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Comment: Re:Why I like programming (Score 1) 228

by David_Hart (#47422179) Attached to: The Lovelace Test Is Better Than the Turing Test At Detecting AI

One of the things I love about programming is the moment you have to remind yourself that your program is simply executing algorithms that you told it. Depending on how clever the algorithms are it can appear as if the computer is thinking for itself. Programming allows you to encode intelligence in non-thinking machines.

No... programming does not encode intelligence in a machine. Intelligence indicates the ability to think for itself and come up with a creative answer that isn't part of it's original programming. When you write a program, all you are doing is telling the computer what to do given a specific input. There is no intelligence involved.

Comment: Re:One simple rule ... (Score 2) 328

by David_Hart (#47418503) Attached to: Blueprints For Taming the Climate Crisis

When I see something which says "In 15 years the world will be like this", I think "My, what drivel", and move on.

From what I've seen in my lifetime, futurists and prognosticators are usually dead wrong, clueless, and writing little more than fiction.


In other words, it will require the impossible, need huge sums of money, depend on a level of consensus and cooperation unlikely to happen, and a near complete re-tooling of societies.

Blah blah blah.

Especially since it takes 15 years+ to get a Nuclear plant off the ground in the US... In order for this to happen, every single power provider in the US would have to submit plans to build Nuclear reactors this year. It's not going to happen, especially with large natural gas reserves and low natural gas prices.

Comment: Re:Actually makes good sense (Score 1) 659

by David_Hart (#47402115) Attached to: TSA Prohibits Taking Discharged Electronic Devices Onto Planes

You're just not thinking outside the box enough. *Finally* we have a way of getting rid of all all of our broken electronics without having to pay those exhorbitant recycling fees or sneaking out in the dead of night to dump it at some ad-hoc "landfill" site!

"Sorry, officer, I must have forgotten to charge that one too... here you go! Shall we try this... um..." *wipes dust off logo* ...Compaq now, or just move on to the next crate?"

FYI: Your local Best Buy will take back broken or unwanted electronics (assuming you are in the US)....

Comment: Re:sure you want to go with 'undead' ? (Score 1) 283

by David_Hart (#47303253) Attached to: Perl Is Undead

What about "the rumor of perl's death has been greatly exaggerated?"

And you heard it here on slashdot first.

Yeah, its only Mostly Dead.

Miracle Max has the cure.

But you either need a compelling reason, like true love (not likely), or a good MLT (Mutton, Lettuce, and Tomato) to get him to come out of retirement.

Comment: Re:Good! (Score 3, Interesting) 619

by David_Hart (#47275923) Attached to: 2 US Senators Propose 12-Cent Gas Tax Increase


a. Gas is much too cheap in the US.
b. We need a lot of infrastructure work.


Personally, I would love detailed breakdown of where the current gas taxes goes. I'm willing to bet that a good portion of it goes to other programs, pet projects, and expenditures that have nothing to do with highway, bridges, transit, bike, or walking path infrastructure. In other words, I'm pretty sure that there is enough money coming in from gas taxes today. I'm also willing to bet that the Highway Trust Fund would not see the full amount of any tax hike....

This is just another way to get people to pay more taxes.

Comment: Re:And hippies will protest it (Score 2) 396

by David_Hart (#47247729) Attached to: "Super Bananas" May Save Millions of Lives In Africa

Part of the contract with Monsanto should be a buyback program. If the farmer has seed left over, say 30 days after the purchase, he can get a refund. 30 days shouldn't be enough time for most crops to go to seed but should be enough time to plant the crops. The point is that Monsanto should have a fair, for the farmer, program in place to prevent seed storage. If they have this, then they are on more solid moral grounds in suing farmers under contract for seed reuse and/or harvesting. Today, I'm willing to bet that Monsanto doesn't buy back seeds and farmers are left absorbing the cost of seed that they didn't use. Normally, this would not be a problem as they would use the seeds the next season. However, with GMO crops they can't do this.

Comment: Re:Many industries standard: buy competing product (Score 1) 120

Regarding intelectual property Cisco seems far more advanced on hardware level, so obtaining gear from competitor is not really going to move things forward. Article also does not mention (unless I missed it) obtaining equipment which is in developement.
The best way for commercial spying is information exchanged by people - engineers from all those networking Silicon Valley companies know each other, they gossip, they betray secrets. This is how most of information leaks through, straight from the sources, not via reverse-engineering.

You can be also completely sure that Juniper bought Cisco equipment for the same purposes, and so did other companies. Even TFA mentions Alcatel-Lucent buying Cisco. It was an all-out activity.

Actually, Cisco used to be a front runner with more advanced network products. However, more and more network vendors, such as Juniper and Aruba, have caught up and passed Cisco. For example, while Juniper routers aren't as well known in the enterprise space, they are used heavily in the ISP and cloud provider space.

The one area where Cisco still has an edge is the ability to centralize management of all of their devices. Practically every network management solution provider supports Cisco. This will change as Juniper becomes more popular in the Enterprise, but it just isn't there yet.

The article did mention Cisco buying Beta gear. This is usually the last stage before release. It must have been a Beta unit to show customers for the VAR to be able to get their hands on it.

Comment: Re:Yeah. Right. (Score 0) 243

by David_Hart (#47193271) Attached to: New Car Can Lean Into Curves, Literally

Maybe I'm reading these replies wrong, but it doesn't sound like anyone that has commented understands the actual use of ABS technology.

ABS does NOT stop you any quicker than regular braking. Speed, weight, surface conditions, do no magically change simply because a car has ABS. In fact, you would likely stop a bit quicker, in a straight line, without ABS.

What ABS does do is allow you to steer during heavy breaking, something you can't do with manual breaks without pumping the break pedal. It's purely for avoidance maneuvers while breaking.

Comment: Re:Who watches TV anymore (Score 2) 261

by David_Hart (#47123575) Attached to: Curved TVs Nothing But a Gimmick

Who watches TV anymore, let alone with friends, that is just some cruel torture

Says someone who isn't a hockey, or sports, fan with the Stanley Cup playoffs in progress...

This past weekend my Brother-in-law, nephews, and myself watched a bad Canadian Zombie movie. We were having a ton of fun making up our own Riff track. Granted, it's not exactly "watching TV" when you are actively participating.

I agree with you that watching TV tends to be a solitary experience unless it is a special sporting or broadcast event.

That being said, a majority of the population still watch TV. I know that a good percentage of people on Slashdot have cut the cord, but people who have done so are still the outliers.

Comment: Re:For pecular values of close. (Score 1) 66

by David_Hart (#47123449) Attached to: Not A Hoverboard, but Close (Video)

oh come now, a person with one cent to their name is infinitely more rich than a person with zero cents to their name

Only in the world of mathematicians and statisticians.

In the real world, both would starve to death in the same amount of time (excluding the possibility that the cent is composed of either a precious metal or is a collector's item that would net the owner a sum larger than 1 cent).

Comment: Re:Not an advertisement... but er, yes, yes it is (Score 0) 66

by David_Hart (#47123411) Attached to: Not A Hoverboard, but Close (Video)

This is no closer to a hoverboard than a skateboard is.

It's three wheels closer.

Just one to go.

75% of the way, by any logical measure.

Um... No... Not even 1% closer.... You do realize that hovering in mid-air is completely different than any wheeled application and requires new technology.

Reducing the wheels from 4 small wheels to 1 big wheel gets you no closer to a hover board than going from a rotary dialed wired phone to a touch tone wired phone got us to a cell phone. The cell phone required a completely different technology than a wired phone, no matter how fancy.

If this had been an article about a skate board that floated over a specialized magnetic surface, then I would agree that some progress was being made...

In my opinion this is somewhat interesting but the comparison to a hover board is simply being used as click bait...

Comment: Re:It's the energy cost of the drive (Score 4, Interesting) 339

by David_Hart (#47122987) Attached to: The Energy Saved By Ditching DVDs Could Power 200,000 Homes

I assume if you buy or rent from a store you're going to visit anyway, this difference vanishes

They accounted for that, only 50% of the trip is assumed to be for the DVD.

You could cycle or walk to the store.

I rent or buy Blu-ray, not DVD. I do stream every so often. However, the local Redbox, which is within walking distance, is cheaper. I did have Netflix for a while, but they suck for new movies so I dropped them.

I'm willing to bet that the energy use would reverse if they did the same study using Blu-ray quality bit-rates. The energy used to go to the store to rent would end up being the same (possibly lowed due to higher fuel efficiency) but the streaming energy cost would increase due to the higher amount of data being stored, streamed, etc.
