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Haven't there already been some well-written commentaries on the DMCA? The U.S. ACM (particularly Barbara Simons) have been quite vocal. See http://www.acm.org/usacm/Issues/DMCA.htm

http://mind.sourceforge.net/m4thuser.html is the User Mainual of the free AI Brain for robots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionism#Spreadi ng_activation is the principle of operation of the free AI Mind for robots.

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/307824.307853 is an ACM paper on the AI Brain from 1998.

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1052883.1052885 is an ACM follow-up paper from 2004.

http://www.914pcbots.com is where robot-builders discuss the AI Brain in the A.I. Zone forum. See you there.

http://mind.sourceforge.net/m4thuser.html is the User Mainual of the free AI Brain for robots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionism#Spreadi ng_activation is the principle of operation of the free AI Mind for robots.

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/307824.307853 is an ACM paper on the AI Brain from 1998.

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1052883.1052885 is an ACM follow-up paper from 2004.

http://www.914pcbots.com is where robot-builders discuss the AI Brain in the A.I. Zone forum. See you there.

Yeah, I was reading that a couple weeks ago. Lesson I got out of it (might be wrong, but if it is, it's wrong in a good way): all linear recursion, deep down, boils down to "copying" some recursive "data structure"; scare quotes because you get to pick your own "fake" constructors, destructors and type predicates. Thus, linear recursion boils down to "copying" a "list," and iteration (i.e. tail recusion) boils down to "reversing" a "list."

Well, there's a bit more to it than that. I suppose that might be the message of the first five pages which describe the different morphisms available for lists (and for another view of what you're describing, I recommend Mitch Wand's Continuation-Based Program Transformation Strategies), but the real meat of the paper is the laws that they derive regarding those morphisms that work for any algebraic data type (I still need to read Bananas In Space, which I believe extends their work to exponential data types). It's one of those papers that's both really interesting and really uninteresting at the same time.

My favorite part is the end where he references K.C. Sunshine for the song of the least complexity, "That's the way (uh-uh uh-uh) I like it".

Sadly, only for members of the ACM. You can't even register for access unless you're a member.

What are you talking about? I'm not a member of the ACM, yet I was able to get to the direct link here. I dunno whether that link has a session identifier in it, but it could work.

Short answer: click the little "Pdf" link right next to "Full text".

But how was the *first* compiler compiled?

Just thinking about that makes me head explo[NO CARRIER].

I like Dr. Dobbs Journal, C/C++ Users Journal, Communications of the ACM and IEEE CGA.

If you haven't heard of DDJ or CUJ before, give them both a try. DDJ covers all sorts of stuff and (as an example) the October '05 CUJ had the best accidental intro to template metaprogramming I've ever seen.

One of CACM's selling points is that the articles are regularly featured on slashdot. :p

IMO, IEEE CGA is much more useful to me than any of ACM's SIGGRAPH stuff. This is only relevant if you're into computer graphics at all.

I'm thinking of joining the Association of C/C++ Users for it's C-Vu journal, I dunno.

I read 2600 for the hell of it.

Your mileage will vary.

Back in the old days, before Rod Brooks started iRobot, I worked part-time at a small MIT AI Lab spinoff making robots for kids called Turtles. The Turtle was an outcome of Logo, and, which itself was an outgrowth of Lisp, and so somehow the company's name got on a list of AI and Robotics vendors. (Sidenote: Lego Mindstorms also came from this same group of people at MIT and industry, though not this particular startup.)

Anyway, we got a letter from a defense contractor asking for "applications of our AI and robotics products to battlefield logistics" and gave a half-dozen or so areas for us to evaluate our products.

As you can imagine, puzzlement gave way to amusement, which quickly gave way to mayhem and by 3:05AM we had started writing our response, starting off with "The Turtle enjoys very low observability, due to a minimal radar cross-section and an almost non-existent infra-red signature."

The letter made the rounds on the photocopy/bulletin-board circuit (there was no electronic copy available outside), and somehow the response got published in an ACM journal. Through the magic of modern imaging, it is available for you to read today in PDF.

Have you considered publications put out by folks like the ACM or IEEE?

When I was an active programmer, doing OS development and such, I used to read publications from both.

IEEE has many journals, conference proceedings, and standards.

ACM has just as much, but, IMHO, is somewhat more acedemic in slant. I'll leave the exploration of the ACM web site in your able hands.

Technological Singularity has really got to mean artificial intelligence.

Vernor Vinge has brought you the Meme of the Singularity.

Mentifex (Latin for Mindmaker) has brought you the Mind of the Singularity.

The Mind of the Singularity is here but in a very primitive state.

When will the Singularity happen? This is a much discussed topic.

The A.I. Zone is where you may discuss and witness the Singularity in situ.

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/307824.307853
ACM Sigplan Notices 33(12):25-31 Mind.Forth: Thoughts on AI and Forth

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1052883.1052885
ACM Sigplan Notices 39(12):11-16 Forth and AI Revisited: BRAIN.FORTH

http://www.sl4.org/archive/0205/3829.html

http://pub.ufasta.edu.ar/ohcop/curso2003/27-Activi dad12.ppt

http://books.iuniverse.com/viewgiftoc.asp?isbn=059 5654371&page=1

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/307824.307853
ACM Sigplan Notices 33(12):25-31 Mind.Forth: Thoughts on AI and Forth

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1052883.1052885
ACM Sigplan Notices 39(12):11-16 Forth and AI Revisited: BRAIN.FORTH

http://www.sl4.org/archive/0205/3829.html

http://pub.ufasta.edu.ar/ohcop/curso2003/27-Activi dad12.ppt

http://books.iuniverse.com/viewgiftoc.asp?isbn=059 5654371&page=1

No, I'm sorry, but that's not sufficient.

The compiler (which is executed as a binary) itself could be subverted.

The compiler can take the good friendly Open Source, compile like normal (for the most part,) but then inject some nastiness wherever it was programmed to.

Even observing the compilation of the compiler does not help, because someone can subvert the compiler that compiles the compiler.

What I recommend: Humans performing pencil & paper counting under scrutiny of video camera and representatives of competing parties. Distribute the video tapes of the counting process on the Internet, and maintain archives for at least 12 years.

5. Fund more important research.

Except of course that java is completely insuitable for writing an operating system in,

Really? What makes you say that?

Java works just fine for Operating Systems, just like LISP did before it. It's just that the idea of *needing* assembly/C for OSes is so ingrained that people can't get over it.

running an OS written in java we would need the average machine from five to ten years from now

Bull. In fact, Java OSes have the potential to be *faster* than today's OSes. Why? Because no hardware protection is needed from code. It's all handled in the memory model, making it impossible for GPF/segfaults to occur.

What we should be focusing on is improving the security of native code execution through mecahnisms such as pro-police, systrace, chroot/jails, improvements in memory guards for instance see the recent changes to openbsd for the way it should be done.

Dead. End. Until you can absolutely control the code, someone will always find a way out of your little cage.

No its not hyperbole, look at eclipse it needs (with the jvm) 450MB of ram and is miserably slow to work with, all of other software running on my machine at the same time has a smaller footprint and is much more responsive.

It is hyperbole. Eclipse is a development environment, not a regular desktop app. Comparing footprints there is just silly. I can find you plenty of "native" development environments with very similar footprints.

What needs to happen is the realization that software development cannot be undertaken by the lowest common denomitator, bridge design isn't, java, C#, are not a panacea, they are a bandage for a social problem not a technical one.

As long as you trust the programmer instead of a system that makes the problem impossible, you WILL have security holes. Not because the programmer is lazy (though that doesn't help), but because he's human and makes mistakes.

Now guess what:

Vinton Cerf works for Google now. Google wants to become a provider and they buy their own communication cables for an alternate internet. Ergo, Google will allow Vint to create a new Inernet protocol, which will have a number of features, which will make AOL/Microsoft cannot provide.

Of course, AOL/Microsoft can buy the market share, but if Google's protocols and Internet is the next generation, then Google will get its market share. And there is nothing that AOL/Microsoft can do about that.

His paper makes the inference that you know what a GOTO is and what it does, and explains why under most circumstances it's not the best choice.

His paper is very short -- you might want to give it a quick read.

Did you read his essay? He makes no such assertion. The main point he makes (in abstract terms): "The unbridled use of the go to statement has an immediate consequence that it becomes terribly hard to find a meaningful set of coordinates in which to describe the process progress."

It's not exactly the same thing, but the most powerful and clever C code example with an 'underhanded' purpose must be Ken Thompson's classic...

Reflections on Trusting Trust
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/

Other interesting papers that come to mind include Tom Duff's on Unix viruses, as well as McIlroy.

Sam

sam @ iamsam.com
http: /www . iamsam . com

Some of my professors have developed a tool to help structual testing. JaBUTi (Java Bytecode Unterstanding and Testing) can test java applications and components even it the original java source code isn't available. It is possible to do the structural test through several approachs, like control-flow (all-nodes, all-edges) and data-flow (all-uses, all-potential-uses).

I have used this tool during some time and it is amazing. It generates graphs of the code you are testing and it can be integrated with junit.

Check this paper for more details: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1072118.1072 131

20 Questions is not where it's really at in artificial intelligence.

Mind.Forth is the True AI you're not supposed to know about.

Stumble upon Forbidden Knowledge in artificial intelligence and you could be in danger because you Know Too Much.

Slashdot readers figure out the Hidden Truth for themselves.

914pcbots.com is the Forbidden A.I. Zone where techies discuss installing secret AI Minds in PC-based robots but: Hush! (It's a big secret -- Forbidden Knowledge).

Novamente is another truth-will-out story of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

AGI Mail List is where the l33t heavyweights talk about Artificial General Intelligence.

AGI Secret Archive is where you may eat of the fruit of the tree of the Forbidden Knowledge about artificial general intelligence.

Lasciate ogni esperanza, voi che entrate .

Upon what basis can you say that you do possess the ability to think rationally and logically? I do quite a bit of thinking, discussing, and writing that is rational and logical. I have several examples of my writing available on my personal website, if you care to take a look, and have been published by the Association for Computing Machinery's Ubiquity. You can see two articles I have published on Rice University's Connexions project here and here.

I would be interested in reading something that you've written and published, that can support an argument or point of view without resorting to name-calling.

Upon what basis can you say that you do possess the ability to think rationally and logically? I do quite a bit of thinking, discussing, and writing that is rational and logical. I have several examples of my writing available on my personal website, if you care to take a look, and have been published by the Association for Computing Machinery's Ubiquity. You can see two articles I have published on Rice University's Connexions project here and here.

I would be interested in reading something that you've written and published, that can support an argument or point of view without resorting to name-calling.

Upon what basis can you say that you do possess the ability to think rationally and logically? I do quite a bit of thinking, discussing, and writing that is rational and logical. I have several examples of my writing available on my personal website, if you care to take a look, and have been published by the Association for Computing Machinery's Ubiquity. You can see two articles I have published on Rice University's Connexions project here and here.

I would be interested in reading something that you've written and published, that can support an argument or point of view without resorting to name-calling.

> Linux allows the user to have a far greater degree of confidence for a relatively small expenditure of effort. For example: It is possible to understand your firewall's operation and to validate that there are no vendor supplied backdoors and that there are no port knocking exploits other that those you may choose to define yourself.

You think that you can really know that there are no backdoors? Why? Because you can look at the source code and understand all of it? Even then, you can't guarantee that the gcc didn't compile in a backdoor. What, you have the gcc code too?! Well, how was that compiled? Read Ken Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust" here: http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/

Er, could anybuddy spare a few coins for Open Source Artificial Intelligence?

You don't even need to fund an unknown AI startup. Just hire some hotshot programmers and Steal.This.Idea!

It's all described in the scientific literature of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
Be the first on your block to launch the Hard Takeoff of a Technological Singularity.

I once read a paper written by Cristina Videira Lopes, a pioneer of aspect oriented programming, in it she stated that AOP is a significant breakthroug, but that the next step is to include elements of natural language in programming languages.

She says that natural language is not suited to write computer programs, but it has powerful elements that can be useful in transferring ideas more closely to the way we think. An example of such elements are temporal references such as before and after.

You can read the abstract to one of her papers here. Very interesting stuff.

Mind.Forth is the world's first open-source, public-domain, no-charge-to-use True AI that you may adapt and modify to use as an electronic brain to know facts about your business and to not only answer questions but also to advertise your business when you modify the AI source code and pass it on further with your advertising messages embedded in the free, educational artificial intelligence.

914 PC BOTS is a discussion forum where you may share information about installing the free Mind.Forth software in your own PC BOT robot employees and customer service representatives.

It's all described in the free-to-read-online AI4U alternative textbook of open-source artificial intelligence.

Right.
Also, just because the number of published bug reports/security holes in Linux outnumber the ones published for Unix-X doesn't mean Unix-X is more secure. Linux is not only the most popular Unix on the Internet, but also the most widely used platform for security testing and systems research. If you read up papers on automatic bug-finding tools (à la Coverity), testing tools, model checkers that look for security bugs - they're all over Linux, making a case for themselves by claiming having found '100s of security holes in Linux' (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=502041).
No other OS gets that kind of attention.

I recommend patent examiners/lawyers joining organizations like the ACM http://www.acm.org./ They've become an invaluable resource and their digital library is excellent.

I fail to believe that the USPTO doesn't have a system that can access a database or achive of not only previous patents available to them but of a large amount of freely available papers etc.

The guidelines need to be revisited and they should be revisited on a regular basis. What you've basically stated is that the job is not getting done. It's unacceptable, especially when the technology is available at a cost so infinitely small. It's just unacceptable.

If you haven't already, read Trusting Trust. Interesting, at least.

Computer Science as an industry is following that of the TV and VCR repair men. When TVs and VCRs are expensive they get em fixed....Early on there was Computer Science. Now they have splintered into various factions like various specialized sciences following certain areas, (MIS,IT,DBAs,Programming, etc.)

And then there are people who still do real Computer Science as opposed to programming or "Computer Related Work". There's a nice quote by Dijkstra to the effect that Computer Science is as much about computers as Astronomy is about telescopes. Computer Science is still going quite strong, and there is active and intersting research into a variety of fields.

I am a mathematcian, so I am not really all that up on all the various interesting areas of CS are these days except for the odd bits that cross my path. One of those is Algebraic Specification, which is an effort to formalise the design and specification of systems (software) using algebraic techniques. In practice this could mean vastly more reliable software down the line. For now it means a lot of hard slog involving a lot of pure math (universal algebras, category theory, etc.) which doesn't involve a computer in any way shape or form. You can get some idea of the sort of thing they're doing here, or here, or just google Algebraic Specification. It's pretty exciting stuff from the mathematician's point of view (some very lovely mathematics finding practical application).

Don't misinterpret what CS is, and what it offers.

Jedidiah.

Finally, if we had a keyboard like this, we might finally get programming languages with decent mathematical symbols -- instead of crap like !=, **, and so on.

And when we do, we'll have the programming language to make use of it.

While it's all well and good that Tim B-L gets all that publicity, please don't forget Robert Cailliau, who worked with TBL on the WWW at CERN (and who is - by the way - a very decent chap!). He's also been awarded the 1995 ACM Software System Award by the ACM for his work on the WWW - see http://www.acm.org/awards/ss_citations/1995A.html
See http://robert.cailliau.free.fr/ByLetter/M/Me/CV.ht ml for more details. Or read http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-286207-3
Dan.

http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/

Read Ken Thompson's classic paper on just that. He makes the case that it would, in fact, be not terribly difficult to hide code that does exactly what intel is being accussed of in an open source compiler, without anyone ever knowing it was there.

Really?

http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/

Ken Thompson proved that unless you can see the compiler assembly, you can't trust the compiler.

He did it to show that the further down you go, the harder it gets to detect such things. So you wrote a new compiler to get around that? Great. How're you planning on compiling it?

Never forget that Open Source is no guarantee of security in and of itself.

woof.

The concept of relational databases definitely came from IBM (http://www.acm.org/classics/nov95/toc.html). They were also the creators of the first disk drive (http://www.duxcw.com/digest/guides/hd/hd2.htm). Those are the only two that I can verify off of the top of my head.

To say that IBM hasn't out-innovated Microsoft is ludicrous. To say they haven't out-innovated them in the software market is an entirely different matter (and one that I don't know enough about to delve into).

Read this with a British accent: "Additional research into the potential problems of fragmentation can be found in the 1987 paper "Fragmentation considered harmful" and the more recent "Fragmentation considered very harmful" from 2004."

Does that remind anyone else of a sentence that Douglas Adams would write? They still can't replace my favorite, though - Go To Statement Considered Harmful

I suspect that's why people have been saying "hey, that seems a lot like [insert drawing program here]" - this is a (somewhat) new twist on old techniques. (Which, of course, is why it's a one-page submission to the conference, rather than a 10-pager like the original "Computer-Generated Watercolor". Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Java is very important in the research community. I have been a grad student for past 3-4-5 yrs (..have lost count by now :) but I have never used any language other than Java for my projects/experiments . Be it simulation requiring a Knowledgebase of million RDF triples or be it a Medical Imaging Software to be used by Physicians.. it does it all.

Somehow 'application researchers' like me are fascinated by the extent of its use.. (drawing nice GUIs or plotting graph with existing Jars)

With regards to question of scaling..lately companies like IBM have been working towards creating optimized JIT compilers for Java.. I had benchmarked one during my internship at IBM Research.. and it gave nearly similar performance to native C/C++ apps.

From the ACM code of ethics imperative 1.2(http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html):

"In the work environment the computing professional has the additional obligation to report any signs of system dangers that might result in serious personal or social damage. If one's superiors do not act to curtail or mitigate such dangers, it may be necessary to "blow the whistle" to help correct the problem or reduce the risk. However, capricious or misguided reporting of violations can, itself, be harmful. Before reporting violations, all relevant aspects of the incident must be thoroughly assessed. In particular, the assessment of risk and responsibility must be credible. It is suggested that advice be sought from other computing professionals."

+ // Google mods
+ const char* allowed_host = \"video.google.com\";
+ char * host_found = strstr(p_sys->url.psz_host, allowed_host);
+ if ((host_found == NULL) ||
+ ((host_found + strlen(allowed_host)) !=
+ (p_sys->url.psz_host + strlen(p_sys->url.psz_host)))) {
+ msg_Warn( p_access, \"invalid host, only video.google.com is allowed\" );
+ goto error;
+ }

Make was originally created by Dr. Stuart I. Feldman in 1977. Dr. Feldman was working at Bell Labs at the time. Since it is old, many derived tools have appeared that work better. Among these are BSD make, GNU make and A-A-P. In 2003 Dr. Feldman received (http://campus.acm.org/public/membernet/storypage. May.2004.cfm?story=4&CFID=23207696&CFTOKEN=2889574 4) the ACM Software System Award (http://www.acm.org/awards/ssaward.html) for the invention of this important tool.

Make was originally created by Dr. Stuart I. Feldman in 1977. Dr. Feldman was working at Bell Labs at the time. Since it is old, many derived tools have appeared that work better. Among these are BSD make, GNU make and A-A-P. In 2003 Dr. Feldman received (http://campus.acm.org/public/membernet/storypage. May.2004.cfm?story=4&CFID=23207696&CFTOKEN=2889574 4) the ACM Software System Award (http://www.acm.org/awards/ssaward.html) for the invention of this important tool.

I would have to disagree with the poster - significant researching efforts have been put into question answering and factual data retrieval from the web. Visit the University of Massachusetts Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval website. For a more specific project, check out QuASM

But even if the source is clean, you still have to trust the compiler. And you cannot actually do that unless you verify the source code of the compiler. But then you of course also have to verify the compiler that was used to compile the first compiler etc. And what about the operating system or processor. Can you really trust them?

So it boils down to that for some boundary you just have to trust whatever it is depending on.

Why attack the source code when you can instead attack the compiler?

You need only attack the compiler, or the linker, or the interpreter.

Reflections on Trusting Trust , Ken Thompson's Turing Award speech.