No face of mine

Facebook. That is what this post is all about. I have been curious about a couple things:

1. People with 1000-ish (or more) friends - Is it possible to maintain that many relationships? Maybe I am asking the wrong question. How do other people see Facebook? Personally, I see it as a place not to distribute my name in quantity, but to maintain close with a smaller network of friends. But I understand the way that I use Facebook is probably just one way out of many.

2. The quizzes – What is it that compels people to design quizzes that ultimately assign a score to a participant (example: those “How well do you know me?” quizzes)?

3. The fan pages – I fear Facebook is losing what I hoped it would not. A personal Facebook page seems to be more of an advert of who a person thinks that they are rather than a place where communities of people maintain in contact.

4. Wall posts – To me, there are circumstances when I reply to someone’s post on my wall directly on my wall and others when I choose to reply on their wall. It would be interesting to find out if other people see this similarly. I’ve only heard one person ever mention anything about where another user chose to leave their comments.

5. The highly similar series of uploaded photos – I don’t want to put this in a negative light, but I am curious why people sometimes choose to upload 10-20 photos of themselves doing something that spanned about 10-20 seconds in real life. As a result there are many photos that look like the same photo, with very little changing between pictures. I would never say this is a bad thing, I just don’t understand it.

A way to simplify your internet searches with Firefox

Hey ppl,

This applies to Firefox, IE7/8, and Google Chrome users, though it is written using Firefox as an example.

Are you pressed for time? Tired of doing all of the tedious steps in searching for what you want on a site? I am. …and because it happens to me, it would be ludicrous to think that other people do not have similar experiences. So here, check this (http://mycroft.mozdev.org/) out.

Though it’s called the Mycroft Project, I have come to know this simply as Mycroft. It allows you to search, select, and download search plugins that can be accessed by clicking the down arrow on the Firefox search bar. If you don’t understand this, or learn best visually, see the image below.

See the searchbar? If you don’t see it, look at the image below.

Mycroft Project Screenshot - Cropped Searchbar Basic

Now put your favorite website into the search. If you don’t know how, see the image below.

Mycroft Project Screenshot - Cropped Searchbar w/ Entry

You will see many results. To download a plugin, click the search function that will best suit your needs and a dialogue box will appear. Click OK in the dialogue box. Then, to test out your new plugin, click the down arrow in the Firefox search bar, and select the icon (favicon) of the plugin you just downloaded.

You can rearrange the different searches by clicking “Manage Search Entries”.

This will undoubtedly save time. No longer do you have to open new tabs, type in the URL, navigate to the actual site search bar, and type your search. Now you can just type your search and press ENTER. Less steps means less time to find whatever you are looking for.

One Pirate’s View of the Pirate Bay Trial

Fortunately, The Pirate Bay continues to run. Registered and nonregistered users of the site can still download any torrent file on the site. As of now, very little (perhaps nothing) has changed which would affect a user’s ability to torrent and reap the result of whatever content is specified within the torrent file.
Jack Riley believes that the trial against The Pirate Bay has made The Pirate Bay stronger and more powerful than before the trial (see http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/jack-riley-this-trial-has-only-made-torrent-sites-much-stronger-1670409.html for the article). Not only do I share Jack Riley’s opinion, but I condone what many consider piracy. Probably very few people would say this for fear of  legal consequences.  The sharing, distributing, and downloading of content across dozens of protocols has shaped how I see the internet, the computer, and technology in its entirety.
Note that this rare instance that I am using to express my thoughts is not about my philosophy of file sharing protocols. It is about the uselessness of trials against organizations like The Pirate Bay.
If the Swedish government knew (or cared) about what was really going on, Carl Lundström, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg would probably be laughing at (thus blogging about, or at least noting) the stupidity and lack of understanding of some other government or capitalist organization instead of  wasting their time waiting to appeal. There are fundamental differences between actual data (the real data) and meta-data (data about the actual data). Similarly there is no reason to say that The Pirate Bay ever violated any Swedish law because the severs in operation at The Pirate Bay contained no actual data and there is no way to directly determine if the meta-data actually referenced any files that were truly protected from duplication and distribution. Since the actual data is contained on the computers of users of The Pirate Bay, it is impossible to say that just because the meta-data references a file called “Legally Protected File 123” does not mean that “Legally Protected File 123” is actually “Legally Protected File 123”. The user could have simply taken content completely legal to distribute and renamed it “Legally Protected File 123”. Last time I checked, a user can name a file as they please. Without meta-data referencing file hashes along with the unaltered actual data in question (which lies on whichever user’s computer), it is inaccurate to claim that The Pirate Bay is, in any means, providing its users a way to obtain and share content prohibited from unregulated distribution. It may just appear that way. The law does not apply to how a situation appears. It applies to the actuality of a situation. If the actuality of a situation is not present or does not exist, the law of any just government will be unable to prove that legality was somehow violated. Of course, this can only be said as long as there is no law against a situation appearing a certain way. If this were the case, then The Pirate Bay would not be on trial for being accessories to copyright infringement but instead appearing as accessories to copyright infringement.

Stay Away from Monster Cable. Do not buy, do not invest, do not consider.

This is a commentary written in response to the commentary found at this location: http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/26/monster-cable-at-it-again-sues-mini-golf-company/.

Just as a handful of other companies have done in the past, Monster Cable is quickly gaining the reputation of a company quick to cry and suckle on the legal teat of America. They are trying to become #1 by cutting in line, instead of working hard and ethically to get to the top. They are truncating the necessary effort that it takes to gradually gain a reputable name, and instead, attempting to take a short cut through the courts of America.

If anyone is curious about the goods, services, and ethics of Monster Cable, they are everything but progressive, useful, mutalistic, or insightful. Instead, this is a company hellbent on getting a break or a deal on something that so many other businesses have worked very hard to attain.

A good company does not find the speck in it’s fellow company’s eye, but focuses on improving its inherrent evils. The law and the legal rights that have been designed for companies were created for good reasons that are now being misused and corrupted by companies that are and are similar to Monster Cable.

Do not buy goods or services from this company, as they seek to cheat their way to the top.

Look: ‘Google Trends’ in Google Trends

This is pretty cool.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=google+trends&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

It’s up there with looking up the word ‘dictionary’ in a dictionary.

Forced Exodus of BitTorrent Sites Is Imminent

Don’t let this scare off people from filesharing! Research what is called I2P! Don’t give up! Liberty and freedom will come out on top!

read more | digg story

On assistive technologies

Assistive technologies is a term that is used to describe a field of technology that is targeted at the accommodation of the needs people that inherit a certain characteristic which is atypical of the biological model of the human being.

It is not a question of whether or not this technology is practical to develop; the development of this technology is inherent with time. Some people need to be accommodated for. This accommodation can take place either through the unaccommodated person developing a new technology by him or herself, or by a third party that is seeking to assist the unaccommodated person.

A device that aids in the event of someone being hard or hearing is one of the most obvious examples of assistive technologies. The enhancement of hearing has had a long history. Many devices have been fabricated in order to accommodate for such an abnormality, which in theory, is not an abnormality anymore since a technology exists to aid the problem. Examples of devices are: cones used to funnel sound into one’s ear, hearing aids, sign language, etc.

Assistive technology is necessary in order to allow all human beings, or at least the ones who can get a hold of some type of assistive technology who need it, the chance to live a life that better models the bodily idiosyncrasies of a biological model of the human being.

Exclusive: I Was a Hacker for the MPAA

In an exclusive interview with Wired News, gun-for-hire hacker Robert Anderson tells for the first time how the Motion Picture Association of America promised him money and power if he provided confidential information on TorrentSpy, a popular BitTorrent search site.

read more | digg story

On Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property doesn’t exist. It doesn’t even deserve the capital letters I just gave it. It is a term that corporations and lawyers have coined to put an ID tag and a price-tag on thought, ideas, and intellect.

We are not objects nor are we gods, therefore, we do not create property. Property is only encompassing of that which already exists that can be bought or sold. Intellect is a measurement of the progression and development of past ideas and influences in relation to the most primitive of ideas and thoughts.

Property can only be defined as who possesses and who does not. Intellect is not and can not be defined in terms of who possesses it and who does not because is a by-product of human life. Property is a term that describes the partitions that humans put on earth-made elements or concepts (like stock) directly related to such earth-made property that define or describe the amount of earth-made property that each individual or group of individuals owns.

Intellect can not be created without a previous influence. No reaction can come without an action beforehand. Property is a term that many people pretend existed before humans were even on this earth. Property was first conceptualized when the hunter-gatherer societies of earth needed to partition themselves based on certain earthly, religious, or physical characteristics. Intellect began with the first organism on this earth.

Intellect came before property. Intellect supersedes property. It is through the intellect of the human mind that the concept of property even came into play. Why are we trying to equate a larger and more mature concept of intellect and define within the smaller, immature, unnatural, and man-made boundaries of property?

If there is life more intelligent than us somewhere in this universe, according to the common practices of one who believes in intellectual property, it would be illegal for us to try and copy whatever we deem as an advantage that anyone of a more intelligent nature has over us.

This new term: intellectual property, is not definable because the ownership of an expressed thought or idea is not possible. As human beings who are all on the same level of equality, no one has a right to grant or deny permission to (a) certain individual(s) or a group of individuals that perform certain actions, the right to think a certain thought or process a certain idea.

If you have an idea or a thought, you have no right to grant or deny permission to (a) certain individual(s) or to a group of individuals, the right to repeat or play back what you have thought or what idea you have developed. This is not possible because we are selective communicators that include and exclude all sorts of details from daily communication.

If the majority of our policy makers continue to support the ownership of intellect, we will inevitably become obsessed with the accrediting of the individual and we will forget the value of knowledge for progression as a whole.

On the Turing Test

I have questions that I need to write (type) down. I may not be able to answer them soon, and some of them might actually be easy to answer. My focus is to get them on paper so they do not shrivel away in my head.

1. If it is said that computers will one day be able to convince a human being that it is actually human also, how will we go about manufacturing code that is complex enough to persuade a human brain?

2. Is it impossible for a single man or woman to accept all responsibility for coming up with the code for the machine that will convince a human being that it is a human being?

3. Will the computer be able to convince even its own maker that it is human?

4. Can computer technology inhibit creativity, intellect, and emotion?

5. Will the majority of the technology inside a computer designed to convince others that it is a human incorporate more human parts or more manufactured technology?

6. Why not take a human and upgrade it into a computer rather than take a computer and modify it into a human like object?

7. Is it possible to calculate the next step AFTER this all may possibly happen? Are there and long term consequences of such a technology?

8. If a computer were to pass the Turing Test, then what? Do we officially discredit our own brains for the sake of computer technology?

9. Do we desire computer technology that is smarter than us, or is it only an illusion for something else that we are craving?

10. Is it possible to design a machine that has morals, ethics, and standards that are interpersonally developed as opposed to programmed?

11. Will we choose to leave out the desire to kill and do wrong in any technology we further develop?

12. What is the ultimate goal of such a technology? Are we trying to rush any certain process?

13. Is humanity ready to co-exist with computerized life?

14. Is there anything wrong with having a desire to be immortal?

15. Can a machine be immortal?

16. Is it possible to take information directly from the brain and write it onto a disk without the use of medical equipment?

17. Because every machine that is possibly creatable, doesn’t that suggest that it has to be man made, or can machines create new machines that are better than itself without the intervention of man?

18. Is there any way to program computers to answer all of the questions we want answers to (meaning of life)?

19. Is there enough energy on earth to support the demands of a population comprised of machine?

20. What will the government do to damper any effort to develop technology such as this?

21. Will any effort be made to keep this technology out of the hands of criminals and wrong-doers?

22. Is there even a necessity to worry about who has access to these machines?

23. Will any particular group of people be at a disadvantage upon the emergence of such a technology?

I believe that no matter what the answers to these questions are, this technology has the potential to change the direction of the future dramatically, even though there is only one possible direction for the future, increased chaos. There is nothing more mind-blowing than trying to think about what the future is going to bring in terms of technology. It is also really weird to think about all of the people that will try to silence the progress of such a technology. The Turing Test is not and can not be the only test available to determine if the point in time when computers are smarter than humans has been reached. I do not think that we should put all of our eggs in one basket, but instead, distribute the eggs among many sources so that the most possible ideas can be spread.

Short Entry On Intelligence

I recently asked a smart friend of mine (we’ll call him J.) what his thoughts were on the future of machines. I asked him if he thought that we will be able to one day create a machine that will be able to create something that is better than itself in terms of performance. J explained to me that he does believe that machines will one day be able to do this, and it is actually not that difficult to accomplish. I was rather stunned at this as I am in a very early stage in the large field of physics, science, and computers. In my plebian state, I believe that any machine we create can only be as smart as the sum total of all the intelligence of the designers. This is to be proven right or wrong as time progresses.

Five Problems with AI

These four problems have been taken (not word-for-word) from an article by Rodney A. Brooks called Intelligence Without Representation

1. The ability to understand language in a natural way.

2. The ability to freely choose between telling the truth or telling a lie.

3. Cost – the pursuit of AI is very expensive

4. The ability to discover new knowledge and confirm with other forms of AI that the knowledge is true and accurate.

5. The ability to use both abstract reasoning or symbolic logic.

on direct brain-computer interfaces

We are not far off from the day when the overloaded student or the avid enthusiast of physics, music theory, mathematics, or any other topic will be able to, instead of reading a book, insert a card or a chip into a card-reader located somewhere on and in the human body, and the equivalent of a book, possibly even a thousand books, will be uploaded into the person’s brain in a matter of seconds. This is the epitome of brain-computer interfaces.

American capitalism would be one of the first industries that would try to get a hold of such a technology…before others do. Large and wealthy companies and agencies like Microsoft, the US Army, the CIA, and health insurance companies would do everything in their power to make sure that the American public only has limited access to such a technology. Between these four powers, there would be efforts of stockpiling to ensure the cost of the technology stays high and out of the hands of the poor, lawsuits to protect the intellectual property within knowledge that many corporations have a slice of, legislation aimed at keeping this technology away from criminals, children, and mentally unstable people, and threats issued by the general media directed at the American general public to ensure that the interests of the corporate system stay intact. Immediately following the release of this technology, every educational system in the civilized world would crumble as there would no longer be a need for teachers or students. Both roles would be rendered obsolete. Children would be ‘chipped’ in the same way they are vaccinated before beginning school, except this time, there would be no school as there is no need for it any longer. Instead, children would be shipped off into American industry to serve the interests of corporate progress for profit and domination. Labor laws would be tweaked to ensure that the maximum rate of progression is occurring. Focus would be taken away from the individual to an extent indescribable in today’s adjectives, and instead, focus would be placed on the nation as a whole. No longer would we have individual rights as all of our personal freedoms would be given up after our court systems affirm and approve that America as a whole is the only one, true individual, and therefore, the only thing with rights. The people working inside of the one-body America would not have the luxury of individual rights, but instead, would be treated like animals: being beat and forced to produce ‘x’ result or face certain death. And death would be completely devalued as well. When one person dies, there will be no sympathy for his or her death because everyone will know just as much as everyone else, assuming that all of the above actually occurs in conjunction or before this. If an agency as corrupt as the CIA were to get a hold of this technology before anyone else, the CIA would keep the true and omniscient brain-chips for themselves, and would allow the general public to invest and use only a limited, censored, and flow-controlled chip at the expense of one’s individual rights as mentioned earlier. The CIA would then recruit and implant its own agents with the true and all-access chips which would only strengthen the power of an already corrupt establishment. The CIA would then create a chip based off of their all-access chip, but without any information on emotion or humanity, and these chips would be implanted in the up and coming troops in training for the United States Army. If one is to learn everything they will ever know from a chip implanted in the body, how would one ever learn how to show emotion or learn how to question the assertions of another entity? That would no longer be possible if the CIA has total and inevitable control of this technology.

There is also a possibility that after such a development, all thought would lose its value. The entire economy of thought would be spoiled in a few swift movements of automated arms and electronic instruments as the mass production of this technology would be very high on the priority list, but the out sourcing and distribution rates of this technology would be limited and low. Entire classes of people would be discriminated against as the availability of the brain-chips would be limited to those who could afford it. But not to fear, this wont be as gut-wrenching as it sounds. Apple will be happy to pick up such a governmentally and corporately controlled technology and patent it with the socially popular and eye catching, ¨iChip¨. And of course, there will be ten variations of the iChip and it will come in six different colors! Everyone will ‘have to have one’ as it will eventually become the one and only format sold in stores and all previous formats of electronic or printed media will be obsolete. Just like DVDs, CDs, or even cassettes, the iChip would replace all of its predecessors and would be ‘the most revolutional technology since the Mp3 player.’

My opinion: Moore’s Law

It is most likely, and most probable, that Moore’s law will end and computing speed will come to a halt, but there is another possible solution which I will mention later. At least for a while, science will halt the progress of computing speed until we find out what, if anything, is smaller than the electron, the proton, and the neutron, which are the building blocks of atom.

Because we are not far technologically from creating a processor that has transistors and other parts only a couple of atoms large in size, it is probable to say that we will progress and be halted at the size of one atom until we find out what is smaller than the atom, or until we find out how to combine and build larger computing machines, as opposed to going smaller.

There may be a future for alternative methods of computing, however, that would be both costly and time consuming as all of the modernized world would have to make a paradigm shift to a completely refabricated technology. One idea may be to research the abilities and advantages of quantum tunnelling as a possible solution to a future limitation of processing speed. Another possible solution is to research the properties and possibilities of forward time-travel. If we were able to understand and even harness the ability of computational forward time-travel, a computer could receive the answer to a calculation before any calculation even takes place, and when the future moment of time is reached where the calculation would have ended, all of the backward moving energy could be filtered into a separate unit to ensure no damage to the computer…or no over-expended processing power. If we could harness computational forward time-travel, it would ensure that we would never run into any limitation with computational speed, except the end of time, which is a long time away.

Artificial Intelligence and its younger brother Robotics

Artificial Intelligence is a concept that we have created to grant human-like characteristics to computers. Since the Industrial Revolution there has been an increased effort to automatize technology because of certain relatively new concepts in the manufacturing business. These concepts include mass production, interchangeable parts, and the assembly line.

A brief explanation:

1. Mass production: A method of producing products in large quantities at a low cost.¹ In order to ensure optimum quality in the production process, many business owners strive to make the manufacturing process of the produced good as consistent as possible. One way to ensure this is through the use of automation in the manufacturing process.

2. Interchangeable parts: A concept originally thought of by French gun manufacturer Honore Le Blanc², this system was devised to ensure the same parts made up a manufactured product. This lessened the cost of part manufacturing as well as saved labor costs. The best way to make an interchangeable part consistent is through the use of an automated system where the more responsibility is taken off of the workers and put onto the machines.

 

3. The Assembly line: Made popular by Henry Ford³, this was a system that eliminated the requirement for cars to be individually crafted, and instead, allowed one person to perform the same task over and over again to a moving line of parts that would eventually be built into a car.

¹ According to http://www.willamette.edu/~fthompso/MgmtCon/Mass_Production.html

² According to http://www.ryerson.ca/~dgrimsha/courses/cps841/Interchangeable.html

³ According to http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ford.htm

-Artificial Intelligence-

The question I want to answer: Will we ever reach a time in history when Artificial Intelligence has the ability to overpower humans?

In order to explain my answer, you need to first be familiar with the First Law of Thermodynamics.

My hypothesis: No, Artificial Intelligence will never be more powerful than the total of the mind power of the human race. Yes, there will come a time when an Artificial Intelligence can and will be smarter and as complex as a human being, but there will never be any system of Artificial Intelligence that is more suffocated or complex than the sum of brain power of everyone on this earth. It is not possible to be overtaken by an artificial intelligence that was entirely created by our hands, however, it is possible for a single person or group of people to be overtaken.

The First Law of Thermodynamics: “Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another. The total energy is constant within any system.”

This law holds firm in all situations or else it would not be true. A scientific law is a scientific law and there is nothing that can be done to evade or surpass such a law without being incorrect. If this statement were not true then the First Law of Thermodynamics would not be called the First Law of Thermodynamics. Instead, it would be called something like: The First Guess of Thermodynamics. So, it is very important to realize as you read the rest of this article that this law applies in all situations at any and every cost.

It is completely improbable to say that one day, Artificial Intelligence is going to overpower the human race, by either brain power or by strength. This is because Artificial Intelligence can, is, and only ever will be designed by human beings and not by other Artificial Intelligence. All of the programming that a unit of Artificial Intelligence receives is all the programming it is ever going to receive until it is acted upon by another human being to either upgrade it with a high capacity of knowledge, or a different system to process. We can not and will not be able to design any sort of Artificial Intelligence that can think on its own. The only kind of Artificial Intelligence that would be possible to design is a type of Artificial Intelligence that is able to learn from what has already been created and designed by human beings. It is 100% impossible to design an Artificial Intelligence to be innovative or creative because the only creativity that it will ever receive is the same amount or less than the total amount of creativity that the original manufacturer of that particular system of Artificial Intelligence has.

If a team of designers is responsible for the design of an Artificial Intelligence, that Artificial Intelligence can not, according to the First law of Thermodynamics, contain any more energy, or any additional potential to do work, or any additional ability to make calculations than the combined sum of all of the designers who created the Artificial Intelligence. That may mean that the Artificial Intelligence could be more intelligent than one human being, but it will always remain at a less amount of intelligence than the total of all of its designers because that is what the First Law of Thermodynamics has clearly stated for us.

With all of that said, this does not mean that AI will not be able to process the environment, or scan an image, or do something electrical that humans are at present moment incapable of doing without the aid of external equipment. This also does not mean that AI will not be able to fully function like a human being. However, what this DOES mean is that any AI will never be able to fully function like a human race because without proper programming, AI do not and can not inhibit the same characteristics and can not experience individually influenced emotion without the prior programming of it into the AI by a human being.

So in summary of what has been said above:

1. AI will never be able to create anything more than what has been programmed into themselves.

2. Man made creations can overpower an individual in both strength and processing power, but man made creations can never overpower an entire human race.

3. AI does not experience emotions meaning that without external influence by humans, there can be no improvement on something that does not exist such as how it interacts with other AI, etc.