TheMightyEthan

Hear hear!

P.T. I noped out right near the end and just watched it on Youtube. Even on Youtube it was scary.

inb4 shaky cam

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. I know it's an ancient meme, but I actually do welcome this trend. I have no real rational argument, but I'm confident it will work out okay. Plus I'm 100% sure it can't be stopped so see no reason worrying about it (thinking/talking about it is great though, it helps us to prepare for and manage the transition).

I doubt it. Did you watch the video? Learning software is getting really advanced. "Learning" just means discovering new information. The problem isn't the information acquisition, it's higher order thinking to figure out how it's relevant, but I doubt that will be too far in the future either.

lol, "interpretation" is a good way to describe that. AI now can't perform higher order reasoning necessary to do things like geology and law, but there's no reason to assume it will never be able to.

They're adding DNLA support. Now Sony will probably follow suit in a few months. (Not a rip on Sony, I think this is a good thing, though surprising.)

One difference that always jumps out at me for some reason is how British people will say something is "different to" something else, while Americans will say it's "different from/different than". Obviously it doesn't create any confusion, it's just interesting.

You do make some good points. I'll say that my concern isn't actually directed at the people who are currently fat, I would also rather they be accepting of their body than walk around in shame, my concern is about the message it sends to kids growing up in that world. Re clothes: most people know how to dress for their body type, but goddamn the ones who don't...

I honestly think that's more of a gender issue. Women are judged much more harshly on their appearance than men are, and that extends to fat women being looked down on in a way that equally fat men aren't, and I don't think that's right. I don't think anyone should be ostracized, or shamed to the point of depression, due to their weight. On the flip side though, I don't think we should be encouraging unhealthy lifestyles, just like we shouldn't encourage people to smoke. The two aren't entirely analogous because there are actual health problems that you might have no control over that make it very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain what one would call a healthy weight, but for most people I think it's very similar: just like quitting smoking, losing weight is very difficult, but it's something that should be encouraged for the sake of health.

Oh yeah, it will be a long long time before the law allows stuff to be completely automated, with no human in the loop to be legally responsible for the judgments, far longer than what would be technically possible with software. What I could definitely see happening though is software starting to replace paralegals. I mean, that's basically the position paralegals already hold: do the gruntwork but have an actual licensed attorney sign off on it before it goes out the door. I don't see a reason software couldn't fill that role.

@Dean: you're right, lots of contracts are basically form contracts, but those already don't require a human to write each time because you just reuse the form. More to the point, when I said "legal documents" I meant court documents, letters to other attorneys convincing them that your position is strong, etc. That kind of stuff takes a disproportionate amount of time because it requires higher level thinking and analysis.

Lol, see to me the long o sounds more like a dog (albeit a big dog) than the short o does.

Anyone who says roof with a long ooooo sound sounds like a dork.

Dean posted this in his status, and I thought I'd bring it in here since he's always reminding everyone that we do have a forum for discussing things. I think the video is pretty interesting, and brings up some aspects of advancing computers that often aren't talked about, though it definitely makes it sound easier to replace certain things than I think it will be in practice. For example law (since that's my profession and therefore what I'm familiar with); in the video most of the stuff it talks about isn't typically performed by actual lawyers. Sure sorting through huge amounts of data is something computers are good at, but the other things it mentions in passing, such as drafting documents, are more complicated than it makes out. A legal document is all about taking a position and constructing an argument to support it, something that would require very robust AI to do. This is not to say that a computer program could never be developed to do it, I'm sure it will happen at some point, but it requires advances well beyond that required to write a new story. My other quibble is broader: sure it's silly to say "we'll just do other jobs we can't imagine yet" when you're talking about computers getting to the point of being actual, conscious AI, because at that point there's nothing humans can do that the machines can't, but I still don't think humans will necessarily go obsolete in the same way that horses did. The entire purpose of the economy is to provide for humans, and as computers can do more and more of the work that humans used to do the economy will change. So I guess rather than saying we'll do jobs we can't imagine, I'd say the economy will take a form we can't imagine, because humans won't actually be central to its functioning so we'll need entirely different systems for distribution of wealth, but there will be some kind of system.

I would too, though I'm not proud of that fact.

We don't typically have much sugar free stuff at restaurants (other than diet sodas), but there's all kinds of packaged stuff at the supermarket. Though there's also a lot of stuff that's like you said, low fat but with tons of sugar.

Ooh, this is one I can actually get people to play with me occasionally! *Edit* - Shit, that board is huge. Gonna have to talk my wife into buying a bigger house...

So the land ownership generates money by rent? Or what?

Sugar... free? Desserts with no sugar. I'm not sure if you're joking or if you really don't have them. We did talk about the roof thing, I even made a recording demonstrating how it's a different sound from rough. http://forum.pressxordie.com/topic/420-english-vs-english/page-10#entry37039

So I've heard people say things like "the duchy of such-and-such is worth £X per year." Where does that money actually come from? Who pays it?

I watched it on Netflix a couple years ago and thought it was great.

So my wife's coworker, who's diabetic, just went to Canada, and apparently you guys don't really have sugar free desserts there?

*Edit* - My favorite part is that I didn't even really have to exaggerate what he said.

Bungie was owned by MS, there was no time-limited contract. They bought themselves back after ODST, though part of the agreement was MS retained ownership of Halo and Bungie would still make Reach.