Posts by Ken Moorhouse 4017 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2007
Do you do what the NHS do:-
Page last reviewed: 22 January 2021
Next review due: 22 January 2024
I think there are some regimes where, if one of the top bods keeled over out of band, as it were, they would wait for the next review date before announcing it.
All very well, writing obits in the future, but suppose something happens out of chronology? How many scenarios are planned out?
These things aren't unique unfortunately. It is shared with somewhere in Altoona, Wisconsin, which could mean residents at that location being treated with some suspicion.
My address suggests that I help exiles... If it's to do with exiling oneself from the cloud then I can help with that.
Wot, no comments?
The moral of the story is...
Look for bugs rather than them find you.
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I used to work in a real-time environment where the mantra was "if it falls over once, try it again. If it still fails, investigate."
If I did a test which fell over, my mantra was "I may never get another opportunity to squish what may be a possible one-in-a-million bug, let me take it."
I don't think it registers with us Brits as much as in the States. Yes, we do have them and I remember having it explained to me as a kid what the two numbers on the yellow H sign stand for, but they are just not part of our everyday awareness, as they presumably are Stateside.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fire_hydrants_in_the_United_Kingdom
I think it has already been mentioned, but there is no such thing in UK, so YMMV with how us Brits will answer.
"The other one that it seems to have problems with are marking the traffic lights, "
I read the question, where it says click on those that *contain* a traffic light, I'm afraid that I will click on all the images containing the pole, because to my mind the traffic light cannot exist without the supporting pole. Google's devious reaction probably would be to show a traffic light fixed to brickwork with a white line painted to the ground (looking like a pole - the resolution of the images is so awful it is guesswork at the best of times), just to be awkward.
Thinking about it Google could easily profile people by their answers. Show pictures of Armstrong on the Moon, for example and ask users to tick those images showing the moon. Conspiracy theorists could be segregated by their refusal to select those images.
I did tinker with "learning" games some time ago. Connect4, was one such attempt. Very easy to program the rules of the game in. Easy to get the program to "learn" by making moves which result in a win or a lose. But there is no realisation that a mirror-image of that move would have the same win-lose effect... unless it is programmed in. Then there are the counters that are on the periphery of the action... their existence or absence in every possible combination, and in every possible chronology takes up a huge space in the learning dictionary, and in the amount of time taken to crunch games involving those moves. Unless the programmer uses his/her intelligence to collapse down those combinations. The only learning involved is by the programmer in coming across those combinations and adding code in to deal with them. Learning to me would involve the program recognising that a part of this game is a mirror of that game and to insert the code in itself to do that. I suspect that would involve grids full of esoteric data which comprehensively weights every single play, in every possible chronology. Such a program would make sense to nobody because it would be the epitome of abstraction. It would be completely unmaintainable beyond the individual team or individual writing it.
So what am I saying? I'm saying that the law of diminishing returns applies to AI and that the best compromise is for the programmers maintaining the code for the AI program to be considered as the AI behind the program. This is nothing new. This is the way programs have always been written.
I learn something new every day from this site - much of which has nothing to do with technology.
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Warhol would have run rings around AI with his placement of everyday objects as art. Bananas reminds me of Nico's distinctive vocals...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkDJcUCyjCU
My parents were rather alarmed that I got through a bottle of that stuff per day. Great stuff...
It was round about the time it started appearing in cans that my addiction ceased, IIRC pouring it into a glass it was a funny pink colour.
Smith's crisps were the one's with the blue bag of salt which was usually a solid ball by the time it was purchased.
Reminds me of an employee I had. His initials were very appropriate for the story I am about to relate ;-))
After he left I decided one day to clear up some space on the pc he was using.
I discovered that his favoured technique of clearing space when running out of space was to pick a group of folders, right-click and create a zip file, then delete the folders.
Trouble was, a lot of those folders in turn, contained zipped content... I quickly found out why the word recursion embodies the word curse, and gave up.
If data could eventually turn itself into coal, then forget BitCoin, we would be millionaires.
I think it was Compaq that really irritated me.
Luckily I was the only one that received their mailings.
They sent out a mailshot with dozens of loose 5mm inch square black card squares which, when you opened the envelope, spilled out over the floor. They did send a follow-up apology, but what possessed them to do it in the first place?
IIRC my neighbour's dad used to be a Corona lorry labourer.
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In those days there was a 3d deposit on bottles. Just take the bottle back to the retailer. When we were a bit broke we would go round the back of the newsagents and grab a few, then go round the front to collect the money.
My favourite lemonade was Franklin's. I swear it came in swing-top ceramic stopper bottles, but can find no reference to that on t'internet.
Live music was the catalyst for a lot of people in the last century.
Those that sat through some horrendous support bands were sometimes rewarded with an absolute gem. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I went to see John Martyn at Sadlers Wells. He had not one, but two support acts, so you'd think maybe a trip to The Shakespeare's Head across the road was quite in order (which is probably where you'd find him, pre-gig). Tanita Takiram was more or less boo'ed off stage for her curled up pork sandwiches. But then on comes another solo guitarist, no fanfare, no introduction, no waiting for hush to descend, she just started to play and after a few bars we were entranced. People in the audience were whispering "who is this?" and very few people knew it was Tracy Chapman. History in the making, as it were. How any AI app can connect Martyn and Chapman would be anyone's guess, but I suspect a lot of people who saw Martyn on that tour still appreciate Tracy Chapman too. In those days it was probably agents ringing round "I need someone, anyone to support a Glaswegian folk singer at a gig at Sadlers Wells."
A lot of the so-called rock radio shows would get their inspiration from the many pub rock venues (Red Cow, Golden Lion, Hope & Anchor, etc.). I believe that's how e.g., Dire Straits, The Police and Tom Robinson found fame. Who remembers bands such as (and I quote) "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" I was into a band called Bethnal who did a ground-breaking (literally) version of Baba O'Reilly featuring a violin solo (when played live) which was streets ahead of the original (IMHO). Doesn't sound much on YouTube... in fact, please don't! But in the pub, or Hammersmith Odeon (which they did get to play) you can truly immerse yourself in the atmosphere.
One of the problems of today is "Listener's Digest". Who listens to an album in sequence from first to last track these days? I think this is one of Neil Young's beefs for temporarily, at least, pulling his back catalogue off music sites. Digressing slightly: who has watched The Italian Job from start to finish? Most people just want to see the chase, and once you've picked that out of the highlights, why bother to watch the whole thing from the beginning? This has been going on for years with classical music, but rock is arguably now the same.
A lot of the true rock classics don't fit into a standard single slot "Stairway to Heaven" and "Layla" immediately come to mind. Maybe why Mountain's "Nantucket Sleighride" rarely got air play.
Sorry, now where are my meds?
There's your problem.
Now if you'd mentioned shows like John Peel who played what he wanted you to hear, that's more like it. I think it was Tommy Vance on Capital Radio (maybe in the days when it was on 539) who had similar free rein on his Saturday night show. If he decided he was in the mood for a bit of Chicago [Transit Authority] then this was good reason to stay in with the tape recorder running. This morphed into TV on Reggae, which was arguably the first mainstream UK station to devote a programme to the genre and its variants. Nicky Horn had a similar half hour slot at the end of his programme which introduced me to the likes of Pink Floyd and Traffic. The free rein curation by someone who is seen as an authority, without pandering to what management dictate, is what people respond positively to.
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