Humodour

Hey guys. I know there's a few investors on here so I figured I'd fire this off. How does this sound as part of an investment strategy? My aim is 10% growth per year. 1) Sell any share that increases by 10% above the price I bought it at (I do not intend to make money off the rises and falls, it's simply the case that once it has grown 10% it has served my purpose and I can pull out my profit right there and buy another share I feel is under-performing). 2) Buy stable high-dividend shares just before they go ex-dividend. Sell them after the dividend payment once/if their share price increases by a certain percent which when combined with dividend growth equals 10% growth on the amount paid for the share. Is this an OK idea or should I just aim to keep stable, high-dividend shares long-term? The benefit of this strategy seems to me that I can repeat this process quite a few times during a year and achieve the 10% growth I want, whereas growth from dividends alone won't meet this goal (although share price might - in this current climate that's no sure bet). Is 10% growth per year too high as an aim? To that end, using the above strategy, is waiting for a stock to increase 10% before selling too high an aim, or would I be more likely to achieve my 10% growth goal by selling stocks once they increase say 5%? *This strategy is, I guess, predicated on my ability to be able to correctly identify undervalued stocks. As a bit of a hedge, I aim to only invest in reasonably stable companies with decent dividend payments just in case the stock isn't as undervalued as I predicted. I have a fee-free cash investment account with growth rate of 5% currently, compounded daily. So once I've sold a stock that has grown by my set amount, the money can lie around for a while, waiting for me to find another good buy, and I don't need to worry too much about losing money. Inflation in Australia stays between 2 and 3%. Brokerage is $20. Thoughts?

Sometimes I really wonder where you obtain the alien logic you use to reach some of your conclusions. Systems theory. But don't let that worry you. It's only used to run every major technology and manufacturing firm in the world. FFS I thought you were studying for an MBA? I don't know any technology firm that's run on systems theory, certainly not any I've worked for. And how exactly does systems theory show that I wouldn't care if someone was hit by lightning? Anyway, I think you have me confused with someone else, I'm not studying for anything, I've been an engineer for 25 years. Um, look, as nutty as Wals is sometimes, and as annoying as it is to hear him claim yet again that his logic is sound because he 'understands systems theory', I scoff mightily at your claim that you don't know any technology firm run on systems theory. I say bull ****ing ****. Systems theory underpins all engineering, information, scientific, economic, and mathematical disciplines and companies based on them. In fact, systems theory is especially crucial to engineering...

Your ideas amuse me, and I wish to subscribe to your magazine.

That's a lie. Evolution doesn't exist. God created the Earth in seven days for humans to enjoy and destroy. Awesome. How much does it cost to hire a circular saw and a continuously looped tape of There Goes the Neighbourhood by Bodycount? Actually, gravity doesn't exist either. It is just an illusion properly explained by God's will. How else do you account for the way angels fly?

That's a lie. Evolution doesn't exist. God created the Earth in seven days for humans to enjoy and destroy.

How do you mean? Surely Libya is the only one which got a new government? Tunisia is holding democratic elections tomorrow, actually. Libya is still essentially run by a military council until their elections (understandably). I think Tunisia is far and way the model revolution. But hey, Gaddafi didn't actually give the Libyans the choice of being peaceful, so can't really blame them!

Oh yeah? That's the first time I've ever heard someone make that claim, and it sure as heck isn't reflected in the market (Rio Tinto, BHP, et al). Anyway, I would say Australia is pretty damn close to the economies that actually matter when considering exporting and importing PHYSICAL goods, wouldn't you? No recession in 20 years, 4 of the worlds 9 remaining AAA rated banks, fibre-to-the-home Internet, wealthiest country in the world, beautiful beaches and babes! Come on mate, hop on a plane and come visit!

Um, you asked me what the use of artificial intelligence was, and I showed you examples with links. For example, you doubted we could create an AI that could do useful science. I directed you to research projects which already do that! Expert system or not, much of the argument from you and Morgoth in this thread has been ignorant claims that "AI can't do x" or "building an AI that can do x is too difficult for humans to achieve any time soon". So I think that showing you counter-examples of AI's that already accomplish these tasks is an appropriate response to establish the most basic capabilities a fully learning AI would have at its disposal, no? Yeah, right. Reading science articles all day makes you understand things so much better than us plebs. Well that is a measure of me being informed on the topic, along with being exposed so frequently to academics in the information sciences. You two are NOT informed on the matter. You know little about AI or the latest advances in the field, so I think it's about right that I call you both out (with detailed counterexamples) for making inaccurate sweeping proclamations about the futility of the field.

Posted March 2006 with no news since. I wouldn't expect an effective mind-machine interface anytime soon. I disagree. We already have a variety of brain implants on the market (all for medical purposes, but their variety of purpose should signal their commercial versatility beyond health purposes). These are called brain pacemakers. We also have bionic eyes soon to be on the market which are digital video camera glasses connected to to a computer that sits in the shirt pocket and sends the processed versions of the images the camera picks up to an implant in the vision centres of the brain which can receive wireless signals. We've also decoded brain signals and converted them into real images using computer software. Is it really such a stretch to imagine that in the next few decades connections between these various developments will occur? E.g. brain implant as above which communicates with a pair of bionic eyes. The bionic eyes could analyse incoming data to AND from the implant, process it and display it "on screen". Heck, bionic eyes don't even need to process data coming FROM the implant to provide an effective mind-machine interface (insofar as our current GUI interface with computers is effective): the bionic eyes already come with processing capacity, and this could be extended to include computer vision intelligence algorithms for analysing the image and then displaying processed data highlighting meaningful information about the image on screen in the eye. And something like a combination of modified cochlear implants and sound processing algorithms could also be incorporated into this bionic eye to provide sound processing to complement hearing (while opening up the opportunity of voice commands to control and manipulate the interface). Mind-machine interfaces are going to be here relatively quickly. And they'll be useful - how useful depends on exactly what your expectation of a mind-machine interface is. But imagine the above described implant combination combined with wireless access to the Internet. Possibilities expand rapidly. And then, there's this.

Alternatively to purchasing gold, you could simply invest in Australian companies. If Australia's economy ever ends up tanking, then that implies it's probably not a world where gold or money will mean anything again for a long time anyway.

Oh really? http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-robot-...ex-problem.html http://www.itnews.com.au/News/276700,ibm-e...-computing.aspx http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/apples_sir...volutionar.html If you don't understand what you're talking about, keep quiet, Wals. Same goes for you, Morgoth. You two are to artificial intelligence what Luddites were to the industrial revolution.

To reiterate, so that the point is not lost with Zoraptor grasping at straws, there are energy-producing molecules of oils, fats, cholesterol, carbohydrates, etc which are good for you ('good calories'), and there are those which are bad for you ('bad calories'). They're all energy sources, but not all are equal when considering health impacts. They can't be conflated when purchasing food without health consequences. Oh dear, you're being a ponce about a small number of natural trans fats (which are found in trace amounts in some animal products, and not relevant to the situations where one would want to ban trans fats e.g. in fast food and processed foods, much like fat content is not relevant to purchasing vegetables) because you managed to find two natural trace trans fats on Wikipedia, and yet the core point of my post was entirely on the mark - that artificial trans isomers produced by the partial hydrogenation of unsaturated oils, which constitute the immense bulk of consumed trans fats, are extremely bad for the body due to a lack of binding sites which can recognise them. As a further note, it is suspected that the reason those natural trans fats do not appear to cause harm to the body is precisely because they are found only in trace amounts (the amounts which you would continue to find in food if trans fats were banned, since any cooking process produces trace amounts due the potential - depending on the kinetics - rearrangement step of many chemical reactions). No, there is clearly 'good' food and 'bad' food. How the food is metabolised is far more relevant as 'good' food and 'bad' food can have exactly the same energy production value (calorie) yet be widely differing in apparent health effects. There are molecules which when metabolised produce 'x' calories but have deleterious health consequences due to things like geometry, bonding, polarity, etc compared to other molecules which also produce 'x' calories. And as such it is appropriate to say that there are good and bad calories. Calling molecules/food calories in the first place isn't very exact (since what produces the energy, of which calories are a non-SI unit for measuring it, is the dephosphorylation of adenosine triphosphate into adenosine diphosphate via the citric acid cycle), but people understand what it means. Hydrocarbons usually produce death in the body, what with them being poisonous and all. Fortunately most people don't ingest benzene/ butane et alia. :1440x900 smugface: Carbohydrates, proteins, alcohols, fats, etc, are all hydrocarbons. You could argue that the existence of an oxygen (e.g. ethers, glucose, alcohols) or a chlorine atom (chlorohydrocarbons) or whatnot makes these not strictly hydrocarbons but that is a rather exclusive definition of hydrocarbons. If it is a carbon chain primarily constituted of carbon and hydrogen it's fair enough to call it a hydrocarbon.

And what if people failed? You'd withhold their voting license? People fail subjects in school all the time. They still take something out of it. A person's performance in a critical thinking class is not relevant to their right to vote, but would in many cases hopefully inform it. Meet more then? There are quite a few centre-right greens parties (and greenies) out there. Plenty of them here in Aus. Although unfortunately some of the economically far-left element has hopped on the green bandwagon, too, since hardcore socialist parties continually fail to gain representation, but this fringe element is unable to dominate because their ideas are unpalatable to sensible people. I say unfortunately because these are the type of people that still go around calling for the overthrow of capitalism. It's stupid, and damages the core messages of the green movement. But hey, the economic liberals have a similar problem with idiot social conservatives hijacking their movement. Nitwits like the Tea Party movement, etc. Yet in no way does their existence cheapen the concept of economic liberalisation. No, we are not. I'm sick of dealing with people like you who portray us that way. Stop jumping to conclusions. The first and fundamental principle of green parties (the political movement, not necessarily environmental groups), is adherence to human rights in all government policy. That's a far cry from eugenics and forced euthanasia bull****. I didn't. I proposed compulsory ethics and abstract thinking classes in school (alongside maths and English) so that when the future generations do go to vote they hopefully approach the ballot box with more insight than the generations before them. There was nothing in this proposal which tied their performance in these classes to their right to vote - don't jump to conclusions!

Hahaha. I'm curious about the Saudi reaction to it. It would seem to me that in any war with Iran, the West could count on very strong Saudi support. I have only the vaguest notion of what the Saudis could put in the field, but I think they're probably much MUCH more worried about internal dissent and places like Yemen, than they are about invading Iran. Invading Iran is not terribly likely. Where the **** would the money to do it come from? Half our population appear to be more willing to give the Iranian government credibility than our own. Plus we're overstretched on our existing commitments. Keep in mind that Iran's not Iraq. It's got a lot of mountains, and a HUGE trained irregular force in the Revolutionary guards and Basij. You couldn't do them any significant damage on the cheap, I don't think. *thinks* Well, maybe shoot the crap out of their oil infrastucture. But that would probably just strengthen their hand, domestically. Iran knows this and that's why they're gokking about in this way. Note that Iran lofted a salvo of mortars at Afghanistan today. Not in the major news. But it happened. Just a little "**** you" to show they don't give a rat's ass about indignation over the terr attempt. And to maybe threaten ramping up their efforts in that country. I don't disagree with you. A war with Iran would be highly undesirable. But I don't think Iran would have any significant Arab allies is what I am saying. They'd all be supporting the West. What was that thing that came out of Wikileaks? A bunch of Arab countries were secretly lobbying the US government to increase pressure on Iran and take out Iran's nuclear facilities? http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-28/us/us.w...-cable?_s=PM:US

What I expect is that AI will, over a long period of time, slowly replace the algorithms for things which we've always done or used, and people will barely give it a second glance, because it happened so slowly (relative to humans - i.e. over a period of years). Look at Google Translate or Google search. Some pretty sophisticated machine learning algorithms (AI) at work there, but nobody really notices that. Certainly a far cry from the dumb Google of 1999 that I remember (although yes, it was still the best search engine at the time). A great response I can think of off the top of my head is science. Something that could do science for us day in, day out, without losing its knowledge upon death, without needing to train replacements for, at a speed that can be increased indefinitely with increased computing power (which comes from... more science) would be pretty ****ing useful. It's the type of thing which applications are found for once it is built... like LASER or the Internet. But what is the cost of AI? The software cost is nothing (besides the initial investment). The hardware costs... well, I'd suggest that in 20 years time the supercomputers of today will be pretty cheap. That has been the trend for the last half a century or so. Look at your smartphone. There are things we won't want AI/robots to do for us, because those are human things which we will cherish as part of what it means to be human. But there are things we will.

On the inside? No. Only need to look at LDL vs HDL or trans fats vs natural fats, or essential vitamin and mineral intake to see why (let's take an easy example of iodine and thyroid malfunction, or vitamin B12 and anaemia + lethargy). Unfortunately in many cases, the health impacts of a bad diet (fast food or otherwise) can often take years to observe. Fatness is not what I consider when I discuss health, really, because if you're fat I'm sure you're already well aware you're ****ing your body over (being fat exerts a hefty and obvious physical and psychological burden in terms of mood, energy levels, ability to perform tasks, constantly getting sick, etc). Fatness is not good for your health, but it is easily noticed and controlled (ensure your calories eaten are roughly the same as your calories burnt - simple). That said if you were really observant you could get by on a fast food diet (depending on the fast food) and still be reasonably healthy... but you'd need to have a pretty decent grasp of nutrition and eat very selectively to ensure you were covering all the appropriate bases... so it's a bit of a moot point.

3 of the other top 4 biggest robotics markets, commercially, are South Korea, Germany, and the USA. So, what are your excuses for these countries? Why not? Maybe you should let the Japanese government know. I'm sure they'd appreciate your expertise in robotics.

And your perpetual optimism is actually caused due to a brain disfunction. Look, first off mate, you can quit with the mean-spirited and rude insults and name-calling ok? Try some civility for a change. Do you treat everybody in your life like you treat people on here? And maybe instead of posting a link to an incorrect and poorly worded journalist's perspective on a scientific study, you could go and read the study yourself? http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/n...ll/nn.2949.html Morgoth, you called me an 'clueless idiot' because I pointed out that there are areas of intelligence where computers outperform humans now. This was arrogant and ignorant of you, and it makes you look like a buffoon, because what I said was correct. These are commonly called expert systems and are already widely used commercially. They outperform humans on specific tasks. The challenges is integrating them together so that you've got something which can outperform humans on multiple tasks. Perhaps the most noteworthy AI is IBM's Watson because it is capable of using true learning methods like neural networks and genetic algorithms to process and integrate the information provided to it by 1000's of competing expert systems and AI algorithms (some of which are themselves true learning algorithms). In doing so it consistently beats every human player at a game called Jeopardy (you might want to look into the rules of that game if that doesn't impress you), and is now being used to diagnose medical disorders because it can process (and access) more information than doctors: http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/biomed...-ibms-dr-watson We also have organic neural nets (which are real neurons from a rat brain which are essentially encouraged to form links with eachother in a petri dish - calling it an artificial brain would be accurate) which are capable of some surprising feats: http://singularityhub.com/2010/10/06/video...moving-forward/ Then there is the Blue Brain project being funded by the Swiss government to run an entire mammal brain by taking cortical slices and translating them into a computer (i.e. including gene regulation, neural network, neurotransmitters, the whole gamut - rather than just trying to simulate the neural network). The only limiting factor to this project is supercomputing power... which is increasing faster than exponentially. http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/ Morgoth, I don't think it is optimism to expect the current pace of progress in robotics and AI to continue into the foreseeable future. If anything, I think that is a slightly pessimistic assessment (computing power has started violating Moore's law by advancing faster than it, as one example of the factors propelling this field forward... another factor is the similarly lightning-fast pace of materials science research, and another is the entrance of scientists and governments in India and China into the field - more hands and funding make light work). But this slightly pessimistic assessment based on the pace of CURRENT progress in the field is an assessment I run with because it provides a nice floor to work with when projecting future developments.

Hahaha. I'm curious about the Saudi reaction to it. It would seem to me that in any war with Iran, the West could count on very strong Saudi support.

Protip: There's no such thing as a "good calorie" and a "bad calorie." Energy is energy. Protip: You're wrong. Some molecules produces more calories than others (and in this sense can all be thought of as 'calories' themselves), and further the different molecules have different levels of benefit (or hindrance) in the body. For example, one of the types of calories, cholesterol, pretty obviously has good and bad forms (broadly speaking, HDL vs LDL). While simple carbohydrates (sugars) are (in equivalent, i.e. large, amounts) worse for you then complex carbohydrates. Moreover one type of carbohydrate, fibre, is pretty much completely indigestible. On to fats, trans fats are absolutely horrible for the body relative to natural fats. And of the (non-cholesterol) natural unsaturated fats, poly- produce more health benefits than mono-, which are bother better for you than saturated fats (which lack any reactive pi bonding). Even this summary is incomplete, as within each category there are hundreds of different types of each molecule which can often be ranked along a scale of 'goodness' in the body - some of these molecules with the right geometries or bonds to entirely violate the general properties of their category (e.g. vaccenic acid [which is able to be converted from a trans to a cis isomer in the body, and then metabolised], as Zoraptor ignorantly pointed out thinking it meant that all trans fats must be OK for you). So, uh, there are pretty clearly 'good calories' and 'bad calories'. Now, here is a list of how much caloric energy the mains types of hydrocarbons generally produce in the body (and note the quote from Wikipedia below about burning these things to produce the measure - it's a bit more nuanced than that, and while still not really getting into the nitty gritty of the citric acid cycle or anything, does give a decent broad representation of what foods are going to give you more/less energy. Calories for various hydrocarbons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy#Nutrition_labels

Some more gems for those interested in the field: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-boston...tary-robot.html http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-mabel-...gged-robot.html http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Sc...720-290039.html Um. You don't understand the field. It depends entirely on what your definition of 'robot' or 'AI' is. We have robots and AI's right now which are extremely good (human-level or better) at specific tasks or groups of tasks. We've got computers which combine thousands of different AI algorithms into one and use probability theory to make decisions, much like a human brain (IBM's Watson), we've got things like this above, and we've got artificial neural network robots, we've got real neural network robots (neuron cultures), we've got robots that understand human speech, we've got robots that can perform image recognition as well as humans... robotics is now an extremely diverse multi-billion dollar field which continues to grow at a spectacular pace. Probably the biggest limiting factor for robots and AI is NOT modern technology or algorithms, but computing power. And computing power is still increasing faster than exponentially. Does any of the above qualify computers for having sentience yet? Certainly not. Does it need to? Certainly not. Will it in the near future? Most likely. Always the pessimist, Morgoth. And often fairly off the mark, to boot.

Indeed. That said, I do think that those younger than 30 seem to have a more coherent and sensible grasp of what the **** is happening in the world right now.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/artic...8b87cd6a8f7.2d1 ****ING AWESOME. I think some of the Obsidian devs should take a look at this. It's a shame we can't tag people in forum posts like we can on Facebook.

This one's for you, Wals: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/1...t?newsfeed=true

I agree, but I'm not sure how we can fix it. A start would be to improve the slightly abstract skill of critical reasoning in the voting populace. I say that because I think it's just possible one could foster that skill without getting directly political. It's a life skill so the benefits would be felt all over the damn place. However, I do sometimes wonder (in the twilight hours) whether it's just too easy for politicians to keep people dumb. I'm not saying they plan it. I'm just saying it's far far too easy to say it's far too difficult to do anything about. I had this discussion with a mate of mine doing his honours in International Relations, and we came to roughly the same conclusion. Some sort of compulsory combination of ethics/abstract thinking/philosophy classes taught from an early age right through to the end of high school. Then wait a few decades for it to filter through to the populace. Another good way to "keep the bastards honest" is a three party system where none of the parties have strict allegiance with each other and the support of two parties is required to form government (minority government), so that sensible bills from any party get through and bad bills from any party don't. It's harder for corporations, businesses, and lobbyists to buy out all 3 parties, especially since one of the parties that develops in a 3 party system tends to be staunchly economically centrist or centre-left. The best form of third party in this regard is an environmental party, because they are suspicious of business not due to some high-minded socialist agenda but an evidenced-based approach to environmental and social damage caused by corporate excess (and they tend to want to work within capitalism rather than replace it). Moreover the politicians of such a party, regardless of whether you agree with them, tend to be in the game for less corruptible, more altruistic reasons. Thankfully, this situation exists in many Western democracies now (New Zealand, Australia, Britain, lots of European democracies). It is very difficult for this situation to develop in America and Canada because of their shockingly bad electoral systems (although to the credit of the Americans, they do at least have a decent house of review in their senate), and I can't see it continuing into the next term in Britain either for the same reasons (although the fact that it managed to happen in Britain at all surprised me).