More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
18 October
Lindsay Edmunds has set off some more thoughts, this time in relation to whether a PIN could, for fraudulent use, be identified by scanning someone's brain-waves, and what the limitations are of our thinking, the technology, and how we relate them.
Read more at Run Away! Mind-Hackers Can Harvest Your Brain!...
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Showing posts with label Writer's Rest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writer's Rest. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Saturday, 13 October 2012
The Perfection Thing - over at Writer's Rest
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 October
Lindsay, again, has set off some interesting talk in the realm of AI with a recent case of applying The Turing Test.
To read your correspondent's and other people's comments, go to The Perfection Thing.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 October
Lindsay, again, has set off some interesting talk in the realm of AI with a recent case of applying The Turing Test.
To read your correspondent's and other people's comments, go to The Perfection Thing.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Friday, 7 September 2012
News from Writer's Rest
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
8 September
Lindsay's latest posting at http://writersrest.com/2012/09/06/pretending-to-be-human-the-latest-thing-in-robo-calls/#comment-1542 has enthused me to write this :
Ah, The Turing Test, one of the beloved things that returns and returns, and always pays returns!
I always had an interest in Alan Turing and his fellow theorists and code-breakers, and had been to the place that gave rise to the present GCHQ (the UK’s Government Communications HQ), but seeing the play about his life, brilliantly performed by an all-amateur cast, had me taking my then girlfriend that same weekend to that place in Buckinghamshire, Bletchley Park.
Turing’s sister (who calls him Alan M. Turing) has written a book about him, which I shall some day read, as I shall some day read the text of the play and be amazed again at how much the actor who played him embodied that role and knew a huge role almost word perfect.
For now, I see a little bit of his lively mind and thinking from the thirties and through and beyond the Second World War, and feel moved to support the campaign that he should be pardoned for being gay before his time, and also for his seeming suicide to be looked at not as the self-crime that it then was in law.
If that does not encourage you to visit Writer's Rest, I admit failure...
Plus there's now :
Another thing is that the best AI is where the money is being sought: it is not in the very unconvincing services that ‘direct your call’ by getting you to press 1 then 3 then 2, etc., etc., or the stilted automated announcements at the station, as they have no interest in conveying the notion that they are persons, just suitably comprehensible cut-up bits of persons’ voices.
Actually, that is no false economy, but not pretending to be any more than one is, whereas those who use highly developed AI fail to realize how objectionable people will almost always find a however-clever machine that rings them up, if they catch it out as one, and may have to learn a difficult lesson about what matters to human-beings.
The reason? Simply the same affront at a computer seeming to personalize a form-letter, but addressing me incompetently as Mrs Apsley, because of the principle rubbish in, rubbish out – the seeming care about me as this mythical ‘valued customer’ is belied by not even knowing who I am! Just as irritating as if the new doctor calls one by the wrong name, but he or she can be corrected, and should apologize…
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
8 September
Lindsay's latest posting at http://writersrest.com/2012/09/06/pretending-to-be-human-the-latest-thing-in-robo-calls/#comment-1542 has enthused me to write this :
Ah, The Turing Test, one of the beloved things that returns and returns, and always pays returns!
I always had an interest in Alan Turing and his fellow theorists and code-breakers, and had been to the place that gave rise to the present GCHQ (the UK’s Government Communications HQ), but seeing the play about his life, brilliantly performed by an all-amateur cast, had me taking my then girlfriend that same weekend to that place in Buckinghamshire, Bletchley Park.
Turing’s sister (who calls him Alan M. Turing) has written a book about him, which I shall some day read, as I shall some day read the text of the play and be amazed again at how much the actor who played him embodied that role and knew a huge role almost word perfect.
For now, I see a little bit of his lively mind and thinking from the thirties and through and beyond the Second World War, and feel moved to support the campaign that he should be pardoned for being gay before his time, and also for his seeming suicide to be looked at not as the self-crime that it then was in law.
If that does not encourage you to visit Writer's Rest, I admit failure...
Plus there's now :
Another thing is that the best AI is where the money is being sought: it is not in the very unconvincing services that ‘direct your call’ by getting you to press 1 then 3 then 2, etc., etc., or the stilted automated announcements at the station, as they have no interest in conveying the notion that they are persons, just suitably comprehensible cut-up bits of persons’ voices.
Actually, that is no false economy, but not pretending to be any more than one is, whereas those who use highly developed AI fail to realize how objectionable people will almost always find a however-clever machine that rings them up, if they catch it out as one, and may have to learn a difficult lesson about what matters to human-beings.
The reason? Simply the same affront at a computer seeming to personalize a form-letter, but addressing me incompetently as Mrs Apsley, because of the principle rubbish in, rubbish out – the seeming care about me as this mythical ‘valued customer’ is belied by not even knowing who I am! Just as irritating as if the new doctor calls one by the wrong name, but he or she can be corrected, and should apologize…
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Monday, 13 August 2012
Firewalls at Writer's Rest
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 August
Just a little leisurely winding-down (for me, as I'm not in The States) conversation with Lindsay at Writer's Rest about what a firewall is and how to picture it.
I'm sure that any other views or images would be very welcome...
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 August
Just a little leisurely winding-down (for me, as I'm not in The States) conversation with Lindsay at Writer's Rest about what a firewall is and how to picture it.
I'm sure that any other views or images would be very welcome...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Statistics and the brain (1)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
11 April
On Lindsay's blog, another discussion about AI and virtual immortality.
In a side-strand, generated by comment, I have added:
If they do actually mean anything, and are not more inventions (which, however imaginative they may be, just mislead everybody), these statistics about, for example, how much of the brain we use are in the realm of science - but how good is the science, as, if it were crucial to making the right finding to have more of the scientist's brain working than 10%, then the measurements might be ones that defy or defeat the measurer.
An often-quoted one, and one used by those who like wearing hats to justify the preference, is the claim that - and I think that it is usually this sort of figure - 20% of heat lost by the body is through the head. To which I retort:
1. When someone inverted the figure, and made it 80% heat loss, I really had to question whether he ever engaged the brain before speaking;
2. If this is the loss from the head, and one wants to minimize it, a hat is clearly not the answer, where a balaclava is;
3. Maybe that's where the 10% usage of the brain comes from - it's overheating because of people trying to block its cooling system.
See more, if you will, at Writer's Rest...
And now, also, at Statistics and the brain (2)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
11 April
On Lindsay's blog, another discussion about AI and virtual immortality.
In a side-strand, generated by comment, I have added:
If they do actually mean anything, and are not more inventions (which, however imaginative they may be, just mislead everybody), these statistics about, for example, how much of the brain we use are in the realm of science - but how good is the science, as, if it were crucial to making the right finding to have more of the scientist's brain working than 10%, then the measurements might be ones that defy or defeat the measurer.
An often-quoted one, and one used by those who like wearing hats to justify the preference, is the claim that - and I think that it is usually this sort of figure - 20% of heat lost by the body is through the head. To which I retort:
1. When someone inverted the figure, and made it 80% heat loss, I really had to question whether he ever engaged the brain before speaking;
2. If this is the loss from the head, and one wants to minimize it, a hat is clearly not the answer, where a balaclava is;
3. Maybe that's where the 10% usage of the brain comes from - it's overheating because of people trying to block its cooling system.
See more, if you will, at Writer's Rest...
And now, also, at Statistics and the brain (2)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Thursday, 16 February 2012
'Lines here and there' at Writer's Rest
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
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16 February
There is a posting that could give rise to a quite interesting thread (or whatever it's called) - needless to say, I have made a reply:
http://writersrest.com/2012/02/16/lines-here-and-there/#comment-1141
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
16 February
There is a posting that could give rise to a quite interesting thread (or whatever it's called) - needless to say, I have made a reply:
http://writersrest.com/2012/02/16/lines-here-and-there/#comment-1141
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Friday, 27 January 2012
Self-parking garages at Writer's Rest
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 January
There's a discussion going on about cars that drive themselves (that age-old dream - of some, anyway!).
I have just posted this comment in a 'spin-off thread'* to the original posting:
Hmm. I'm not sure that this concept is a new one - if I am not raving, it originated in Japan (probably Tokyo), where, clearly, efficient use of the available space is of paramount importance. (It may be now in West Hollywood.)
In essence, I think that it is little more than a giant car-transporter (those huge things on the roads that look so dangerous on so many counts:
* What if the cars touch (in varying degrees of touching from a knock to a squash)?;
* What if the whole thing falls over?;
* What if a car - as in the films - tumbles off the back and into one's path, and would one's reactions be good enough?.
Self-parking garages are a mechanization of using storage space, as I recall, a bit like the capsule hotel - you get a bed for the night, but it's cheap and basic, as you're occupying a space not much larger than a coffin!
I believe that, with the self-parking concept, you leave the garage with fitting your car into the space available, rather than driving around and around a car-park, where a large surface-area is, of course, wasted in this search by providing the route for the cars to get around, and from floor to floor.
I think that it's computer-controlled mechanization, in fact, with hydraulics, sensors, etc. If I'm right, it's little different from the technology that we have already taken for granted with robots building vehicles for us in car-plants:
There's a very atmospheric scene in such a plant in The Hunter (2010) (write-up on my blog**, and the Cambridge Film Festival web-site), where Ali (writer / director / actor Rafi Pitts), who is a security guard on night duties, makes a patrol. There is no one around, but the robots are busy welding and the like.
Full blog at http://writersrest.com/2012/01/24/let-the-robot-drive/#comment-1108
End-notes
* Some such...
** Postings at: The Hunter re-emerges and Back to The Hunter.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 January
There's a discussion going on about cars that drive themselves (that age-old dream - of some, anyway!).
I have just posted this comment in a 'spin-off thread'* to the original posting:
Hmm. I'm not sure that this concept is a new one - if I am not raving, it originated in Japan (probably Tokyo), where, clearly, efficient use of the available space is of paramount importance. (It may be now in West Hollywood.)
In essence, I think that it is little more than a giant car-transporter (those huge things on the roads that look so dangerous on so many counts:
* What if the cars touch (in varying degrees of touching from a knock to a squash)?;
* What if the whole thing falls over?;
* What if a car - as in the films - tumbles off the back and into one's path, and would one's reactions be good enough?.
Self-parking garages are a mechanization of using storage space, as I recall, a bit like the capsule hotel - you get a bed for the night, but it's cheap and basic, as you're occupying a space not much larger than a coffin!
I believe that, with the self-parking concept, you leave the garage with fitting your car into the space available, rather than driving around and around a car-park, where a large surface-area is, of course, wasted in this search by providing the route for the cars to get around, and from floor to floor.
I think that it's computer-controlled mechanization, in fact, with hydraulics, sensors, etc. If I'm right, it's little different from the technology that we have already taken for granted with robots building vehicles for us in car-plants:
There's a very atmospheric scene in such a plant in The Hunter (2010) (write-up on my blog**, and the Cambridge Film Festival web-site), where Ali (writer / director / actor Rafi Pitts), who is a security guard on night duties, makes a patrol. There is no one around, but the robots are busy welding and the like.
Full blog at http://writersrest.com/2012/01/24/let-the-robot-drive/#comment-1108
End-notes
* Some such...
** Postings at: The Hunter re-emerges and Back to The Hunter.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Blogging is infectious
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
26 January
I have mentioned Writer's Rest already.
Time does not permit a link to those postings to this blog, but here is my latest comment in the debate on cars that drive themselves:
I’m not sure that it is that [sc. that technology fails, because it is only as good as its human designers]:
Someone might be able to say what it is that makes my PC sometimes crash or go into a loop, and I’m not convinced that it is (directly) attributable to having been designed by human-beings – computer systems do just fail in ways that, as far as I am aware, are not predictable.
(Or, maybe, not worth predicting at the cost that would be attached: there’s always a cost, just as, if the maker of the PC, laptop or BlackBerry has skimped, we pay the price as the person using it, especially if we do not lose the simple time to try again, but data, or the chance to bid for that item at the last moment on eBay – the small fatalist in me then invokes You weren’t meant to win it?.)
After all, I believe both that the Apollo missions ran the flight software in multiple parallel because of this very problem, and that, because I understand jumbos that take off and land themselves have the same ‘redundancy’ with which we are, maybe, more familiar from the 32x oversampling of our CD-player (which still fails, but maybe for other reasons, such as a dirty lens), the problem is inherent and has not been solved.
Except by the very simple expedient of rebooting, and hoping that you can carry on, with whatever autosave routine was invoked in those crucial closing nanoseconds…
More available at Writer's Rest...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
26 January
I have mentioned Writer's Rest already.
Time does not permit a link to those postings to this blog, but here is my latest comment in the debate on cars that drive themselves:
I’m not sure that it is that [sc. that technology fails, because it is only as good as its human designers]:
Someone might be able to say what it is that makes my PC sometimes crash or go into a loop, and I’m not convinced that it is (directly) attributable to having been designed by human-beings – computer systems do just fail in ways that, as far as I am aware, are not predictable.
(Or, maybe, not worth predicting at the cost that would be attached: there’s always a cost, just as, if the maker of the PC, laptop or BlackBerry has skimped, we pay the price as the person using it, especially if we do not lose the simple time to try again, but data, or the chance to bid for that item at the last moment on eBay – the small fatalist in me then invokes You weren’t meant to win it?.)
After all, I believe both that the Apollo missions ran the flight software in multiple parallel because of this very problem, and that, because I understand jumbos that take off and land themselves have the same ‘redundancy’ with which we are, maybe, more familiar from the 32x oversampling of our CD-player (which still fails, but maybe for other reasons, such as a dirty lens), the problem is inherent and has not been solved.
Except by the very simple expedient of rebooting, and hoping that you can carry on, with whatever autosave routine was invoked in those crucial closing nanoseconds…
More available at Writer's Rest...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Thursday, 19 January 2012
More on AI: Boxie
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
20 January
Another item that I find of interest at Writer's Rest, where I have posted:
Well, I have to ask: would an investigator from the IRS using such an interface remain as cute in many people's eyes for very long...?
And my AOL sign-on page bombards me with images of people getting hostile and rough with their no less cute PC in an effort to get me to sign on for their System Mechanic (another piece of sotware probably likely to make worse a situation of functionality that is tolerable).
The point being that for someone who sees beyond the 'face' and sees it in a reductionist way as housing just cameras, not real eyes, and the means of controlling the traction and 'the voice', there is nothing to like, and there is nothing capable of feeling any dislike.
It's not, after all, like shouting at the cat when she asks for food and then, if she persists, locking her out!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
20 January
Another item that I find of interest at Writer's Rest, where I have posted:
Well, I have to ask: would an investigator from the IRS using such an interface remain as cute in many people's eyes for very long...?
And my AOL sign-on page bombards me with images of people getting hostile and rough with their no less cute PC in an effort to get me to sign on for their System Mechanic (another piece of sotware probably likely to make worse a situation of functionality that is tolerable).
The point being that for someone who sees beyond the 'face' and sees it in a reductionist way as housing just cameras, not real eyes, and the means of controlling the traction and 'the voice', there is nothing to like, and there is nothing capable of feeling any dislike.
It's not, after all, like shouting at the cat when she asks for food and then, if she persists, locking her out!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Thursday, 22 December 2011
Another blog - Writer's Rest (2)
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
23 December
At Writer's Rest, Lindsay has now made a posting to comment on my posting*:
That is the question and right now it is unanswerable. I want to read this book. I think author is right about the language used to describe this theoretical ascension into consciousness. Personally, I believe that IF it happens (I have no idea whether it will or not), it will fall far short of an apocalyptic event.
* IF technology were what it is cracked up to be, I would not have had to notice in the list of blogs that I am following that there had been a reply, I was supposed to get an e-mail - maybe the e-mail got too interested in watching the trailer for J. Edgar, though I can't fathom why (Hoover as a black woman in the court scene in Bananas, Woody Allen's early collaboration with Marshall Brickman, fires my imagination far more than Leonardo does)...
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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
23 December
At Writer's Rest, Lindsay has now made a posting to comment on my posting*:
That is the question and right now it is unanswerable. I want to read this book. I think author is right about the language used to describe this theoretical ascension into consciousness. Personally, I believe that IF it happens (I have no idea whether it will or not), it will fall far short of an apocalyptic event.
* IF technology were what it is cracked up to be, I would not have had to notice in the list of blogs that I am following that there had been a reply, I was supposed to get an e-mail - maybe the e-mail got too interested in watching the trailer for J. Edgar, though I can't fathom why (Hoover as a black woman in the court scene in Bananas, Woody Allen's early collaboration with Marshall Brickman, fires my imagination far more than Leonardo does)...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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