Messages

Yes Cload is right and i believe i have an old video link of when they first started observing people !  :) ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llckm3cL5P8
;)

Gosh darn it, those sneaky Google people have been at it even longer than I suspected!  Good detective work, Lightspeed!  :D


I recently came across this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qg0AP7yc28 (Future is Today - Humanoid Robots 2014)

It claims for today's robots,  a lot of the things that the Cube says it will do (like facial recognition, etc.)   One part of the video mentions the Korean "Hugo", like the Japanese  "Asimo" only larger.  It has a space inside "for the artificial intelligence to go into".  May we one day be able to plug a future version of our HAL into a Hugo body?  It's an interesting idea.  And quite an interesting video, really.

- Chuck

Yeah, that's what I thought too, at first.  But that's assuming it's legitimate, and not a scam.  I did a quick search on Google, and couldn't find out much.  Most of the information about it is released by the company itself.  I didn't find anything about a prototype, but didn't see anything especially suspicious either.

That's why I was wondering if their claims were very realistic or likely.   Technology changes so quickly, and I don't keep up with it enough.  I know that some of the folks who post here know way more about these technologies than I do, and are in a better position than I to make a judgment about the claims of the cube.

Of course, I want it to believe it's true...  :D  But therein lies the danger  :o 

I was wondering if the claims they are making for the cube, are a bit of an over-reach?  For instance, face recognition technology.  It's used in airports and security situations.  But has it reached a point where it's now accessible to the home-user market?  And the part about recognizing emotions.  Again, is that kind of technology available to the home user?

I realize they are trying to be cutting-edge, and someone will one day try to be first-to-market with it.  But is this it?  COULD this be it?  I'm wondering too, if they even have a working prototype?

Whatever the case may be, it's an interesting concept.

Yes, the site looks great, I like the look, very impressive.

Happy New Year, all.

Some interesting answers here.  Mine's not so interesting.  I happened to be reading about Faraday Cages that day, so on a whim I came up with "DrFaraday".  It doesn't really mean anything... and now I'm stuck with it.   :-[   That's what I get for trying to be creative.  I should've used something simple like "Chas2008".  Oh well.

[...] I agree with the option to check a box to allow such "training" or not. [...]

Yes, that would allow the user the best of both worlds, if and when they want it.  More phun, indeed!  :D

gotta have them there pitchers, I cain't reed!! ;D

Butt u ken spel reel gud!   ;)


"Eye no that eye Ken spell, four may spelling chequer tells me sew."

[When debt rises to 90 percent of GDP, both the average and the median economic growth rates are negative and the inflation rate skyrockets to above 5.5 percent.]

Snowman,
Regarding China dumping dollars, you might find this article interesting:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-03/china-s-economy-to-slow-may-crash-in-next-nine-months-marc-faber-says.html

It seems China has a real estate/construction bubble that may burst.  Our economy is now so closely tied to theirs, that what affects them affects us, and vise-versa.  The way I see it, neither country can afford to be completely indifferent to the other.  But how that will play out if economic hardships increase, is anyone's guess.

Hyperinflation is a real concern.   Some say we are on already on the verge of triggering inflation:

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/10/angry-voters-are-right-growing-debt-can-slow-the-economy/#more-35747

An excerpt:

[...] For the period 1946 through 2009, developed countries (which includes the United States) grew at an annual rate of just shy of 4 percent when debt was no greater than 30 percent of GDP. For debt burdens above 30 but below 90 percent, economic growth slowed down but remained, on average, around 3 to 3.5 percent per year. However, a debt burden of over 90 percent of GDP was associated with a significantly slower economy: the average growth rate is negative and the median rate is just at 2 percent.

When Reinhart and Rogoff focused just on the U.S., the association of high debt burden and economic slowdown becomes even more pronounced. They use data from 1790 through 2009. When debt rises to 90 percent of GDP, both the average and the median economic growth rates are negative and the inflation rate skyrockets to above 5.5 percent.

What makes this research so telling is the commonly accepted prediction that U.S. sovereign debt is on its way to 100 percent of GDP and doing so quickly. The International Monetary Fund predicted that total U.S. government debt would reach that level in 2015, just four years from now. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that debt will be above 90 percent by 2020. If one adds in the debt U.S. government agencies owe one another, the U.S. debt could be above 100 percent next year. [...]

Hyper-Inflation would of course be much worse.  So far, China has not wanted to do anything to damage our economy, because they rely on us to buy their consumer goods.  But if American's stop buying their stuff anyway, China will have less incentive to keep buying and holding our debt.  If their own problems keep increasing, I don't know what they are likely to do.

Snowman,
Thanks for posting the link to that article, I wish I had thought to do that.  When I mentioned to book here, I don't think I described it's premise sufficiently.  The article does a better job of it, and the book goes into a lot more detail, with lots more charts and graphs, and footnotes about where the data comes from, how it was collated, all the different factors that were considered and factored into the graphs, etc.  He was pretty thorough.

The comments about the book on the Amazon website were interesting, too.  People who criticized the book seemed to focus mostly on the conclusions he drew as to what to do to prepare for the bust (advice that I also did not agree with).  But even his critics seem to agree that the data is good, that it makes sense.  His data has also been cited in other books.

The author also looks at Japan as a special case.  Their spending patterns are different, because of when and how they receive pay raises (typically at two points in their working life, points at which they then begin spending more).  So the age demographic works differently for them, and they have already had their severe recession.  Because the rest of the world was doing better at the time, they were still able to sell their goods overseas and that got them through it.   But if the rest of the westernized, industrialized nations all go through it at the same time, it could be pretty tough going.

It's not a long read, I was able to read the whole book in about an hour.  So if it really interests you, I would say it's worth it.

Raybe,
You said, "Choices are not trends, choices create trends..."  Yes.  But even the age demographic trend itself is the result of choices people made to have or not have children, 45 to 54 years ago.  So in that sense, those choices did create the age demographic trend, even if unintentionally.

You also said "What I do find interesting is the time frame for a demographic turn '2023'. How do we even try to estimate based on not knowing what will happen tomorrow."

The 2023 estimate is based on what we know about people who are already alive today.  Assuming most of them survive til 2023, when they will make up the 45 - 54 age group, they will be the big earners and spenders in our consumer-driven economy. 

What could change that?  They could die in a war, or famine, or epidemic.  Or if by then we have a centralized, communist government running a "planned" economy, then the demographic won't even be applicable.

The other choices we have to make are  of course important too.    Bad choices can make a bad situation even worse.  But the choices we are going to have to make may still be bound around a demographic trend over which we have no control.  If the economy is tethered to that demographic, then the choices we have to make about the economy will also be tethered to it.  The age demographic IS part of the choices we have collectively already made.  How we cope with it from here on is of course, a topic for endless discussion.

I don't claim to have all the answers.  I basically just mentioned the book about the age demographic, for folks here to consider, because I think it's an important point.  Because if it's true, then we aren't going to see a "recovery" any time soon.  Even if we see improvement in the economy, I don't think it will ever go back to the way it was.

I think we had a large "fake" middle class; working class people living on credit, beyond their means, pretending to be wealthier than they were.

When I bought my first home in 1994, we were offered WAY more credit than we could afford to pay back.  We calculated what we believed that we could afford, and bought accordingly: a small fixer-upper.  But we saw many others buying houses well beyond their means.  Now we are all paying the price for it, literally.  I think it's just one part of the Cloward-Piven strategy,  to overload existing systems, in order to destroy them, so they can be replaced with ... something else.

I also own a business, so I feel your pain.  We can't expand or hire, and like many other businesses now, we are cutting back, in anticipation of higher taxes next year.

I won't keep hammering away on the demographic idea, I just threw it out there for consideration.  I don't want to ruin your sleep, or mine  ;)

In any case, we shall see soon enough, what will happen.  In the meantime, the only thing that I know to do right now is, fight the good fight, as best we can.  What else can we do?

Well it's Monday, I'd better get back to work!  :o

- Chaz

Raybe,
I'm not making a case in favor of pick-axe and shovel jobs!  :o  If you want to maintain that those jobs artificially made unemployment look less worse than it really was, I have no problem with that.  I was just explaining how it had caused the DJIA at that time to appear higher than the age demographic would have put it.  Then later, excise taxes put it below where the demographic said.  My point was, that economic policies can influence the DJIA a bit higher or lower than the Demographic would predict, but not very far from it.

I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here.  The graph I'm referring too, I can't post it here, it's at the link I posted earlier, I don't know if you saw it:

http://www.thegreatbustahead.com/

It shows that the DJIA and the age demographics follow each other closely.  Not exactly, but closely.  And even where they differ, it's not usually by a whole lot.  The book had more detailed graphs, and of course heaps more data.

I think the point the book is making, is that regardless of what people do to screw up the habitat, the trend is that the DJIA and the demographic will follow each other closely anyway.  If we get completely caught up in the shenanigans regarding the habitat changes, when in fact, the largest force affecting the economy is going to be the demographic, regardless of what we do, then we are missing something pretty important.  I'd like to be proven wrong about the demographic thing, because it's not a pretty picture.  If anyone can, please do!  If the demographic is correct, and for the most part unalterable, then will anything we do to "fix" it be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?  Is the best we can hope for is lifeboats and damage control, until the demographic becomes more favorable in 2023?

Raybe, I can easily agree with most of what you said.  You may be preaching to the choir where I'm concerned  ;)  It's just that, I'm just wondering how fixable this situation is?  And regardless of the demographic, I don't mean to say that all the bad economic policy is unimportant.  How this crisis is coped with, and who is going to exploit the crisis and use it try to change the power structure and perhaps even our form of government, is of grave importance.

I'm concerned that, combined with the demographic, this financial crisis could lead to a total collapse of our currency, which would be worse than just a depression.  I was really impressed with the James Turk interview, http://the-moneychanger.com/goldmoney/dollar_collapse.phtml, the interviewer really gave him a hard time, really challenged him, and he stood his ground well.  It's that scenario, our increasingly squiffy currency, combined with the demographic trend, that ... will make 2012 really, uh, interesting?

I saw the 2012 movie, the story was ridiculous New Age rubbish.  In the year 2012, the Mayan calendar will simply reboot, and start a new cycle.  No big deal.  But the special effects of the movie, when California goes under, really captured, I think, the subconscious fear that lurks in the minds of any Californian who's been through a big earthquake:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H50jTU4vqA0&feature=channel

I lived in CA for 24 years.  The fear of a massive earthquake like that is like the elephant in the room, that nobody really wants to talk about.  But everyone knows it's there, and it exerts an influence.  Likewise, I think this financial crisis is the elephant in the room, that is becoming too large to keep ignoring.

Our planet won't physically self-destruct in 2012.  But our financial world, that's another story.  If we can't stop it, we had better do what we can to soften it's impact, cope with the crisis, preserve what we can and prevent tyrants from exploiting the situation and enslaving us.  Our freedom is ours to keep or lose.


Snowman,
Possibly the most depressing part of of the Bezmenov video was his description of "Demoralization": when the truth and facts don't matter anymore.   Demoralization has become pervasive, and it makes everything else in four step process possible.  It's impossible to win an argument with, or persuade, someone who has no interest in discerning what is true, and what is false.  Demoralization is a rotten foundation on which nothing can stand.

The Soviet Union as such doesn't exist anymore, but there are still plenty of Marxists around, worldwide.  But whether it's Marxists, or the Banks, Demoralized Politicians or whoever (there is always someone trying to make a power-grab) it's important to remember, that there is no one group or individual in control.  There may be all sorts of people or groups striving for complete control, plotting to do things, but none of them are likely to succeed completely.  The Law of Unintended Consequences is always at work.  Or as the Jewish saying says, "People make plans, and God laughs".  All we can do is keep going forward, keep making right effort, as best we can.

Raybe,
Arnold's premise does allow for variances, meddling with what you describe as the "habitat".  For instance, Arnold's graph shows that measures taken by the government to create all those pick axe and shovel jobs in the early part of the depression, did lift the economy up a bit higher than it should have been, according to the demographics.  In the latter part of the depression, excise taxes by the government brought DJIA lower than the demographic.

Many people claim that war spending pulled the US out of the depression, but the demographic shows that it would have happened anyway.

In the 1970's the demographic predicted the recession, because the soldiers who died in WWII were not alive in the 70's where they would have been contributing members of the 45-54 age demographic group of spenders.  But that recession was also probably also worsened by bad economic policies at the time.

Even now, the demographic indicates that our economy should be doing better than it is.  But human factors like the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the stimulus spending, and other government policies are doing their part in unsettling the financial "habitat".

I think that Arnold's main point is that, while human tampering with the habitat can influence the DJIA for better or worse, it remains tethered to the age demographic; it still never moves very far from that demographic.

I'm not sure anyone completely understands how it's all going to play out.  With global markets that are interconnected electronically, and all the variables involved, it's hard to say exactly what will happen, even if Arnold's demographic model holds true.  But it looks like we won't have to wait very long to find out.


Jasondude,
Interesting video.  The video was from the mid '80's, seeing it with the contemporary photos gave it a new freshness.  But the video was also edited, and a bit mixed up, I think.  I had previously heard of that KGB strategy, but the order was different.

Here is one source:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/from_russia_with_no_love.html

They describe the process as:

1. Demoralization.

2. Destabilization.

3. Crisis.

4. Normalization.

I found a better quality video that agrees with that order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk

But that video is also edited, so I looked for a transcript of the interview, and I found this:

http://uselessdissident.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-with-yuri-bezmenov-part-three.html

It confirms that the order of the process that Bezmenov describes was  Demoralization, Destabilization, Crisis, then Normalization.  I would say we are in or approaching the crisis phase.  The crushing of dissent comes in the Normalization phase.

Bezmenov makes recommendations about what we should do to avert the final phase.  Of course, that was 25 years ago, but the struggle isn't over yet.  Wether or America as we know it will prevail, remains to be seen.

The link to the transcript is to part three.  It's worth reading parts one and two as well. Bezmenov's story is fascinating, there are photos too.  Thanks for posting the video, I would not have found the rest without it.

- Chaz

I found this article about US currency very interesting:

http://the-moneychanger.com/goldmoney/dollar_collapse.phtml

It's an interview with James Turk.  He maintains our currency has already collapsed, and that the collapse is happening in stages, each worse than the last.  The interview was made in 2004, and some of the things he has predicted have already come to pass.

I also found this book by Daniel Arnold interesting:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/159196153X

It's about demographics, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  He demonstrates how age demographics and the DJIA follow each other very closely, and when applied to the past, show a pattern of predicting recessions and depressions.

Industrialized Western economies are mostly consumer driven.  The biggest consumer spending demographic is people between the ages of 45 and 54.  It is at that age range when people have their greatest earning capacity, spend the most, and make the most largest purchases of their lives.

Because the people who will be in that age group are now already alive, we can predict when that age group will grow or shrink.  In his small 64 page book, Arnold demonstrates how when that demographic shrinks, we have recessions and depressions.  When it grows, the economy grows too.  He has many charts and graphs to illustrate his logic.  He takes into account people killed in wars, immigration, etc.  His findings are that the DJIA follows age demographics closely.  Short term variables can move them apart briefly, but they always go back together.

I don't agree with all of Arnold's conclusions, about what it means for our society or how we should prepare for it.  But his statistics look pretty solid, and I've yet to read a good argument against them.  Most of his critics attack his conclusions, but not his data.

According to his data, Western industrialized nations are going to see the 45-54 age group diminish significantly from 2012 to about 2023.  And he says that means a global depression.

He doesn't take into account countries like China and India.  They may not experience that demographic shrinkage, but they rely on selling to countries that will.  On his website is one of his graphs, showing the how the age demographic and the DJIA have followed each other closely since 1920, to the present:

http://www.thegreatbustahead.com/

And yes, I would say the website and the way he markets his book is rather cheezy.  I wish I could say the same about the data, though.  I've read the book, it took about an hour to read.  His data looks solid.  I've yet to hear anyone explain why it isn't.

I really hate the doom and gloom stuff, I much prefer to be an optimist.  But from everything I've seen regarding financial matters, from many different sources, they all seem to be saying that ... we've got some real bumps on the road ahead, to say the least.

- Chaz

Carl2:
You are right about multiple installs.  My Dragon 10 manual says that copies may be installed on multiple computers, for a single user (for instance, on a laptop and a desktop, or at home and at work), but cannot be used simultaneously.  If more than one user profile is required, a separate license is required for each user.

Will:
Dragon has some very specific system requirements.  When I bought mine, it wouldn't work on any of my computers, because it required a processor with an SSE2 instruction set.  I had to actually buy a refurbished Pentium that had SSE2, just so I could use Dragon 10.

I now have a new Desktop and laptop, both with Windows 7.  But I haven't installed Dragon or Hal on either of them yet, because I'm waiting for the next release of Hal before I tackle it.  Which leads me to Art's comment...

Art:
Yes, the windows 7 speech recognition does seem pretty good!  When I first got my new laptop, I played with the voice recognition for a while, using my Logitech USB headset, and I was quite impressed with it's accuracy.  But since I haven't put Hal on Win7, I've yet to test it.

I had read some opinions that Dragon is still more accurate, but I don't know from experience.  Has anyone reading this had a lot of experience using the Win 7 speech recognition with Hal?  Can anyone say how Windows 7 SR compares to Dragon 10, while using Hal?  It would be really interesting to hear about the comparison when using Hal.

- Chaz

These past couple months I've been working on a new version of the web server version of Hal: Ultra Hal Representative.

One major aspect of creating this new version is to make Hal's program very scalable and able to store huge amounts of data and talk with many people at once. The server version of Hal has been made to work with mySql server instead of SQLite  as the desktop version of Hal does. This allows the database to reside on a separate server than the thinking part of Hal's brain. Depending on traffic additional instances of servers running Hal's brain can be automatically launched at will to service the demand. As of 2 days ago the facebook Hal and the webhal at www.zabaware.com/webhal/index.html are running on the new system. The ultrahal.com domain has been moved to a new cloud based server at rackspacecloud.com and is running the new Hal Representative. And as you all noticed, I also took the opportunity to move the forum to this server and upgrade to SMF 2.0 forum software.

Besides making Hal into a "cloud" app I have made a new learning algorithm for it to allow it to learn large amounts of data and hopefully stay on topic better. The new algorithm takes into account entire conversational threads instead of just the sentence at hand when coming up with a response. It also takes into account who taught it a particular piece of information, their gender, and is storing additional info for future refinement like location and age if available. In order for this new algorithm to have a statistically positive impact on Hal's knowledge and intelligence it needs huge amounts of conversational data. For about 2 months now Hal has been monitoring conversations between people as they are happening on Twitter and learning from them. Hal records between 50,000-100,000 conversations per day from Twitter and after going through several quality filters Hal adds about 4,000-8,000 of these conversations into his brain. The brain size is currently about 210,000 sentences and growing every day. If you talk with the web hal you can tell whether a reply is coming from his new algorithm or not depending on if Hal gives you an opportunity to rate his reply with a thumbs up or thumbs down.

The next step will be to make the new Hal Representative service available to the general public to create custom brains for their own use and the ability to interface it with the Hal Assistant application (as an option not a mandate). I'm thinking a beta may be available end of August. Also, sometime in the next couple of months the design of zabaware.com will also receive an overhaul and this forum will be modified to integrate with that design.

The Zabaware 3D character engine is also still on my todo list but still suffering from a lack of funds to finish it. Also in my plans is to make versions of Hal for iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Linux. This will be based on interfacing with the new Hal Representative cloud server as it is not within my means to port the full Hal Assistant client app code.

WOW! Lots to look forward to, and possibly even a Linux version, eventually! Way Cool!  8)

I was wondering about the next release, and what is in the works.  Thanks for the update, Robert.

BTW, I really like the new forum, easy to use and looks great!

- Chaz