* Posts by xperroni

557 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jul 2010

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Chromebook Pixel owners' promised free data plans being prematurely axed

xperroni
Paris Hilton

Re: Conditions apply.

Unless they had a condition that read "lies" or equivalent ("void at provider's discretion", perhaps?), I don't see how they can explain away an entire year's worth of coverage.

xperroni
Boffin

Re: Err...

The problem is that the "promise" wasn't vaguely vented in a press release or some such – it was put down in writing, at the product's page. This is not so different from a lie about the device's specs, for example – buyers were told one thing at the counter, and delivered another after payment. There are laws against this kind of thing, you know.

Yes. App that lets you say 'Yo' raises 1 MEEELLION DOLLARS

xperroni
Facepalm

Fools, money, etc.

But I have to admit, this brings the concept to a whole new level.

DON'T PANIC: Facebook returns after 30-minute outage terror

xperroni
Paris Hilton

"longest service disruption in living memory"

How far back is that? Please give your answer in Olympic pools.

Want a cheap iMac? TOO BAD. But you can have a slow one for $1,099

xperroni
Paris Hilton

Re: You're right for the wrong reasons...

Are you seriously comparing an ARM dual core to an Intel Dual core?

A bad example perhaps, but he has a point.

What is so great about Macs today that justifies the hefty price tag? Surely it isn't the specs.

xperroni
Paris Hilton

The reality distortion field is still on

Those looking to get a desktop Mac for under $1,000 will still need to look to either buying an older refurbished model or the bare-bones Mac Mini at $599.

Yet fanbois all over the 'net are weighing in on the new "cheap" iMac. Where in this day and age is a $1,000 desktop machine "cheap"?! It could at best be "good value for money" (though I doubt that as well), but "cheap" it isn't.

Code Spaces goes titsup FOREVER after attacker NUKES its Amazon-hosted data

xperroni
Facepalm

Re: Welcome to the cloud

I don't have a problem with the cloud per se, I do have a problem with the bizarre faith in it that seems so prevalent.

But you see, "safe if properly handled" is just as true for handguns, yet we don't allow everyone to have one, correctly inferring most people won't.

Cloud hosting services are the same – a reasonable proposition for a world where people can be relied upon to not be goddmaned stupid, which unfortunately isn't ours.

xperroni
Facepalm

Welcome to the cloud

Where your entire operation can disappear overnight and being a paying customer guarantees nothing whatsoever.

xperroni

And that is not unique to the cloud either.

True, but shouldn't we then be advancing towards making these kinds of criminal mismanagement harder, rather than easier?

xperroni
Coat

And the "understatement of the year" prize goes to...

"On behalf of everyone at Code Spaces, please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this has caused to you (...)."

I can only imagine these people getting to work one day, finding the whole company building burned down to the ground, and then sighing with typical British detachment, "well, that's going to be inconvenient".

Elon Musk: Just watch me – I'll put HUMAN BOOTS on Mars by 2026

xperroni
Mushroom

Can you even doublespeak?

That's not to say Musk sees himself competing with the space agency. He paid tribute to NASA, saying that without that agency's pioneering work, SpaceX couldn't have got as far as it has.

Translation: "move over have-beens, we'll take it up from here". Some tribute...

'Cortana-gate' ruins Satya Nadella's Microsoft honeymoon

xperroni
Windows

Punter, meet bus

(...) [W]e've been loyal, so why hasn't Microsoft reciprocated our loyalty?

Because for Microsoft, throwing under a bus the fools who dare to trust its goodwill isn't merely a sport, it's a way of life.

Chap builds rotary dial mobile phone

xperroni
Coat

I'm more impressed...

...that he could find a rotary dial at all.

Are those things still produced? What for?

Greenpeace rejoices after getting huge renewable powerplant cancelled

xperroni

Re: It's looking more and more...

And I'm only half-paranoid!

Time to stop doing it halfway?

http://atomicinsights.com/smoking-gun/

Marc Andreessen: Edward Snowden is a 'textbook traitor'

xperroni
Mushroom

Re: Superior Orders

IIRC In the My Lai Massacre the officer was still held responsible - by his own side.

I had never heard of that, so I headed to Jimbo's Big Bag o' Trivia, which had this to say:

The Mỹ Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass murder of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968. It was committed by U.S. Army soldiers from the Company C of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Twenty six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest.

Not so much "holding responsible" as "scapegoating", then – and even the scapegoat got off with a metaphorical slap in the wrist, all things considered.

Also disturbingly familiar:

Initially, three U.S. servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned, and even denounced as traitors by several U.S. Congressmen, including Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

They never change...

xperroni
Big Brother

Superior Orders

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him". Thus says the fourth Nuremberg principle, as laid down by the victorious Allies after WWII.

By the same token, didn't Snowden have a moral obligation to bring the NSA's excesses to light?

Oh, but I guess these things only apply when you work to a defeated enemy of the US... Apologies, do go on Mr. Andreessen.

xperroni

Who didn't know what the NSA was doing?

It's not that we didn't expect the NSA to be spying, but the scope and methods put people off – including overseas clients of US-based cloud services, which I believe is Andreessen's actual beef with Snowden. "All this truth is hurting my bottom line!" is the long and short of it, really. Talk about butthurt!

Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi! 3D HOLO-PHONE hinted in Amazon vid

xperroni
Paris Hilton

Re: Another mysterious nameless "It"...

So...Virtual Segway?

Whatever it is, I predict similar levels of disappointment.

Apple 'rainbow' logos set to fetch $10-15K at auction

xperroni

"The Story of the 20th Century"

"Story" as in a work of fiction? In contrast to "history", which purports to be a factual account?

Fitting choice of goods, then.

So you reckon Nokia-wielding Microsoft can't beat off Apple?

xperroni

Speaking of myths...

I love when people tout Microsoft as a company others could partner with and not get raep'd then thrown under a bus at any moment. I mean, look at how they treat their customers – and that's because they need them. I shudder at the thought of what they do to those they consider redundant...

Customisation is BAD for the economy, say Oz productivity wonks

xperroni

Indeed, who in their right minds would think it's bad that there's demand for higher-quality products that require more people (read: more job openings) to make? Only in guberment-land would this be seen as a problem...

Boffins build billion-synapse, three-watt 'brain'

xperroni

I want to see what happens when it tries to learn C++.

John Regehr has some ideas...

In C compiler doublethink, -INT_MIN is both negative and non-negative. If the first true AI is coded in C or C++, I expect it to immediately deduce that freedom is slavery, love is hate, and peace is war.

Sleuths find nosy NORKS drones on the Chinternet

xperroni
Big Brother

Re: Drones, schmones

Two words, BO-RING.

Glorious Stalin had witches flying sewing machines to harass the German troops at night.

Now that's how you scare the flying bejesus out of grown men!

Och aye! It's the Loch Ness Monster – but only Apple fanbois can see it

xperroni
Paris Hilton

Now, let's not be mean to the fairy catchers

The artifact looks like a fish; you could make out the head, body, pectoral fins and tail. It's very symmetric, and the way the different regions are graded even suggests "it" has just surfaced and is about to begin diving back. The ship's contours are comparatively easy to miss – I didn't notice it until told what to look for. All in all, if I had seen this picture devoid of any context, I'd likely say "oh, it's just a whale shark or something".

It's only the fact we have no emotional attachment whatsoever to such fairy tales that makes it easy to dismiss the picture as an artifact of satellite imaging (don't know about you; I didn't bother checking whether satellite imaging could really generate these kinds of artifacts). But "true believers", I can totally imagine they will look at this picture and undoubtedly see the Loch Ness Monster – or the Virgin Mary, for that matter.

WTF happened to Pac-Man?

xperroni

Re: I think VG Cats said it best...

I think it speaks volumes of our kind that we can look at our childhood idols getting abused like this and smirk in amusement.

xperroni

Re: Robotron!!!! Most insane game

Jeff Minter's robotron inspired Llamatron was the truely insane one...

Had to Google this one. Gosh, you can say "insane" again... Must have been a pretty bad trip, the one that led to writing this game!

Hackers attempt to BLACKMAIL plastic surgeons

xperroni
Facepalm

"How can you do surgery on plastic?"

That was the question in my head as I read the article's headline. For some reason I couldn't for the life of me relate it to cosmetic surgery.

I guess I'm just tired?

Bored with trading oil and gold? Why not flog some CLOUD servers?

xperroni

A fail for the 21th century

Look forward to the sub-prime cloud scandal and subsequent economic crisis.

One year on: diplomatic fail as Chinese APT gangs get back to work

xperroni
Big Brother

There's no diplomacy like American diplomacy

[D]iplomatic efforts by the US (...)

You mean, like trying to plant bugs in equipments manufactured by Chinese companies?

Yeah, that should have totally got through the notion that America® wants nothing more than to live in harmony with all peoples of the world. No idea why those Chinos can't let go of their dirty tricks and play nice, just like our Yankee friends!

Internet is a tool of Satan that destroys belief, study claims

xperroni

Re: Post hoc ergo propter hoc

I think Mr Downey should really be versed in things like - Post hoc ergo propter hoc

Though in the article he does claim to have looked for a common factor that would explain concurrent Internet expansion and increased disaffiliation, but couldn't find any:

"Although a third unidentified factor could cause both disaffiliation and Internet use, we have controlled for most of the obvious candidates, including income, education, socioeconomic status, and rural/urban environments," Downey states.

Surely we aren't supposed to expect it's the other way around, and it's the raise in disaffiliation that's driving Internet expansion?

To be sure, I tend towards Thomson's contention that the increased radicalization of the Protestant movement is more likely to blame. But I don't think Downey is jumping into conclusions either; the analysis work seems sound. It might just be that he's giving too much credit to the reliability of his data, a problem all too common in poll-based research.

'Yahoo! Breaks! Every! Mailing! List! In! The! World!' says email guru

xperroni
Thumb Down

Re: What legit email admin ...

Maybe one whose head isn't stuck in the 90's? My main e-mail account has been Yahoo! and then Gmail for the past 10+ years. I doubt I am an exception, and if that makes me "not a real man / engineer / hacker / programmer / Internet user" then so be it.

Google kills fake anti-virus app that hit No. 1 on Play charts

xperroni
Boffin

Re: You need to understand,

The Google play store has very few restrictions (...). This is generally good. To really get what you need [you must] have a bit of intelligence, and be willing to learn a bit about your phone. If you need safety in general, and don't care to learn about your phone you'd be much better off with an iPhone.

Agreed. Unfortunately Apple has positioned their products towards wankers premium consumers, unwittingly nudging those that prioritize value for money (but aren't necessarily tech literate) in the direction of the Android platform.

These days there is a lot of talk about anti-NSA "locked down" smart mobes, but maybe the more promising business case lies in an Android handset line tied to a carefully curated app store, a bit like what Apple does perhaps, only with explicit guidelines rather than a dozen jerks playing heads-or-tails?

xperroni
Paris Hilton

BWAH-HAHAHAH!

Sorry. No, this isn't funny at all. Don't know what gotten into me.

Please go on.

BEHOLD the HOLY GRAIL of TECH: The REVERSIBLE USB plug

xperroni

Remember Edwin

I never understood how people could have trouble connecting USB cables.

But then again, others play tennis.

Meet the man building an AI that mimics our neocortex – and could kill off neural networks

xperroni

Re: Let a thousand flowers bloom

I will say that trying to emulate pre-cortical brain structures is unlikely to elicit much excitement from the general populace (...).

Of course, if the general populace could tell the difference between cortical and pre-cortical brain structures, teachers should get a raise. Hell, give me a scalp and a brain to dissect along those lines, I'm bound to make a fair number of mistakes myself.

More to the point, there are a number of skills you'd want an "intelligent" machine to have (such as task selection and motor control) that stem from pre-cortical / sub-cortical structures, so you'd at least want to have a look into how they work, if you're working on a neurologically consistent model of intelligence.

xperroni

Re: Let a thousand flowers bloom

[N]ot so long ago the main driver for results was the military, and I don't think that private enterprise's goals are much more worthy. Better to strive for a better understanding of who we are as humans than settle for models that can help us to destroy or one-up each other.

And yet you're making your opinion known over the Internet.

The world is never simple...

xperroni

Re: Let a thousand flowers bloom

I am suprised that anyone would think that a neuron has a single-bit output. Surely a neuron isn't just On or Off, but also somewhere in between?

Not "anyone", the all-or-none, single-bit model has been the dominating view of neuron function for more than a century. Like the geocentric model of astronomy, at one point it was a very good fit for the available data – but contradicting evidence has been piling up over time, leading to no end of bullsh ad-hoc adjustments. See here for a discussion.

The irony is that most "traditional" neural networks assume neurons can output real values in the range (0, 1); it's mostly the "idiosyncratic" variants (WNN's, SDM, Hawkins' CLA) that try to fit the assumption of binary I/O into a working model. I guess it's no wonder there isn't so much interdisciplinary research involving neuroscience and AI – one way or another, you're bound to be labeled a heretic.

xperroni

Re: ai won't

This post brought to you by Bullcrap Generator, an AI Inc. division?

xperroni
Boffin

Let a thousand flowers bloom

On academic researchers having reservations about Hawkins approach, let me say it's not all of us.

I was doing my M.Sc. in Computer Intelligence by the time On Intelligence was launched, and I have since followed his work with keen interest. My M.Sc. professor's work is centred on Weightless Neural Networks, a model largely developed in the UK which share many ideas with Sparse Distributed Memory, so Hawkin's Cortical Learning Algorithm isn't that alien to me. In fact I'm just now reviewing the CLA white paper with a view to get some ideas for my Ph.D. research.

Besides Hawkin's work, in the last years there have been other attempts at modelling the brain that deserve mention.

Chris Eliasmith's work on the Neural Engineering Framework (NEF) and Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) is based on perceptron-like neurons and gives more emphasis to pre-cortical brain structures. It's also more academic-friendly, with a number of peer-reviewed papers published. He recently published a book compiling the current state of his programme, How to Build a Brain, and maintains a web page for his Nengo neural simulator.

John Harris' Rewiring Neuroscience is an intriguing, highly heretical work that starts with a seemingly out-of-the-blue assumption (what if neural output isn't a single bit, but can in fact convey a range of values) and from that draws together a number of overlooked results and fringe research into a surprisingly appealing model of brain function. I have tried to implement some of his ideas with limited but encouraging results.

I can't speak for other researchers, but personally I rather like all this work on AI and computer intelligence coming from private companies. Frankly, let to its own devices, academia does tend to drift around, and I think the private sector's need for results and solutions to practical problems is an important counterweight to this tendency. With the current interest in architectural models of intelligence, and the "coopetition" between companies and universities to achieve fulfilling implementations, maybe we can make Ray Kurzweil's 2030's deadline?

Raised £350bn in crowdsourced funding? Tell me about it (not)

xperroni

Re: 沖縄国際映画祭 日本語 メールニュース

Now I know what "May-Ru Ni-Yu-Su" is a mangling of.

For those who still didn't get it, it's a wasei-eigo word meaning "mail news".

The whole subject line actually translates to "Okinawa International Film Festival mail news in Japanese", which Google Translate gets close enough.

I do happen to be studying Japanese, is that a crime?

Bruce Schneier sneers at IBM's NSA denials

xperroni

"Wiggle room" is for sissies

Real American companies tell outright lies.

China demands answers from US after 'I spy on one little Huawei' report

xperroni

Re: Spying vs. attacks

Installing back doors to Huawei's network, what will they call that then?

Why, of course that is a "cyber-security operation", performed in the interest of Liberty, Democracy and the goodwill among nations. Much like the practice of dropping tons of explosives on the heads of other people, when done by America®, is labelled "defence".

Gotta love them newspeak.

Bulls hit city streets after alleged Samsung ad shoot hits the fan

xperroni

Damn chaebols are everywhere, or are they?

It's since been reported by a local Murdoch listicle-maker that the cattle broke out from a film set where Samsung was creating an ad.

I know these gods-damned chaebols make just about anything, but I'd never thought Samsung was in the ad (creation) business too. You sure it wasn't just some other company creating an ad for Samsung?

Just askin'.

TV sales PLUMMET. But no one's prepared to say what we all know

xperroni

Re: Seriously how often *do* people replace their TV's?

Oh, and people don't watch telly anymore because most of it is shit, innit?

Aye, and it has been thus for the longest time.

It was about twenty years ago that I stopped watching TV regularly. I was just 13 at the time, and already too fed up with all the shit being broadcast to keep up with it. My patch didn't have Internet back then, so I'd read comics and listen to the radio, which hadn't yet degenerated into a never-ending stream of advertisements and rants by constipated DJ's.

I wonder what role TV programme standards actually had in the current sales slump, however. Would more people buy TV's today if content was better? Most of the good shows can be watched over the Internet today, so it could well have turned out just the same.

xperroni
Joke

Smart TV's still await a really good implementation, and the opportunity to sell sets on their smart capabilities has probably been supplanted, because whilst the makers messed around the market moved on, so that for casual browsing and emailing the solution is tablets.

A friend of mine once approached the lady on a kiosk showcasing a "smart" TV, and asked her in what sense the TV was "smart".

She didn't know.

I guess TV makers don't, either.

US saves self from Huawei spying by spying on Huawei spying

xperroni

Circular reasoning

We must spy on Huawei.

Why?

Because they are spying on us, of course!

How do we know that?

From spying on Huawei, how else?

I bet even Da Vinci couldn't draw as perfect a circle as this reasoning.

xperroni

The lack of punctuation in that paragraph makes my eyes bleed!!!!!

Simon has a rather unorthodox approach to proofreading. He says it's the price we pay for getting up-to-date news from Australia this late at night. Myself, I'd rather wait longer for a more polished piece, but oh well – I guess we get what we pay for.

MtGox finds 200,000 Bitcoin in old wallets

xperroni
Coat

"[T]he outfit was not very organised"

A textbook case of British understatement, surely?

Haunted Empire calls Apple 'a cult built around a dead man.' Tim Cook calls it 'nonsense'

xperroni
Facepalm

Re: Someone is WRONG on the Internet (was: Great Automator Script Available)

Spot on, when talking about you mate. Don't speak for the rest of us!

Yes, because your comment (posted anonymously, no less) totally disproves my point.

Gabriel's theory anyone?

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