agreed

You don't know what the hell you're talking about dude. Seriously, do some homework and learn. You're not stupid until you pretend to know what you're talking about. Both BeanThere and I can clearly see you don't know what you're talking about.

The Economist is *the* best source for economics news all over the world. And they are a British mag that has been in circulation for around 150 years.

It's ok to not know. Just read and learn.

Damnit, nothing more dangerous than a mod with a sense of humor

Yes. Loved it. My first experience with trying to manipulate code (after nibbles, of course). Good times.

And generally, the insightful posts are marked as troll

Good God, +1 for a rational, measured response from someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about.

I swear, I read some of the most illuminating, brilliant comments on /. on topics on which I have little knowledge but after the dude above says "nothing beats actual local accounts" I wonder if they brilliant comments I read are just utter bullshit.

Someone would create a system of local accounts for tens of thousands of desktops and expect to have a manageable LAN? Yeeeeeeah...

I don't disagree with anything you said.

True. I actually do not disagree with you there, necessarily. It could go either way. But I would think it's more probable that a machine will obtain some level of autonomous "thought" and "understanding" before we can adequately meld humans with them. I would be surprised if the progress of neural/machine interfaces was as rapid as the AGI algorithms which are currently being researched, especially when the raw horsepower of processing capability is being doubled roughly every 18 months. But... it certainly is possible a human will find a way to augment their brain before a true AGI is created.

Of course, you hit the nail on the head in that I do have a certain blind faith in Moore's law continuing. Generally I believe this will happen because it does seem to be the way processing change occurs, as Kurzweil famously says "back to the 1890 census" and probably before.

+1 Loved that episode!

Artificial General Intelligence. AI is generally referred to as the specific expert systems and AGI is something more "humanlike" in that it can attack general problems without specific domain knowledge.

Yeah, I do believe humans will be disadvantaged in terms of computing power relative to machines in a few decades. That will very likely lead to "the singularity" in my estimation. Any time I tell non-tech folks about this, they think I'm nuts. And most tech folks think the idea is similarly nuts. Oh well, luckily for me, I'm not proselytising and don't need to be. It'll either happen or it won't!

Yeah, I love Linux and so do most people here. But how the hell is Russia going to manage that LAN (assuming it's anything resembling a large enterprise of 10k+ machines)?

Really... there is nothing, I repeat NOTHING which is as robust or catered to large enterprise user/LAN management than Active Directory. This is one of the major reasons why large enterprises have not left Microsoft.

It's my impression that the Linux community just doesn't "get it". Am I wrong, or perhaps they're not even targeting business customers? Linux devs focus on creating a good desktop, but there's really so much more than that to consider.

Oooh, I don't know if our leaders deserve quite that much vitriol. At least our current ones. Putting partisan politics aside as much as possible, I think it's fair to say that Obama's cozy relationship with Erik Schmidt of Google almost guarantees he has heard about the possible implications of a scalable AGI. And I think Obama is with it (I'm speaking of technology) enough to understand and not immediately dismiss the implications of this. Why do you think the dept of energy constantly funds these supercomputers and supercomputer research? I have hope that we're not quite as obtuse as many would believe. Similar lawyers and financiers had the foresight to finance a very expensive project to split the atom about 60 years ago.

Agreed. I very much doubt we are modeling weather patterns or nuclear explosions anymore. People know an AGI will be created at some point in the future. Some people (including myself) believe that it is highly probable the AGI will be created in the next few decades. Given the huge advantage an AI could create, how could a superpower (or an aspiring superpower) NOT act to create one? Even if the odds are .01% an AGI will be created, a loss in this area means a loss in any conflict. Therefore a power MUST try to create one.

Incidentally, people have thought about this kind of stuff. Factions competing for creation of an AI will very likely lead to a "hard takeoff". This is thought to be the worst of all ways to create an AI because the power and "mentality" of such a thing cannot be well controlled. Much better to collaboratively work together as a species to create a benign and useful partner - but why the hell would we go and do something sensible like that? Instead we'll get what we deserve.. whatever that may be. Fuck

Hahahahahaha - LOL - yeah... but really, c'mon now. Seriously, what ever gave you the idea that the market was a place for equals. It never has been and never will be