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Entries tagged 'cat:Thoughts' (Page 7)

Just Try It! It Will Have Been Simple Afterwards.

Again and again I encounter technical problems (software bugs, hardware defects) that seem to be nearly impossible to fix without having had a proper education in the respective field. The simple, and correct, way to getting rid of these types of problems surely is to declare them not a problem. Buy a new device, convince yourself that you don't want the feature anyway, make somebody else solve your problem and blame them if it isn't perfect or breaks again.

But in those cases where I do find the motivation to try and repair something myself, it is often easier than expected and always so in hindsight. If you have repaired something yourself before that you initially considered to be a problem that is above your capabilities, I congratulate you on this eminently gratifying feeling that more often than not seems to come with this experience. If you haven't, this sentence doesn't address you.

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Film: The Road

The boy's father in "The Road" is not a good father. Change my mind.

All things considered, I'm glad he died. It would have been even better had he died earlier.

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I'm good at misjudging people's moods.

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Why are all beds rectangular?

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Theres no feeling like the feeling you get when you finally tidied up your .bashrc, added every alias and function you ever wanted there and then accidently overwrite it with something silly before you made a backup.

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Things are changing. Damn. !

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Film: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

There is something that I think most people overlook in the story of the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence. I've watched it more than three times before I realised this.

I realised that Teddy (the toy robot teddy bear imitating emotions, called a "supertoy") displayed the exact same signs of actual intelligence and emotions as David (the surrogate son A.I. invention). When talking about the movie people discuss whether David is actually intelligent and actually feels emotions like a human or whether he (it?) just imitates them. But nobody seems to notice that the same question then has to be asked about Teddy. The main difference between the two is that one is marketed as a toy and one as an artificial human with actual artificial emotions. When you watch the movie and pay attention to teddy you'll notice that he has opinions of his own, will, shows fear, love, intent, ... On the journey with David he behaves just like any other sentient child character.

I believe the technological improvements of David over Teddy are mainly in looks, texture of the skin, speech synthesis and a repertoire of behavioral patterns that are expected of a boy his age. If you believe that David is sentient and can feel based on what you saw in the movie than you should also believe the same about Teddy.

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The choice of available orange FireWire 400 cables is too small in 2020. Why is there no short one?

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