In all computer related fields, that's pretty easy: give the code. It's often a pain in the ass to reproduce the results (and I talk only for my field), but as soon as you get the code, then you see what's the tricky part, and what's left to improve.

Actually if you continue learning maths, there's a moment where they become interesting by themselves and not only for what you can do with it.

If you didn't felt this, I guess you stopped too early, like when you stop reading a very good book because the first chapter was boring. Or maybe it's just not your kind (say, like some musical taste), whatever practical use it has or not.

My bet is the rush of sensation comes from killing the others instead of being killed, not from the tools used to achieve this. Replace the gun by whatever you want, it will still be violent because it triggers some primal feelings deep in your DNA.

SVM are primarily a classification technique that has been extended to clustering, regrssion, structured output learning (such as ranking), and so on. So yes, the max margin principle has been used is basically all the areas of machine learning.

How do you argue machine learning is not AI? You know the vast majority of researchers and publishers in the ML field consider it to be AI.

I prefer those dating bonds over your accusative ones.

Haven't you recognized her cries when she heard the news of her destitution? You insensitive clod!

All devices will tend to use more OSS and be less locked down, because it's a potential well in terms of market competition (less investment, longer duration, better image, ...). The gradient may be smooth now (and has been close to 0 in the past) but in the long term the world will be mainly OSS.

France was way more efficient at this. The French voted against the referendum, but former president Sarkozy decided to sign the treaty anyway...

Again, democracy in action.

Without tinkering, you will never get any evolution. The market law is milk them till you can't. Without tinkering, it's forever.

I'm sure we will adapt. However, I'm much in doubt that the new world environment will be as pleasant as it was before.

The crime is not to change the world. The crime is to change it for the worse.

No it's not exactly the case, and you gave a perfect example right after. Are you advancing the civilization by being more efficient at your job thanks to a tool you don't understand? I don't think so. You are surely advancing the profits of your company, or your own profit if the paycheck at the end of the month is all you are looking for. But for the somewhat positive evolution of of masses behavior that you named civilization advancement, it's another story.

Civilization changes due to a deeper comprehension of the universe, be it mathematics, sciences or psychology, sociology or whatever else. This better comprehension allows us as a whole to build new tools (either material like your car or immaterial like equality among sex and races) that in fact will change our global behavior. But restrict the understanding and you get stagnation, which was exactly what happened in the middle-age in Europe.

In the case of computer programming, if you focus on learning the tool (the syntax of the language or the usage of your IDE) and forget the underlying problem, you just won't be able to do anything useful. The key question in programming is not how to write that damn loop, but what to put in it. Because, you know, syntax is easy: read the manual and type what the hell they say is correct. And if it's not working, read the output of that damn compiler, check the manual again and guess what's wrong. But to answer the question "what are the steps needed to reach this result?", you need a deeper comprehension of the underlying problem. Oh god, you may even have to think for yourself, and there's no tool for that.

Add to this the fact that targeted managers have no technical background at all, and do not even have a clue of what the words "operating system" mean. It's easier to sell something to an ignorant than to the perfect layman.

This is typically american. Someone raises a legitimate concern about capitalism, and the first response is that communism isn't good at it neither.

What painful humiliation did soviet russia that you always have this pavlovian need of being better than them? Come on, the competition is over and communism has lost. So now, please accept that capitalism also has severe flaws that need to be addressed.

How do you make money from free cloud apps, if it's not by selling the private information you extract from your customers files? I thought the cloud efficiency (good service at low cost) came by design from taping into privacy.

The real question is what would be the resolution of such device. Can it be so precise that a reasonable area of skin could be used to read message? Or to restore sight to blind people or to make a non visual augmented reality?

If this is more than a binary variable (vibrate or not), then it opens the doors to much more creative applications.