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Comment Re:One of these things is not like the others. (Score 1) 167

Excellent, I'll risk providing nourishment for a troll just *once* more to show how this particular layfolk has illustrated my point. Psychologists are hardly at all related to psychiatrists, making that an ill-posed analogy. One branch of psychology is "clinical psychology". That branch deals with analysis and such and is what most people think of as "Psychology", and is indeed related to psychiatry. The rest of psychology, however, has nothing at all to do with that. So, the completion to the analogy may well be "lobsters".

Comment Re:One of these things is not like the others. (Score 1) 167

For those reading who aren't trolls: If you happen to think this way, then your definition of psychology probably comes from elementary school, TV, or a college intro course (which too often amounts to about the same thing). There are many branches of psychology; the least scientific of which seem to be the most well known to layfolk. Although I do agree that some fMRI studies of the brain can be pretty close to phrenology.

Comment Re:Yes, Thank Turing We're Not the Media Hype Mach (Score 1) 293

In fact, the assumption that cognition is computational or mechanistic is where the mind-body problem comes from (right from the 17th century). If it's all just syntactic, then explaining semantics is now a problem, and you have problems like dualism. Non-algorithmic doesn't mean magic, by any stretch. If you don't assume algorithmic, then there is no mind-body separation about which you can have a dualist stance.

If you think that the universe in general is algorithmic, e.g. that the evolution of the sun is an algorithmic process, then we might easily only disagree about terminology. Those who do not follow computational theories of mind might say that the complexities of intelligent behavior are more like the complexities of the sun than anything you will get out of a turing machine.

There are a frightening number of different issues once we go into details, and there is a long history of people attempting to address them. I don't think a slashdot thread is capable of holding it all. And of course, the more one learns the more one realizes that the answers are far fewer than the questions.

Comment Re:Yes, Thank Turing We're Not the Media Hype Mach (Score 1) 293

You're making a *huge* assumption that humans operate algorithmically, which is exactly the problem being discussed in the debate between Searle, Dennett, Haugeland, and others. Getting a handle on "understanding", or more specifically the origin of meaning, is the larger question that these folks are addressing. So you're entirely correct about needing more than intuition, and that is what people have been trying to do using these means for many, many years.

Comment Re:We don't use sudo? (Score 1) 592

That's funny, using sudo for administration always makes me think of ubuntu, speaking of noobs in the basement.

Seriously though, I don't like giving a regular/admin user easy access to root like that. If my user password is compromised by some means, the sudo thing means root is also compromised. I'd rather have the authentication and environment separation.

Comment Re:I don't see Linksys as core equipment. (Score 2) 380

All NAT devices have a stateful firewall; tracking state is how NAT can happen at all. If you remove NAT, you are still left with a firewall with rules to deny inbound connections unless initiated from inside.

That is, the security you're talking about is not provided by NAT, but by the firewall underneath NAT. That's not going anywhere.

Comment Re:Each user gets 18 quintillion addresses? (Score 1) 214

I can imagine devices in the kitchen wanting to communicate to each other, but not wanting to hear from the garage door. The reasons for keeping separate broadcast domains in general will apply to the home when many, many devices are IP enabled. The topology of these domains could be organized automatically by the devices as well. Really no one knows what demand for IPs and subnets will be in the coming years, so it's good to think in terms that allow for growth. That's how I think, anyway.

Comment Re:This is ridiculous (Score 5, Informative) 214

Give rfc3177 a read, especially section 4. That RFC is obsolete now, but the math hasn't changed.

These numbers are ridiculously huge, and it is intended in the design that subnets would normally be sized at /64. Thinking of that as 18 quintillion addresses is thinking like IPv4. IPv6 is different, and you think in terms of subnets. There are also (since an address is 128 bits) 18 quintillion /64 networks. If we give each person on the planet 65536 /64s (that's a /48) then we have enough for 5000 times the current world population in the current pool of addresses, which is 1/8th the full IPv6 address space. If you use the whole space, then it's 40,200 times the world population.

Comment Re:Each user gets 18 quintillion addresses? (Score 1) 214

A /48 is actually 65536 times bigger than a /64 (2^(64-48)), but it's still reasonable to give home users that much. Only 4 subnets is extraordinarily restrictive. Think many (actually probably not that many) years down the line when you have subnets per room and such. I'd want my kitchen to be on a different subnet than my garage, for instance.

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