oldandtired

I have watched this dispute for many decades and the reality is that there is ebb and flow in the lifecycle of such things. The biggest problem is that people do not have sound memories of what has happened in the past.

The Great Barrier Reef is a good example of the dire calls about its impending destruction. As far as the [experts] of James Cook University are concerned, I have serious doubts as to the abilities of the researchers there. Far too much politicing going on.

Because it affects them more, the locals are more involved in caring for such without the interference of the [experts] who make their [expert] claims. The locals know just how silly many of these claims are and are now in the habit of not informing the [experts] so that the actual environments are protected.

Certainly. My middle son was looking at buying a property in a near by town. He asked me to come an look at it. We had the actual shire plans for the blocks and while looking at the property lines, we measured the actual fence to fence widths. The block was being sold by the owner of an adjoining block and when we measured we found that the fence line had been moved by about 20 to 30 cm. On querying the owner about this, he was somewhat angry that we were questioning where the fence was as he was the one who had it built.

From what I could see, the builders most likely kicked the boundary peg out of the ground and just put it back willy nilly.

As a consequence, I did advise my son to have nothing to do with the property and we did inform the real estate agent of the problem. This would put legal responsibility on the estate agent if it was sold without the boundary line being corrected.

Due diligence is necessary if you are doing this kind of thing.

This scenario happens far more often than most people realise, putting up a building on the wrong plot of land. If you are not going to do your due diligence then you will suffer the consequences.

If you build on the wrong plot, the only person to blame is yourself.

I didn't think my play on words would cause such controversy about acceleration and jerk. Mayhaps I should not be making "Dad jokes" here.

Here in Victoria (Australia), we commonly see road signs stating that "speed kills" whereas the reality is that it is the jerk that kills.

One of the basic causes for slowness is how the underlying language implementation does procedure calls.

Decades ago, I looked at how Microsoft handled procedure calls and returns of data. I found the same problem elsewhere.

The problem was related to copying of data. A single API call could involve (at the time) up to 100's of copy actions of the same value for each subsequent internal call. The actual processing of that data was minimal in the scheme of things.

This has been a problem amongst many others over the decades and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

Things that we did as a matter of course when resources were restricted have been dispensed with once those resource limits were exceeded. The lessons have subsequently been forgotten.

Far too many people (including AI researchers themselves) fail to see that all LLMs are actually simple machines. Extremely simple machines that are only mechanically following a relatively simple programming path.

Now before anyone gets too caught up with objecting to this notion, I would seriously suggest that you spend time with observing children from new-born to 2 years.

I have been observing my latest granddaughter sine her birth about 16 months ago and thinking about every public LLM system current;y available.

There is an insight here to be obtained and that insight is in the nature of real intelligence.

On the whole, no-one actually knows what intelligence is or what sentience is or what it means to be cognitively conscious. There is still much research going on and nothing actually definitive has come forth yet. We really are at the beginning in terms of studying these areas.

We can certainly produce some incredible systems, but none of them are intelligent per se. Solutions to certain kinds of problems can be achieved using these systems and there are researchers who are seriously looking at incorporating these systems into CAS and theorem provers. These systems though only provide an augmentation service for a person as does every mechanical system we use

But there is an essential component necessary for the use of all LLMs which many seem to not be cognisant of and that is these systems, to be useful, require humans to be involved.

The questions we have to ask ourselves is: what can we use these systems for and do these uses provide benefits in some way or can these systems be abused by various parties in obtaining control over others?

There are benefits and there are abuses. Can we do better or will we do worse by using them?

For the duration of their incarceration, why is there an expectation that those incarcerated have a right to vote anyway. Of course there are people who are in prison who shouldn't be and there are those not in prison who should be (including many politicians).

In a relatively ideal (of course there is none) world, those who have basically abused the citizens of an area should not have a say in the politics of that area that then affect the citizens of that area.

Once those incarcerated have paid their dues and served their time, they become eligible to partake again as citizens and should have the same voting rights as anyone else.

Over 40 years, I have seen many "programmers" who should never been in the business. Some of these were marketed as "guru" programmers. I suppose such idiotic systems like ChatGPT and its ilk could replace some of these.

However, anyone who has had to build the required skills to actively get real work done will probably find that they will not be replaced by such systems in terms of skill replacement.

What is more likely to happen is that the pointy heads in upper management will replace them because of the usual lack of foresight and intelligence on the part of the pointy heads.

So, yes, all sorts of programmers will be replaced by these systems and we shall see the systems produced become more garbage faster than we have already seen.

Doesn't support Linux though or any of the unixes. Looks good though.

Your third option is never good.

Not cowering before bullies, even if you have been beaten up works wonders. So does ignoring the tom fools.

Their goal to intimidate and make you fearful has failed at this point and it becomes far more problematic for them and their egos.

Private school has a different kind of bully.

Says it all.

If you want pristine sand beaches then expect major change over time. Looking at areas where there is little change over time, certain coastal structures are in plain sight.

But as many have already noted, the sea erodes all coastlines. However, what the sea takes away at one time, it also brings back in another time. When my father was in his teens, the water's edge for a small residential site was over a mile away. By the time I was in my teens, that distance had been reduced to 30 metres. By the time I was in my late twenties and early thirties, the water's edge was now at half a kilometre further out. Since then (I'm in the mid 60's) that beach has has grown and receded a couple more times.

Moral of the story, build only where there is relatively constant conditions.

As I wrote above:

> The reality is that it is based on a very distorted view of relational algebra as in it is based on tables, which are not relations but bags of records. It allows nulls to represents all sorts of information and the nulls are not treated in any uniform way.

Very simply, relations are sets and sets do not have duplicate elements. SQL tables are effectively bags, where duplicates are allowed.

The only reason you see unique elements in tables is that in implementations you can define primary keys, which forces uniqueness. If there is no primary key defined then you can add as many copies as you want of any record and the system doesn't care. The default for a relation is that the primary key is every field within the entire tuple, you do not have to define a primary key as the RDBMS does that automatically for you. No duplicates can occur.

The other aspect is that nulls do not occur. The interesting thing is this forces you to design your relations carefully so that you do not have nulls occurring. You will find that there are various people who hold contra views about this and you have to look at the subject and make up your own mind. Personally, I have found that proper design and removal of nulls brings a high efficiency to the resultant database.

One lesson learnt over decades of database design and system development using SQL and SQL DBMS's, is that you have to be extremely careful in your design. I have had to redesign poorly thought out databases that had been built by those who had not put in the time and effort to understand what relational algebra meant. I spent years learning the subject and still didn't delve into the extensive depths of the subject.

Relation database theory stemmed from Codd's original papers, which you should be able to download. But this was only the start of the theory related to this subject. Various developments occurred over the next few decades. You also had various people argue against relational algebra as a useful device for creating databases.

SQL databases and DBMS were supposed to be designed on Codd's papers but essentially didn't succeed, thus leading to the mess we see today.

There have also been various personality clashes in the field, which have lead to various controversies about database technology. I simply avoided that side of things wherever I could as they were not relevant to solving the problem space problems that I was tasked to solve. There are various well-known people who proselytise their particular views about database technologies and dismiss other opposing technologies. There have been various proposals to solve the problems being faced and the reality is that for any problem you have, it is up to you to choose what works effectively for you.

If I am going to use a database as part of the solution, I still design based on relational theory as this to me is the better option. Your situation will be different and you can choose whatever is appropriate for you. However, it is beneficial to delve into relational theory as it will give you alternative ideas to play with. There is plenty of resources out there that will show you both good and bad ideas in designing any database.

My choice of DBMS is PostgreSQL and it suite of tools. I would personally stay away from Microsoft and Oracle as I have had various issues (not problems but serious issues) with each of these besides being payware. There are others like SQLite, etc which appear to be useful for small systems on the basis of feedback of other people I know. I don't have any experience in the large with these and so cannot comment on the effectiveness of these systems.

Mind you, I have been out of the thick of it for a decade or so as I am effectively retired, even though I still actively do projects I am interested in when I feel like doing such work.

I was quite disappointed in this person's consideration of the problem of SQL and relational databases.

The following extracts from the discussion highlight some interesting misunderstandings:

> The mathematical foundation of SQL is relational algebra, which is an algebraic system used to perform batch structured data calculations. This is also why databases that use SQL are also called relational databases.

Unfortunately, SQL is not based on relational algebra. The reality is that it is based on a very distorted view of relational algebra as in it is based on tables, which are not relations but bags of records. It allows nulls to represents all sorts of information and the nulls are not treated in any uniform way.

> Relational algebra has been invented for fifty years, and the application requirements and hardware environment fifty years ago are vastly different from today.

The hardware requirements are an implementation function not a relational algebra function. As for application requirements, relational algebra is as applicable today as it has been at any time in the past. Relational algebra is problem space solution when the solution to the problem is the use of relational algebra. No one technique is universal as a problem space solution.

> Due to the large number of existing users and the lack of mature new technologies, SQL based on relational algebra remains the most important database development language today.

SQL has never been a mature technology. It is a commonly used technology, but highly flawed. There have been very few relational algebra implementations over the many decades. One that was developed was Dataphor's D4, but it didn't gain traction nor did it stay purely in the relational algebra domain, it was partly contaminated by the requirement of some SQL compatibility.

Many many years ago, one person did present an example of using D4 to build a solution to any interesting problem that was extremely difficult to solve using SQL. The D4 solution was elegant and very understandable. It was a beautiful example of solving a very difficult problem. The solution, if I recall correctly, involved using transitive closures to get the required results.

> Although there have been some improvements in the past few decades, the foundation has not changed. Faced with contemporary complex requirements and hardware environments, relational databases are not as adept.

There are no extent relational database technologies today, though there are quite a few SQL database technologies today. Most, of not all, so-called relational DBMS are lacking in the fundamental relational algebra requirements. Hence, they are unable to do what is part and parcel of relational algebra.

Though I disagree with various parts of the "The Third Manifesto", this tome does describe quite clearly what relational algebra is and what it is not. There is a third edition published as a pdf from [https://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~hugh/TTM/DTATRM.pdf]. The material is not for light reading and you must be prepared to put on your thinking cap because it does get theoretical in many places.

As I said, I don't agree with some of their (Date and Darwen) views or requirements. But that doesn't at all detract from what they are saying.

> Relational algebra is too simple and lacks sufficient data types and operations. Therefore, when using SQL to describe the solution of a problem, it is necessary to find convoluted ways to implement.

SQL, as implemented in all the major SQL DBMS's, is too simple and lacks sufficient data types and operations. This says nothing about what is available within relational algebra. As pointed out above, a proper relational algebra language such as D4 does allow much easier solutions than the ABOMINATION database language SQL.

On the whole the discussion made by the author was lacking in so many ways.

The problem is not the query planner per se. There is a much more subtle problem and it is related to how you have created the query in the join structure.

For many queries, the order in which you specify the joins doesn't really matter. But there are a number of classes where the join order dramatically affects how fast the query can actually run and nothing the query planner does will change this.

I came across this problem around 30 years ago. By accident, I discovered what the problem cause was - the order of the joins. The original query was built and took 30 - 40 minutes to run. I deleted particular joins to see what intermediate results were. In reestablishing the joins, the query time went to down to a couple of seconds.

I was able to establish that the order of joins in this particular case was generating a Cartesian product of the original base records. By judicious reordering of the joins, this Cartesian product was avoided.

If you are aware of this kind of problem, you can solve it faster than any query planner ever could.

One problem with your explanation is that the muon and the tau (and the pion as a decay product of the tau) all decay into electrons, neutrinos and photons, which would suggest that neither muon or tau are fundamental.

This would put the fundamental leptons being only the electron (and its antiparticle) with the neutrino and the photon.

Such an idea would upset the "symmetry" model.

After about 15 minutes, the neutron has changed into another proton and electron, so bar now has a bigger party on its hands.

The first thing to point out here is that the

> the speed of light

is not

> 299,798,452 m/s

It is quite inaccurate to say this. The correct way to phrase this is that the speed of light is 1/sqrt(permeability * permittivity) of the medium through which the light is traveling.

For a perfect vacuum, these two properties of that vacuum give a result as specified above. For other specified medium, you will get a different value, which could be greater than or less than the above figure.

Little technicalities matter in such cases, as it opens up the discussion. Part of that discussion is that solar space or interstellar space or intergalactic space will have distributions of matter that can alter what the speed of light is away from the assumed perfect vacuum speed of light.

Simple assumptions such as perfect vacuum are quite likely to affect how accurate our models of the universe are. The problem for us is that we are here and not out there making actual on location measurements of the permittivity and permeability of the relevant regions. The assumptions made in our models can come back and bite us in the long term.

Now as for the models we use currently for proton and neutron structure, there are assumptions here that could well be misleading us even though our models appear to work. There are alternate models available (since at least the early 20th century) which have, as far as I know, not been investigated with any detailed effort. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that these alternatives are actually viable, but we don't really know at this time.

Emergent behaviour can occur, not a problem. But if you study such systems, I think you will find that the emergent behaviour is based on the programming involved and is not "beyond the programming".

When it comes to intelligence, this is not something that we can say is actually emergent.

There are currently a number of projects that are looking into intelligence and free-will. There are researchers on the same teams who hold quite different opinions - the results for these projects are not at all conclusive.

The images generated are based on two things:

1). the code within the systems

2). the data entered into the system.

Those images are the result of how the data is processed by the code. Even if you put in a random number generator, the code processes those numbers based on it internal code constraints.

Now a well designed and built code base may be able to generate every image of the same dimensions. You can certainly write code that can exhaustively generate every possible image, but the question here is whether this exhaustive generation is intelligent.

Using protective gear (as in the kinds used in American football) is more detrimental to player safety than not using it. This was discussed back 40 or so years ago.

It allows you to hit harder and as a consequence bringing to play far more momentum and far more danger to the recipient.

Try this in something like the various Rugby forms or proper football (soccer) and the impacts are far less intense.

Certainly, increase protection for certain fields is highly desirable, but not for any form of football or other kinds of contact sports.

You make the following comment regarding artificial stupidity systems (AI)

> since it knows how to correctly apply exist concepts to previously unexplored areas

and yet these systems know nothing at all. Far too many people (including the developers of such systems) have failed to understand that none of these systems can go beyond the programming that humans have incorporated into them. Yes, they appear to exhibit certain [abilities] but no more than any other essentially mechanical device and the limited capabilities that we have been able to design in them.

You can certainly pose questions and these systems (within the constraints of the programming involved in them) can retrieve and correlate data that is accessible. Bus the insights drawn will require human involvement.

Over decades, I have built tools to help in the analysis of all sorts of data sets and it has taken a human asking the [right] questions to get appropriate outcomes.

We do not understand our own intelligence let alone being able to build any artificial intelligent system that can operate on its own.

What does amaze me though is that we create natural intelligence systems all the time and they are called children. I have been avidly watching the development of my youngest grandchild and she makes an absolute mockery of any artificial system we have built anywhere.

In a very real sense, every artificial stupidity system (AI) that we have built is as complicated as a hammer or a knife.

It is what we (human beings) do with these simple tools that determine the outcomes.

My two brass razoo's worth.

Like any technology, if you use relational databases incorrectly then you will have problems. Unfortunately, over the decades I have seen so many abuses when using relational databases that one has to wonder if those building these systems actually understand the basics.

The complaint in the article was about transactions - rollback purposes. I would agree that this facility is highly undesirable for payment systems.

But it is not the particular facilities that is the problem, it is the application of inappropriate use by those building the systems in question.

There are far too many database developers who just do not understand the basic theory behind relational databases and so, we will continue to see inappropriate applications built.

Nothing says "hack me" more than "tamper proof".

Let's see how long it takes before this technology is defeated.

The funny thing about this article is:

1). It starts with [Science Tells US] and here see the first stupidity. Science doesn't tell us anything. It is the practitioners of scientific investigation who are telling us something based on their particular interpretations of the data.

This is a form of eye-witness testimony.

2) Any data collected in any event is never guaranteed to be accurate. We have to test the various processes repeatedly. An example here, which is known to be true. DNA evidence collected from a scene may be there becasue of many different reasons, including being accidentally brought in by an investigator or being contaminated later in the process.

3) Irrespective of variations in eye-witness account, you can obtain a reasonable view of the environment at the time of the incident. This is irrespective of the kind of incident, law or experimental.

4) Every eye-witness account is seeing the individual perspective and it is when they all match, that we then need to start asking questions (about collusion or otherwise). What is important to one witness is often unimportant to another and we should be expecting variation in testimony.

Here in Australia, decades ago, there was a series of advertisements highlighting the "big picture". What was telling about it was that, even with recorded incidents, if the records were too close, you couldn't see the "big picture" of what was happening.

There is a classic picture in one of the Melbourne papers of a policeman beating the living daylights out of a person. This officer was condemned and a call for his sacking and prosecution was made. This was headline news. A couple of days later, another reporter showed the actual picture (the big picture) and the calls for that policeman to be sacked was dropped as it showed a full-blown riot going on around him and he was defending himself from attack.

The upshot is that all evidence is required, eye-witness and circumstantial, if we are to be able to make fair decisions. Nothing is perfect (especially evidence) and we will make mistakes. But we do have to consider what is available to us.

There are all sorts of reasons for using any language and there are just as many reasons for not using that language.

But the problem is not the terseness or the relevant clarity of any language or its ability to compile to fast code. It is the ability of any programmer who comes along later to make changes to that code in support of its use.

All too often, programmers want to show their [leet] skills and fail to take into consideration the poor sods who have to come after to support that code. The reality is that much [leet] code has to be discarded or completely rewritten to get something that is supportable long term.

It took me a long time to understand this and after this, I made sure that my code could be supported by others - clean, simple and comprehensible. Too much throwaway code becomes the basic infrastructure used in organisations and becomes entrenched and incomprehensible to following generations.

If you look at any sort of political activism, there tends to be a tendency for the promulgation of dogma. Now not every activist does this and you will find that these kinds of people tend to be willing to discuss and defend their positions in reasonable and logical manner. But many activists don't seem to be able to discuss and defend, they want to shout down and heckle.

As for many teachers who are focused on political activism, when challenged by their own students, they seem to just get very upset at their students or the students' parents if taken to task over the particular activism taken.

Now, if you haven't seen this then you have been very fortunate.

I have some questions for you to think about:

You have said above that :

> My content is mine

Okay. So how do you define your content?

If you write something, you are using an alphabet that others have over a long period of developed. You use combinations of alphabetic characters to form words that have also been developed over time by others. You use combinations of words in particular ways that are semantically meaningful because of the development of that semantics over time by others.

If you draw something, you again are using form and structure that is comprehensible because such things have been developed by others before you over long periods of time.

Any ideas you have are based on what has been shown to you by others and these ideas are a part of the collective intelligence of societies.

So, if you expect others to

> ask for, and get permission, to do so

Have you done so yourself?

There is an old old saying that there is nothing new under the sun.

All to often, people seem to claim for themselves a privilege that they will not allow others to utilise.

My wife is an artist (in various areas) and people are willing to pay her for some of her works because they like her renditions. Yet, all of her art is based on what she has seen in the world around her. I love her handiwork, but none of it is solely hers. It is based on what has gone before her.

An addendum: If people think your stuff is worth something and they want you to create it for them then they will pay you what they think it is worth and not what you think it is worth.