Off Topic The "Discuss Anything Else" Thread

Definitley!

 

In Australia of late, a massive **** fight has broken out on the future of Drop Bears. Over the last couple of months hundreds of sheep and the occasional poddy calf in the Mallee Shires of Buloke and Gunnawarra, have been savaged in frenzied attacks.Of course graziers are up in arms and want action, but as things stand at the moment, the Drop Bear is on the protected species list. And it isn't just in the Mallee that the problem has cropped up in recent years, there have been reports of similar attacks to livestock and domestic animals right across the country. I guess the farmers have a point, but so too do the conservationists. Right across the globe, endangered, dangerous creatures have been save from extinction by well meaning governments ... I suppose the same has to be done here. What do ya' reckon?

please log in to view this image

 

I call shenanigans Cyclonic.

Almost a nice photoshop though.

 

Talk about one extreme to the other

 

They did find some ancient drawings of Thylacoleo carnifex (the marsupial lion) which is now extinct in Oz and that appears to be the best reasoning as to where the tale of the mythical drop bear comes into being.

Always be aware walking under the Eucalyptus trees though Cyc, you never know when a drop bear might fall on you!

 

Strange that you should mention the lion STH. We've lost the last known Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) within the last 80 odd years. It died in a Hobart zoo in 1936 and is now thought to be extinct. It seems as though it may just about have died off on the mainland about 2000 years ago, but survived in the wilds of Tasmania. Bounties were placed on the animal from about the 1830s onward. They were blamed for sheep killings. The encouraging new is that there have been many sightings reported in various Australian states as well as PNG. It would be sensational if they could be found and protected.

 

I have read about them before from an excerpt by Tim Flannery, a while back now though but I remember glossing over a piece on these.

The book "A gap in nature" is quite an eye opener regarding the amount of species we have lost. Brilliantly illustrated book but quite expensive too.

Great if the Tas Tiger was alive and kicking. Australia is a vast place so it isn't beyond the realms of possibility.

 

Nearly 9lb of food in half an hour. What a greedy bastard.

 

Hear, hear! No further comment.

 

Serves him right

 

A Pathe Clip of the Titanic, still being worked upon in Ireland, before she set sail for Southampton on 2 April 1912. They believe the people aboard at the beginning of the film are workmen. The structure with the two hoses on the starboard side of the ship, is a worker's toilet. The film of Captain Smith is not from the Titanic, but from the Olympic. He wore black when in charge of the Titanic. Further proof that Titanic was still not fully finished comes in the change of paint used in her name, here it's in black, but by the time she left Southampton, it was in white.

 

115.8F in New South Wales this afternoon.

 

A bunch of cows who think they're going on holidays. Love the road train though.

 

Some people just love to eat.

 

Every month the boss holds a team meeting and every month there is a quiz, set by the previous month’s winner. Last month we were all hopeless and this month’s quiz was set by a colleague who won with 3 out of 10 because everyone tries to lose. So the boss decided that this month the worst score would set next month’s quiz.

Today being the 13th February, my devious colleague made all the questions about tomorrow. I only got 1 out of 10 – and that was because the question answer was the monarch in 1537 who designated the day a holiday and I knew it was Henry VIII from the year. I am sure that some of you know the two-time European Footballer of the Year born in 1951 and you will know your Roman love gods/goddesses from your Greek ones.

The March meeting won’t be Cheltenham week because me and the gaffer have both got that week off, so I will have to wait until it appears in the diary so I can think of something so cretinously simple that they all get 10 out of 10 and I can make the tie-break question impossible. Problem is the gaffer gets to vet the questions and may smell a rat...

 

Ok boys and girls, will artificial intelligence usher in a wonderful future for man kind, or will it lead us all to ruination? Long have many of us held fears that A.I. could lead to horrid scenarios like those depicted in blood and guts movies like Terminator and Blade Runner. Is it possible that at some point in the future, mankind will be dominated by machines we have no control over? It's all to easy to say. " Lets just pull the plug on them if they step out of line." But it probably wouldn't be all that easy. It's been suggested that what we have in our favour is the ability mix emotion and reason, while machines can only work on algorithms. But does that make us safe? Can a machine make a value judgment that advances it's own lot? According to scientists working on Google's DeepMind, it would appear so. A site called to Futurism has stated. " Researchers have been testing whether neural networks are more likely to cooperate or compete, and if these AI are capable of understanding motivations behind making that choice." DeepMind programmed two agents with the abilities to co-operate or turn on each other, dependent on circumstance. They were given the option of making value decisions. When harvesting was good, they worked together, but when resources were thin on the ground, they looked to take one another out.

I can't get into the mind games of computers ... it's all well above me. Does the result indicate greed and selfishness, or is it survival? And does it mean that man now knows that he may be yep another step closer to being dominated by Artificial Intelligence? If it eventually happens, it won't be in my time, so no nightmares for me. But it does make me wonder about the lives of those generations ahead.

 

From Elon Musk: "Humans must become cyborgs to avoid 'Artificial Intelligence' domination."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...ificial-intelligence-ex-machina-a7581036.html

Good grief, for a start can you imagine a cyborg Sir Barney Chuckles and N.Henderson on the forum. Bloody hell, head for the sickbay fellahs!

please log in to view this image