jdoeii - Slashdot User

Comment: Re:AI amature hour (Score 1) 291

by jdoeii on Monday May 25 2009, @09:25AM (#28083033) Attached to: Towards Artificial Consciousness

I believe you are mistaken. First, you assume the brain function is effectively calculable. It is not. At least not at the level relevant to this discussion. Second, I think you assume if a device is computationally equivalent to a Turing machine it must have software and hardware as distinct components. Church-Turing thesis does not claim that and I believe it generally is untrue.

Imagine an expanding air balloon. Is the function it calculates effectively calculable? What is hardware and what is software in this case?

Comment: Re:can you shut it off? (Score 4, Insightful) 291

by jdoeii on Sunday May 24 2009, @07:51AM (#28074029) Attached to: Towards Artificial Consciousness

Murder is a human concept. It's from the [thy shall not do stuff onto others that you do not want to receive yourself]. And if you step back, then it's an evolved behavior to increase chances of survival. One more step back, and you will notice that fear of death is also an evolutionary achievement. Another look, and perception of continuous life itself is an evolved psychological construct to protect sanity. Consciousness is not continuous. Your conscious self dies every night. AI does not need to fear death, does not need to have psychological crutches that humans use to stay sane. If life for an AI is overrated, murder is irrelevant.

Dreamhost down nearly 24 hours, thousands affected

Submitted by

dgtlmoon

on Monday February 26 2007, @01:54AM

dgtlmoon writes "Following a planned power outage that went for an unplanned amount of time due to some burnt out cables discovered during the maintainence dreamhost.com hosted websites are down, some estimates are between 100,000 and 250,000 domains are affected, further-more when the power came back on they found a bunch of core routers to be dead and are having difficulty resuming normal operations, this is issue is just about to tick over to 24 hours open."

Google Apps replaces Office at 100,000 sites

Submitted by Tookis on Friday February 23 2007, @05:30AM

Tookis writes "Google's newly released online productivity suite Google Apps has already replaced Microsoft Office at more than 100,000 small to medium enterprises and has been deployed at two of the largest companies in the world, according to the search leader's enterprise product boss, Kevin Gough. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9865/53/"

Study shows file sharing has no effect on CD sales

Submitted by

jibjibjib

on Friday February 23 2007, @05:10AM

jibjibjib writes "Ars Technica reports that a study by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, recently published in the Journal of Political Economy, shows that file sharing is not responsible for declining CD sales figures.

The study, entitled "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," claims that "a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero.""

String Theory Test Proposed

Submitted by Alchemist253 on Wednesday January 24 2007, @04:18AM

Alchemist253 writes "Theoreticians at a trio of American universities have recently proposed a (non-trivial) experimental test of string theory, often called the "theory of everything." Importantly, it is possible that this test could be carried out in the not-too-distant future when CERN's latest powerful tool, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) comes online. From the article, "If the test does not find what the theory predicts about W boson scattering, it would be evidence that one of string theory's key mathematical assumptions is violated. In other words, string theory — as articulated in its current form — would be proven impossible.""

Financial Analyst: Second Life is a Pyramid Scheme

Submitted by

Petey_Alchemist

on Wednesday January 24 2007, @01:36AM

Petey_Alchemist writes "Silicon Valley gossip rag Valleywag is carrying a story about Second Life being a new spin on the old pyramid scheme.

The article, which consists mostly of selections from the report of financial consultant Randolph Harrison, suggests that not only are most people deceived about the amount of money they can make in Second Life, but also about how easily they can withdraw it.

From the report:

"Like the paid promotion infomercials that run on CNBC, sadly SecondLife is a giant magnet for the desperate, uninformed, easily victimized. Its promises of wealth readily ensnare those who can least afford to lose their money or lives to such scam in exactly the same way that real estate investor seminars convince divorcees with low FICO scores to buy houses sight unseen with no money down.

Even some corporations have dedicated marketing budgets to creating a presence in SecondLife. While few will shed a tear for the frivolousness of these companies' spending, such adds a false legitimacy to SecondLife. Interestingly, no legitimate, real world corporation has earned net profit from SecondLife activities.

That's because there are but a very tiny handful that profit off of the SecondLife economy. A handful of casino owners, large scale virtual land flippers, and brothel owners are responsible for nearly all of the real money extracted from the game. And they continue to attract new recruits to the bottom of the pyramid.""

Move Over Silicon Valley, Here Come European Start-Ups->

From feed by nytfeed on Wednesday January 24 2007, @01:12AM

European entrepreneurs who have taken the start-up culture pioneered in Silicon Valley as a template and are successfully transplanting it.
Link to Original Source

Unidentified Objects on Moon Nightside

Submitted by

Jotii

on Wednesday January 24 2007, @12:20AM

Jotii writes "If you stare at the Moon long enough, you start seeing things. "82 things to be exact," says Bill Cooke, leader of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Group. That's how many "transient phenomena" the group has video-taped since they started monitoring the night side of the Moon in Nov. 2005."

MySpace Sues 20+ Spam Networks for Over $500 mil

Submitted by

Harry Maugans

on Tuesday January 23 2007, @06:45AM

Harry Maugans writes "MySpace is launching a flurry of lawsuits against over 20 advertising and spam networks, seeking between $20 million and $75 million each. The largest is against CPA Empire for a staggering $75 million. The news of MySpace launching lawsuits towards all these ad networks comes in the heels of an official announcement that MySpace is seeking damages from the infamous spammer Scott Richter (source).

From the article: "However this time, by targeting all sized ad networks, from small to massive, MySpace is clearly trying to send a message through the industry that they're tired of the abuse of their network... quite possibly the most heavily spammed website on the entire internet."

Most of the lawsuits are from bulletin spam, and are being prosecuted in California where the anti-spam legislation has steeper penalties."