Posts by RIBrsiq 364 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Nov 2009
>> My patients often pick apart my reasoning, and I'm happy to (try to) explain it.
Yes, of course. And the same should apply to any doctor, regardless of physical composition. But what's implied by the context would be tantamount to your patients demanding a fMRI scan and a vivisection before accepting the prescription, if applied to a human.
But you're right. I think I should have said "no more and no less", to keep things accurate.
Ethics, yes.
Let's start with "slavery is wrong", shall we...?
And some of the sci-fi on the subject is actually quite good, I think. Off the top of my head, "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" comes to mind...
Finally, no, when a doctor AI recommends a prescription you shouldn't "be able to pick apart how it came to that conclusion". No more than you are able to when a flesh-and-blood doctor does the same. AI got a certificate saying it's a doctor...? That's all I need to know, thank you!
Proper AI, the kind ethics would apply to, is a person, with everything that entails, good and bad. The sooner we get around to that understanding, the better off everyone will be.
Good article.
I would even go so far as to say an excellent one. Well done!
Most important thing to keep in mind is that the lines are indeed very blurry, if they exist at all. The details of each case would change how one would tend to define it, too.
Example: if I told you that Google Translate translates between languages, you'd tend to describe it (or I would, at any rate) as machine learning or an expert system. But if I also included the detail that it apparently can translate between pairs of languages that were not explained to it and that, most importantly, its minders don't know exactly how it's doing that, you'd be more inclined to think that maybe there's a budding AI in there somewhere.
Similarly with the insurance company's example, there might be some details we don't have that make the "AI!" pronouncement much more grounded in reality.
But more probably it's just hype and marketing. It usually is hype and marketing, after all...
>> takes time to find somebody over in Redmond who does not panic when s/he sees a command prompt with a funny blinking bar.
Eh...?
Have you used Windows Server, recently? There's this new-fangled, ten-year-old thingy called PowerShell, you see...
I guess your information is just a bit out of date! Please consider this a bug report and update it.
AV isn't perfect. It's supposed to be another layer in your defences, though, and not the only thing keeping the Big Bad World out.
Arguing that AV should not be used because it doesn't solve all malware issues is like arguing one shouldn't see a doctor until they can cure all illnesses.
Finally, imagine the PC of your typical user, please. Now ask yourself: would it really be more secure without an AV...?
>> I am going to go ahead and assume that spending $144 million to gain high office in the US leads to lucrative opportunities to recoup the money in some fashion.
Some of it is that, yes. But not purely so.
While close scrutiny of public officials is warranted, to catch the corrupt as well as the simply incompetent, one cannot automatically assume they must be corrupt simply because it doesn't make financial sense for them to seek office.
Look: what good is money if you don't use it to buy the things you would like to have? I mean, why would anyone buy Ferraris, Veyrons and similar when there are perfectly serviceable Toyotas at a fraction of the price? Hell, the Toyotas are probably more reliable and thus, technically, better cars! The answer, of course, is that some people like having such vehicles for reasons other than transportation. And a subset of said group can afford them, so they do.
Similarly, some people want to hold public office for reasons other than the paltry salary it pays. So it makes sense for them to pay a lot of money to get what they want. Now, the reasons for each individual budding politician will vary, naturally—again similar to the situation with the cars, really: some want the power, some crave the prestige and others simply like the looks of the things. I have no doubt that some of them seek office for the corruption opportunities it presents. But it's not a given.
Right... fakes, of course! Why didn't I think of that!!?
Question: does the story sound to you like he couldn't afford the money? That he would risk federal money counterfeiting charges to get out of paying US$3000? Or does it sound like he wanted to "get back" at the government...?
Mind you, all he actually achieved is inconvenience some government employees who had absolutely nothing to do with whatever imagined ill-treatment he was protesting or whatever.
"[F]ingerprints could be extracted from photographs using yet-to-be built technology".
I'm pretty sure they did more than this in an X-Files episode years ago...
Meanwhile, on planet Earth, I am happy if the work punch-in thingy doesn't take ages to recognize my finger pressed right there!!
Also, did these guys look at the output quality of even a decent digital camera...?
>> * no material grounds for the valuation
>> * no underlying asset
>> * The whole of the value is based on faith in people you probably can't trust
Yes, I see what you're saying and I mostly agree with it.
But then I look at the traditional monetary system and think "what is, when get right down to it, the actual difference?". I mean, at least with crypto currencies everyone sees the ledger!
>> "For new Office or Azure cloud customers in the UK, no exchange rate can justify any price rise at all".
You are aware that data centres, no matter where they are located, require quite a lot of gear not made in the UK and mostly priced in, or at least with prices based on, USD, yes...?
The price increase percentage being well-above the GBP price collapse is arguable, but it's probably just indicative of what Microsoft expects the future will bring.
Anyway, price increases from foreign service providers is a boon to local service providers, no? Think of it as an opportunity for domestic IT services!
It's the same, BTW, when entering credentials on a Windows command line, just FYI.
The story is referring to entering them using what sounds like a GUI of some sort, where the SOP has been "tab to move to next field" for as far as I can recall. It also sounds that some form of error was thrown but not noticed. So I cannot really blame the UI designer(s), based on what's reported here.
There's a lot to recommend stand-alone FDE with no backdoors or recovery options whatsoever. But it's not appropriate for a corporate environment where multiple entities may have legitimate claim to the data. There needs to be a way to recover even if the day-to-day key is "lost".
>> "Yup, the OS will only trust updates that have been signed using the same key as the kernel and base libraries were signed with".
I thought of this, and I'm not sure it will save the day, really.
I don't know the details of the link to Windows update itself -- I always figured the digital signatures on the updates themselves are enough, so I didn't bother to dig any deeper. But certainly the link to local WSUS is not usually HTTPS; though it can be.
You see, the update itself can be perfectly legit! Just so long as it will trigger this behaviour, it can be used to effectively remove BitLocker.
I mean, it doesn't affect me, so far as I can determine, because I'm a paranoid basterd. But this one is an Epic Fail worthy of the great Bloody Stupid Johnson himself!
"[T]ens of thousands of Windows desktops" with BitLocker deployed?
Are you sure that's a real scenario?
Even if it is, shouldn't something be worked out using AD instead of storing cleartext decryption keys on the local machine...? Or, if that's impossible, for whatever reason, shouldn't enabling this "feature" require an admin flipping something in a GPO or something? Some sort of opt-in? If all of that is impossible, shouldn't this be well-documented by Microsoft, to let people know that there's this tiny security hole they should consider?
This is not a bug. This is a "feature" of a security system that completely and totally obliterates it, in certain scenarios. It didn't happen by accident. Someone sat down and engineered this. And any number of other people signed off on it.
I, personally, would be very happy to see all of them fired.
Security is a trade-off. Usually with convenience.
I would appreciate it if Microsoft didn't decide to not inconvenience me when I have clearly elected to be inconvenienced. Please assume that I know what I am doing, and have good reason to do it when I use things like BitLocker, etc.
I mean, just ask for the bloody key on boot time, same as you would in any other case the machine is rebooted. What's wrong with that, Microsoft...? What's wrong with that?
I doubt Microsoft are planning to go out of the OS business any time soon...
Look: if someone is not willing to run Windows, but wants to run SQL; why should Microsoft refuse to sell to them?
I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason they didn't do this earlier were that the overhead due to the virtualization required was too much, until very recently.
>> But in the context of the UK energy system that doesn't help.
Well, that's not a failure of solar technology, is it? It's a failure of whoever is trying to implement it.
Nothing is a one-size-fits-all.
I mean, if we tried to use, say, tidal generation in this practically-land-locked-desert right here, how well would you expect it to work? And would it not working be at all an indication of how well it would work if properly implemented off of the shores of an island?
>> How big was the grant (subsidy) you got to install it?
Nothing. Fully funded by a bank loan that's being paid back by the savings on the electricity bills.
>> What value is the feedin tarriff you're getting?
About half of what we pay. But that's practically irrelevant as it's an on-grid setup such that the theoretical maximum we can get is to pay nothing, averaged over a year. As they say; in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, we still pay!
>> And if you honestly expect to get 25 years out of a solar PV installation I have a couple of bridges I'd like to sell you. It'll be down to 50% capacity in 8-9 and half that again by year 16, if the inverters haven't blown by then or some other silicon failure knocked it out.
Well, I'm a simple physics major who does IT for a living, so what do I know...? But the contractual warranty on the inverters and panels is 10 years. And the warranty on the panels includes an efficiency of 80% after 10 years; so I guess we get new panels, if what you're saying is true! In any case, everything breaks down, and I cannot see the fundamental difference that will make solar tech fail more than fossil fuel; or nuclear, for that matter. If anything, I would think that having fewer moving parts will make solar last longer, all things being equal.
>> they all require government subsidies to even look as if they are economically viable.
I was not talking theory, you know.
We have a PV system running, at work. No subsidies whatsoever. It cut down the electricity bill by about 90%, so accounting are purring like kittens. And it's very economically viable, considering that a system with a projected lifespan of 25 years should have paid for itself in 3, even taking into account expected drops in efficiency.
I guess it all depends on who is trying to achieve what and where they're doing it.
That said, it is important to be sane and conservative about things and not promise undeliverable miracles to people who do not know, nor care about the details.
It's clear that a sustainable overall solution would have to be based primarily on nuclear and augmented, where possible, with renewables as the specific environment where the deployment is taking place allows -- I live in a place that's much sunnier than the UK and most of the EU, for example; hence, PV works great, here. So selling a dream of a system that's primarily based on renewable energy while simultaneously feeding the unreasonable fear of nuclear is, IMO, almost criminal.
I personally hate this apparent need everyone seems to have to create a false equivalence and impartiality where none is justified.
We should be partial to the truth. At least the truth in its most basic and uncontroversial form(s); say, if someone denies they said something that they verifiably did say, etc.
You seem to be unable to use a search engine. Let me help you with that (on a related note: Clippy icon, please?):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act
Read. Just the first paragraph will suffice, really.
Do you see anything applicable?
On a more serious note, and as has already been pointed out by many others here and elsewhere, Hillary has been investigated so much that it is by now clear to anyone reasonable that there's nothing to find. Unreasonable people cannot be helped.
"[I]t’s easy to specify the objective function" in Go? A game where the top human players say that they play by intuition...?
"Moving the goal posts", much?
While we're by no means about to develop super-human AI, I think, that's no cause to over-compensate in the other direction and discount what are huge advances in the field.
Thanks for the succinct explanation, I enjoyed reading it.
That said, I suspect JeffyPoooh's objection was to the anthropomorphising of a non-sentient space probe, and not questioning the need of shutting down the science instruments for the manoeuvre. But I could be mistaken.
Also: please forgive me, Juno! I don't mean to hurt your feelings you beautiful, beautiful probe, you!
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