* Posts by Angus Cooke

25 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2007

Neutron star crash in a galaxy far, far... far away spews 'faster than light' radio signal jets at Earth

Angus Cooke
Big Brother

.. and another thing...

Don't forget all that's been discussed so far is in the world visible by humans - we can't quantify, analyse, theorise or calculate anything we can't see. I know a few people have already referred to this but our own view of the world - i.e. 3 dimensions and a 4th we've called time which we know little about is all we have to work with. Sure we can make what we think are reasonable guesses about other bits but that's all they are. We also know enough about our world to realise some things are beyond our comprehension and in our current physical form we can't understand them. So it would very naïve and stupid to think our view of the universe is the definitive one - whatever created this is way beyond our understanding - which you would expect given what a minute part of it we are! Hence a massive sense of insecurity in a lot of people, an overwhelming fear of death and as a result the creation of many different religions to regain mental stability and an ability to cope with life as we know it. I'm not religious, I'm also not afraid of death and I'm fascinated exploring the world we live in and the technical advances we make. That makes life all worthwhile to me and I'm enjoying it while I'm here :-)

Calm down, Elon. Deep learning won't make AI generally intelligent

Angus Cooke

Re: Bishop Bollocks

Sadly delusional idiots like yourself just fuel the AI fantasy and media hype. How many times do genuinely intelligent people have to point out we know absolutely nothing about how emotions and self awareness works which are enormously key things to real intelligence for people like you to remove their neural network blinkers and come back to the real world. As an aside, in the real world most of medical science which isn't brain related is still mostly recommendations on observing cause and effect and that's relatively simple biological engineering compared to the brain.

Web devs griping about iPhone X notch: You're rendering it wrong

Angus Cooke

Is the crotch scratch 'n' sniff ?

Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 is hot, but not much more than the S8+

Angus Cooke

Re: Rendered irrelevant by the iPhone X...

Looks like you have a chip on both shoulders! Idiot.

Regulate, says Musk – OK, but who writes the New Robot Rules?

Angus Cooke

That's not a difficult one either - if you pick up your hammer, walk up to your neighbour's cat and start hitting it - who's responsible for that, you or the manufacturer of the hammer?! Exactly the same scenario in your example.

Angus Cooke

Re: will the rise of the Robots

No-one has produced a successful Turing Test - at least not against an intelligent audience and without ridiculous boundaries.

Angus Cooke

Re: will the rise of the Robots

Relax! There is no "rise of robots" happening any time in our lifetimes. AI engineers have enough trouble getting machines to do what they want with the code they've written let alone anything outside that. There will always be an evolution of machine/robot/AI creating technology and environments to make our lives easier but there is always going to be the need for people to create and maintain them plus they can't do anything that needs a human touch... and that is a lot more of things we do in life that you would think!

Angus Cooke

Re: Working out what AI is thinking and why

Well said and it goes far deeper than that when you bring emotions and feelings etc. into it. Amazingly there are far too much "intelligent" leading AI advocates out there (Musk a prime example) who either don't understand that or just simply choose to ignore it, (classic self delusion).

Angus Cooke

Re: Working out what AI is thinking and why

There's nothing magic or sentient about AI (and that includes neural networks). If a manufacturer can't release a product with sufficient log/trace mechanisms to track the logical sequence of actions in an AI unit they're essentially releasing a sub-standard untested product and it should be treated as such!

If Machine Learning is the question, open source is the answer. Right?

Angus Cooke

Re: People have been trained in Machine Learning since the 1980s

Machine Learning most certainly is nothing new, the phrase originally coined even earlier by an engineer at IBM. The problem I have with it is the hype surrounding it's links to AI - despite recent large scale developments and neural networks it's still nothing more than clever algorithms and code just doing what it's been programmed to do. Yes, neural network systems do this slightly differently but they are still essentially just a large collection of mathematical equations! True deep AI is still a huge unknown - the holy grail of creating something that can think for itself (i.e. sentience) is still a complete pipe dream. I'm not even sure the day man can play god will arrive - you are, after all, using the brain the recreate itself without a biological reproductive process. The brain is very good at inventing tools to ease repetitive work but I'm not sure it's capable of analyzing itself. We're better off looking for the self-diagnostics gene and it's associated activation button!

Milking cow shot dead by police 'while trying to escape'

Angus Cooke

Common sense is a declining commodity...

So some cows have escaped near a busy road - at most, police marksmen in two cars armed with tranquiliser guns. Job done.

God knows how many armed police, 20 cars, a helicopter and a terrified - soon to be dead - cow. Nice work Mr Plod. I only pray the Northumbria police never have to deal with a madman wielding a machine gun. The exam board marking the papers for some police applicants really need to tighten up QA on the finer colouring-in questions.

Japanese finally produce a ROBOT which isn't DEAD INSIDE

Angus Cooke

Re: The Daleks are coming!!!

I don't think so - 50 years of ELIZA just indicates how long an irritating pattern matching program can wow people wanting to believe electronic tools & toys can mimic humans! The bottom line is we understand hardly anything about how our brains work. Any robot no matter how exaggerated the PR is will be anything more that just clever hardware & software. I prefer to pursue the quest for AI as exactly that - artificial. How clever can we make software to adapt to different scenarios and inputs and put that to use in something that really helps us. Not, how can I make something that has human characteristics and gimmicky features that I can brainwash the public into buying at huge expensive! Good luck to them though.. I'm sure they'll sell a load initially before people realise it's just a useless toy :-)

Samsung names Galaxy Tab launch date

Angus Cooke
FAIL

Dear of dear...

I agree with all the comments so far (and I'm not an Apple fan, I have an HTC Desire and love it). This is a nice piece of kit and Samsung have an opportunity to really challenge the iPad... but no way at those quoted prices. I can't believe it's so expensive to make it warrants a price that high - a sensible price and maybe even a bit of subsidy on the initial sales would make a huge difference!

Mars projected to collide with Earth

Angus Cooke
Happy

No need to worry...

... this intergalactic experiment with odd shaped balls and fiery gases we're all unwittingly a part of will come to an end long before any of the equipment breaks.

Windows 7 gets built in XP mode

Angus Cooke
Stop

Surely...

... I can't be the only person who prefers Vista (the current release) to XP and use it for work and home by choice on a powerful laptop!

NASA test rocket explodes

Angus Cooke
Alert

Oops...

It looks like the experiment to study the physics of exploding rocket parts in an oxygen rich atmosphere kicked off a little prematurely!

NZ judge saves girl from bloody silly name

Angus Cooke
Thumb Up

I can't see...

... what all the fuss is about.

Regards,

Bubblegum Moonrock Squidman McGinley

UK ISPs agree to menace their filesharing users

Angus Cooke
Alert

@Big_Boomer

It's a wild stab in the dark but I'll wager you missed your caffiene fix this morning...

GPS tracking fights teenage trauma

Angus Cooke
Joke

I didn't realise April 1st lasted 4 days!

Yeeeeeeah... right. I can imagine this one going up for Dragons Den - not a chance! Anyone investing any amount of cash in this crackpot idea has obviously not reached their teen years yet or had their head buried in a computer screen during them. Take a walk outside and show me a single teenager that'll play ball with any kind of tracking system that doesn't involve an electronic tag clamped around their ankle :-)

Coming up: the fingerprint-grabbing keylogger

Angus Cooke
Alert

Oh the irony of it all...

The glaring point everyone seems to be missing is that the weak link in every security configuration is… us! (i.e. us human beans!)

It doesn't matter what level of secure sophistication you implement there will always be the vulnerable human flaw in the system whether it's an unscrupulous contractor stealing confidential information or an absent minded manager letting the wrong person know his password.

Until we nail down our own biological security ethics every secure system in the world is flawed to varying degrees of ease of access - so in other words nothing will ever been totally secure ... !

Map paints gloomy picture of world's oceans

Angus Cooke
Alien

Re: Insanity (& more on that elephant)

When you become ruler of the world my mothership will have collected me long ago - I sincerely hope! (one by one the penguins steal my sanity).

Watchdogs probe Sky dominance on pay-TV

Angus Cooke
Happy

Smaller bundles

I work for Sky and get it all free so none of this is really an issue for me and obviously I'm ever-so-slilghtly bias!

Howver, I do agree with the comments for Sky offering more choice in the bundled offering though and certainly think forcing broadcast companies to share the various package offerings like the premiership football will just cost everyone a lot more in the long run.

Cells 'react' to GSM signals claims research

Angus Cooke

Re: Interesting...

absolute rubbish - it doesn't suggest anything of the sort. As MarkMac says all it does is illustrate cells reacting to energy.. not growing or multiplying!

In fact the temporary effect a GMS signal can have on cells can be quite incredible. Whenever I'm on a train and a suited up tw*t next to me answers his phone and proceeds to embark on a long extremely loud conversation my whole body starts shaking.. and sometimes even my arms uncontrollably grab him in a headlock and give him the worse headburn he's ever experienced.... as you can see that's a huge cell reaction and definitely a case for banning mobiles on trains in my opinion.

Judge questions theft claims of Facebook rival

Angus Cooke

Case closed!

It looks to me like UConnect are just publicly illustrating their talent for making crap decisions ... ;-)

Suit blows £105k in London bar

Angus Cooke

But honestly...

... is he really happy... I can feel his pain ;-)