Slashdot Mirror

skwilcox writes "From Wikipedia: 'The Loebner Prize is an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the chatterbot considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test. A human judge poses text questions to a computer program and a human being via computer. Based upon the answers, the judge must decide which is which.' My chatbot, Suzette, won this year's Loebner and even confused a judge into voting for her over a human (or should I say he confused himself). Here is the blow-by-blow of this weird event." Read on below for the rest; this sounds like it would have been a fun competition to watch. skwilcox continues:

"When I arrived at the contest, I figured I had good odds to win if nothing went horribly wrong. Yes, Suzette had easily qualified over the 3 other competitors (her score 11 pts, the nearest competitor's 7.5). Her design and data naturally gave her an edge over her competitors on the human knowledge test questions of the qualifiers. But human judge chat was an entirely different matter than the qualification test. Still, I felt she could carry on a detailed conversation better than the others and should win.

Initial installation of the programs occurred on Friday. From prechat conversations with the other contestants I learned that A.L.I.C.E. came with 3 redundant disks. Yet all three turned out to be blank! What a scare that must have been. Dr. Wallace managed to install by retrieving the program over the Internet. Cleverbot is now at 45 million lines of memorized user chat (at a rate of doubling every year). And UltraHal is now listening to tweets, so has 300K of user chat it learned and 400K of tweets it has accepted for learning (code decides if the user has had enough responses and doesn't trigger any red flags).

Then we get to the competition. While the CalState organizers had initially planned to have various interdepartmental professors act as judges (like English dept, etc.), they backed out at the last minute, so all the judges were from the Engineering/Computer Science dept. Talk about guys who might know what to expect from chatbots! And all the humans were students from the same departments. What a weird mixture to compete in. And then, each round was 25 minutes. That's bad if you want confuse a judge about who is human. But really, the programs have no chance for that. So it's good because it gives the human time to compare each program against the other. Though it's not clear to me that the judges tried to use their time to do that.

And the students didn't really understand their role. It was merely to BE HUMAN and convince the judges of that. Before startup there was informal chatting between humans and judges, which was obviously inappropriate and it was then pointed out to the humans that since the judges already knew their names, they had best use false ones in the competition.

So, Round 1. After a few exchanges, somehow Suzettte got stuck into repeating exactly what the judge said for the rest of the round. I have no idea how. The round is a total disaster. I've never seen such a bug before. Maybe it's in my only-lightly-tested protocol for the competition. I have no idea. But it completely derails my hopes for Suzette. She could still win on points only if she outdoes her opponents for every other judge and the other contestants vary all over the place.

Round 2, a great demonstration of Suzette. She should win on this round alone.

Round 3 gets off to a horrible start. Somehow, Suzette can hear the judge but the judge can't hear Suzette. Makes no sense. A couple of restarts of Suzette doesn't fix this. Eventually they restart the judge program, and that clears it (not that that makes any sense either). Then, after a few rounds, it's clear Suzette has the judge from hell. He wants to know who she's going to vote for in the upcoming election (the unspecified California governor's race). And when she has no useful answer he wants her to name a candidate in the race. And when she has no answer to that, he simple keeps repeating the question ad nauseum, insisting she answer it. Suzette gets irritated. Then she gets angry. Suzette then gets bored. Suzette threatens to hang up on him The judge doesn't back down until the last seconds of the round. I figure that's the end of life as we know it.

Round 4 is a mixed bag. Suzette is ok but not great. It's all over.

When the scores are tallied, Suzette ties with Rollo Carpenter's Cleverbot for 2nd-3rd. Yet, it turns out, the 3rd round judge got the human subject from hell. Poetic justice! The human was all over the place -- confusing, vague. The judge voted irritated/angry/bored Suzette as human. Instant win since no other program swayed the judges.

What more can I say?"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "You may recall that a few weeks ago the Court rendered a detailed decision providing for safeguards in connection with the RIAA's proposed inspection of the defendant's hard drive in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The decision instructed the RIAA to submit a proposed protective order consistent with the Court's decision. The RIAA submitted a proposed protective order yesterday, which attracted some thoughtful commentary by readers of my blog, but today the Court rejected the RIAA's suggested order, explicitly rejecting many of the 'enhancements' included by the RIAA, including production of 'videos' and 'playlists' which might be found on the hard drive. Instead the Court entered an order the Court itself had drafted. The Court explained that 'the purpose of compelling inspection is to identify information reasonably calculated to provide evidence of any file-sharing of Plaintiffs' copyrighted music sound files conducted on the Defendant's computer. Once this data is identified by the computer forensic expert... any disclosure shall flow through the Defendant subject to his assertion of privilege and the Court's authority to compel production, just as disclosure would occur in any other pre-trial discovery setting... (1) As should have been clear from the Court's May 6, 2009 Order, although the Plaintiffs may select experts of their choosing, these individuals are not to be employees of the Plaintiffs or their counsel, but must be third-parties held to the strictest standards of confidentiality; (2) the inspection is limited to music sound files, metadata associated with music sound files, and information related to the file-sharing of music sound files — it shall not include music "playlists" or any other type of media file (e.g., video); (3) the Examining Expert shall be required to disclose both the methods employed to inspect the hard drive and any instruction or guidance received from the Plaintiffs.'"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Well, Phase I of the RIAA's misguided pursuit of an innocent, disabled Oregon woman, Atlantic v. Andersen, has finally drawn to a close, as the RIAA was forced to pay Ms. Andersen $107,951, representing the amount of her attorneys fee judgment plus interest. But as some have pointed out, reimbursement for legal fees doesn't compensate Ms. Andersen for the other damages she's sustained. And that's where Phase II comes in, Andersen v. Atlantic. There the shoe is on the other foot, and Tanya is one doing the hunting, as she pursues the record companies and their running dogs for malicious prosecution. Should be interesting."

2muchcoffeeman writes "Former Linspire president and CEO Kevin Carmony — whose relationship with his former employer has turned acrimonious, to say the least — reported on his blog that Xandros and Linspire signed an agreement in principle for Xandros to buy Linspire June 19. Carmony includes a scan of the memo to Linspire shareholders announcing the deal, which requires the former Linspire company to change its name. According to the memo, the stockholders voted to change the company's name to Digital Cornerstone, Inc. Despite the wording of the Linspire memo to stockholders, this deal apparently came as a surprise to Carmony and other stockholders. Some here may remember that both Xandros and Linspire signed patent protection deals with Microsoft in 2007."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "MediaSentry, in an attempt to stonewall discovery in UMG v. Lindor, has turned over nothing other than a collection, apparently a complete collection, of its publicly filed affidavits. However, these do make interesting reading indeed, and as comments started trickling in on my blog, I realized that for the technically minded among you there are probably a number of good laughs in these materials. So in keeping with the Slashdot community's analysis of the RIAA's not very expert, 'expert' witness, I thought you might like to take a shot at its not very factual, 'fact' witness."

gholmer writes "Eric Van Hensbergen reports that Plan 9 has been successfully booted on IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer. A live demo will be attempted during a poster session at this year's Usenix. There is also the obligatory Space Glenda picture."

LandGator writes "Robert X. Cringely, doyen compu-columnist for PBS, reports on a hidden e-mail problem at Earthlink: They're losing up to 9 messages out of 10, found as a result of a friend's testing." From the article: "He sent messages from other accounts to his Earthlink address, to his aliased Blackberry address, and to his Gmail account. For every 10 messages sent, 1-2 arrived in his Earthlink mailbox, 1-2 (not necessarily the SAME 1-2) on his Blackberry, and all 10 arrived with Gmail. Swimming upstream through Earthlink customer support, my buddy finally found a technical contact who freely acknowledged the problem. Since June, he was told, Earthlink's mail system has been so overloaded that some users have been missing up to 90 percent of their incoming e-mail. It isn't bounced back to senders; it just disappears. And Earthlink hasn't mentioned the problem to these affected customers unless they complain."

thetan writes "Google has announced the first major upgrade to Blogger since taking over the creaking old platform. Still in beta, the new service offers a tie-in to your Google Account, dynamic pages, separate comment feeds, new layouts, an apparent merger with Google's Page Creator for WYSIWYG editing, integration of feeds, public/private access control and — of interest to bloghackers — tag-based labels for categories. Take the tour."

An anonymous reader asks: "Across the web, stories abound regarding censorship and persecution of those who publish content online that may be offensive or conflicting toward certain governments or ideals. It almost seems that you can't attach your name to anything without being heavily scrutinized for the opinions you express. Lately though, I've begun to see several communities that promote an atmosphere of anonymity to protect their users and facilitate open communication on tough subjects. PostSecret is one of the most popular of these sites, allowing a one-way publication medium for visitors to vent their frustrations, similar to Group Hug. However, both of these sites are one-way mediums, and do not provide for anonymous interaction of users. Is anonymous blogging and publication a brief fad, or a serious, growing trend?" "One rare example I've found that allows a truly open anonymous mode of communication (dissimilar to Slashdot's own automatic demotion of 'Anonymous Cowards'), is the Teen Angst Central, or Tangst. Operated by a group of high schoolers and hosted by Google's Blogger service, its editors publish posts made anonymously by visitors, with comments and discussion made to the site sprouting from a community bonded by anonymity. I think this concept can easily be applied to other aspects of online society, though I have yet to see many examples beyond the simple angst-driven outpouring of feelings."

SuperWebTech writes "A new generation of spam has emerged lately in the form of automatically-created spam blogs, or "splogs." One wily programmer manipulated Blogger's API to create a "spamalanche" of thousands of blogs whose sole purpose was to increase their real sites' pagerank. This clogged search engine results while filling RSS feed services with useless listings. Though Google, Blogger's owner, is doing its best to fix the problem, in the meantime several services have stopped listing any site they host. So far nobody has found a solution."

labnol writes "Recently, Mark Cuban of Icerocket made the accusation that Blogger is by far the worst offender when it comes to Spam Blogs. Now Google Blogger is introducing Word Verification for user comments to prevent comment spam and another feature called Flag As Objectionable where users can report blogs with questionable content. Google appears to be listening."

labnol writes "Recently, Mark Cuban of Icerocket made the accusation that Blogger is by far the worst offender when it comes to Spam Blogs. Now Google Blogger is introducing Word Verification for user comments to prevent comment spam and another feature called Flag As Objectionable where users can report blogs with questionable content. Google appears to be listening."

miller60 writes "Darth Vader has launched his very own blog: The Darth Side: Memoirs of A Monster, in which the Sith Lord holds forth in posts such as "Christmas on Hoth" and "I Am Surrounded By Idiots." The comments are a hoot as well. The homage appears to be the handiwork of Canadian Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming."

Kierkegaard writes "The Globe & Mail and Fortune Magazine both wrote a piece on Google, arguably one of the most important companies in the world, and its influence and impact on the Internet. In particular, they mention the effects of Google's recent new services, like Blogger and Maps, as well as their take on how Google threatens the Microsoft Corporation. "If Sergey and Larry stick to their corporate mantra -- Don't be evil -- and are able to stem degeneration into the typically corrupt corporate ethos, who knows, they may just succeed in assuming the fair and honourable dominion over the world's information they so naively set out to achieve eight years ago in their garage.""

1sockchuck writes "Google is now an ICANN-approved domain name registrar, an intriguing move that could be tied to its blog hosting service, Blogger. Yahoo recently dropped its domain prices to $4.98, as hosting companies use domains as a cheap way to lure customers. Registrar status could allow Google to compete aggressively on price. Bloggers seem to resist paying for hosting, so cheap domains might help Google's plans for world domination."

Dan Brickley writes "It appears that Iranian ISPs have been ordered to block a large number of popular Web sites, including weblogging, community, chat and email services. Web (particularly weblog) use has been increasing rapidly in Iran, with 64000+ weblogs published by Iranians via various sites. As of today, if the news is correct, the majority of these may be inaccessible to their authors, as will the email (eg. Yahoo) services they use to communicate with friends, colleagues and family worldwide. See stop.censoring.us and hoder.com for more details. The newly expanded blocks include PersianBlog, Blogger and the Google-hosted Orkut 'social networking' site, where Iranians come third after Brazil and USA, representing 7% of all users. How can we get our Iranian friends back in the Web?"

deadpixel writes "Gmail, the 1gb webmail service offered by Google, has gone into beta. Blogger (owned by google) users have first crack at the service. Besides the massive storage, the free service boasts a sophisticated spam filter, no pop-ups/banners, and gives you search results relevant to the emails you receive automatically. Bring on those attachments!"

dcm writes "As U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson prepares to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission to censure the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) government for increasing 'repression of its people using the Internet, democratic dialogue, religious expression,' the regime continues to block discourse.On Friday, China began blocking access to Typepad, a paid weblog hosting service in San Mateo, California. The communist regime previously blocked access to BlogSpot, Blogger's free hosting site. Yan Sham-Shackleton filed a report on the Glutter weblog, mentioning China is '...now using blocking software to stop information from leaking into the county via personal sites, an increasingly vibrant China Internet community, and a place where users are slipping in banned information. Some sites in the blogging community are turning black in protest of this event while others are reporting the incident.'"

Khazunga writes "News.com is reporting that the Google-owned Pyra are releasing the formerly-$35/year Blogger Pro weblog service for free. This is backed up by an announcement from Evan Williams at the Blogger Pro site, as well as a list of the newly free Blogger features. It's the dot-com frenzy all over again! Free services with no business plan... run for your lives!"

Khazunga writes "News.com is reporting that the Google-owned Pyra are releasing the formerly-$35/year Blogger Pro weblog service for free. This is backed up by an announcement from Evan Williams at the Blogger Pro site, as well as a list of the newly free Blogger features. It's the dot-com frenzy all over again! Free services with no business plan... run for your lives!"

Argyle writes "SiliconValley.com reports that Google has bought Pyra Labs. Pyra Labs is the creator of the Blogger software and runs the blogger.com and blogspot.com services. In weblog fashion, founder Evan Williams reported the news on his weblog in the middle of the Live from the Blogosphere event."

Argyle writes "SiliconValley.com reports that Google has bought Pyra Labs. Pyra Labs is the creator of the Blogger software and runs the blogger.com and blogspot.com services. In weblog fashion, founder Evan Williams reported the news on his weblog in the middle of the Live from the Blogosphere event."

WCityMike writes "Blogger has been severely hacked into, with users' passwords and e-mail addresses being replaced with 'hacx0redbyme' or 'hax0redbyme.' Apparently, attempts to change your password or other information do not succeed due to a major database problem. Blogger currently has no official news: its main page simply apologizes for being down for repairs and its status blog has no information, probably suffering from the same accessing problem as other blogs. In the meantime, discussion, information, and advice is appearing on the weblogs of Anil Dash and Tom Coates, as well as this QuickTopic thread. Glad I use another journaling service." We usually try to avoid "Site X Hacked!" stories, but since this affects so many people - and, heh-heh, they don't have anywhere else to talk about it - here you go.

WCityMike writes "Blogger has been severely hacked into, with users' passwords and e-mail addresses being replaced with 'hacx0redbyme' or 'hax0redbyme.' Apparently, attempts to change your password or other information do not succeed due to a major database problem. Blogger currently has no official news: its main page simply apologizes for being down for repairs and its status blog has no information, probably suffering from the same accessing problem as other blogs. In the meantime, discussion, information, and advice is appearing on the weblogs of Anil Dash and Tom Coates, as well as this QuickTopic thread. Glad I use another journaling service." We usually try to avoid "Site X Hacked!" stories, but since this affects so many people - and, heh-heh, they don't have anywhere else to talk about it - here you go.

Alexander Moskalyuk reviews below the new O'Reilly title Essential Blogging, which he points out is available not only for purchase through conventional purchase, but also with O'Reilly's Safari Online subscription, where it's available for a mere 1 point. Read on for his take on how useful Essential Blogging really is. Essential Blogging author Benjamin Trott, Mena G. Trott, Shelley Powers, J. Scott Johnson, Rael Dornfest, Cory Doctorow pages 264 publisher O'Reilly rating 3/10 reviewer Alexander Moskalyuk ISBN 0596003889 summary Introduction to running Weblogs on the Internet

Blog, Blog, Blog. Recent media infatuation with the blogging effect seems to be overwhelming. It seems that newspaper journalists have just discovered the ability to post and comment messages on the Internet, while most of the computer aficionados and heavy Internet users just shrug their shoulders when told about personal Web journals that link to other articles on the Web.

Blogging Essentials is mostly a generic guide to setting up and running your own Weblog using the software available out there. It doesn't require as much technical knowledge and Unix experience as Running Weblogs with Slash, and doesn't have a nice preface by CmdrTaco, but for a person who is determined to keep a daily journal available on the Internet, it would provide helpful reading material.

What's reviewed

Blogger, Radio Userland and MovableType are the primary products discussed in the book. Each of these packages has two chapters dedicated to it, one for beginners' introduction and one for description of advanced features. The main difference between these three products is in their hosting capabilities - Blogger wants you to keep the journal entries on its Web site and provides Web interface, Radio UserLand keeps the posts on its own server as well, while providing desktop interface, while MovableType assumes the user has a Web server on which to install the blogging software. Both Blogger and Radio UserLand allow for self-hosting, which is also covered in introductory chapters.

Another chapter is dedicated to server-based Blosxom, and in the review of desktop clients such blog utilities as BlogScript, BlogApp, BlogBuddy, W.Bloggar and Slug are covered.

What's good and what's bad

While the depth of covered material is surprisingly large for such a narrow topic, a lot of book pages are spent on displaying screenshots of the blogging software, and showing other people's blogs. The only thought that never left my mind while reading this book was "Who would buy it?" Why would you need 264 pages to explain you how to set up your own journal and run it? People who find satisfaction in running their own customized versions of online journals already know most of the material, and those who don't would probably opt in for easier Web-based interface like LiveJournal.

The book seems to be just a quick walk-through of the manuals, and if you consider that all of the reviewed products have pretty good help and FAQ sections, the need for such book decreases even more. I can hardly name anyone to whom I would recommend this book.

Table of contents can be viewed on publisher's Web site.

You can purchase Essential Blogging from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

cpfeifer writes "The Washington Post bring us this fluffy piece the details the history of the sickeningly sweet marshmallow peep and marshmallow in general. The fact that these things have tons of little air bubbles in them explains why they are so entertaining when you microwave them."

I've never cared for the term "blog," but gee, I can't really argue with the idea of a siteful of short newsy items updated several times a day. And everyone seems to agree Blogger is a great way to run your own such site, much better than the crappy alternatives. As Dan Bricklin says, "I didn't like the idea of Blogger being lost in the dotCom crash. Personal web sites were growing and important." So he got his company Trellix to license it. Go check out his account "How The Blogger Deal Happened" (and/or read the press release).