john.kurman

john.kurman

  • Commented on YAPC::NA 2014 keynote: Programming Perl in 2034
    Taking from your 2034 bullet points, I get: complex, tightly coupled systems, built on rickety, kluge-ridden infrastructure, with little or no regulation, and what exists is either inept or cronyist, with possibility near-biological replication of material instrumentalities, using bug-embedded human-fallible...
  • Commented on Yet another bad idea
    I didn't need to read beyond the pic of Volodya. Flipper-limbed halfwits in this benighted nation have a major stiffie for a strong leader. But keep in mind, Zombie Reagan can be suckled back to vitality by bare-chested Putin. And...
  • Commented on Can We Merge Minds and Machines?
    I know there's lots of downsides to this, but that's what late adopters like the Amish are for. The first rule of improv (and rank speculation) is: Always Say Yes. My takeaway from this is: Yes, and therefore, once it...
  • Commented on The Singularity Is Further Than It Appears
    "That's not a strong AI, that's a calculator." It's probably worse than that. It's probably a screaming insane thing trapped in a Minecraft Hell. Forget the "is it murder if you flip the switch to off" ethical conundrum, I'd feel...
  • Commented on How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love Focus Groups
    "But the opening of the movie's just a story delivery system", yeah. I like that. Kind of like, do you really care how the tail of the bacteriophage is constructed, when the whole point is to inject the DNA? It's...
  • Commented on Why Make A Movie Within A Computer Game?
    Best of luck to in your. Come to think of it, I would see a machinima feature of a Stross adaptation, say, like "A Colder War". I think that's the name of it....
  • Commented on Why Make A Movie Within A Computer Game?
    Not what I'm into, having cured myself of video games decades ago, but I think you've really tapped into something that will go somewhere, Hugh. Example: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/a-journey-to-the-end-of-the-world-of-minecraft.html I'm wondering, moving beyond WoW and all that other stuff, is the idea...
  • Commented on Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire
    This is kind of a "money spent on space exploration could have been better spent on more worthwhile things" kind of logical fallacy argument, but... I read that the raw computation power used for mining bitcoins is now exa-obscene (and,...
  • Commented on The revolution will not be hand-stitched
    Luxury fibers you say? Spider silk? Polymers? Why stop there? How about artificial muscles, nerves, skin, biolfilms, etc. etc. for either soft robots or exosuits, or limb/organ replacement?...
  • Commented on What have we learned?
    I don't about the "we", but what I have learned is that: Given the events of the past ten or so years, it sure looks like China won the Cold War....
  • Commented on Snowden leaks: the real take-home
    I'm thinking the other part of that event, the creation of the United Provinces. What an interesting counterfactual if the New World was not conquered when it was, for all the Enlightenment would have no fuel to sustain itself. The...
  • Commented on Snowden leaks: the real take-home
    I could accept Charlie's speculation if: 1) Increasing number of whistlelblowes (number minus chilling effect of prosecution/ostracizing, plus supposed encouragement through "transparency"). 2) Assuming venality remains constant across generational lines 3) ease of apathy due to nomadism 4) assuming the...
  • Commented on Short Story: Bit Rot
    I see. Static klingons, then. (Sorry. No really. Sorry about that)....
  • Commented on Short Story: Bit Rot
    I, for one, welcome our Cannibal Robot Space Zombie Masters. Nut, it occurs to me that, if the Universe is so gosh-darned inconveniently radioactive, perhaps these androids - especially the more xenomorphic - would be looking for a material substrate...
  • Commented on "Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying" — Iain Banks, 1954-2013
    Well, this sucks. Anticipated, sure. Dreaded, certainly.Hopeful for a different outcome, without question. But sometimes I think hope is the worst of the horrors Pandora unleashed upon us. Even so, when reality intrudes upon wants, it doesn't mean it sucks...
  • Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
    It's all good. I just realized, the way to defeat a post-Singularity superhuman AI is to get it involved in an off-topic digression on a BBS, and you can slip right on by unfettered. My suspicion is pretty much any...
  • Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
    I'm wondering if the out of context problem can go full circle, or rather, full Mobius. I don't think I quite buy into the tech-beats-all formula. If there is enough of a disconnect in the context, then you've got guys...
  • Commented on The map is not the territory.
    Perhaps, if the Singularity comes, hyper-intelligent computers will keep us around because we can smell their "incipient cancer or a seizure about to happen"....
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