So even if you charge $1 for it and assuming you're working by yourself, you're looking at anywhere between $7,000 to $47,000 (minus hardware and licensing fees). If you had anyone else helping (which is probably the case), then yeah... you're looking at poverty level wages.

There's a questionable assumption buried in that: The assumption it takes a year to put out an app. It certainly should not. Unless the developer really, really sucks. And in which case, perhaps that should be considered with regard to remuneration.

A good dev can put a working skeleton of an iOS app or a full blown mac app up in a matter of hours. I can do it in minutes. Filling it with whatever one wants it to do doesn't generally take all that long, certainly not a year, unless you're building something as extended and construct/art heavy as Angry Birds, and in that case... you're likely to make more than 50k.

Now, as for those who are filling the app store (Android too, I'm not discriminating) with 50mb apps that hardly do anything at all... well, there you go. Given the level of what they've produced, perhaps it does take them a year. But I can't say I'm terribly worried about them, either. :/

He sure isn't. My lady has an iPhone 5; I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Guess what she's about to buy? Hint... not another iPhone... We both also have recent iPads. Quite familiar with iOS.

You see anyone not sitting on the sidelines here?

All kinds of noise was made about Hitler's early moves, it's just that other than noise, everyone sat. Which is just what everyone is doing now. Not saying there's much to conclude from that, but it's certainly a similar thing thus far.

This. I would go further -- I bet the components are ready to plug together. And they already have ballistic capable launch platforms. And they've had nuclear reactors for years, not to mention some of the smartest, well educated, motivated individuals on the face of the earth and huge industrial powerhouses very well acquainted with keeping tight security.

Although I should admit that it doesn't worry me even a little bit, nor do any of the known nukes around the globe. They're just really big bombs. Sucks just as much to be blown up by a grenade, or shot with a 50 caliber bullet. Being taken out by a bayonet or other bladed weapon is no party either. I truly think it's just beyond awesome that politicians are finally on the front lines -- if we get nuked, they are finally the first to go, as they should have been for every war they declared, frankly. And I don't think for even a second that the actual leaders of Muslim countries are taken in by that 72 virgins BS, any more than most US presidents are seriously religious (except for poor old drugged out Bush, but that's our own fault...) Religion is a tool of control. Smart people quietly ignore it, or go through the motions as needed. Religion is not there for people smart and cunning enough to get to positions of national leadership. It's there for everyone else.

Once you have the bomb, you're not going to get attacked

You might want to keep an eye on India and Pakistan...

I don't use my thumbs with my smartphone, you insensitive clods!

Hold in left hand, poke and stroke with right index finger. No, no, the smartphone, still talking about the smartphone.

LOL

These are alterations of the magnetic fields from sources outside the cranium and outside the myelin sheath which impact the neural processing. Would this not be indicative of quantum influences in neural processing?

They are indicative of EM interference. Quantum interference and effects are something else entirely, and outside of the laboratory, have only been found to occur on very tiny scales associated with atomic structure, as in photosynthesis. Quantum modulation -- that is, a quantum effect that changes the output of a cell based upon evaluation of the inputs -- is possible, but only speculative at this time. Quantum interference, that is, changing the output of a cell based upon external quantum events, is wholly speculative; we're unaware at this time of any such event occurring in nature and I personally, at least, am unaware of a natural means for it to occur.

Given that these effects are sourced outside the cranium, it would seem plausible then that the current generated as a signal propegates[sic] down the axon of neuron A would have an impact on parallel neuron B firing due to the magnetic field generated from A's firing. These generated magnetic fields are strong enough to be detected outside the cranium and are the basis of some FMRI techniques.

FMRI - at least as far as I know - works by intentionally orienting the magnetic impulses of hydrogen atoms, and then uses the newly resulting magnetic field to indicate brain activity by proxy of blood oxygenation. Hemoglobin is diamagnetic when oxygenated but paramagnetic when deoxygenated. This difference in magnetic properties leads to small differences in the MR signal of blood depending on the degree of oxygenation. Since blood oxygenation varies according to the levels of neural activity these differences can be used to detect brain activity. But this is not a magnetic field generated by the brain, it is an externally stimulated one (using extremely powerful external fields) and even so, it does not show any signs of affecting brain function, which in turn argues, again, for the lack of effect of magnetic fields at the level of the neurons.

Here's my thinking on the kind of thing you are talking about, admittedly somewhat off the cuff: Magnetic fields that are generated by current along a conductor are proportional to the inductive impedance of the conductor. Similarly, the amount of current induced in a nearby conductor is proportional to the initial signal size, but reduces by distance (square law) and to the lack of or presence of an impedance match between the two. The poorer the impedance match of the receiving element, the less signal will be impressed upon it by the field, which carries very little power. We must consider that the signals are low and so therefore are the initial field intensities. Because of this, the interior signal condition of the receiving element is extremely likely to drown out -- subsume -- any neighboring interference. And that's actually what FMRI, again the kind I am aware of, indicates. You can boost the magnetic fields within the brain quite a bit and there's no detectable difference in brain function; certainly the brain still works and so I think this tells us pretty clearly that the brain is not very sensitive to this sort of thing. One caveat: magnetic fields generally induce voltages when they are changing, not when they are static, so frequency could easily be an issue here. But now we go back to the experience of high field exposure in the pursuit of various radiative undertakings, again at every frequency from sub-hertz to gigahertz, and this has shown us that the brain continues to operate without any particular notable reaction at all.

Can you give me a pointer to the FMRI techniques you were thinking of?

There are actual articles on inter-neuronal communication via electromagnetic waves: http://www.sciencedaily.com/re... and Neural and Brain Modeling by Rondald MacGregor

These articles talk about electric fields -- not magnetic fields. We do know that the aggregate fields of many neurons firing in relative synchrony can be detected via electrodes, and that creating similar fields internal to the brain affects its operation; but again, we also know from radio and electrical work that the effects of externally applied magnetic fields in inducing electrical impulses are not indicated, probably due to a lack of inductive pickup -- small conductor lengths are only resonant, and therefore capable of efficient power transfer, at extremely high frequencies. In either case -- effect or no -- the much smaller scale (short effective distance) of quantum events doesn't really allow us to apply the information about the one to the other without some guiding evidence that it is actually happening, and that is presently not the case. I don't think it is very likely at all, but as I indicated previously, that's based on the current state of my knowledge about the matter, which I think (hope!) is fairly broad.

Ultimately what this points to is that our mathematical models of neural networks and dynamic bayesian networds[sic] are not exactly what is happening inside the brain. At best its a discrete approximation to a continuous space which exists in a feedback loop with itself. Kinda like a Summation approximation for the Integral of a function.

I am moderately confident that the evidence does not support such a contention at this time. However, let's say that it is so. Then the question becomes, are our current models accurate enough? Given our present ability to reproduce small neural systems and get results that match, it would seem that at small scales -- which is really what we're talking about, I think -- our understanding is sufficient. Certainly from an empirical standpoint, we have been able to do many interesting things with simulation of what I'll call "isolated neural systems" just so we have a handle on the matter, as opposed to an "externally receptive neural systems." Current undertakings show that working to replicate the presently known performance metrics definitely results in usable and very powerful deterministic results. It may well be that even if your suggestion is correct, we won't run into it as a functional limitation although It certainly is interesting to think about even in a speculative manner.

The topological graph structure of the nueron[sic] connections through dendrite and axons is dominant, but it is not dominant enough to eliminate the influence of the fluctuations in the ambient electromagnetic fields. The above articles provide evidence of this. It's not just speculation.

That externally applied electrical fields can create effects is known, and that there are internally generated electrical fields is also known, but the idea that the signal levels of the actions of nearby neurons affect other nearby neurons remains speculation. Even if it is so, and it is significant to how the system processes its signals (see next paragraph), it still falls directly into the electrical, chemical and topological three; none of it signals or suggests the existence of quantum interaction or modulation.

When we create neural networks, we find that they are significantly more useful and effective when the transfer functions are sigmoid or sigmoid-like in that the stable states are high and low, very much binary, whereas the shift between states is not a significant player in stable neural results. I think this is likely also with respect to the neuron (speculating), as neurons that were unable to remain stable would seem to be hard-pressed to represent memory or even consistent thought patterns without disruption. Having said that, however, there are many signals in the brain that operate in repetitive temporal patterns, and perhaps this is a counter indication, though since timing is very much a factor in nervous system communication (see Numenta's work), it may simply be a result of the physical connectivity along the neuron's input channels.

My highest confidence presently rests with the idea that while what we perceive in an aggregate fashion as "mental activity" -- consciousness, memory and so forth -- is both emergent and widely distributed among many neural elements, that distribution is within the network and not any kind of a field effect outside of them, or consequent to significant EM field or quantum interactions between otherwise unconnected neurons. That doesn't mean that applying fields externally won't have an effect -- I'm saying that the brain is apparently stable within its own environment and so modeling, simulation and emulation without non-connected effects is presently what is indicated as the likely equivalent mechanism.

That's all definitely interesting speculation, but the point remains: As far as quantum effects go, it is all speculation. Nothing like what you suggest has been discovered; further, no effect has been detected that cannot be attributed to one or more of the chemical, electrical or topological mechanisms we're already aware of.

As to lowish resistance, stray capacitance and inherent inductance providing for signal coupling, that's conceivable but has not been found. We know that the many layers of a lipoprotein called myelin (the myelin sheaths) provide a very effective form of EM isolation along the nerves themselves, and then at the edge of the skull, there are several layers (skin, lipoids, the skull, the dura, the CSF-carrying arachnoid, and the pia) that do an extraordinary job of keeping brain signals in and external signals out, which is part of why we are extremely confident that the mind operates inside the skull and nowhere else, and that the various related superstitious speculations that claim otherwise are invalid.

Radio operators have been exposed extensively to RF at about any frequency from "DC to daylight" as the saying goes, at just about any power level you can imagine, as well as all manner of static EM fields, and from this we know that it takes an enormous amount of non-nerve-signal, non-directly coupled interference to have any detectable effect upon any portion of the mind at all. Further, we know that if we go in, in an invasive manner, surgically implanting electrodes and directly stimulating the nerves, once the myelin has been bypassed, only a tiny signal is required to destabilize / change what was going on prior. This in turn implies that the myelin is doing a really stand-up job of keeping signal integrity, and therefore against much credence for internally generated interference along the actual nerves. Within the cell, one could -- should -- think that what is going on is integral to the stability of the cell itself, and again, we know only of chemical, electrical and topological elements that operate as modulators at this time.

There's one more thing. Poor myelin sheathing is a known causative factor underlying many really serious disease processes. That's not ultimately definitive, but then again, it certainly doesn't argue in any way for interference being a good thing.

This, all taken together, strongly indicates that whatever is going on in there, it's very stable with regard to decoupled interference / cross-talk of any kind, local or otherwise.

Tomorrow, these conclusions may all be different due to new data. But as of right now, those three -- the "big three", I sometimes call them -- show every sign of being all there is.

The iWatch is a fragile thing that won't last very long without specialized maintenance, replacement parts, et cetera.

That hasn't stopped us from making them, though, has it? That hasn't stopped it from being created by us for a specific purpose, has it? That hasn't made nature produce one on its own, has it? Remember, the claim was: "If grey goo replicators were possible, evolution would have already created them." Clearly the IWatch is possible; yet nature didn't create it. Therefore, it is a flat-out given that "If grey goo replicators were possible, evolution would have already created them." is invalid logic. The fact is, special purpose devices can, and have been, made by us, that evolution has not even come close to, which fact destroys the above assertion completely.

Grey goo replicators have to get energy from somewhere. Where?

Well, let's see. There's light; heat; motion; all in the environment, available for harvesting. That oughta do for a start. Then there's magnetic induction from a central source, and also the electrical component of RF emissions. Then there's chemical energy, atomic energy... for all we know at this point there's energy in vacuum -- a lot of theory points that way. So, presuming we can make disassemblers in the first place (not a given) odds are good that we can power them, or get them to power themselves. Or both. They may work in a bath of energy supplying chemicals, they may work by harvesting available energy, we may be the supplier of that, or nature may -- the possible and potential variations on the theme are quite extensive.

The organisms which can break down anything are readily out-competed by a variety of organisms which between them can break down anything. And that's why grey goo is not a credible threat.

Nope. Grey goo is not an organism. It won't be evolved, and it won't be competing. It'll be working. Like an iWatch. The potential to create such has nothing at all to do with what organisms are in the environment. You see anything in the biosphere "out-competing" an atomic weapon? No. That's because it's a purpose-designed machine. It does what it does, regardless of who made it; but we made it and nature didn't, and biological evolutionary competition and selection are not in the least relevant to the mechanism of the bomb, no more than they would be to the mechanism of a nanite of any stripe. Or an iWatch. :)

Just an also-ran. Chuck Norris built an AI out of RTL the day the chips were shipped. He kicked its ass in an intelligence test and it committed suicide.

If grey goo replicators were possible, evolution would have already created them.

Yes, that's why nature created the iWatch.

Oh.

Wait.

I have no idea if quantum computing will ever be a thing we want to use, but I know we're going to keep talking about it like we talk about nuclear fusion being humanities[sic] salvation.

Well, except that we have no particular evidence of "quantum computing" going on around us, whereas the reality of fusion reactions producing heat is an empirical fact, as are stable fusion reactions (look up in the daytime, dark filters strongly indicated.) If quantum computing is going to be a real thing, we'll have to create it from the ground up -- and that's precisely what we're trying to do.

So while I agree that quantum computing presently shows all the aspects of something almost entirely unknown, fusion is a technology we have already used (in the Castle Bravo weapon detonated at Bikini atoll, for instance), see working in nature in basically exactly the form we want (our star) and are simply working to tame down (various fusion power experimental setups and projects in progress.)

Presently, there are many reasons to speculate that we will have working fusion reactors on various useful scales; not so many to think that we can put quantum effects to use in significant computing contexts.

There is some investigation that suggests that quantum consciousness is possible based on interactions between microtubule structures inside of neurons.

No, there isn't. In fact, the term "quantum consciousness" is nonsensical. Unless you consider a bipolar transistor to have "quantum consciousness", and in which case, it isn't nonsensical so much as meaningless.

I think you're confusing Woz with Chuck Norris. :)