dysamoria

I hope everyone with defective hardware got it replaced by now. When my MacBook Pro 3,1 GPU died, it was after the extended repair program was done. It's still defective hardware, but it didn't die quickly enough to be covered.

Mine occasionally acts weird but it always seems to be an iOS problem (focus, lackmof responsivity).

my only complaint with the keyboard itself is that the labels are wearing off. This started months ago. I mentioned this in my product review on Apple's web store but my review isn't visible on the site. WTF, Apple? If I try to write a new review, it tells me I already wrote one. So WTF is it then?

SpamSandwich said:

macplusplus said:

dysamoria said:

stickista said:

Might want to fix your headline... Tom, not 'Ted' Gruber

Still the same by the time I got here. Proofreading is important.

also... artificial intelligence is a buzzword that still has yet to actually relate to actual intelligence. The best simulation of intelligence can't pass the most basic tests for intelligence. I wish there was a different term for this stuff so we could separate actual intelligence from cleverly made software tools that can't think. 

The amount of information that gives rise to conscience is so huge that silicon cannot handle this. An energy efficient biological machine is needed. All the rest is a cartoon of true conscience.

Meanwhile we should not mix up intelligence and conscience. There may be several types of  intelligence that may come close to conscience of not. What we need is "they" solve problems, not think.

There's absolutely no proof that supports your assertion that silicon-based consciousness is impossible.

There's absolutely not proof that supports the assumption that silicon-based consciousness is possible. This is the problem with not understanding how consciousness occurrs. If we equate neurons and transistors (which we shouldn't do), CPUs are FAR behind the 100 billion neurons in the average human brain (Intel has about 93 billion transistors to go). But, as i said, we shouldn't equate those two objects. Mostly, human knowledge doesn't know exactly what neurons do. They're not digital logic gates. Brains are analog. Data in brains isn't composed of bits. The brain doesn't work by doing constant math (the only thing a CPU does; there are tons of layers of abstraction between the electronics and what we see as users).

Until we see an example of silicon that CAN derive consciousness, there's no evidence for or against it. Actually, i would suggest that there is evidence of a sort: the complete and utter lack of success with artificial intelligence to datem with the silicon that is now reaching the absolute physical limits of transistor technology. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I'd be just as happy to meet an alien intelligence that was electronic as i would be to meet one that was biological. Unless it was an asshole.

fastasleep said:

rob53 said:

So Apple is now giving away the iWork apps but only updating them for macOS. No updates for the previous software. I guess I'm going to have to buy a new Mac.

First time this has happened to you? You'd have to have an ~8yo machine to not be able to updating to Sierra, were you not already considering upgrading your hardware?

This is actually quite common. I have a mid-2009 MacBook Pro 5,5 that is still running Snow Leopard because:

• it's the most stable and bug-free version of Mac OS (using its predecessor Leopard on a Quicksilver G4 reveals the kinds of annoying bugs in Finder fixed by Snow Leopard... the same kind of crap slowly taking over Apple software again).

• Snow Leopard is the fastest version of Mac OS. The machine runs Snow Leopard from an external USB hard drive and it still runs twice as fast as the Mavericks installation on the internal original drive. It might matter that the internal is a 5200 RPM drive while the external is a 7200 RPM drive. There's nothing in Mac OS after Mavericks that I want or desire (I love the full screen apps, workspaces, and gestures); I wish it was as fast as Snow Leopard and that my audio tools worked as reliably on it (Logic 9.x has UI problems on Mavericks).

• I have a lot of older software and hardware that was abandoned by their makers (M-Audio and Avid being the most egregious with abandoned hardware) and therefore don't work on El Capitan, let alone Sierra. There are some hacks to get the M-Audio devices running, but hacks are NOT why I'm a Mac user.

Using older machines to avoid changing OS is a very common thing in the world of content creation. Many studios (music especially) stuck with Snow Leopard as long as possible. The problem is, once you do finally get forced to upgrade one thing, you end up being forced to upgrade everything. This is both the nature of the tools and an artificially compounded issue driven hard by the industry. Apple is only getting worse about it with the needless changes to Mac OS to accommodate iOS (and the needless changes to iOS to accommodate marketing new phones).

Are they using manual modes in third party apps or just hoping to get lucky with the automatic stuff in the iOS camera app?

The continuing push against using the right tool and a trained artist...