I dispute that auditory function in the brain is fairly well understood. *Some* of the fundamentals are fairly well understood.

As an example, there is the Olivocochlear system that feeds back from Superior Olives to the cochlea. We think it may contribute to active amplification of sounds in the cochlea. See wikipedia for a list of PROPOSED functions.

What we do know is that cutting the olivocochlear connection impairs sensitivity in the cochlea. We do know what neurons connect to what other neurons, and have some idea of the types of connections.

What we don't know is "how the thing works".

This system is key to human hearing; it's not just a lump of cells with no known function. So, we are a long ways off from any human- (or even cat-) level auditory models.

These fields you mention (computer vision, speech recognition) are good examples of the state of intelligent machines.

We can make these things work pretty well for very specific tasks (e.g. recognize faces in a picture), but we are nowhere near having general, human-level intelligence. It's hard to see how we are even close to having human-level vision capabilities.

Kurzweil is a "futurist" and "technologist" which means he has some technical background and a big mouth with a lot of hot air.

Sure, he accomplished some research VERY early on with sound and OCR. He has not been on the cutting edge for decades.

Kurzweil's career is summed well with this quote (text copied from Wikipedia's article on Kurzweil):

In the cover article of the December 2010 issue of IEEE Spectrum, John Rennie criticizes Kurzweil for several predictions that failed to become manifest by the originally predicted date. "Therein lie the frustrations of Kurzweil's brand of tech punditry. On close examination, his clearest and most successful predictions often lack originality or profundity. And most of his predictions come with so many loopholes that they border on the unfalsifiable."

So, right angle (aka t-bone crashes) are down, but rear- end collisions are up? That doesn't sound so bad.

Right angle crashes can kill people. Rear-end collisions are fender benders.

There's more detail here, including links to papers: http://voipsecurityblog.typepad.com/marks_voip_security_blog/2012/09/dtmf-telephony-denial-of-service-tdos-issues-for-ivrs.html

The way the article is written, it hints that low quality = more implementation flaws.

Let's not forget that software can have design flaws, too, and careful programming might still lead to low quality software.

In the case of Knight, the defects might not have even been a function of the software per se. I'm sure a good bit of probability and machine learning go into HFT; these algorithms may have been the source of the errors, and the flawed algorithms might not even be due to the software engineers.

Here's another advantage: your internal IT organization doesnt skim a 20 - 30% profit off the top.

Seriously, proponents of strategies like outsourcing and privatization always talk about how these companies increase efficiency. But, since they always have a profit motive, these companies must operate (say) 30% more efficiently just to break even.

When you put it that way, he sounds more like a science fiction writer.

I think it's funny how Ray Kurzweil predicts a "singularity" within 50 years, but the people who would actually implement the singularity (e.g. Norvig) say that won't happen.

Why do people still take Kurzweil seriously?

I read an article that gave numbers for the three investment banks (taken from facebook's disclosures).

The numbers totalled $11.6 billion, out of the $16B facebook raised. So, the investment banks bought most of the shares. Some of that is probably for their investors.

I wonder how much the banks will lose from propping up the price.. FB is down 12% today, which means the banks' stock lost over a billion dollars in value. That wipes out everything they made in fees (a few hundred million, IIRC).

This assumes that the stock could be sold for less than $38. I'm not sure that's even possible in an IPO scenario like this (not saying it isn't, saying I don't know).

Who would buy the stock for $38-$42 then turn around and sell it the same day for less?

There is no doubt - for most of what IBM is selling, APAC and the Middle East are the growth markets. So it does make sense to move centers of business from the country with low single digit growth and a saturated market to the developing areas with strong growth and lots of greenspace

On the other hand, there's clearly a lot of outsourcing fever going on, and IBM may be participating in that but couching it in the "International" part of its namesake. It's hard to say.

Your view on democracy sounds great in theory, but American-style democracy just doesn't work like that.

Here's an example. Georgia just changed its law about selling beer and wine at the grocery store on Sundays. Previously, it had been illegal.. for decades.

Under new law, cities and counties could hold referendums to allow/disallow sunday sales in their area. In almost all of the cities/counties that held a vote, Sunday sales won in a landslide.. typically 70+% approving.

Now, this new law nearly died in the 2011 state congress thanks to special interest groups like the Christian Coalition. In fact, Sunday sales were kept illegal for decades due to their efforts, even though it is clearly what the majority wanted. This tells me the Christian Coalition and groups like it successfully suppressed democracy for DECADES, against the wishes of a 70+% majority!

I'd say the timing has to do with the Ceglia case.

With a recent judicial decision to sanction Ceglia, Facebook most likely believes they are in the endgame of that suit and can move forward with an IPO without the suit causing problems.

Think about it. Would you file for a $75B IPO (or whatever bullshit figure they've come up with) if there was an open suit with someone claiming they own half of the founder's shares, and backing it up with a signed contract?

I pretty much agree with your conclusions, but have a couple quibbles.

You're right that the purpose of an attack is to disrupt the target machines, but it won't always be a DDOS attack. Stuxnet was a worm with a targeted payload; if the German researcher hadn't found it and gone public, Iran might not have ever figured out why their centrifuges weren't working as anticipated.

But Stuxnet doesn't fit neatly into cyberwarfare. I'd say it fits better into a third category: Covert Action, which is, by design, deniable.

But, yeah, I totally agree that this is unnecessary saber rattling.