The problem with this discussion is that yall are inter weaving to very different AI development paradigms. Not all AI is created with the goal of emulating human thinking. If anything, much of what we see as applied AI is intended to avoid the complexity of human decision making. I know the Post Office is old news these days, but their hand writing recognition for hand written addresses was able to read addresses more accurately than humans.

Does this have anything to do with AI self consciousness? Absolutely not. But when you start ignorantly citing the implementation details of different AI systems without acknowledging the purpose and goal of each design, then you are arguing irrelevant facts.

You're certainly right. If anything that's why they're bad, because now those same suit wearing people are spending money on anything/everything called "cloud" even though many of those things aren't within the strict definition of cloud computing, and thus don't offer the actual benefits that true cloud computing offers.

Your effort to specify the internet-of-things as a well defined set is noble, but I wouldn't give the term that much credit. It's already a mushy buzzword that spills over into other technologies, and despite anyone's best efforts will never be used in any consistent manner. It overlaps everything from home automation, to remote crowd sensing, to simple devices that act as their own servers.

Your definition takes things touted as an internet-of-things and places them outside of that. The thermostats being called part of the internet-of-things are nothing more than a server that you can connect to remotely and control, and include some "smart" functions to make energy use more efficient. Many of them do not implement any standard home automation protocols that would allow the integration you speak of. In this respect they are just a standlone server you connect to with your phone/computer as a client.

Your definition basically narrows it down to things that communicate in a peer to peer fashion, no different than what existing home automation protocols do. "Internet-of-things" is just a buzzword that is popularizing what has already been possible for quite awhile. Oh yes, your camera senses motion and triggers lights? Guess what, there's already a standard for that that predates the internet-of-things concept.

Additionally, your definition of IP cameras either falls into or out of your definition of internet-of-things depending on how you use them. Yes they can act as a standalone server, not different than remotely accessible thermostats. Often you network them to a server and manage/monitor them remotely through the server. Otherwise it would be maddening to access every single device separately.

Additionally some support home automation protocols such as X10, which places them squarely into your definition of IoT because that allows them to be integrated with other devices in exactly the way you describe. Some cameras are poor at motion detection, and so you can rig recording/notifications of the cameras based on a dedicated motion sensor device.

IoT will fall into the same trap as a cloud computing. The terminology will be vastly misused to market things which cover very different paradigms.

"Today I bought one of those new Internet-Of-Things-Thermostats, and installed a Internet-Of-Things-Outdoor-Thermometer." Things friends and relatives will now say to us and expect us to pretend to be impressed with.

Oh we get it, it's just kind of silly. IP cameras have been around before this terminology was in use, and there was never any confusion within the surveillance industry about what made them distinct from traditional surveillance cameras, even among amateurs doing DIY setups. And they haven't adopted this new terminology either, because a "Internet of Things Camera" sounds retarded.

My mistake, I saw some forum posts at Apple saying you did, which apparently was incorrect.

And be prepared for the guy inline in front of you to be messing around with his phone while he is trying to pay.

"Oh just a second, trying to get a connection."
"Oh wait, need to reboot phone."
etc.

Exactly what I thought.

"but that hardly makes it a saint."

I never said they were a saint. You are clearly illiterate so I won't bother trying to have a productive discussion with you.

"I'm not going to bother listing the UNETHICAL things Google has done"

So basically you're just one more person joining the bandwagon with nothing substantial to back it up.

"Should I count how many times it has been to court -- and either LOST or settled"

Should I count the number of times judges have made extremely stupid rulings due to their ignorance of technology fields? How many alone have we seen on slashdot. I would list them but I already gave you some specific examples and you responded with a refusal to basically participate with any actual citings of anything that can remotely support your argument, I'm not going to waste anymore time on you.

Someone will come along and try to find some way to make it out to be an act of evil. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Even a thick terminal supporting remote GUIs like X require less than 10 gb of space, even if you are supporting something like X.

A $170 gets you a 480 GB SSD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

If you setting up terminals that take up 480 GB, then you are doing it wrong.

I have 240 GB SSD and I have Windows along with several varations of Linux VMs and a Windows VM for isolated testing. Numerous repositories. SQL Server, Postgre Server, all the client tooling that goes with them. Numerous multi GB games.

Even 480 GB is plenty for most amateur audio/video production if you are moving finished projects off to a NAS.

And as for the phone comment, show me a single microSD that costs $170 and offers 480 GB of space.

Every aspect of your response is littered with stupidity.

Let me clarify, alot of other major players sell your information and or give third parties access to it. This is how people end up with their picture in Facebook ads from third parties. Facebook has enabled a system where to do just about anything, you have to share information with a third party. Google on the other hand decides which ads are shown where, so they have no need to share your information outside of their own system.

Now you're going to bring up Google sharing your information with government requests, but that's different because they have a legal obligation to do so, and they have done what they can within their legal power to fight that. Additionally, that is very limited amount of sharing when compared with what Facebook does of their own design and intent, AND on a much larger scale, involving sharing with a very large number of third parties.

Google shows targeted ads, without revealing or transferring your information to questionable ad networks, nor do they serve ads to show you ridiculous popups and resource hogging flash. Compare that to other major players in the market, and what they offer users, and you'd see they pan out as being much more responsible in how they support the cost of providing services.

They've also fought for more transparency in government information requests, so the public knows exactly what the government is demanding from Google.

When they discovered oppressive governments were hacking their services to obtain information in political dissidents, Google took steps to correct the problems.

They've made a few missteps along the way, but overall they've taken positive initiatives they didn't have to.

For $150 you can get a SSD with plenty of space for the vast majority of desktop roles, and it will beat out HDD by at least 10 times or more on speed, heat, power consumption, and noise.

The only thing HDD is king of, is being slow. King of maybe certain roles that require a very large amount of cheap space.

And if you want to argue capacity needs for servers, you need to start talking about enterprise HDDs, and their $/gb is not as high as consumer HDDs, and it gets worse when you factor in power consumption and cooling costs(yes HDDs generate heat even though they don't need heatsinks, and in data center cooling costs you $). By the time you factor that in, the $/gb of a enterprise drive gets close to SSDs.

You said: "The article writer mist be smoking some amazing shit to come to such a wacky claim."

Are you referring to the article summary, or one of the specificly linked articles? Because summary says: "Oh, and price. We'll have to wait and see on that."

So they are not making any claims about price. It seems maybe you are the one smoking too much?

Anyhow, there are only a few niche roles where a desktop needs that much space. Give me a 240 GB SSD with 10 times faster IOPs, 10th of the heat and power consumption, zero noise, and no moving parts. That's plenty.

HDD's still have there place for certain use cases, but SSDs beat them by an order of magnitude on just about every factor except price per gigabyte. $/gb is not as relevant when you realize $150 will get you enough of space on an SSD for most desktop roles, and way more than you need on an HDD.