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Comment Re:Oh it gets better (Score 3, Insightful) 490

by idontgno (#48775933) Attached to: In Paris, Terrorists Kill 2 More, Take At Least 7 Hostages

Yeah, because everyone with a fucking grievance grabs an AK-47 and shoots up a magazine don't they love?

Just what the hell does it take to knock some common sense into these bloody liberals??

Irony: right-wingers complaining about left-wingers painting them as violent lunatics and then threatening them with violence.

Of course, in the interest of literal correctness, you didn't threaten to shoot them up with an AK-47. So it's grazing irony, not center-of-mass double-tap irony.

Comment Editorial (HAH!) Heads-Up (Score 5, Insightful) 163

by idontgno (#48759751) Attached to: In-Flight Service Gogo Uses Fake SSL Certificates To Throttle Streaming

2nd link in TFS ("use of a fake Google SSL certificates as a means of throttling video") is a self-starting video at PCMag. Because, I guess, we at Slashdot can no longer read for ourselves and must be read to (after the advertising plays).

It used to be customary to warn people of objectionable formats and maybe link to non-crap sources. Kthxbye.
Robotics

The Dominant Life Form In the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots 391

Posted by Soulskill from the quick-destroy-all-the-remaining-copies-of-Battlebots dept.
Jason Koebler writes: If and when we finally encounter aliens, they probably won't look like little green men, or spiny insectoids. It's likely they won't be biological creatures at all, but rather, advanced robots that outstrip our intelligence in every conceivable way. Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, joins a handful of astronomers, including Seth Shostak, director of NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, NASA Astrobiologist Paul Davies, and Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick in espousing the view that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is probably artificial. In her paper "Alien Minds," written for a forthcoming NASA publication, Schneider describes why alien life forms are likely to be synthetic, and how such creatures might think.

Comment I don't see how this could possibly happen (Score 1) 91

"The Bill includes defences that reverse the onus of proof which limit the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty"

How could this be? This would be completely counter to one of the most fundamental and commonly-stated protected in any civilized nation's bill of basic rights.

Oh, wait, I see the problem.

Exceptions in Western democracies

Australia is the only Western democratic country with neither a constitutional nor federal legislative bill of rights to protect its citizens, although there is ongoing debate in many of Australia's states.
Cellphones

Ron Wyden Introduces Bill To Ban FBI 'Backdoors' In Tech Products 109

Posted by Soulskill from the stop-doing-the-thing-you-might-want-to-start-doing dept.
An anonymous reader sends this report from The Verge: Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is trying to proactively block FBI head James Comey's request for new rules that make tapping into devices easier. The Secure Data Act would ban agencies from making manufacturers alter their products to allow easier surveillance or search, something Comey has said is necessary as encryption becomes more common and more sophisticated. "Strong encryption and sound computer security is the best way to keep Americans' data safe from hackers and foreign threats," said Wyden in a statement. "It is the best way to protect our constitutional rights at a time when a person's whole life can often be found on his or her smartphone."
AI

Upgrading the Turing Test: Lovelace 2.0 68

Posted by Soulskill from the just-make-sure-to-skip-version-9.0 dept.
mrspoonsi tips news of further research into updating the Turing test. As computer scientists have expanded their knowledge about the true domain of artificial intelligence, it has become clear that the Turing test is somewhat lacking. A replacement, the Lovelace test, was proposed in 2001 to strike a clearer line between true AI and an abundance of if-statements. Now, professor Mark Reidl of Georgia Tech has updated the test further (PDF). He said, "For the test, the artificial agent passes if it develops a creative artifact from a subset of artistic genres deemed to require human-level intelligence and the artifact meets certain creative constraints given by a human evaluator. Creativity is not unique to human intelligence, but it is one of the hallmarks of human intelligence."

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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