Posts by chuckufarley 782 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jun 2007
...If I don't have a printer installed why does my entire desktop depend on it? Seriously. Install any given Linux desktop and then uninstall CUPS. You will be left with a box that only runs a CLI. That's great if your last name is Torvalds but the rest of us use a hell if more than the command line.
...the people trying so hard to redefine civilization would take a long, hard look at the actual foundations of civilization. Aristotle may no longer be in vogue but he had some fucking brilliant ideas such as a logical basis for ethics. Not that that matters anymore because the horse has already bolted.
...I'm by far old enough to be a CEO, I am very disruptive (Especially my bladder. Comes with the grey beard.), and I know buzzwords from multiple decades! I bet all I'd have to do is train an AI solely on American politicians' campaign speeches over the last 65 years and I wouldn't even need to actually join one of those Zoomer calls.
...having to pay for something that sets them free because it is free. Yes, the registries need a helping hand but asking everyone to pay isn't going to work when the the organizations that gain the top 60% of the befits could foot 100% of the bill while losing less then 0.01% of their profits and the people they abuse everyday must resort to public assistance just to eat. Remember that dying of malnutrition is a lot like dying of starvation but it takes years, if not decades, longer.
...But at least I know that I am not delusional. Things like this make me wonder what Musk "knows." Does he realize that, like me, people will often not be able to follow the leaps of logic his mind makes? Or does he just care about convincing people he is right? I know I am wrong often enough to warrant caution, but then again the times I get things right out number the times I get them wrong. So I was never lucky enough to be a billionaire. But does this billionaire even know that he is crazy? I mean, here is a very brief summary of most of what he posts online:
https://xkcd.com/3201/
...That race to use AI based surveillance pricing is a threat to consumers and workers world wide. It will not only extract every possible cent from consumers and leave them with nothing to set aside for retirement but it will also drive down wages in a way that was never before possible. I feel that it is recipe for disaster that could put an end to free market commerce as we know it by transferring all of the wealth away from all but a chosen few.
...Like, many years ago, my favorite way to as ask the user questions. Very interested and curious and, um, leading questions. This usually had one of two outcomes: 1.) They would usually realize that there was something that they didn't get but still double down on the fact that they were right, or 2.) Rarely realize that I was trying to instruct them without giving eavesdropping subordinates ammunition to use against them. Then some fucking idiot wrote a book called "Windows95 for Dummies" and EVERYONE was an expert overnight. Except for those that realized they were not in fact dummies and were willing to admit it. If they owned their ignorance and were willing to correct it we got along just fine.
And again we can thank Science for that no longer being the case. That's my point here. Science is good for everyone and makes all of our lives easier. From the privileged few of today to the unwashed masses of ancient times, Science has been the only reason behind human progress. Sea fairing peoples have existed for at least 20,000 years and they were likely the first to learn that the earth was a sphere. This is a fact. It's also a fact that most of the people that have ever lived were not born into sea fairing cultures. Stop nitpicking and trying to find where a two paragraph post about humanity's progress and lack thereof breaks down. It's only two paragraphs! Of course I have to gloss over and simplify my arguments. I never actually wrote what I would consider a real thesis because the professors make you keep it short.
Now go out there and yell at the people running AI Companies about how they have abandoned Science for their own greed!
...I guess I keep saying it to the wrong people. I'll try to keep it short. There are fundamental gaps in humanity's understanding of how brains work. We know that that they are made of neurons of various types and a few years ago we even discovered that some type of neurons come in sizes ranging from the microscopic to several centimeters long. What we don't know for sure is: How do neurons make the biological equivalent of logic gates, random access memory, hard drives, etc. We also can't definitively say much at all about how brain chemistry works or what role quantum mechanics might or might play in a brain and those the tip of the iceberg. There is a laundry list of other unknowns and it in my opinion humanity would be better served by dumping trillions of dollars into scientific research to answer these questions.
I honestly think it can be done because just look at we have done with science in the last 700 years. We have come from a flat Earth where tiny gnomes living in our stomachs' caused abdominal pains to cat videos in space. https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/20/nasa_psyche_cat_video/ Once the scientists have the funding and other resources they need then maybe we can find a better way to make AI. Maybe even AGI.
...The truth is in the business world there has long been a curse on those that Make Too Much Sense. I lost a lot of business and contracts because of it and until The Powers That Be in business learn better they are doomed to repeat past failures.
For an Enterprise to succeed in the long term they must truly think in the long term but that hasn't been happening in decades, at least. Short term thinking has led us down this road and the road gets shorter every day. Yes, open source is great way for us to get off of it but only if there is a fundamental reevaluation of how success is defined. Without that and some other major growing pains like retraining staff and learning to do with more again, well, I think it's a bit bleak. I am old and cynical.
"Willful ignorance is humanity's Achilles' Heel. Once people decide they no longer have to learn then they stop learning altogether. You can't teach them after that. Sadly, they must come to realize the truth on their own and that only happens when things go wrong for them." --By Unknown
...an excuse to drive people to do more and pay them less. The maintenance cost alone will dwarf Obama Care in the long run. In the short run Old Kingdom Egyptian monarchs erected a monolith to warn future rulers against the dangers of famine. If people can't eat you will not stay in power.
Look, it is a round about way to make a point about how so many people thought they knew better than this guy, till they didn't and suddenly he was a household name for a few years and was even memed by Jeff Goldberg in "Jurassic Park" but then people forgot about him because they didn't really understand what he did or what it meant. Kinda like:
https://xkcd.com/3154/
I mean, what do metal weights dropped by some random Italian guy in the 16th century have to do with anything today? It took hundreds of years for Galileo's "simple experiment" to be fully understood and then it was only person: Albert Einstein. I am just glad these scientists write things down, publish what their employers allow them to publish, and a lot of people don't want to kill them off like Joseph Stalin did.
So don't ask again. Just think about it. You might make history.
Also, drop the A.C. Cowards in this day and age all vote for the same candidates.
...After all, idiots are self evident. But look, at some point the smart people have to be smart. Untested? Unverified? These are either people that deserve to get paid or they deserve to be thrown in prison for being a fraud. They work on problems for a living a lot like Dr. Mandelbrot worked on art for living. It's nice to look at it, but can you honestly say you know it?
It's Option C. The IP that distinguishes SOC vendors (and actually most hardware manufactures and designers) is often not that hard for a competitor to reverse engineer and incorporate into their own products provided that the software that drives it is completely open and honest about what it is doing.
...or even me, have to pay for what was stolen from them? Even if it has been run through a blender and then mixed with what was stolen from everyone else and then infused with plastic polymers to make it "unique." That doesn't mean it's actually good on any level.
to go into orbit on Saturday. Thanks.
So what does Jeff know about physics that the rest of us don't? Thermal convection is an extremely inefficient cooling mechanism in a vacuum. The proverbial Sheep would cook itself before it ever reached maximum velocity. It doesn't matter how rich you are, what your rank is, or who you know. Physics is.
...of fighting with my computers to get them to do what I want them to do. If the defaults are pleasing to the eye, the iscsi initiator mounts the targets before the processes that need them start, and it's still stable and and secure, well...I'll sell my mother for it. She pasted away a long time I'm afraid, but as a retiree I don't have a lot of liquid assets.
