Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re: As predicted (Score 1) 78

...and the LLM essentially only found them by insightless statistical pattern matching.

Absolutely correct. I have an example just from today. I told an AI today that I couldn't launch Steam from one of my son's Linux Mint desktop when I double-clicked on the desktop icon. It had several possibilities for me to try, with each suggestion having a footnote pointing to where it got the potential answer. That was kind of cool, in a bizarre kind of search-engine way.

After reading a bunch of them, most of which involved doing things that had zero chance of working (but which the AI picked up from various help sites across the Internet), I had a flash of insight that it may be a simple configuration error. I looked at the system settings, and saw the double-click interval was at its minimum. My son increased the interval, and Steam launched on double-click.

Statistical matching, which is all AI does, is 100% incapable of thinking outside the math that drives it. More accurately, AI is 100% incapable of thinking. End of story.

Comment Re: Isn't that the point? (Score 4, Insightful) 70

Why does repeatability matter?

Repeatability is a fundamental requirement of maintainability. A code generator that can't generate the same code over successively iterations over time is a useless, dangerous code generator.

...there's no reason to go back to the prompt if you got the result you want.

Wants change over time, and code has to be extendable without breaking what's already there. Just because you got what you want now doesn't mean that what you want will stay the same over time. Without repeatability, your new wants will likely destroy the code that satisfied your prior wants. Replacing working code] with new LLM-generated code is a guarantee of breaking existing features.

Comment Re:what is meant by serious? (Score 1) 80

...ability to handle immense amounts of batches per time period...

I've only ever had one COBOL class, and that was in the late 1990s. I was sure I was going to hate the language before ever setting foot into the classroom. After setting foot into the classroom for a couple days, my concerns turned out to be unfounded. COBOL was much worse than I could have anticipated.

That aside, isn't COBOL's ability to process vast amounts of data quickly due to the massive I/O abilities of the mainframes it tends to run on? I have been told over the decades that a mainframe's I/O abilities dwarf those of even high-end Intel/AMD server. If that's true, then COBOL isn't fast due to any inherent strength of the language, but rather is fast because of the I/O abilities of the hardware.

Comment Re: We're in the group (Score 2, Insightful) 217

...If you want these things, then you will pay for a good public education.

If you want those things, you will stay as far away from the public school system as you can manage. The public school system hampered my education and employment prospects, and nearly shut them down entirely. My mom taught me all the useful stuff at home, before the public school system started undoing it all.

I was semi-proficient in the three R's by the time I was 5. My learning pace slowed as I proceeded through the grades, and my desire to learn was all but dead by the time I graduated from High School. The public school system killed it.

My major learning interests focused around computer programming, which I had to learn completely on my own. Even the programming classes in High School (which were experimental at the time) discouraged exploring programming beyond the course's tiny box, and taught students NOTHING. I had to teach the programming teacher how to program. It was ridiculous, and was par for the public school course.

Homeschooling can hardly do any worse than public schooling.

Comment Re:It's a Tool (Score 3, Insightful) 45

Treat it like any other submission.

You can't treat it any other submission, for a variety of reasons. Some important ones are:

1) AI did not create the code. It lifted it from somewhere else, and it will be contributed without proper attribution.
2) There is no way to know if the lifted code has a compatible license, since there is no way to know where it came from.
3) If (or when) the rightful owner is identified, the lawsuits will fly.

Nuke it from orbit, then destroy the galaxy from which it originated. It's the only way to be sure.

Comment Re:Modern VR hardware is really disappointing (Score 1) 45

The problem is untethered VR in the real world means shit graphics, shit battery life and a bulky HMD that generates more heat than the sun.

You have not watched the release announcement. Even if, for the sake of argument, you are correct in your claims, it would be massively incorrect to judge the Frame by those past experiences, assuming Valve's claims are even partially accurate (there is every reason to believe they are completely true). Valve has seen all the complaints about all prior headsets, and addressed the all.

Comment Re: Who asked for this (Score 1) 100

Probably for less than what this will cost.

Maybe, and maybe not. But it WILL be locked down all to Hell, and will be stuffed to the gills with crapware and spyware. The Steam Machine will not. My next living room PC will definitely be a Steam Machine. The form-factor and openness have me sold.

Slashdot Top Deals

Adding features does not necessarily increase functionality -- it just makes the manuals thicker.

Working...