"Rationally, I have to think that when one service provider represents 10% or more of the traffic on a given network they should be doing something to address it, and the responsibility really falls on their shoulders and not the ISP."

I disagree. The reason being that the 10% has been paid for by the people watching those streams. What difference should it make to my ISP how I use my bandwidth. I paid for it.

"Second, how does that support your restaurant analogy? Bandwidth is finite. How do you define "artificially slow down delivery" in a world of finite bandwidth and complex and continually changing network topologies? So Hulu and Netflix have to have the same performance to every customer? No matter what the physical network layout is between server and user?"

That isn't what is going on here though. There is a big difference between the connection coincidently only be so fast between point A and B and an ISP saying, oh a competing video service is at A, so no, don't follow our normal procedure and upgrade the infrastructure at that point. Or even worse, a competitor is at A, so reduce memory or misconfigure the router leading to them. Or still worse, lets install something to actively detect traffic going to our competitor and slow it down.

Netflix pays for it's bandwidth. I pay for my bandwidth. My common carrier better be prioritizing everything I want to access via MY connection equally. Threatening to invisibly slow down Netflix to first create the illusion that Netflix isn't paying for their bandwidth and second raise the costs of a competitors service is unethical and should be illegal and in a REAL free market we would have 20 places to take our business to go around it.

At the very least if companies aren't required to obey net neutrality regulations they should lose all common carrier protections since they aren't offering a content neutral pipe anymore.

It's not actually the government asshatry that concerns me. I mean it's not cool but it isn't going away... ever. But a government needs a healthy fear of it's citizens and a government that isn't afraid of the rabble is a terrible and frightening thing indeed. So yes, I for one do welcome a return to the government hiding in shadows doing illicit things when opposed to one that feels its citizens are powerless and it can openly do illicit things.

It's people who don't understand that government must fear the common man who support measures to disarm the people.

P.S. The whole hoarding bitcoins thing is a myth. Deflationary economies work the same way inflationary economies work the pressure is just in another place. Deflation is a built in wage increase for workers. Everyone's money being worth more is more temptation to spend it because prices get lower and lower. But while prices get lower and lower companies have to continue to pay workers the same amount.

This is partially offset by their cost for materials going down but bottom line is that companies will need to increase sales to keep up. Luckily for companies, everyone makes more than before because their salary of 1 BTC/week is worth more so they can afford more, so consumption goes up.

The confusion comes from people who have bought into the idea that the economy is driven by investors. Never believe this, it's nonsense used to justify people who do nothing but add interest, increase prices, and/or reduce the quality (aka cost of production) of goods and services to "realize value" and thus make money without contributing to the economy but rather by detracting to it. Often these try to take credit for and/or mask their efforts by blending in with actual technology improvements.

The economy is driven by workers (Production) and consumers (Consumption). All value in the economy comes from workers, technology improvements for instance are the work output of engineers and researchers. Consumers purchase goods and services, goods remain part of the economy and have innate value and service availability has an innate value and the output of the service may have a value as well. Consumers generally spend pretty much everything they make.

If you must obsess over middle men (investors, lenders, salesmen, etc) then you should realize that these people want other people's money. Banks don't lend to beat inflation, banks lend to charge an interest rate that is their profit+inflation. With a deflationary system lenders can simply exclude the inflation number since the payback will be in deflated dollars and the interest deflates too. How much interest can they charge? Dunno, but it will be as much as the market will allow and so it should amount to at least the same amount of increased buying power as loans now.

"Sure it is."

No, actually it's not. They screen every donation in the US as well, that's why they have a questionnaire to eliminate high risk groups. I imagine in Canada the people doing those tests are on state salaries and would be sitting around getting paid regardless. In the US the non-profit donation driven organizations collecting blood have to pay third party labs on a per test basis. Generally those organizations run out of money to collect and screen donations before they run out of willing blood donors. It makes absolutely no sense for them to take blood from high risk groups, have more collected donations fail, and therefore have a higher cost per usable pint of blood.

All investment carries risk. High risk carries high reward but you should moderate how much you put into a high risk store like Bitcoin. Of course, bitcoin will stabilize dramatically as volume increases.

But as the market grows there will be more transactions and therefore more fees generated without actually increasing them.

There is another bot created by a group of Isreali's awhile back that was grown to about 6 (if I remember correctly) and read children's books. It was able to convince a child psychologist it was a 6yr old child.

I haven't heard any updates on that particular project.

1. I still highly doubt that. For one I think you underestimate the size of the homosexual population. For another, I think you are forgetting frequency. It is a common myth that women can't derive pleasure from anal sex (yes, it's a myth, there are two branches of the clitoris that drop to the anal passage and appropriate stimulation can actually put women in a continuous orgasm state that can last for... well I've always gotten tired or switched to something else without finding out if there is a limit to how long it could be stimulated but 3 hours+). Women are afraid of anal sex and their fear is generally confirmed by people who don't know how to do it right. Thus they tolerate this painful experience infrequently.

2. Yes.

"I'm sorry but "these people have higher risk factors" is not acceptable when you can just screen the damned blood."

They screen all donated blood. Pre-screening dramatically cuts the cost of doing this and results in an INCREASED supply. Funding for collection and testing is a bigger factor in supply shortages than lack of donors.

It's statistically founded and if they had the balls they'd reject African American males who have crazy high infection rates.

HIV testing isn't cheap and forcing it on everyone would shrink the donor pool dramatically not increase it.

Seriously, can we just having an equal opportunity to have your blood stolen stay off the agenda for the moment?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/a-romanian-scientist-claims-to-have-developed-artificial-blood-180947565/?no-ist

Watson's relational reasoning is extremely impressive. Moreover, forming layer upon layer upon layer of relational pattern matching is exactly how the neural networks in our brains form their artificial intelligence. Watson is definitely on the right path.

I'm highly skeptical that you can "code" an AI. I believe we can code the core of it and build it a platform to live on but that we grow an AI much the way we grow our own. Popping out a fully grown human yesterday would not give you someone who could pass a turing test tomorrow. Why should it work for a machine with less powerful hardware?

I also suspect the way we grow is an important factor. Grow the brain slowly, increasing capacity and feeding it with input. It's like a potted plant. The ideal scenerio is to start with a small pot, let the roots fill it out, then increase the pot size progressively letting it fill out each one. This causes the root structure to grow as densely as possible. If you put the plant in the largest pot to begin with the root structure will be spread out more, less dense, and less efficient. Cities are the same way. This is where we see varied levels urban sprawl.

Would the same not be true for a neural network like the brain? Start with a smaller one, let it fill out and utilize that network completely, then progressively add more neurons in a consistent pattern so that it forms the most efficient and dense neural chains possible and utilizes the raw neurons available to the utmost.

I think you replied to the wrong post. Your point is the same point I was making.

If the chat bot is not able to reason and solve novel problems it is not artificially intelligent. It has to be able to derive meaning from and interpret meaning from things being communicated to it in order to be advanced enough. You should able to teach it things beyond chat via chat.

At that point calling it a chat bot doesn't really matter, that's just how it starts it's evolution, at that point it's just an AI.

It does seem as if a legitimate Turing test would involve humans who didn't know they were potentially speaking with a computer. Even better would be if they thought it was a remote working colleague. Also for it to be legitimate, the machine would need to be able to fool them indefinitely (short of some failure to come to physical meetings or physically interact in some way).

An AI working accounts receivable might be a good option.