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Comment Re:Geolock Porn (Score 1) 253

Ahh yes. That takes me back. I think they were called 'Rugby Songs' and the only thing I remember was:

The men of this water
Had a charming little daughter
and the hairs on her dicky di-do
hung down to her knees.

The result of which was that I could never listen to Dido (the female singer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... without giggling,
and by now, that the charming little daughter would be a hairy Welsh BBW as you say.

Comment Re:Why not just kill them all? (Score 1) 150

So we get a bunch of gay mosquitos?
I did hear once that the female's buzz is there to attract males who don't buzz. Unfortunately the males are deaf.
On a more serious note, the egg, larva and pupa are eaten by fish, frogs, birds, spiders so their absence will be significant. Using genetic switches would only be local and thus effecting the local populations only.

Comment Typical (Score 1) 129

I've never read so much crap from the anti-microsoft brigade for a long time.
I bet that all of them hadn't tried Windows phone 8 and so they feel that they can run it into the ground because it's MS.
The phones are great. The OS is excellent and works well on low end phones too. The Windows store is better than you think and the gui and general operation is easy to use esp with One Drive. Cortana is brilliant. Hands off answers my sms-s with voice recognition.
It all a matter of choice and preference. You like android with all that confusing muddle of updates that stuff things up? Go for it. Like your Apple phone? Then make sure you've got an iPad or Mac to go with it to take full advantage.
Just look up the specs of the newest Lumia 640XL - all for around $300 unlocked. Manufactured in ex Nokia factories, great battery life and a whopping 5.7" screen.
MS will win this. Give them a few years.

Comment Re:Germany should pay war reparations for WWII (Score 3, Interesting) 743

German war spoils were forcibly taken back. Their country was divided in two and all the property gained by them taken away. This resulted in genocide in the newly created nation states whose political borders did not follow ethnic borders. Take Yugoslavia as an example. Or for that matter the Israeli Inquisition on Germany and their allies is still going on 60 years afterwards.
This was a repeat of WWI and was even worse, especially for their Axis allies. The Ottoman empire was effectively dismantled, the Austro-Hungarian Empire ripped apart to the devastation of everyone concerned. Again, the new geopolitical borders did not follow ethnic borders. That's why you have faction strife in the Middle East now, why countries like Hungary lost 75% of their land.
After WWII: Forced emigration - over 3 million Germans had to resettle, raging communist thugs, purges (Tito for example) of their own people, ethnic xenophobia. You name it. Yeah the Allies really stuffed it up badly causing isolation and terrible political unrest.
Those war reparations destroyed Central Europe and they're only just starting to recover.
Now some of you have the educated opinion that Germany should repay Ally losses? That is cruel and unreasonable.
Now Greece wants 303 billion dollars as full reparations when the matter was already settled on the eve of unification in 1990.
Greece's problems are relatively new and are not the result of WWII. It's just a money grabbing attempt by Tsipras.
Even if Greece and the EU can forgive the debt fully, Greece still needs to show that their economy is good enough to support themselves. So far there is no sign of that.

Comment Re:arrow of time (Score 1) 39

Really? Another take on Jane Eyre? I'm sorry but I asked for a terminating pass from my English professor in Romantic Literature as I had an instinctual 'flight or fight' response after reading the genre.
That doesn't mean that The Eyre Affair won't be on my reading list though but I already have slight nausea thinking about it.
OTOH I'm thinking of writing a Sci-Fi time travel specific to 17th century Turkey and the Ottoman attempts to conquer Vienna. No eggs though, scrambled or otherwise. Maybe I can put a reference in there somewhen?

Comment Re:"Deep Learning"...?? (Score 1) 65

I understand you post and was written with a great example. I do not deny that Deep Learning has a long way to go, yet I (as a Philosophy sub-major) can't leave my original contention alone. So with my technical knowledge I can build a do-able A.I. machine which can have elements of Deep Learning if I understand it correctly.
In this case let's use our imagination:
The simplest A.I. is a feedback circuit - like a thermostat. It always tries to control temperature within a set range. It finds it difficult to operate if the external environment is beyond it's mechanical capacity to operate. I.E. if the external temp is too cold (if it is a heat pump) or too warm (as a fridge). Uncontrolled, it eventually burns the compressor out. This damage can be avoided if another temp sensor on the compressor/motor allows it to shut itself off. So it protects itself from damage, but it still wants to work, that is achieve its purpose-of-being.
So let's give it mobility and more sensors around its environment to find a more environmentally friendly position to operate. So as soon as the temp becomes out of range, it moves to a position where it can operate longer.
Now for an example:
Imagine a split system air conditioning compressor motor that can move on rails around the corner of a house. In very hot temperatures it will move towards the cooler regions around the corner in the shade. In very cold conditions, it will move to a warmer part of the exterior. Remember, this is do-able and relatively easy to implement.
The Learning aspect:
Now let us give the machine the ability to store its own movement data based on time, days, months. It can now 'predict' where it can go and does so much earlier. It can move to a better position for better efficiency and it gives itself a +1 for purpose-of-being. It can even do statistical operations on the probability that a certain location at a certain time would be better for it.
Now give it the internet.
What machine intelligence is needed before it can work out how to log into a weather forecasting service? Although it can monitor local wind speed and temperature and find the optimal position all the time, it can also determine if the house/structure inhabited, determine power draw and communicate with other 'house A.I.' to route warmth and cool to inhabited areas.
But the big question is to hard code the weather service. Supposing it goes down? Can it find another? What other services would it require? Maybe we can get the House A.I. to crawl the net or Cortana/Siri to find an alternative or maybe associative services we have not considered when the machine was first set up.
As long as it knows that the new service may/would give it a +1 - or prevent it from getting a -1
So 'preservation' drives this machine and it has a sense of purpose.

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