jdw

muthuk_vanalingam said:

Wow, 3 different posters (who do not belong to the "defend Apple at any cost" or "ultra-aggressive" or even "aggressive" groups in this forum) attacking @jdw for sharing his experince with ChatGPT in what is apparently a very lengthy post. Just unbelievable. If it is too long for you to read, why can't you guys just ignore it and move on, instead of posting TL;DR and further attacking him for his response?

I sincerely appreciate your very kind words.  Thank you.

But there is a bright side to everything.

First, the replies enable me to identify a few more Gen-Xers in this forum, by their own admission.  It should be even more interesting to read their future compositions in this forum as a result of that newfound knowledge.

Second, I agree with mattinoz who said this...

mattinoz said:

Oh think that’s a bit unfair. I mean in gen-x we sure have our share of “those people”.

His observation of me being "a bit unfair" is sound.  I was being deliberately provocative.  Why?  Because my doing so tends to result in one of two things:

1. Nobody says anything at all in response. (i.e., general apathy, a revelation that nobody cares)
2. Key players get feathers ruffled and then suddenly READ what I wrote in order to formulate a response.

It seems that (2) occurred, which has me rather pleased. No doubt LeVar Burton would be pleased as well.  (Yes, that is a bit cryptic, but people my age should know that that means. This is for the rest of you who may not understand.)

The point here is that although younger generations have a greater problem with reading more than one sentence compared to older generations, I know full well from my elder cousins that the reading handicap can apply to Gen-X too.  Modern ways of reading and writing can corrupt any of us, regardless of age.

Even so, I can't help but take note of the fact we all are commenting under articles that are quite lengthy.  A good number of AI articles tend to be longer than what I write, and yet, I can only assume that most people here do read the articles. However we don't see "TL;DR" remarks under every article, seeking to chastise the article for its length.  That means people are being SELECTIVE about what read, which also means their use of TL;DR isn't correct.  It's probably more like WA;DR (Wrong Author; Didn't Read).  Quite hilarious, really.

Anyway, the most intriguing response of all though came from Victor...

VictorMortimer said:

Was your rant out of a LLM?  It's only sort of triggering my "machine generated" sense, but there's a few bits that just seem a bit... off for a human.

I actually take that as a complement. Thank you, Victor.

I have an older female cousin who has nicknamed me "Mr. Data" since the 80's.  I always thought that to be a bit amusing because I rather took to Spock more than Data.  But having a logical mind is always the goal.  A lot of the time, our greatest enemy is emotion, and you get to see a lot of that in forums like this.

All said, great conversation, folks.  I wish all of you a great week!

blastdoor said:

jdw said:

ChatGPT4o, is...

 TL;DR

I often forget Gen-Z has that handicap.  

For my fellow Gen-Xers out there, that cryptic acronym today's youth enjoy using (because their fingers lack the dexterity to type out a complete sentence) is:

Too Long; Didn't Read

I muse over the choice of a semi-colon there.  But hey... is the use of "TL;DR" really the best choice in a forum, which caters to people who know how to both read and write more than a single paragraph?  (The answer is "no" for our younger readers who may not know what a rhetorical question is.)

If Gen-Z refuses to read, God help so-called "Gen-Alpha" and beyond.  

Or maybe it will be the man-made digital god that will help them.

It very well could be that Gen-Alpha won't even need to read or write because the AI of the future will be able to read-then-summarize all text for them, injecting those magical acronym-laced bits of brevity straight into their brains, then reading their minds to know what they want. Eventually, AI won't even need to read the contents of the ever-contracting human mind, opting instead to read facial expressions.  One brief smirk tells AI everything you need!

The future looks bright, folks!

ChatGPT4o, is the most brain dead stupid thing to come along in quite a while.  Sure, it does a few things surprisingly well, but it makes enormous mistakes of epic proportions every single time I use it. And when I attempt to correct it, it foolishly apologizes and then rephrases its stupid errors.  When I tell it repeatedly that it is in error, it repeatedly apologizes but never learns.

When I use ChatGPT via Bing (which I often do after my freeloader time limit for GPT4o runs out), it too makes mistakes. And when I get pissed off at it and give it a piece of my mind, silly Bing suggests I change the topic and a new session begins.  Totally hilarious that Bing is protecting ChatGPT!

Every single time I use ChatGPT4o in Chrome (which is the most reliable browser for it), at times when it gives me a clickable link, the link will never open when I click on it.  That forces me to tell it to give me links in plain text.  Why plain text?  So I can copy/paste it into a browser's address bar myself.  That's a work-around the "can't click the text link" bug, but quite nearly 100% of the time, when I finally am able to open the link, it yields a 404 or totally unrelated info.  It's maddening!

I am also not inclined to trust ChatGPT because it lies.  Because of it's blatant lies, I almost always ask it for links to its source info.  And that is how I know the links are bogus.  I sometimes believe what it tells me is true, but without a link to source info, I cannot trust it 100%.  I become especially doubtful when it gives me a link that leads to totally unrelated topics.

I mainly want to use ChatGPT to search the web faster and easier than I can Google something, asking it to check multiple sources.  Sadly, most of the time GPT4o misses info I know exists.  I often test ChatGPT based on what I know is out there on the web and is easily found by Googling.  Often times it misses that info when it does its own searches, and then comes back and tells me something wrong or incomplete.

I truly hate ChatGPT a lot of the time because it lies so often.  For example, I've recently been comparing OLED TVs and soundbars.  It tells me certain specifications that simply are not true.  When I point out its error, it apologizes and deletes the single error line, and then just repeats the rest it told me before.

Why do I even torture myself by continuing to use the stupid thing?  Because it sometimes does a decent job in very specific situations like summarizing text or rephrasing.  I prefer that use case because I am good enough in the English language to know if what it tells me is good or not.  But in other cases where I am looking for facts I don't know to be true, it often lies; and even when it doesn't lie, I try to get links to source info, but those links never work.

So it's a real love-hate relationship, but more hate than love.

It is totally and utterly laughable that governments and people around the world are afraid of AI.  Yeah right!  Maybe 100, 200 or perhaps 300 years from now it might be worthy of such fears, but at the moment it's not that far ahead of brain dead Siri.  It's no different than the fake promise of "self driving cars." That's not going to happen in my lifetime.  Truly autonomous driving means no human intervention is EVER needed, and you can drive in any situation, like mountain driving in the snow with sunlight reflections hitting the snow and blinding you occasionally.  Or driving on dark roads that aren't marked with paint.  Or driving off-road in the dirt.  Nope.  No matter what these car companies say, what they have now is little more than a joke.  It gives you a great first impression, but using the tech for a while shows how ridiculous it is.  

The PROMISE of AI is great, but it's far, far in the future before we can sit back and experience true "intelligence" that's "artificial."  What we have now in the world of AI is barely useable.  It's more entertainment than anything else.

I write all this to say that if Apple CHARGES MONEY for such digital stupidity, I certainly will not be lining up for a subscription, They have a LONG way to go before its worthy of dedicated fees and special charges.  We're very much in the R&D stage right now.  I say this in the hope of something far superior to what we have now, while at the same time, I am a realist too.  It's not great now, and it probably still won't be that great 10 to 20 years hence.  We need a real technological breakthrough to make a huge leap in usability.

mpantone said:

...Apple knows all about the pros and cons of Blu-ray technology. And you don't need to explain this ancient tech to AppleInsider readers either. It's not like it's cutting edge. 

"ancient"? 
This is what my previous post was trying to address.  So I shall clarify further.

I realize that some (including the article author) prefer to label optical media "ancient" tech.  The term "ancient" is most often used to drive a point home which says "it's so old we cannot possibly consider using it now in modern times."  But that would be totally and utterly wrong!  The only thing closely resembling "ancient" is the fact that "optical media" has been around since the Sony/Philips design collaboration in 1979.  That's when it all started.  I was born in 1971 and don't consider myself "ancient" by any stretch of the imagination.  Okay, okay... LaserDisc hit a year prior in 1978, but that was a different sort of optical disc that didn't gain widespread adoption like CD sized discs due to high cost and the sheer size of the things.

Sony's CDP-101 audio CD player went on sale in Japan in 1982, and by the mid-1980's (a bit after the release of the Macintosh 128K), CD Audio was gaining a bit of traction in the US. CDs really started to give audio tape and vinyl a run for the money in the 90's though, which is when I bought most of my current CD audio collection.

DVD wasn't released until 1996, two years after I graduated from college.  Affordability came around 1998. 

Blu-ray didn't hit the scene until 2006, gaining traction in the market around 2009.  "Ancient"?  Hardly!

Now consider that the first 4K UHD Blu-ray player didn't hit the market until 2015, gaining market traction around 2017.

So while optical media itself originated in the late 70's (a good number of years after I was born mind you, and I am NOT "ancient," still with relative few gray hairs too), the tech itself has advanced considerably through the years in terms of what you can store on it and the drive tech used to read/play/burn it. 

"Ancient"?  LOL. No!
"Ideal"?  Absolutely not!

But the terms "ancient" and "not ideal" should not be confused here.  You may not like certain technology.  You may prefer other tech instead.  But treating modern optical media tech flippantly by suggesting it is so "ancient" as to be laughably worthless amounts to little more than emotionally charged hyperbole.

What I wrote in my earlier post pertain to the USER EXPERIENCE.  It is a fact that UHD 4K Blu-ray beats 4K streaming.  

Would it be nice if streaming could match or beat Blu-ray 4K?  You bet!  
Will streaming ever match Blu-ray?  Maybe, but I don't see evidence that streaming services care about that, and without public outcry, I doubt they will.

Some people may liken this to a compressed MP3 vs. AIFF debate, but I think many people cannot discern between those two audio formats mainly because so many people listen to highly compressed audio and few these days listen to lossless.  But I would argue that more people would probably notice the improved quality of a Blu-ray over 4K streaming on a reasonably good 4K TV.  Add to that the fact you need to pay MORE to your streaming service for 4K.  Netflix being one.  So you pay more for less, when compared to Blu-ray 4K.

With that said, I am NOT trying to excessively defend OPTICAL MEDIA.  In many ways, I think it's just plain stupid.  Slow.  Easy to scratch.  Don't get me started on how triple-layer 4K discs can be rendered dead.  The real problem is there is no public outcry.  Many just silently watch what streamers feed them and leave it at that.  

Few people are demanding movies sell on USB thumb drives, which I think would be outstanding, especially because TVs these days have USB ports!  No scratching to worry about, and your can keep your "physical media" collection in a much smaller area. Movies on thumb drives all the way, I say!  (Yeah, yeah...  "cost of media" and "DRM" concerns are there, but I'd still love movies on tiny, unscratchable media nonetheless.)

People are pretty funny.  Glad I am not going with the flow.  I just recently ordered a Panasonic UB820 region-free 4K Blu-ray player from 220 Electronics. 4K streaming can't touch the quality of a 4K Blu-ray, and when you've got lots of DVD and Blu-ray content on disk, a fair amount that isn't streaming anywhere, you still have a need for a good player.  I purchased it because I recently purchased a new LG C3 48" TV (WOLED).

Speaking of which, Apple really needs to consider how to get more involved in the home theater market.  Two Homepods operated by an Apple TV 4K has a lot of promise to unseat sill soundbars from their lofty thrones, but the cost is two homepods plus Apple TV 4K is too high, and add to that it doesn't support DTS formats, which are big on physical media.  Yeah, Apple is into streaming, but like I said, there's a lot of content that isn't streaming yet, and the fact remains a lot of us in our 50's have a good amount of content already purchased on disc as it is.

The only thing I am glad about is that our DATA isn't on disc formats at all anymore.  Optical drives are plainfully slow when it comes to that. But playback for audio or video stuff is still perfectly acceptable.

And if your wondering about the UB820, yeah, it's top notch, especially for upscaling DVD and 1080p Blu-ray content to 4K.