"Plants crave it!"
Posted on 06/04/2018 10:12:53 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Looks like he’s exactly the right height for her.... outstanding good points.
Smart homes are a dumb idea.
Those of us who live in the country, and I mean no high-speed internet (unless I pay for expensive, rate limited and slow satellite internet), smart homes don’t work.
I stopped by McDonald’s late one night, as I was returning from a volunteer shift at the rodeo, and it was 3 AM.
The teenage girl told me that the cash register wasn’t working, that she was writing down each order’s total, and I had to pay in cash.
However, she did not know the tax rate for the area, nor did she know how to calculate the tax rate. Luckily, my two items was $2.00, + tax. She asked for $3.00. I told her no, it’s $2.17, because the tax rate is .0825, then taught her, in the drive through, to multiple the total of the bill by 1.0825 and that’s how much the customers will owe.
We’re doomed.
When i was in college getting my engineering degree, our department chairman had several laws that he would mention. (name withheld)'s Law #2: The worst math students will have the best and most sophisticated hand held calculators.
i miss those days before cell phones, the internet and the Windows Operating System. Fortunately i kept all of my old text books so that i had the information in hard copy to teach the next generation after the zombie apocalypse has come and gone.
You're not the first person to make this observation.
Strangely enough, the big stories on Drudge are about how the robots are taking over.
It was funny that in the miniseries of the link i just sent, one of the characters was commenting about how the Galactica was built in an era --50 years before the events of the series-- when humanity was so terrified of technology that they looked backwards to find a counter. The character then spoke of telephones with cords, manual valves, and computers that barely deserved the name and could not be hacked because of their simplicity.
Funny how Science Fiction can often predict the future.
Most say we are in the information age, which I agree with, but I firmly believe we are in a period of transition from the information age to the cognitive era. The information age was about collecting data and storing large amounts of it. The cognitive era is about being able to analyze the data being collected in near real-time and then being able to act upon it. The one issue that we as humans have today is that we cannot decipher, find patterns in the data because there is so much that a great deal gets lost in the noise. During the cognitive era we will be able to use AI to aid us in this process and this will tighten what is stored and what is thrown out.
I knew this was coming in 1988, when a couple of us at SUNY Stony Brook broke into a dorm soda vending machine, installed some logic circuits and a network adapter, and from then on we were able to check to see if the machine was out of our favorite drink before walking down the hall to buy a soda!
Mark
From IMDB quotes from the movie:
“[cabinet has been debating putting water on the plants instead of Brawndo]
Pvt. Joe Bowers: What *are* these electrolytes? Do you even know?
Secretary of State: They’re... what they use to make Brawndo!
Pvt. Joe Bowers: But *why* do they use them to make Brawndo?
Secretary of Defense: [raises hand after a pause] Because Brawndo’s got electrolytes.”
If it’s good enough for the SecDev, it’s good enough for me. :-)
So for the vast majority of people in the US, AI would now include, but not be limited to, refrigerators, refrigerator lights, electrical switches, flush toilets, cars, televisions, telephones, cellular phones, airplanes, etc... Pretty much everything they use on any given day.
Mark
"Plants crave it!"
At the checkout counter I usually make small talk with the clerk, especially if they are cute. This one was a male about 18.
Sale rings up as $17.76.
“Famous date in history” sez I.
“Whut’s that.”
“Our country’s birthdate.”
“Kewl.”
Another ploy is to give them the correct amount, down to the change. I’ll add 33c to a $10 bill on a $5.33 sale. If their register doesn’t calculate the change, they are lost. A couple of times I’ve gotten more money back, so I tell them. One of ‘em got mad when I pointed out his mistake.
How about Phil Lesh's (from the Grateful Dead,) Alembic modified Guild Starfire bass?
Mark :-)
I have no enthusiasm now.
Good point.
I worked for many years designing equipment controls for semiconductor processes. The operators of the equipment were very often unable to distinguish between things that the machine could handle and things that it couldn't. Often they expected the machines to know unknowable things.
The other patrons actually freaked out...none had ever seen a small device that could make a phone call.??
The old talkie was a Standard SCRC-146A...so heavy that if you were not careful it might pull your pants down when hanging from the belt hook....lol
Here's an image of the old Standard, it had a Tone pad on the front panel that looked like this.
I do the same thing. Register rings up $5.33 and I give them a ten. Register says $4.67 change which they start counting out. Only THEN I say “Wait, here is 33 cents.” Total befuddlement and wonderful amusement. I’ve yet to run into anybody under 60 that understands what is going on. Eventually I will accept the $4.67 but leave it on the counter and then shove my $0.33 onto the change pile saying “OK, can I get a five now?”
Rarely the light goes on upstairs. Almost never.
My sister teaches middle schoolers math at an elite inner city Baltimore school. At the end of this full year, they still haven’t mastered the meaning of “one half.” Yet they are all told they are geniuses and are all going to college. Really scary!
A really dumb idea.
"Hey, let's take a crapload of devices that control every aspect of your home including ingress and egress, and hook them up to the internet, and then never update them for security vulnerabilities."
Your home router isn't safe. What the heck makes you think anything behind it is? I'm just about to the point that I think there should be liability for internet companies that provide routers that are hopelessly obsolete and riddled with security holes two weeks after they are installed, yet never get updated. I bought my own openWRT router to put behind the stupid 'cable modem' that was provided. I've kept it as locked down as I can, but it's a losing battle. I can't even imagine having all those 'smart' devices (that really aren't smart at all) attached to it.
Now, I could see doing some of that on a non-internet connected dedicated network, but why the hell do I need my thermostat accessible via the internet?
I've tried teaching them how to count change back from the total given. It's not even math. It's counting, and they can't do it.
That’s the beauty of,counting from the total sale to the amount tendered...no math at all. Staggering that they can’t get it.
Also see “ubiquitous computing”, coined by Mark Weiser around 1988, during his tenure as Chief Technologist of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).
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