Amazon only has access to a certain restricted aspect of your social life - your purchase preferences for certain internet goods. But if Amazon's info could be combined with facebook's database, your location information from google maps, your browsing history from your ISP, your supermarket profile, your movie preferences, your medical history etc. etc. (basically, the Database of Ruin the author is talking about) and I'd wager those Amazon recommendations are going to be a whole lot more accurate.

Umm... Would the name calling gentleman be so kind as to explain, why incidents like this are very rare in countries which do not provide ready access to guns to the general public?

Oops, forgot to log-in.

I might add, the writing has been on the wall for sometime now, and Google is still wasting time preparing for an all-cloud future with Chrome OS, although I recall hearing about plans to merge with Android. Still, local storage + processing isn't going away any-time soon, not till internet connections are uniformly 100mbps+ or something. So I don't see the point in preparing for a future cloud-only battle if you lose the current tablet battle and aren't relevant any more for the future.

Of course, Google can still reign in the mobile phone market, because Microsoft isn't going to be able to break into that market any time soon.

People who subscribe to primitive taboo morality, cannot reason ethically by definition.

Oh well, should have known better than to respond to a troll! Good bye!

I recommend that you read his views, and rationale, straight from the source and gain a proper appreciation of his position, rather than sensationalist news blurbs written by reporters who never bothered to. Singer is a pretty amazing guy, and you'll find that he's a more ethical person than most. There's a reason he's a professor of bioethics at Princeton, and the people doing the reporting, are not.

My mind has been changed on the ethics of that and it was Peter Singer who convinced me of the fact. It's an argument rooted not only in minimizing harm to sentient creatures (and avoiding speciesism), but also on the arguably more distasteful issue another poster mentioned, that of how animals are treated in farms.

Singer's article here provides the latter argument, but I can't recall sources for his former argument. Perhaps here.

I am looking forward to the wide availability of lab-grown meat. It'll be an altogether more humane alternative to what we are engaging in now. Plus, on a personal note, it'll make me less of a hypocrite, because I still eat meat. As they say, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

If something can be virally adopted, it can be virally killed.

I won't call this a debate, because a debate implies a particular position, and I don't have one. Let's just call it being the devil's advocate.

However, I will point out that the abstract nature of an algorithm, vs an engineered product has not really been established. By this I mean, a recipe for creating an engineering product is also abstract. For example, a sequence of steps A, B, C in manufacturing product X is abstract, until it is implemented in some concrete product.

Therefore, the "abstract nature" of software (also a recipe) provide no distinguishable difference from an industrial process (also abstract).

So all I'm saying is, there needs to be something more evident here which establishes the difference. Personally, I dislike that idea of any kind of recipe being patented, because I think they are all ideas at the end of the day, and attempts to claim rights to those are attempts to claim rights to thoughts, and ultimately, to police thought. However, I also see the need to compensate inventors. I just don't see a clear solution.

Sorry about the delay in replying.

I'm not sure I understand why software operating on abstract data makes it fundamentally different though? It seems like an assertion, and not a fact? I think that in patents, what is being valued is not what it operates on, but the process by which it is achieved. For example, if a certain industrial process operates on air, which is available abundantly and has nil material value, it's not the air we patent right? It's the process, or recipe. In the software case, the "object" it operates on, the data, by itself has no material value. But nevertheless, both the software and the industrial process are both recipes, steps for achieving something. I don't understand the difference?

So it looks to me like, either both should be patentable or neither should be.

Interesting points about crypto and patenting mathematics.

But what is your take on patenting software in general? What is the difference between an algorithm and an industrial process? Aren't they both "recipes"? If so, should both be patentable? or neither?

Following from that, why is patenting beneficial for industrial processes but not for software?

I'm not really advocating patents nor renouncing them, just trying to get a better idea.

I wasn't talking about trees, not am I interested in pedantic discussions on semantics. I'm saying that in this context, specifically that of someone creating a piece of software, music, or whatever in order to make a living out of it, it's reasonable to expect that others should pay to consume it. It's reasonable to state that if they don't get paid for it, they will have no means of earning their livelihood through their work, which essentially harms the creative process. No type of excuse can hide this bare fact.

The answer to this problem is not to deny that it is happening, which is nonsense, but to understand that the problem lies in greed and exploitation. Popular media is an essential part of culture. Denying people access to that media is essentially a way of denying people access to culture, an essential part of their social existence. Charging such high prices is a form of extortion. It is akin to charging $10 bucks for a glass of water (hyperbole, but you get the idea). Again, there's no need for extremist interpretations here, like, "oh hang on, you won't drop dead because you couldn't watch a movie" etc. Try not to miss the wood for the trees!

The solution is, make things cheap, make it accessible, and make money on sheer, staggering volume. Make people respect copyright by not making copyright a joke. They can start by abolishing the ability to hang onto copyright hundreds of years after the original author is dead.

This argument might apply to software used in the industry like photoshop, but how will it apply to something like games, intended for personal use?

That's why I think the "piracy is good" argument makes no sense. Piracy is the act of using something without giving money for it. Let's not try to kid ourselves into thinking it's a virtue.

Personally, I think that the way to stop piracy is for industries to stop being greedy. It's just not reasonable to expect the massive prices that are demanded for every song, movie, game etc. etc. on the market. People consume a lot of media. The daily bombardments of advertising is to ensure that this happens. For people to be "in" on the scene, they need to consume this stuff. But who has the money to pay $80 per game? or $20 per "3D" movie ticket? Companies need to sell items cheap and make money on volume. And they can!

High prices or high volume, pick 1. If you charge a high price, expect to cater to a niche market and for the masses to pirate. If you want high volume, charge a low price.

Instead, these guys want to charge a high price and have volume to boot. Greedy bastards.

I find it interesting though, that Sebastian Thrun gets so much attention, and Andrew Ng for example, gets no mention. I think that Ng poured in a tremendous amount of effort to teach an absolutely outstanding class with far more structured and well-developed content.

Don't get me wrong, Thrun is an enthusiastic and obviously knowledgeable individual, but having followed both AI and ML classes, I was of the opinion that Andrew Ng was the better teacher. Thrun needs to improve his teaching skills, so that he can impart his great store of knowledge better to students. Although that is my personal opinion, I think you might find that it is backed by some evidence, if you were to trawl through the comments on the respective forums of the AI and ML classes. Overall, both of them + Peter Norvig and the rest of their teams, made fantastic contributions, and that should be recognized equally, whenever possible!