Popye - comments(18) - email me

Saturday September 16, 2006 - 8:22AM EDT

Recently there has been a quite some concern over e. coli contaminated bagged spinach. Although some look upon it as being something worse than an actually is I think it does show something. We can see that food safety still needs work but we can also be kind of assured that the government took such quick widespread action to protect the people. Not only that but private companies heeded government suggestion. It is almost amazing in its only little way that within days of a recall most supermarkets removed all the product and investigators had narrowed it down to the farm it originated from. It almost seems like it was effecient. Obviously the dirty details of the story are not known to me but from what is known right now this whole thing couldn't have progressed any better. If they could somehow be this effecient in detecting and stopping terrorism those damn airport scares where everyone overreacts would be a figment of my imagination. I suppose something like food safety is probably of importance so tantamount that we, especially in the US, have come to expect ultra high standards without a second thought. I just couldn't help but think wow damn good job while the evening news was projecting this thing as some kind of terrible scare.

Justice DRM - comments(18) - email me

Thursday September 14, 2006 - 8:12PM EDT

This is a hilarious quote

The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust chief Thomas Barnett cited recent foreign proposals to impose restrictions on Apple's iTunes service as an example of strict regulation which could discourage innovation and hurt consumers.  - full article

This clown has the nerve to use the words "discourage innovation". What he is refering to is countries trying to force Apple to remove their DRM crapola. Damn losers haven't got a fucking clue.

Its become - comments(26) - email me

Tuesday September 5, 2006 - 4:38PM EDT

one of those issues I suppose. What I am referring to is global warming.  I can't even remember when it came up again. The funny part is that it is not a new issue and this has been known for quite a while. There are probably and amalgam of reasons why it is so popular now. What is particularly annoying is how Al Gore suddenly became a champion of this recently. Yet during his 8 years and President Jr. he didn't speak nearly as loud as he is now about it. I am pretty such not much has changed. In the past 8 years global warming didn't suddenly become more provable or real to most scientests.  Typcial reactionary behavior I suppose. I guess it is true that scientests have gathered more data but 8 years of data in something like global warming isn't going to push any reputable scientests too far in any direction. When Gore maybe had some real influence you heard very little about warming. But that is what happened to his evironmentalist speak when he became VP. All the pre-election talk didn't materialize into action and not even anymore talk. It was a littel weird. I don't know.

Way back when - comments(14) - email me

Tuesday September 5, 2006 - 4:26PM EDT

there was that saying about sticks and stones breaking shit and names never hurting. Then sometime in the not to distant past it changed to names do hurt.  Well my point is that it was obvious that names hurt but the message was that you can and should rise above that. Then it changed to were it became almost acceptable as a cultural standard to allow words to invite serious action. It was never absolute anyway but the message of rising above the words of simpletons is something that I don't hear as much anymore.

On another note I lament the de-education of America. It is truly sad. I have almost no doubt that America's standing as tops in so many things will be not only lost but obliterated by the trend. Unless something weird happens.

I am no scientest - comments(20) - email me

Thursday August 31, 2006 - 12:43AM EDT

but this shit on ABC right now about the possibility of machines taking over is pissing me off. Holy fucking shit I am watching people who call themselves scientests tell me that more powerful computers mean more intelligent computers. What a fucking morons dream.  Then ABC had the nerve to show IBM Deep Blue beating Kasparov as if it is some great milestone in artificial intelligence. Look people, chess is a game of this, probability and combinations. A computer is really good and playing with numbers, much better than any human.  All you do to beat a human is simply calculate the probabilities of certain moves and take the one with the best chance. Couple that with reams of data of your human opponent's tendencies you can build another probability table to compare that against and you can beat virtually any fucking grandmaster there is more times than not. That is probability.  Deep blue didn't  learn a damn thing on its own. Its programers simply keep updating the probability table of Kasparovs tendencies. Computers don't forget or get psyched out so mind games aren't going to work.
These fucking bastards also had the nerve to use Stephen Hawking to somewhat support their crazy statements about machines taking over. All hawking said was "in principle" machines could be more intelligent than humans in 100 years. The key words there are "in principle" and "intelligent".  We really can't definitively define intelligence. We can give characteristics of it but the question of what is real intelligence is the problem. Some fucking AI scientests think it is the ability to crunch numbers. Wrong.  Human intelligence is probably closer to what Jeff Hawkin describes in his book On Intelligence. No computer comes even close to human intelligence. We can duplicate some characterestics of it but the combination of ability and more importantly learning that humans posses outstrip computers.  Not to mention the whole self-awareness thing which we can't even figure out for ourselves let alone program a computer to be self-aware. Enough of this.

Corp. - comments(24) - email me

Wednesday August 30, 2006 - 12:02PM EDT

I was just readinng an article saying that gas prices will be heading lower because of a number a reason. One of them was an end to some federal regulations that make refining cheaper.  I fucking hate that shit. I hate it because I wonder whether certain federal regulation costs were meant to be passed on to the consumer. It bullplop. With oil and refining companies making record profits there seems to be no reason to pass every little change in their balance sheets on to consumer prices.  This is one thing that is disturbing about companies. While our federal government is houded for even thinking about taking more money away from the people through raises taxes to meet funding needs fucking companies do that shit all the time. Another example is a federal communications tax that was paid by the telcos which was essentially passed on to the consumer. When that tax was found to be uncounstitutional or something like that and was repealed telcos found it conviennient to raise fees on their services essentially equally what they collected for the tax.  Now if that was a government tax that was repealed why didn't the consumer stop having to lose that money. Of course the telcos excuse is that it is a normal price raise. Bullshit. Unless you were making money from that tax (which you were not suppose to, then again with fancy accounting you probably could) there is no reason to raise cost as soon as it is gone.  This weak-ass president we have now is a great supporter of these big businesses but he is lowering taxes. It is almost like the government is giving tax revenue to companies instead of reinvesting back in the people. Not quite, but it is not a good thing to have certain corporations that control resources that are essential needs to be making a ton of money becuase their interest is themselves and not the welfare of the populous.  No matter how many of the fucking ethanol or "we are making green vehicle and alternative fuels for a better tomorrow" comercials you see. No corporation has ever proven that they are established for the betterment of the populous as a whole, none. Except for non-profits, which in some cases can be just as unscrupulous and detrimental.