VBA is actually an excellent language, better than JavaScript. The main advantage is that it includes static typing which is a killer feature for larger programs. VBA has classes and properties and dynamic typing, only thing missing is closures which are rather esoteric. There are a few historical quirks in both languages.
End If is actually better than {}s, because the compiler can detect errors -- the {} approach was introduced in Algol 60, replaced with End If (actually Fi) in Algol 68 (1968). Most languages also saw the light and avoided {}s. But then C inflicted {}s back on the world. But that is probably the least bad thing about C. (The worst is counting from 0.)
But per my previous post, the big thing is that VBA runs in the server, JavaScript is client/server. Impossible for end users to use, which is the point of VBA.,
The Excel Object model is actually very good. Sensible and clean (ignoring recent horrors like the ribbon). COM is a mess, but the object model is excellent.
Moving to JavaScript does not merely men replacing End If with {}. The JavaScript model runs in a client server style, with futures etc. Much, much more complex. That is the essence of the change, Not the actual language.
10 lines of VBA becomes 100 lines of the new Java API. And is impossible for non-programmers to write. And that is what VBA supports, non programmers.
In VBA you can even record a macro, see the object handling, and then tidy it up afterwards. Excellent.
What actual users of Excel want is the VBA to be properly supported. It was abandoned for.Net, which was unusable by non programmers and very difficult to deploy. And now the fashion is Javascript. But since when to developers listen to uses? Wot's hot and wot's not. That is what counts.
Unlike China, there are real and freeish elections in Iran. There human rights are not nearly as bad as many of our friends. Sure, they are overseen by a religious right that most Iranians would love to remove. But they are certainly no worse than many of our other friends. (Same goes for Cuba.)
What is worse, picking on Iran just supports their religious right. It is counter productive.
And remember (if you ever knew) that Iran lost some 2 MILLION dead in the not so ancient war with Iraq, during which Hussein used plenty of chemical weapons. And we actively supported Hussein.
Because faces do not contain serial numbers. Instead, many different features that change subtly over time, and look different from different angles and lighting. Matching all those fuzzy stats to a large database is not at all trivial. For every face there will be thousands that look almost identical in a database containing millions.
And I suspect not really possible. I suspect that they used other things like cell phones to reduce the set of possibilities, and then use the facial recognition as the last step.
Australia has a huge trade Surplus with China, and a huge deficit with the USA. So the money goes around in a circle.
And if one focuses on the goods, rather than the money, China is supplementing US incomes, which is silly.
However, there is a good non-macro economic reason to restrict some things like robots. The US did well historically by supporting its inefficient watch making industry against the Swiss. When war came, they could make instruments.
But I think that the USA will do what it does best -- large scale farming. And China will do what it does best -- manufacturing and technology.
Once the computers completely control us, he who controls the computers needs no guns (or at least very few).
The Chinese are the masters of control these days. Their citizen surveillance systems, combined with their new social credit system are already far superior to anything in the west. Probably won't be long before our governments buy these systems from the masters, although probably indirectly. Because terrorism, children, human trafficking, copyright,...
You do not need to kill someone in order to destroy their social credit score and remove them from power an influence. Then promote others. Control society. Your society, or someone else's. Provided you control their computers.
This sounds like a problem involving scanning databases of known reactions, and doing detailed modeling. There might be an artificial neural network in there somewhere but I doubt it is the key.
It reflects the sad state of science journalism that anything vaguely intelligent becomes "Deep Learning", or whatever the current buzz phrase is.
It is one thing to be able to tell if a picture of someone is who they say they are. Or to identify people in a roomful.
But to accurately identify people with no other information is almost beyond belief. There are lots of people that look almost the same, and women tend to look different every time the change their hair or make up.
It would not be possible humans to do this, so I am suspicious that it is possible for computers.
One thought is that tracking mobile phones lets them know who is nearby. Or that an app on the phone using GPS does it -- *everyone* there needs WeChat. Maybe their ID cards can be read at a distance.
Bu noticing mood, who you are with, collecting and correlating that info. The Chinese are way ahead of us in those technologies, but will probably be happy to sell them to us.
NO. Most Chinese are not that upset by the great firewall. Indeed, their take up of technology has been frighteningly fast. In the cities, it has become difficult to spend cash, even for small purchases. *Everyone* uses WeChat Pay. Everyone, except foreigners who cannot use the service.
But most Chinese are poor and rural. While there are many billionaires, the total GDP per capita is still about 1/3 the west. Those poor only have basic feature phones if anything. So they are the next place to harvest new users from.
That said, let us hope that Emperor Xi turns out to be benevolent, because his word is now law.
Flash a dim light on the windscreen at random intervals, and ensure the human responds. No mobile phone usage then. This sort of thing has been done for trains for ages (I'm not talking about dead man, but attention monitors.)
Uber did not care. And that video they released was dubious, someone else took a dash cam of the area and it was reasonably well lit, even if there was no Lidar.
Uber were totally negligent. And I suspect they did not pay that driver very much. Monitoring a test car should not be a minimum wage job.
With a bit of luck, these specialty sites will embrace protocols that enable them to communicate with each other. It might, possibly, be the beginning of what social media should have been (and started out as). Namely, independent sites, with content aggregators rather than a monoculture.
Why wouldn't the systems have stereo vision? That was one of the earliest successes of machine vision in the 1970s. Relatively easy to do, once you match up the features on both views.
The lane next was empty. A sharp brake and swerve would have missed her.
Deliberately not swerving to miss a pedestrian when otherwise safe should land you in jail.
When looking at the video, at what time did the car start to actually brake? Seems very late to me.
And zero attempt to swerve. I have avoided accidents by swerving, but it does require situational awareness to know when this is safe. One thing a computer should be good at is constantly monitoring what is happening around it.
That video is also dubious. I wonder if the lighting had been deliberately reduced. With ordinary headlights, she would have been more visible sooner. Certainly to human eyes. Or to a decent quality video camera.
This is part of Emperor Xi's crack down on foreign interactions generally. If you want to control a country and its IT in particular, then the last thing you want is your hackers interacting with foreigners.
For get Putin and Russia. China will give us more grief. And Putin will go after one more term, whereas Xi is no in for life, and by all accounts his health is good.
I would hate to be living in China now, even if the economy is booming. For the time being at least.
Slashdot Mirror
VBA is actually an excellent language, better than JavaScript. The main advantage is that it includes static typing which is a killer feature for larger programs. VBA has classes and properties and dynamic typing, only thing missing is closures which are rather esoteric. There are a few historical quirks in both languages.
End If is actually better than {}s, because the compiler can detect errors -- the {} approach was introduced in Algol 60, replaced with End If (actually Fi) in Algol 68 (1968). Most languages also saw the light and avoided {}s. But then C inflicted {}s back on the world. But that is probably the least bad thing about C. (The worst is counting from 0.)
But per my previous post, the big thing is that VBA runs in the server, JavaScript is client/server. Impossible for end users to use, which is the point of VBA.,
No, it does not use the Excel Object Model.
The Excel Object model is actually very good. Sensible and clean (ignoring recent horrors like the ribbon). COM is a mess, but the object model is excellent.
Moving to JavaScript does not merely men replacing End If with {}. The JavaScript model runs in a client server style, with futures etc. Much, much more complex. That is the essence of the change, Not the actual language.
10 lines of VBA becomes 100 lines of the new Java API. And is impossible for non-programmers to write. And that is what VBA supports, non programmers.
In VBA you can even record a macro, see the object handling, and then tidy it up afterwards. Excellent.
What actual users of Excel want is the VBA to be properly supported. It was abandoned for .Net, which was unusable by non programmers and very difficult to deploy. And now the fashion is Javascript. But since when to developers listen to uses? Wot's hot and wot's not. That is what counts.
Indeed. The USPTO is in the patent granting business. The more they grant, the more additional fees. And, more importantly, the more applications.
It would be interesting to see both the + and - scores. Not just the total.
Unlike China, there are real and freeish elections in Iran. There human rights are not nearly as bad as many of our friends. Sure, they are overseen by a religious right that most Iranians would love to remove. But they are certainly no worse than many of our other friends. (Same goes for Cuba.)
What is worse, picking on Iran just supports their religious right. It is counter productive.
And remember (if you ever knew) that Iran lost some 2 MILLION dead in the not so ancient war with Iraq, during which Hussein used plenty of chemical weapons. And we actively supported Hussein.
What makes you think you will be able to do the same things?
They monitor what features most (dumb) users uses. If they don't use something, it must be clutter an goes.
I expect them to remove Labels.
+1
Because faces do not contain serial numbers. Instead, many different features that change subtly over time, and look different from different angles and lighting. Matching all those fuzzy stats to a large database is not at all trivial. For every face there will be thousands that look almost identical in a database containing millions.
And I suspect not really possible. I suspect that they used other things like cell phones to reduce the set of possibilities, and then use the facial recognition as the last step.
Could take an hour or more...
Humans are already obsolete technology for space travel.
Just imagine what 3D games would be like if they could be written in CMD batch language!
Some AIs exist, others do not. The ones that do will do so because they are fittest.
Australia has a huge trade Surplus with China, and a huge deficit with the USA. So the money goes around in a circle.
And if one focuses on the goods, rather than the money, China is supplementing US incomes, which is silly.
However, there is a good non-macro economic reason to restrict some things like robots. The US did well historically by supporting its inefficient watch making industry against the Swiss. When war came, they could make instruments.
But I think that the USA will do what it does best -- large scale farming. And China will do what it does best -- manufacturing and technology.
Once the computers completely control us, he who controls the computers needs no guns (or at least very few).
The Chinese are the masters of control these days. Their citizen surveillance systems, combined with their new social credit system are already far superior to anything in the west. Probably won't be long before our governments buy these systems from the masters, although probably indirectly. Because terrorism, children, human trafficking, copyright, ...
You do not need to kill someone in order to destroy their social credit score and remove them from power an influence. Then promote others. Control society. Your society, or someone else's. Provided you control their computers.
This sounds like a problem involving scanning databases of known reactions, and doing detailed modeling. There might be an artificial neural network in there somewhere but I doubt it is the key.
It reflects the sad state of science journalism that anything vaguely intelligent becomes "Deep Learning", or whatever the current buzz phrase is.
It is one thing to be able to tell if a picture of someone is who they say they are. Or to identify people in a roomful.
But to accurately identify people with no other information is almost beyond belief. There are lots of people that look almost the same, and women tend to look different every time the change their hair or make up.
It would not be possible humans to do this, so I am suspicious that it is possible for computers.
One thought is that tracking mobile phones lets them know who is nearby. Or that an app on the phone using GPS does it -- *everyone* there needs WeChat. Maybe their ID cards can be read at a distance.
Bu noticing mood, who you are with, collecting and correlating that info. The Chinese are way ahead of us in those technologies, but will probably be happy to sell them to us.
NO. Most Chinese are not that upset by the great firewall. Indeed, their take up of technology has been frighteningly fast. In the cities, it has become difficult to spend cash, even for small purchases. *Everyone* uses WeChat Pay. Everyone, except foreigners who cannot use the service.
But most Chinese are poor and rural. While there are many billionaires, the total GDP per capita is still about 1/3 the west. Those poor only have basic feature phones if anything. So they are the next place to harvest new users from.
That said, let us hope that Emperor Xi turns out to be benevolent, because his word is now law.
Flash a dim light on the windscreen at random intervals, and ensure the human responds. No mobile phone usage then. This sort of thing has been done for trains for ages (I'm not talking about dead man, but attention monitors.)
Uber did not care. And that video they released was dubious, someone else took a dash cam of the area and it was reasonably well lit, even if there was no Lidar.
Uber were totally negligent. And I suspect they did not pay that driver very much. Monitoring a test car should not be a minimum wage job.
With a bit of luck, these specialty sites will embrace protocols that enable them to communicate with each other. It might, possibly, be the beginning of what social media should have been (and started out as). Namely, independent sites, with content aggregators rather than a monoculture.
When politics is banned, everything becomes political. Significance will be attached to the smallest things.
We will indeed see at least a partial Cultural Revolution. And certainly a personality cult.
Can the Chinese economy continue to grow at a fantastic rate under that oppression? They are already discouraging their students studying overseas.
Very bad for the Chinese. And very dangerous for the rest of us.
They did get the rockets right in controlled conditions. Then filmed them.
You don't believe that they actually went there do you? That is why they never want to go back. To find the evidence.
Why wouldn't the systems have stereo vision? That was one of the earliest successes of machine vision in the 1970s. Relatively easy to do, once you match up the features on both views.
I have never understood the need for Lidar.
The lane next was empty. A sharp brake and swerve would have missed her.
Deliberately not swerving to miss a pedestrian when otherwise safe should land you in jail.
When looking at the video, at what time did the car start to actually brake? Seems very late to me.
And zero attempt to swerve. I have avoided accidents by swerving, but it does require situational awareness to know when this is safe. One thing a computer should be good at is constantly monitoring what is happening around it.
That video is also dubious. I wonder if the lighting had been deliberately reduced. With ordinary headlights, she would have been more visible sooner. Certainly to human eyes. Or to a decent quality video camera.
Agriculture is usually paid piece work in the US so the real pay is often less than $3/hr.
And if you buy an expensive machine and it breaks, you need expensive mechanics to fix it. But you can always just hire another Mexican.
The big issue is that the machines are becoming cheaper. At $100K Mexicans are cheaper. But at $10K the economics change.
Also, we will see the machines in civilized countries with proper minimum wages first before they become popular in the USA.
This is part of Emperor Xi's crack down on foreign interactions generally. If you want to control a country and its IT in particular, then the last thing you want is your hackers interacting with foreigners.
For get Putin and Russia. China will give us more grief. And Putin will go after one more term, whereas Xi is no in for life, and by all accounts his health is good.
I would hate to be living in China now, even if the economy is booming. For the time being at least.