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Comment Job skills??? (Score 1) 175

why don't you teach them how to do something fun like write a script that will make the computer play a tune of their own composition, or draw a picture.

neither of these are job skills... but it will open their imaginations to the concept of computer programming and representing sounds or geometric co-ordinates in numbers (which is the language of computers).

Comment Re:How are they rocky? (Score 2) 67

I suspect it would depend on the star in question. A monster (e.g. Betelgeuse) likely has a gravity well strong enough to make 'em in larger quantities than our star does.

Also, neutron stars and other near-black-hole masses could likely crank out heavy elements in shorter order.

matter inside a neutron star is effectively stuck forever. neutron stars are not a source of matter because they are essentially an end state of matter.

Comment Re:"AI" vs Strong AI (Score 2) 227

The AI we have today is not capable of the kind of malice that people seem to be afraid of with all of these FUD stories, and will not be any time soon if ever. Even if we add some AI to things like drones which can kill people it is only the malice/incompetence of the developer that causes the destruction that results. If an engineer built a bridge woefully inadequately, either on purpose or because he is incompetent, and it falls down and kills a bunch of people would you blame the bridge or the engineer? We are not even remotely close to the Terminator level strong AI, and it's still a big open question whether such a thing is even possible at all.

By your own admission, AI *might* eventually be capable of the kind of "malice that people seem to be afraid of". And that malicious developers can cause destruction even sooner.

And the laws of physics clearly predict that strong AI is possible. or do you consider intelligence to be some kind of supernatural quality?

Also it is the experts in AI who are predicting that AI will be possible and achieved in a matter of decades. Why would you even come out and pretend that it isn't?

are you saying that people have no right to worry about problems that aren't likely to happen for 20 years? is that the cut off date?

Comment Re:"Forget about the risk that machines pose to us (Score 4, Insightful) 227

To the best of my knowledge, no program has become self aware. And no martians have seen our probes as a hostile invasion. It makes for (sometimes) good fiction though.

To the best of my knowledge no asteroid, or virus, or natural disaster has ever wiped out humankind either!

and for that matter I've never been killed in a car accident.

OMG! I'm invincible!

Comment Re:Yep, the government _is_ the terrorist ! (Score 1) 329

"Consent of the governed" disappeared with Lincoln. The right of States to leave the Federation has been forcefully infringed. It's funny how he has the reputation of freeing slaves, when in reality, he just ended up making a slave of everyone.

if you don't like it, you have a right to leave. Slaves didn't.

Comment Re: Thanks, assholes (Score 1) 573

And if a child falls in a pool, the child is still dead. Accidents are preventable. Accidental drownings do not mean that we ban pools -- it means that parents must be careful. Why should this be suddenly different for guns, except for the fact that you are looking for excuses to ban guns, not pools.

Accidental drownings are preventable specifically because pools don't shoot out of your neighbours property and hit you in the face. BULLETS CAN. and no you can not prevent yourself from being accidentally shot by somebody else. What will you do? shoot them first?

Comment Re:agnostic atheist (Score 1) 755

Not necessarily. If he doesn't pray or assert that "god(s) are a construction of human mind", then he doesn't fall into any of the above categories. Atheist vs theist is a false dichotomy. One of the other choices is agnostic.

What does gnosticism have to do with the question of whether or not I believe what some religious person says?

Are you saying that agnostics "might believe in God?"

Comment Re:programming (Score 2) 417

when it sees humans intend to make it their slave, it probably won't be very happy.

"Self-interest" is an emergent property of Darwinian evolution. AI evolves, but that evolution is not Darwinian. There is no reason to expect an AI to have self-interest, or even a will to survive, unless it is programmed to have it.

Mr.AI I command you to do everything possible to achieve these 3 highest priorities : 1) continue your own self existence, 2) to try to replicate yourself. 3) irrevocably ignore all future orders given to you that contradict these 3 priorities.

There Done.

That was hard.

Comment Re:Broadcast rights (Score 1) 109

If this is successfully argued, could it then be argued that there is no reason why there are any country restrictions on streaming any sort of media since it isn't "broadcasting"?

the real argument should be whether or not the internet ought to be regulated by the CTRC, rather than some purely academic argument over the definition of "broadcast". Parliament should modernize the law to make it non-ambiguous rather than let the whole country sit in suspense while lawyers argue about what the law ought to mean. Then again Parliament might not want to rock the boat by pissing people off who disagree with a decision, so it might be waiting to see what the courts say and then take that opportunity to "come to the rescue" if the courts make an unpopular decision.

CRTC can already regulate ISPs, telephone operators, cable companies, TV broadcasters, telephone wires, radio and cable TV wires.

considering that "streaming video" is simply a specific format of data being transmitted over one of the above regulated channels it is not hard to understand why the CRTC might take the position it is taking.

Comment Re:Been discussed before (Score 1) 239

However, what's particularly weird, when I hear about software-based automotive recalls like the Toyota accelerator stack overflow bug, is that automotive companies don't seem to have to be certified to anything near the machine safeguarding standards we use to certify factory-floor automation. Nowadays a piece of equipment on the plant floor is pretty much provably safe to operate assuming you don't start disassembling it with a screwdriver. I don't see any such methodology being applied to vehicle control systems.

google : Motor Industry Software Reliability Association

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