Saying "coding" is like it's learning medical billing or something. Which is probably more useful for most people.

Coding, or rather programming, is not a new literacy in the sense that exposure should be forced. Programming tools are free and there are free programming tutorial websites. That should more than suffice for today's equivalent of most of us here who did whatever we could to get our hands on a PC, type in programs to learn, taking courses by choice, and enjoying it.

We programmers are not more or less literate than other acquired skills, on that skill alone. And those who don't program are not more or less literate than us lacking that skill.

Those who want to program will have already jumped right in as soon as they were ready. There is freer access than ever now. I'm sure we'll have fine new generations of programmers to join us.

not shutting it down, sunsetting it. Content will continue to be available on static web pages for quite some time, and probably will find a home after that.

You missed my point. Your "world is becoming more and more reliant on computer technology" meets host website crashes.

Reliant software doesn't crash.

They might as well get introduced right to today's coding.

this is a post of wisdom and experience to be sure.

Amazon dropped my Kindle book listing today. I wasn't terribly shocked because I had read that they were trying to corner the e-book market, and that's how you do it. My e-book was Barnes & Noble publisher associated, so Amazon is flexing their muscles at more than the two publishers mentioned it appears to me.

Certainly will have me shopping around other book store sites now.

I took it that "found he was being fired" was without the company's knowledge, as in using his admin privileges to look at email, etc.

But I agree with another comment. As still being an employee, I doubt he "tapped into a protected compauter" from the outside, and doubt that he actually didn't have authority to the computer. What does "tapped into" mean anyway? Probably an unauthorized login to format the drive, which I think the buzzphrase "reset to factory settings" means. He could have done an OS install I guess but I doubt it.

" IIRC an IBM exec in the late 60s predicted selling a couple dozen units a year, with those numbers everything is gonna be conservative."

I think he said there was only a need for about six computers worldwide. Period. Didn't see any business in it, from what I recall reading. And it was much earlier than that, before the 360 project.

I agree with all these points. +1

The Senate would never do it but I thihnk it would be good for representative democracy for the House to do it.

At what point does one "know" it's rubbish? Saying "wibble wibbke wibble" to a baby will evoke a smile if said in the right tone of voice.

If I store purchase data away in files and then have a re-order routine/program that generates replenishment orders based on purchase history, that is no more "learning" than any of this neural network stuff capturing patterns and interpreting it.

I wrote a Double Deck Pinochle program back in 1981 that is hard coded logic, no "learning". There is as much or as little AI in it as anything else "AI".

When programming applied to human like operations is stopped being called "artificial intelligence" until there is indeed self generated change in behavior based on input beyond pre-determined algorithmic control, then there will be some honesty and integrity about the programming process now called AI, and possibly with honesty and integrity may come advances.

The self-generated change in behavior would require self-determined changes in programming and data that provides for actual non-preprogrammed behavior. This is obviously extremely difficult.

I have a substantial collection of books on AI and AI history and have a lot more to read but of what I've read a lot of AI programming efforts are done by people with limited time and effort. Very unimpressive stuff from the university crowd.

Implementation wasn't sloppy. Free form keywords and bulletproof compiler testing and error handling for other specs like D specs would be a huge undertaking. Not even remotely cost effective for anyone, IBM or customers.

Flammon wrote: "The question is, where does this programming come from and how is it stored in our DNA?"

Yes, that's my overriding question. I have to think it's stored in what we think is "junk" DNA (although there is plenty of inserted genetic material that has accumulated, I understand that.)

But still, where is the programming stored for all the innate behavior of organisms? The only thing that can can hold it while being passed on is DNA, and I can't believe that enabled genes in specific kinds of cells can direct that specific and consistent behavior.

The only mechanism that I can envision is when the deep parts of the brain are being wired that aspects of junk DNA are drawn upon to guide it to embed behavior. That's about as hand wavy as it gets, but that's what I suspect.

The cold virus and most other viruses are not dependent on a protein that boosts transcriptiuon of the virus like apparently HIV is.

Otherwise you would have a universal blockage of production of any virus.

Thanks for the info, reverseengineer. I am just a layman reader of textbooks on the subject. This sounds like protein(s) that are associated with some cancers that have a mutation for overtranscribing something that helps the cancer grow.

The retrovirus sounds a little more random than I thought would be done. Wouldn't some HIV have to incorporate the retrovirus into their own RNA to produce the modified protein which would then affect further transcription? What about all the HIV in the body that doesn't incorporate the retrovirus? (Question could also apply to cancers being treated with gene therapy.)

thanks for your insights.