Every time I see articles like this, I wonder why people like this have cell phones in the first place if they hate using them so much. That, and they need to realize that the world doesn't revolve around them, and that people who need to contact them shouldn't have to bow to their whims to communicate with them (I'd love to hear the conversation with their boss about why they didn't respond to a critical voicemail). Look...if someone needs to relay some information quickly, a phone call is much quicker than e-mail or texting (yes, really - not everyone has a phone with a keyboard). Just answer your damn phone!
So that's it then, huh? Just data processing? So why haven't chimpanzees come up with formalized logic? Do dogs use abstract reasoning?
I'm of the opinion that mere processing power will not resolve the issues facing so-called "strong" AI.
Give me a computer program that can learn an unknown language including abstract concepts by interacting with a human and you might be getting close. Good luck with that.
Well, apparently the relational database has been doomed for the last 20 years or so.
You'd think that the people running the thousands of systems with databases managing data on everything from bank accounts to medical records to what you bought from Wal-Mart last tuedsay would have heard the news by now and moved on to the Next Big Thing.
I won't argue with you that the "war on drugs" has some unfortunate effects, but I find that proponents of legalizing drugs haven't necessarily thought things through.
What you're wanting is for us to legitimize powerful, ruthless businessmen who have far-reaching influence in politics and an existing, entrenched supply and distribution network; a huge head-start over anyone else who wanted to enter the market.
Proponents of legalizing drugs say that we should tax them...what makes you think that people who didn't balk at bribery and murder would pay their taxes?
Assuming that they do start paying their taxes...legalizing drugs wouldn't get rid of the drug lords, it would simply allow them to openly buy the government of their choice to solidify their power, the same way big oil, the defense industry, etc. already do. How would any of this be an improvement?
The glaring hole in Dijkstra's argument is that most software is built to automate what used to be manual processes, and they therefor have to mimic a human-centric process... which is inherently illogical, inefficient and rife with nonsense.
In the world outside the ivory tower, programmers do not have the freedom to create completely logical, functionally complete programs that can be reduced to a mathematical proof.
Next time your boss comes to you with an project to write an application, show him this paper and explain that what he's asking for is "medieval thinking" and see if you can then explain to him why you should keep your job if you don't want to do it.
There are also a lot of uncompleted story lines and plot holes.... Time and time again, Stephenson introduces an interesting concept, or an intriguing subplot, only to drop it without any follow-up.
I would think that this is actually on purpose. If you read the last few chapters, it makes sense why the rest of the narrative might have incongruities...
You seem to be confusing "produce art" with "make a living". That's a common fallacy. Artists have never been guaranteed a living solely on the basis of the art they produced. Many famous painters, composers, etc. have died as paupers even when they were famous in their own time.
For what it's worth, in a capitalist system nobody else is guaranteed a living for what they do either. You might be the world's best Parcheesi player but I doubt you could make a living doing just that.
Phone companies would never rearrange pricing structures on hugely popular services just to wring more money from other companies that use them! I mean, look at SMS!
Anyway...even if they did, the "free market" would correct it...right?
I can't wait until I have "Premium" Internet with all those "High Definition" websites - it'll be sooooo much better. The phone company promised!
It seems to me that the biggest challenge to having meaningful quests in an MMO is the problem of not having enough resources to craft unique, meaningful quests for every player of the game.
So, why not have players be the quest givers? Each player can give other players a quest and determine the reward for success. More powerful players would be able to give better rewards, and therefore give more demanding tasks.
This could dovetail nicely with a deep crafting game. In a complex world, each player has a limited amount they can do themselves, and if they want to craft powerful items, many difficult to acquire ingredients will be required.
I'm not talking in the philosophical sense, I'm talking in the practical sense. Have you ever had to interview eye witnesses of an event to figure out what happened?
If the actual witnesses of an event can't even all agree perfectly on what happened, how do you propose to know what reality is when 100% of what you know about something filters through a myriad of sources? If you're lucky, you *might* wind up with some basic facts...maybe.
... but right now it's kinda like being a man dying of thirst on a boat in the middle of the ocean ("water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink").
Wake me up when we can actually swing by one of these places for a visit.
I think it's time to organize an Internet Protest. How about we all pick a day and for 24 hours, and make the only message flowing over the tubes "Piss off, wankers!"
How the hell do you "consider" something to be illegal? It either is, or isn't. Actually, the American legal system doesn't quite work that way. There are many, many "grey areas" where a person might be charged with a violation and yet be cleared of wrongdoing in court. Few laws are written without the need for interpretation, and none should be.
Great...now I get to do IT's job for them. In addition to my own work. So, I'll get paid for all the extra time I put in working on an IT project, right?
Remind me why we even have an IT dept. again?
Did the American Revolutionary army outnumber and out-gun the British army?
Did the French citizenry have more firepower than the French army at the start of the French Revolution?
"Seem" being the operative word. My criticism of the neologisms surrounding the Internet are not from a "we must preserve the purity of the language" basis, but from an aesthetic viewpoint: they're simply ugly. I would prefer if they were easy on the ear, pleasing to say, and especially that they were more intuitive. Some cleverness would definitely be appreciated as well. "Blog" is one of the worst, because it is grade-school level; in fact I've heard 5th-graders come up with better "first part of one/last part of the other" hack jobs.
Over the years, the Internet and its resulting commercialization have lead to some truly awful buzzwords and mangling of the language (may the person who first coined "blog" rot in hell)...
But ye gods! "domain tasting"?!
I can see it now... "The slashdot.org '97 was a superb one; It had a playful nose, a full, rich body and a piquant aftertaste. The digg.com '07, however, can only be described in scatalogical terms."
I would go a step further and say that the real problem is simply the number of people on the roads. And building more road capacity is not the answer to the problem any more than building more restaurants is the answer to the obesity problem in America.
Of course, that would require sane city planning, reliable and ubiquitous public transportation, and some willingness to sacrifice a tiny bit each in order to gain a great benefit to society as a whole. So *that* won't happen...
Unless I scanned the novel first. Then I don't really need to buy a new one, especially if I happen to own a printing press.
Ok you don't need to buy one in the sense that you are capable of making a paper copy...which has nothing to do with the legality of your action. You would break the law when you scanned the novel.
As for your other point, answer a question for me: if I am a doctor, is it excusable for me to decline to perform a legal abortion to save the life of a patient of mine if I am morally opposed to it?
Personally, I find it both intellectually dishonest and morally repugnant to claim that illegal copying (which directly benefits you and would impose no hardship on you were you to refrain) is not only excusable, but that making illegal copies is a moral imperative! Where are all of the people loudly espousing civil disobedience when it comes to ridiculous laws like the PATRIOT Act, et. al?! Oh, that's right...actually doing something that matters isn't as easy or free, like a hard-drive full of movies that I didn't pay for.
Which is a violation of *copy*right...it is an unauthorized copy. So you and the previous gentleman fail. Neither the straw man argument about stealing* nor your point about the source of the physical medium have any bearing on the root of the problem: namely, that copyright law is about controlling the ability to make copies. The law does not distinguish between copies that are expensive to make vs. ones that are cheap to make, nor does it distinguish between the physical media onto which the copies are placed.
I don't know how more plainly to put it: it is the very act of copying the work without authorization that is illegal. How people in general, and especially the otherwise very intelligent people here on Slashdot, fail to grasp this extremely simple concept simply astounds me.
* to clarify my point about walking out of a bookstore with a book (which would be stealing, but that's not the point I was making): if you walked into a bookstore with a laptop, scanned an entire book into the computer with a scanner, and then walked out, it would be illegal. Pleading that you had already "purchased the content" by buying another copy of the book is not a valid defense. The fact that you hadn't "deprived the owner" of anything doesn't enter into the discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time I see articles like this, I wonder why people like this have cell phones in the first place if they hate using them so much. That, and they need to realize that the world doesn't revolve around them, and that people who need to contact them shouldn't have to bow to their whims to communicate with them (I'd love to hear the conversation with their boss about why they didn't respond to a critical voicemail). Look...if someone needs to relay some information quickly, a phone call is much quicker than e-mail or texting (yes, really - not everyone has a phone with a keyboard). Just answer your damn phone!
So that's it then, huh? Just data processing? So why haven't chimpanzees come up with formalized logic? Do dogs use abstract reasoning?
I'm of the opinion that mere processing power will not resolve the issues facing so-called "strong" AI.
Give me a computer program that can learn an unknown language including abstract concepts by interacting with a human and you might be getting close. Good luck with that.
Well, apparently the relational database has been doomed for the last 20 years or so.
You'd think that the people running the thousands of systems with databases managing data on everything from bank accounts to medical records to what you bought from Wal-Mart last tuedsay would have heard the news by now and moved on to the Next Big Thing.
I won't argue with you that the "war on drugs" has some unfortunate effects, but I find that proponents of legalizing drugs haven't necessarily thought things through.
What you're wanting is for us to legitimize powerful, ruthless businessmen who have far-reaching influence in politics and an existing, entrenched supply and distribution network; a huge head-start over anyone else who wanted to enter the market.
Proponents of legalizing drugs say that we should tax them...what makes you think that people who didn't balk at bribery and murder would pay their taxes?
Assuming that they do start paying their taxes...legalizing drugs wouldn't get rid of the drug lords, it would simply allow them to openly buy the government of their choice to solidify their power, the same way big oil, the defense industry, etc. already do. How would any of this be an improvement?
The glaring hole in Dijkstra's argument is that most software is built to automate what used to be manual processes, and they therefor have to mimic a human-centric process... which is inherently illogical, inefficient and rife with nonsense.
In the world outside the ivory tower, programmers do not have the freedom to create completely logical, functionally complete programs that can be reduced to a mathematical proof.
Next time your boss comes to you with an project to write an application, show him this paper and explain that what he's asking for is "medieval thinking" and see if you can then explain to him why you should keep your job if you don't want to do it.
There are also a lot of uncompleted story lines and plot holes. ... Time and time again, Stephenson introduces an interesting concept, or an intriguing subplot, only to drop it without any follow-up.
I would think that this is actually on purpose. If you read the last few chapters, it makes sense why the rest of the narrative might have incongruities...
You seem to be confusing "produce art" with "make a living". That's a common fallacy. Artists have never been guaranteed a living solely on the basis of the art they produced. Many famous painters, composers, etc. have died as paupers even when they were famous in their own time.
For what it's worth, in a capitalist system nobody else is guaranteed a living for what they do either. You might be the world's best Parcheesi player but I doubt you could make a living doing just that.
Phone companies would never rearrange pricing structures on hugely popular services just to wring more money from other companies that use them! I mean, look at SMS!
Anyway...even if they did, the "free market" would correct it...right?
I can't wait until I have "Premium" Internet with all those "High Definition" websites - it'll be sooooo much better. The phone company promised!
It seems to me that the biggest challenge to having meaningful quests in an MMO is the problem of not having enough resources to craft unique, meaningful quests for every player of the game.
So, why not have players be the quest givers? Each player can give other players a quest and determine the reward for success. More powerful players would be able to give better rewards, and therefore give more demanding tasks.
This could dovetail nicely with a deep crafting game. In a complex world, each player has a limited amount they can do themselves, and if they want to craft powerful items, many difficult to acquire ingredients will be required.
So, what is "*reality*"?
I'm not talking in the philosophical sense, I'm talking in the practical sense. Have you ever had to interview eye witnesses of an event to figure out what happened?
If the actual witnesses of an event can't even all agree perfectly on what happened, how do you propose to know what reality is when 100% of what you know about something filters through a myriad of sources? If you're lucky, you *might* wind up with some basic facts...maybe.
So, tell me again about your reality...
... but right now it's kinda like being a man dying of thirst on a boat in the middle of the ocean ("water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink").
Wake me up when we can actually swing by one of these places for a visit.
But I'm wondering...why no Frogstar Fighter?
I think it's time to organize an Internet Protest. How about we all pick a day and for 24 hours, and make the only message flowing over the tubes "Piss off, wankers!"
Great...now I get to do IT's job for them. In addition to my own work. So, I'll get paid for all the extra time I put in working on an IT project, right? Remind me why we even have an IT dept. again?
Hex
So, it seems that you missed several of the biggest movies Hollywood released this year.
Did the American Revolutionary army outnumber and out-gun the British army? Did the French citizenry have more firepower than the French army at the start of the French Revolution?
Blasphemy!
You might want one of these.
"Seem" being the operative word. My criticism of the neologisms surrounding the Internet are not from a "we must preserve the purity of the language" basis, but from an aesthetic viewpoint: they're simply ugly. I would prefer if they were easy on the ear, pleasing to say, and especially that they were more intuitive. Some cleverness would definitely be appreciated as well. "Blog" is one of the worst, because it is grade-school level; in fact I've heard 5th-graders come up with better "first part of one/last part of the other" hack jobs.
Over the years, the Internet and its resulting commercialization have lead to some truly awful buzzwords and mangling of the language (may the person who first coined "blog" rot in hell)...
But ye gods! "domain tasting"?!
I can see it now... "The slashdot.org '97 was a superb one; It had a playful nose, a full, rich body and a piquant aftertaste. The digg.com '07, however, can only be described in scatalogical terms."
I would go a step further and say that the real problem is simply the number of people on the roads. And building more road capacity is not the answer to the problem any more than building more restaurants is the answer to the obesity problem in America.
Of course, that would require sane city planning, reliable and ubiquitous public transportation, and some willingness to sacrifice a tiny bit each in order to gain a great benefit to society as a whole. So *that* won't happen...
Ok you don't need to buy one in the sense that you are capable of making a paper copy...which has nothing to do with the legality of your action. You would break the law when you scanned the novel.
As for your other point, answer a question for me: if I am a doctor, is it excusable for me to decline to perform a legal abortion to save the life of a patient of mine if I am morally opposed to it?
Personally, I find it both intellectually dishonest and morally repugnant to claim that illegal copying (which directly benefits you and would impose no hardship on you were you to refrain) is not only excusable, but that making illegal copies is a moral imperative! Where are all of the people loudly espousing civil disobedience when it comes to ridiculous laws like the PATRIOT Act, et. al?! Oh, that's right...actually doing something that matters isn't as easy or free, like a hard-drive full of movies that I didn't pay for.
Which is a violation of *copy*right...it is an unauthorized copy. So you and the previous gentleman fail. Neither the straw man argument about stealing* nor your point about the source of the physical medium have any bearing on the root of the problem: namely, that copyright law is about controlling the ability to make copies. The law does not distinguish between copies that are expensive to make vs. ones that are cheap to make, nor does it distinguish between the physical media onto which the copies are placed.
I don't know how more plainly to put it: it is the very act of copying the work without authorization that is illegal. How people in general, and especially the otherwise very intelligent people here on Slashdot, fail to grasp this extremely simple concept simply astounds me.
* to clarify my point about walking out of a bookstore with a book (which would be stealing, but that's not the point I was making): if you walked into a bookstore with a laptop, scanned an entire book into the computer with a scanner, and then walked out, it would be illegal. Pleading that you had already "purchased the content" by buying another copy of the book is not a valid defense. The fact that you hadn't "deprived the owner" of anything doesn't enter into the discussion.