- Palm Pre pumping up the stock.
- Second day of news about the crackpot Singularity University. Cults emerge when there is no work to be had.
- June 12 should be real date DTV transition.
- Google Latitude is in the news.
- Negative stories about Windows 7, finally!
- Facebook is five years old.
- Cisco good news and bad news.
- Why the Feds should embrace the cloud.
- Motorola hopes to become a trendsetter again?
- Is Eric Schmidt the next David Geffen?
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
I’m sentimental about Motorola, like Harley Davidson and Caterpillar, Boeing and Schindler. They should focus on what makes them unique, American industrial designers, and not on being all things to all people.
Vista secure? Rofl
I used to believe that Ray Kurzweil was a very smart guy. Now I believe he is, well, something else.
I wonder how much money he’s made over the years harping on the “singularity”, which is no closer to reality now than it was when he first proposed the idea. I bet it’s been truckloads.
Anyone with a brain, (and I assume Ray has one), would have figured out by now that a calculator is a calculator is a calculator. It’s not going to press it’s own buttons.
Any programmer knows that a computer has basic limitations. It’s not going to ever go from playing chess to becoming sentient to taking over the world ala TRON or Terminator.
And Kurzweil, having been a programmer, knows that as well.
So, is he a crook or just nuts?
#3 He’s made the classic mistake of thinking that computers can be made to “think”, when they can only be made to run programs and be made to look like they think.
#4. Turing would argue that if it can maintain a conversation, then it is intelligent. Leibniz, adopted a reverse philosophical rationale that people can be made to think like machines when fed bytes.
#4 Paddy-O. I absolutely agree.
Now my stand on Kurzweil is, he knows better. He was a computer programer, for crying out loud. He isn’t a coding outsider. I think he got caught up in the limelight and started to believe he is the center of the universe.
“The first person a con man cons is himself”.
You got my attention, Great Post let’s cheers to that, i will forward it to some of my visitors just for them to know about your blog.
Human brains are analog chemical computers that are programmed by evolution and their environment. How long have electronic computers been evolving 60 years? Give it a wee bit more time … hail Skynet!
# 8 Improbus said, “Human brains are analog chemical computers that are programmed by evolution and their environment.”
As far as you know. However, it was shown LONG ago that there is no way to store the amount of memory that we have…
AI isn’t going to be solved by software, but rather by radical engineering. The present day development of computer guts will never achieve sentient hardware. It will require a completely new, dedicated design, for AI logic, and no other use. It won’t be made from slapping together off the shelf computer parts.
Engineers will have to go back to the basic circuit designs, and rethink EVERYTHING. And it will probably take decades of R&D, without any commercial product in sight in the meantime. And because of that, it’s not likely to happen in the commercial industry. Unless some outfit, like a NASA organization, gets behind it, and directs it. Which means, only if your tax dollars supports years of research (like SDI got), are there ever going to be any AI brain prototypes. Intel, AMD, and Motorola aren’t going to be wasting their profits for decades, trying to hack out an AI Brain. AI is too much of a commercial blackhole.
Only if the Universities put the needed time and dollars into it, is anyone likely to see anything close to an AI Brain. And most will just waste years trying to simulate it with software on their mainframes. While touting their supposed progress to sign up more students. AI will be a con game for years, until someone SERIOUSLY wants to crack it.
About the snake fossil item, I can’t believe you didn’t use a “Don’t have a cow man!” sound byte with that one. John, you should use something other than Family Guy. Even American Dad would be a change. The Simpsons bytes are all timeless classics. And South Park has its charm, too. The FG bytes are getting pretty stale, here.
Yes, the DTV transition should have been planned for the summer. But it was decided years ago by some guys, who probably thought, “a week or so after the SuperBowl” was the perfect time. Football fanatics at work.
Not thinking about February being the middle of the Tv series programming. Then somebody realized that Oscar night fell on the 22nd. And all hell broke loose. And if they pushed the deadline forward for that, they’d have to push it forward for everything else or it would look suspicious.
The problem I can see with putting off the switch-over until mid June is this. The way things are going now, the Tv stations might be laying people off by this summer. And when things go wrong, and then will, there won’t be enough technical staff around to correct it. So while network programming may be saved from the transition. The summer Tv reruns, won’t be. Which I’m sure pleases the motion picture and cable Tv industry, no end.
OK…JCD I get it.
Windows 7 (yesterday) is loved yet overhyped.
Windows 7 (today) is damned by all.
To all of the lovers and haters of Windows 7….give it a chance! It has not been out for 100 days.
Can’t you feel the love of Bill Gates, Jerry Seinfeld, and Warren Buffet eating Churros?
Peace in Our Time!
Mr. Show
#13,
I haven’t tried Windows 7 yet, as its beta software and I am not gonna go through the trouble of installing beta software when what I have right now (Vista Home premium 64 bit) is working great for me.
I probably won’t try it until this computer gets clunky… Or it comes pre-installed on a broken down computer I am replacing.
I still feel like I already know exactly what it is from screen shots and what not.
Nowdays if I want excitement from a computer program, I am gonna look at what games are coming out.
I think if you are having problems with Vista, the problems are on your end at this point, because I have used it on enough different computers now that I know for a fact that the software is good.
As the type of person who buys a bunch of computers, I take comfort in the lack of change in the OS coming from Microsoft.
On the subject of Ray Kurzweil and the nerd rapture (aka singularity). Um… futurists always get it wrong, even if they are able to track the trend…
Right now all the research and researchers are in the field of military kill bots. When and if all the various wars go away, they will be looking for civilian applications for their technology.
At the same time, I have used enough of these sales person and tech support chat bots to know it is certainly possible to make a chat bot that is a challenge to identify as AI vs Human. If you haven’t used one of these yet, you have to try it.
Back to Kurzweil… Genetics AI are already being used to design new computer chips and circuit boards. It is already able to find better solutions that humans are. Where is the exponential growth? Seems like the lithography technique still matters more.
#16,
Like I said… Ive not experienced any of those problems on dozens and dozens of computers now. Thats been a wide mixture of HP and Acer desktops and notebooks.
For starters, I think I can count one one hand the number of times Ive needed to look at network properties on Vista. You are obviously doing something wrong. I mean, start-right click on network- properties… How hard is that?
I only have network printers, and its never been an issue, at all, with even with the odd ill supported symbol barcode print servers.
Protected folders??? I have no idea what you are talking about there.
You have problems, but they are not vistas…
People will never stop complaining about Vista until they fix that awful PEBKAC issue.
I’ve run into the same problem but have not had it with W7 since the first alpha I tried. I talked with some the Redmond peeps about it and different hardware combinations and profile setups can cause it. Go figure.
Sounds to me like someone needs a refresher in the difference between ntfs permissions and share permissions.
Adobe used to have a bunch of problems like that with roaming profiles, but afaik it has been fixed.
# 17 GregA said, “You have problems, but they are not vistas…”
Wrong. I’ve had most of those problems mentioned on multiple Vista machines. (N.B. none were running 64) This has been the worst MS OS since NT 3.0. Not that Cutler did a bad job, VMS & RSX-11 were great.
Paddy-O, pedro. He’s a troll, don’t feed the troll.
#25 Sorry. I’ll remember for the future.