone OS."
Since when is Dalvik Java-based? Hint: it's not. It's a virtual machine that executes Android's (or rather Google's) own bytecode format. It does not execute Java bytecode, so labelling it as Java-based is at best misleading, and pure Oracle-supporting FUD at worst.
What's the point in reading the rest of the article when its author can't even do some minimal research and get correct facts in to the first sentence of the article?
Thanks for reminding me why I'm no longer an InfoWorld subscriber.
Three points of similarity, if worded differently:
I hope you are either joking or not a native English speaker. Sometimes the humor is so dry on Slashdot that I just can't tell.
Creating THE FIRST sentient machine is a hard task.
We have already been created.
After intelligence becomes easily scalable, the next generation of AIs is a breeze.
It may not be easily scalable. There might even be a law of diminishing returns.
Now, I survey the reality television landscape and realize that maybe killer mutants with shouldpads and mohawks wouldn't have been so bad after all.
Try changing the channel in a Mad Max world.
Even we on Earth are already emitting more electromagnetic radiation than the sun and it is *not* random noise.
Apparently you skipped Physics class when the instructor explained that light was electromagnetic radiation.
asking if a computer can think is like asking if a machine can swim.
That's a corrupted version of Dijkstra's talking about the irrelevance of asking if submarines swim. I raise this point because let's say you built a human robot that swam using the same mechanics as humans. Of course then people would say it was swimming. Hence a machine can swim.
Similarly, if a machine appears to be doing something that we would call thinking, then there's no reason to say it isn't thinking.
If a machine comes up with the question "what is the meaning of my existence" on it's own, would you claim it wasn't sentient?