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Facebook seems to have gotten big mainly by chance. like being the only bacteria in the pietry dish. The only savvy they had was realizing the peitre dish was available and rushing to get there first.

You're right, no one ever thought of social sites before Facebook.

AOL is right to assume some hoakey server is a spambot. It is easy to use a free, reliable, well known group remailer that AOL will already have on its white list.

http://groups.google.com/ or http://egroups.com/
are easy and reliable and conveneient.

• New ATAPI driver. Our new ATAPI driver supports UDMA-133 on all major chipsets, and has been tweaked to interact well with the latest DVD-RW and DVD+RW drives. Coupled with a new revision of the soft update code, you can rest assured that your data is safe.
• Better NTFS support. Release 4.5 includes the ability to natively read and write to NTFS 5.0 filesystems, making it easy to retrieve your important files when you upgrade from Windows 2000 or XP.
• Better wireless support. FreeBSD has been updated to support all major 802.11b and 802.11a chipsets. The IEEE spanning bridge kernel module has been updated to fully implement software-based wireless access points - another FreeBSD first.
• POSIX capabilities. The support for least-privilege mechanisms in the kernel has been greatly improved by Roger Watson's recent work. Most binaries that were formerly setuid root now use capabilities instead, which provides a level of local security that has only been dreamt of on other unices.
• Better soft updates. Our soft updates filesystem code has been further improved. Soft updates set the standard for data integrity and performance. Why use a clunky, slow, unstable journaling filesystem like reiserfs when you can use a proven winner instead?
• Improved Linux emulation support. For those of you who prefer the stability of a BSD to the bleeding-edge trainwreck of Linux, this is a way to have your cake and eat it too. We have tested thousands of free and commercial products for Linux, including Netscape, Oracle 9i, and even TuxRacer, and have fixed all known incompatibilities.
• Java support. We now include a native, Free software Java VM and compiler. This removes the last roadblock to the use of FreeBSD in the enterprise.

/Jordan

My roommate interviewed for a position at WebRing.org while they were in the middle of the Yahoo acquisition, and he revealed a dirty little secret that the interviewer let slip: Yahoo wanted to lay low for a little while to keep building critical mass, then implement interruption based advertising so that in order to get to the next site in the ring, users would be forced to sit through a 10-second Flash animation (probably coupled with a few pop-under X-10 ads).

Naturally, the waning popularity of webrings in general made it an economic reality that the ad revenues generated wouldn't even cover the cost of running the service. So, Yahoo dropped it, predictably enough.

What Yahoo! does makes a lot of business sense. However they are forsaking a large amount of goodwill as they acquire and corrupt various sites that used to be very nice resources. Alas, that is the way of the capitalist. I can't say I'll feel sorry when it comes back and bites them later.

df

P.S. My roommate got the job offer but, fearing imminent layoffs, did not accept.

Rest in peace, free anonymous services. We'll bury you in a shallow grave right next to the free long distance calling services and the free mailing list services.

Here's a paper I found from decentralization mailing list, it's a hash table distributed to each node in the network. It's reliable, fast enough and scalable. I've thought a few additions to it which would allow storing the content inside the hash too and how to search for data. The original authors may have better ideas but at least I know it could be made to work :)

well, it seems that if you have a Shinco DVD Player (or an Apex AD 500/703), there's a few people working on adding support for DivX to the firmware they've been hacking. they've already hacked in the menus that made the Apex AD-600A so famous, and have extra unused space in the firmware, enough space to add mini-dvd support and hopefully DivX soon.

the page is here

I wonder if Linux could approach a mass market in this particular function, and further weaken the need for proprietary solutions in the e-publishing world?

Let's hope so

The overhead with PayPal (both in terms of their operating costs and what they charge their users) is as bad as it is with creadit cards, so it really doesn't solve the micropayment problem.

Really this is just one facet of the larger issue: PayPal is just another middleman. They're a bureaucracy, which can screw the little guy just like all the other middlemen. (And if you need an example of how, just take a look at the debacle with the Webplayer co-op.)

I bet there are 100s - maybe even 1000s - of Linux hackers that would buy a Linus action figure!

LinuxMall, Linux Central, Cheap Bytes or some other Linux retailer could get them made & sell them. They all sell stuffed Tux dolls already.

Or maybe a co-op buy like the Webplayer Co-op could work.

I believe, given what Michael Sims (yes, that Michael Sims, Slashdot/YRO editor) did against Censorware Project, this information is important to this discussion. And I'll take any karma hit for it.

The http://censorware.org site has been taken down since the following was posted, more than a month now.

Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 16:49:46 EST
To: CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
From: Jonathan Wallace <jw@BWAY.NET>
Subject: The Censorware Project

I've been trying hard to avoid washing dirty laundry in public, but a couple of recent posts have raised the issue and I'd like to give an account of what happened to the Censorware Project (the site at http://censorware.org is now offline). What we have here is the spectacle of a group member who volunteered to act as webmaster effectively closing a group which wants to continue, because the domain happened to be registered in his name.

The Censorware Project was originally an informal collective of six people who collaborated online to fight censorware: Seth Finkelstein, Bennett Haselton, Jamie McCarthy, Mike Sims, Jim Tyre and myself. After Seth left the group, the remaining five continued. Several of us had never met or even spoken on the phone, yet for some time--around two years as I recall--we had a remarkably easy collaboration. There was no funding, no hierarchy, no titles, not even project managers. Someone would suggest a project and take the responsibility for a part of it, others would sign up for other elements, and proceeding this way we got a remarkable amount of work done, including reports on X-Stop, Cyberpatrol, Bess and other products.

Even though two of us were attorneys--Jim and myself--we never incorporated the group or wrote a charter or any contracts among ourselves. Mike Sims was obliging enough to register the domain, just as other members paid for press releases and the other incidental expenses which came along.

Robert Frost said that "nothing gold can stay," and the Censorware Project was no exception. Over the summer, Mike Sims' reaction to a perceived slight was to take the site down for a week, exactly as Seth says in his mail. He sent us mail at the time saying something like "The Censorware Project is over." I replied to him that, given that the group was a collective and we all had an interest in its work product, the domain, and the goodwill it had achieved, the decision was not his to make. Sims did not reply.

Mike put the site back up a week later without explaining, let alone apologizing for, his actions. Given his continuing failure to answer any email from me (and I think from others) and the overall signs that Sims thought the group was exclusively his, I wrote him several emails requesting that he turn the domain over to Jamie or Bennett, as I felt we could no longer trust him to administer it. We also found out during that time that important email from people trying to contact us, including members of the press, was not being answered by Sims, nor being forwarded to other members.

I ultimately became exasperated that my name was listed as a principal on what had now become a "rogue" site I had no control over. Over about a five week period, I wrote Sims several more emails asking him to delete my name from the site if he wasn't going to transfer the domain. Again, I received no reply.

Today, Sims took the Censorware Project site offline again, with a message which says "Due to demands from some of the people who contributed, in however minor a fashion, to this site, it has been taken down." Judging from some email I received from him today, this means me.

Its a sad thing, both because we got some good work done and because some of the other members of the group were eager to continue and in fact have continued working, while deprived of the Censorware Project site, name, email aliases and public recognition. These further efforts are appearing on Bennett Haselton's Peacefire site, www.peacefire.org. (I applaud the work but take no credit as I have not been involved in some time.)

On the page currently at www.censorware.org Sims makes the following request: "If you are interested in volunteering to fight censorware, please contact me." One of the reasons I made this post was so that anyone considering working with Mike can make an informed decision.

It's not just pure caloric restriction that causes the marked effect in extension of ones life span. CRaN (Calorie Restriction and Nutrient suplementation) is a highly specialized dietary regime where your caloric intake is greatly reduced and controlled while at the same time the nutrient intake is increased so that all essential vitamins and mineral levels are maintained. Note that most CR practitioners that I know strive to avoid the need for additional supplementation of thier vitamins, minerals and nutrients by makeing sure there are 'complete' meals intake not through the use of Vitamin supplements. (all do use some supplements btw but the goal is to make sure everything you need is in your food)If you restrict without additional nutrients you will end up malnourished/starved and eventually you will die way before your median lifespan. Research has proven that this works in various lab animals where life span (I am using mice here as an example) of an adlib group of animals is rougly 36 months and a CRAN group of these animals may live 45-55 months. Primate research is underway at a few universities but the results may take 45-50 years to be fully realized. The mechanism that causes this is probably a lack of free radical damage due to the limited caloric intake but more research will need to be done to prove this as such. The estimates by many noteable gerontologists such as Dr. Roy Walford tends to place the maximum lifespan of man at roughly 120 years. It could be possible for people to attain 130-140 years on this lifestyle if they start early enough (post puberty by say 2-3 years with a 20% degree or greater restriction).More information can be found at some of these links: Calorie Restriction Via Non-Gourmet Cooking
CR Society Mailing list Archive
Stealing Time Article on PBS
Life Extension Magazine CR is NOT for the undisciplined folks out there. It is a very difficult and possibly dangerous regime with many fantastic benefits but it takes a LOT of hard work to do and to do right. My wife and I have been practicing CR on and off for the past two years. When we are doing it correctly I can honestly say I feel awesome(and not very hungry btw) but when we mess up our bodies let us know very quickly that we are eating incorrectly. Back to topic... The interesting thing about the discovery of this particular gene is the potential for use as gene therapy etc.of course none of this matters if you get hit by a bus while crossing the street ;-)

140 encoding characters? From what I can see of the encrypted message, there are roughly 600 characters in the entire message. Once you get to the point where the number of encoding characters reaches the number of message characters, isn't the entire information content transferred to the encryption key, and you the message itself becomes garbage?

Frankly, I'm amazed Gil Broza was able to solve something with so little information left!

Satellite imagery confirmed our suspicions that his lipids are dangerously elevated and also detected the presence of hemmorhoids.

The only thing I've seen problems with, though, is the lack of a random play feature for MP3s (and fastforward/rewind in MP3 files, but I wasn't expecting that).

Now if they would release the firmware source code...

The best hope for Raite is for another company to buy them and start making them again.

For more information on the Raite players (including firmware files), I recommend the egroups Raite group.

I too, am rather a UNIX newbie, and not remarkably knowledgable. However, I feel that a lot of the concepts in organization on computers we use need re-thinking. Check out our e-group, and maybe we'll get something done. ;)

Terradot

Heres the link to the decentralization group on e-groups

PyApache is what I use, no troubles with Apache 1.3.14 and Python 1.6; hackable.

Mod_Python which is closer to mod_perl in philosophy, I think.

Mod_Snake which is kinda like the same thing only different.

The latter two projects don't offer me enough enhancements to make me switch from PyApache yet; so I haven't as much experiance with them. PyApache has the feel of a defunct project, I haven't heard of any efforts to make it work with (Apache|Python) 2.0+

Just to keep this from being completely offtopic, Obfuscated Python is possible. AMK's ARC4 in python is a good example. If you're feeling particularly evil you can do really nasty things by mixing tabs and spaces and taking advantage of the fact that indentation need not be constant throught a file (this block @ 3, next @ 5, one after that at 4, etc.)

Join the Virgin Web Player Co-Op The Virgin WebPlayer Co-Op

This is a quick info page to inform and register interested parties. The Co-Op exists to gather the collective purchasing power of /. readers and associated appliance hackers, so that we can bargain collectively for bulk rates of defunct and recalled Web Players. With bulk rates, we can enjoy a lower purchase cost, and the offer might actually attract Virgin enough to convince them to sell us units rather than scrap them. We don't think they'll consider it worthwhile to sell to individual customers at this point, but if they do, you can be sure it will cost a lot more.

If you are interested in joining us, please send mail to Jake Schlachter, at schlach@hotmail.com, and subscribe to the listserv (instructions below). Include in email the maximum you'd be willing to spend on a Web Player, including shipping, and how many units you're looking at picking up. I think $50 US per is reasonable, but less than that may be possible.


News:

Post by schlach at 5:15 pm EST
We now have a listserv compliments of egroups.com. To join, send email to
webplayer-coop-subscribe@egroups.com

The list info page is here, and it has a little bit more information on the list, as well as archives of old messages.

Post by schlach at 3:30 pm EST
Virgin wasn't kidding about the dead number. There are 11 people left at IAN, and none of them seem to be in the office at the moment. =) Poor Silicon Ally fscked company. I just wish we could do more for them... =)

Continuing to look for someone to talk to.

Post by schlach at 3:10 pm EST
Alright! Initial response has been good, but the more the better, so please spread the word. I'm going to see if /. will update the story with a link. If anyone wants to post to any of the appliance hacking BBSs, please do.

Virgin fronts the Web Player for Internet Appliance Network, IAN, which is who went belly-up. The network service was provided by Vertical One Corp. Virgin's number for IAN is already out-of-service, but they're checking for any other contact info.

Post by schlach at 11:00 am EST
This page created at 11 am EST. Initial contact with Virgin at 10:30 am EST. I'll post bulletins here as events warrant, including how many interested people there are in the Co-Op at a given time, what price the units should be, etc. Glad you guys are interested.

Join the Virgin Web Player Co-Op The Virgin WebPlayer Co-Op

This is a quick info page to inform and register interested parties. The Co-Op exists to gather the collective purchasing power of /. readers and associated appliance hackers, so that we can bargain collectively for bulk rates of defunct and recalled Web Players. With bulk rates, we can enjoy a lower purchase cost, and the offer might actually attract Virgin enough to convince them to sell us units rather than scrap them. We don't think they'll consider it worthwhile to sell to individual customers at this point, but if they do, you can be sure it will cost a lot more.

If you are interested in joining us, please send mail to Jake Schlachter, at schlach@hotmail.com, and subscribe to the listserv (instructions below). Include in email the maximum you'd be willing to spend on a Web Player, including shipping, and how many units you're looking at picking up. I think $50 US per is reasonable, but less than that may be possible.


News:

Post by schlach at 5:15 pm EST
We now have a listserv compliments of egroups.com. To join, send email to
webplayer-coop-subscribe@egroups.com

The list info page is here, and it has a little bit more information on the list, as well as archives of old messages.

Post by schlach at 3:30 pm EST
Virgin wasn't kidding about the dead number. There are 11 people left at IAN, and none of them seem to be in the office at the moment. =) Poor Silicon Ally fscked company. I just wish we could do more for them... =)

Continuing to look for someone to talk to.

Post by schlach at 3:10 pm EST
Alright! Initial response has been good, but the more the better, so please spread the word. I'm going to see if /. will update the story with a link. If anyone wants to post to any of the appliance hacking BBSs, please do.

Virgin fronts the Web Player for Internet Appliance Network, IAN, which is who went belly-up. The network service was provided by Vertical One Corp. Virgin's number for IAN is already out-of-service, but they're checking for any other contact info.

Post by schlach at 11:00 am EST
This page created at 11 am EST. Initial contact with Virgin at 10:30 am EST. I'll post bulletins here as events warrant, including how many interested people there are in the Co-Op at a given time, what price the units should be, etc. Glad you guys are interested.

Please have a look at the archives for the thinknic-tech mailing list at egroups - you'll notice lots of @oracle.com addresses in the responses. They've been very supportive of the burgeoning developer community for these boxes.

As a side note, we've just rolled out 125 of these boxes as X-based terminals on our High School campus - booting completely off the network and they just plain rock. My hat's off to the company for producing such a flexible piece of hardware!

These things have been hacked all up and down already, and this is one of the most content-poor accounts I have seen. Here are some better resources:

• eGroups thinknic and thinknic-tech
• The (Unofficial) NIC FAQ-O-Matic
• Kaikun
• NICHacker.com
• BICNic.com

I've gotten one of these myself (littlelarry.capnbry.net, currently offline), pulled it apart, soldered another power connector on, and added a hard drive. The Cyrix PR266 is pretty underpowered, but it runs linux like a scalded dog.

Despite the trolls, Instant Runoff Voting (IRV, aka Preferential Voting) is generally considered far superior to plurality winner-take-all. In the US, there is no constitutional problem with IRV (in fact, it has been endorsed in a consenting opinion by the Supreme Court, and by figures as diverse as Ralph Nader and Rush Limbaugh).

Due to a recent supreme court decision which invalidated blanket primary systems, the state of WA is revamping its primary system. Instant runoffs, due to their ability to collapse multiple virtual runoffs into a single round, are a cheaper replacement for primaries. It is very possible that the many groups interested in better democracy in WA (the Grange, the League of Women Voters, and the minor parties) will use the citizen interest in this issue to run IRV as a state initiative. If you're interested in this issue, contact me via email (it's not even obscured; leave the cookie in, please, even though I can handle it with or without).

ObOnTopic:
Anyone interested in voting systems should know about Arrow's Theorem, which states that there are no "perfect" ; voting systems. The only way to have a group of people preferentially rank a group of options so

1) new options will fit neatly into the ranking without mixing things up;

2) if everybody agrees on a ranking that ranking is chosen;

and 3) new voters who prefer A to B never cause B to win over A

is to have a dictatorship (ignore all voters except one). My personal choice of "ideal" system is to elect executives via borda selection among the condorcet-winning group. And then a house selected by proportional representation and a senate by approval voting. Hey, a boy can dream.

There really is an ICANNt. It's by the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility's for people who tried and failed to become ICANN Members-at-large due to the ICANN's failure to provide adequate servers. But if you're interested, the ICANN CANNOT - WE CAN site has signed more people up and is probably a better bet.

One cypherpunk going by the handle "mystery_inc" has posted the results and some analysis of the decoding to the PoeCipher mailling list at egroups. You can read his entire message here.
He believes it says:

it was early spring warm and sultry
glowed the afternoon the very breezes
seemed to share the delicious languor of
universal nature as laden the various
and mingled perfumes of the rose and the
jessamine the too dense abatis wildflower
they slowly wafted their fragrant offering
to the open window where sat the lovers
the ardent sun shone full upon her blushing
face and its gentle beauty was more like the
treetop of side wind romance of flirt
inspiration of a dream than the actual
reality of earth tenderly her lover gazed
upon her as her glittering ringlets
were eased by amorous and sportive
zephyrs and when he permitted the rude
intrusion of the sunlight he sprang to
draw the curtain and she gently stayed
him no no dear charles she softly said
much rather would i have a little sun than
no sun at all

Yeah! That's the aim of the InterSAINT Project! Imagine Artificial Neural Networks algorithms running in millions of distributed computers. They would learn from different data inputs to achieve good goals. There's also a mailing list for the project. NOTE: The power of all the computers connected to the Internet could now be very near to the power of one human brain (in terms of speed, memory,... ).

--
ACid

Curious that no one has listed the links for the Page, Company, or Source Code. Let alone the Forum or associated presentation. Maybe this will help: http://www.networkice.com/altivore/

DigitalContent PAC

I urge anyone who is outraged by this to join the DigitalContent PAC, a new grassroots organization that will represent the rights of citizens with these issues.

http://www.egroups.com/group/DigitalContent
DigitalContent PAC

I urge anyone who is outraged by this to join the DigitalContent PAC, a new grassroots organization that will represent the rights of citizens with these issues.

http://www.egroups.com/group/DigitalContent
DigitalContent PAC

Never mind that Nader has made money off of those corporations he hates so much
DigitalContent PAC

Film/game companies exist to make money. Why should they release art films/games that don't make any money?
DigitalContent PAC

You might be interested in a long post I sent to two email lists where I develop the same application twice in the on the fly programming style. First in a pseudo Prolog and then in Self (a Smalltalk dialect). This is what Smalltalk is specially good at, so it seems strange that you feel it can't do it.

little demand for Smalltalk programmers:

This is probably true, but it is likely that the supply is even smaller so that it might be a good career move for someone to learn Smalltalk. Over the past few years three different US companies have contacted me asking if I wouldn't be interested in moving up there to work for them. In case you are thinking that they were just after cheap labor, I made it very clear that I would be expensive and they were still wanted me so there might be a genuine shortage.

http://www.egroups.com/group/digitalcontent/
DigitalContent PAC

http://www.egroups.com/group/digitalcontent/
DigitalContent PAC

Please join the DigitalContent mailing list
http://www.egroups.com/group/digitalco ntent/ we will plan to proactively voice the web communities concerns about copyright and free speech. Please join.
DigitalContent PAC

Please join the DigitalContent mailing list
http://www.egroups.com/group/digitalco ntent/ we will plan to proactively voice the web communities concerns about copyright and free speech. Please join.
DigitalContent PAC

Actually I believe Moveon.org was successful at changing some opinion on the impeachment issue and they've done some organization relating to gun laws.

It just proves that this online stuff needs to be followed up in meatspace tho.
DigitalContent PAC

In general, I like to recommend that people do a little research before they take what Michael says too literally. Unfortunately, Google seems to have got bored with Michael's magnum opus (the page in which he describes his love for the GNU project is particularly fun), but it still lists many of the other mailing lists Michael has tortured over the years.

For those of you interested in actually organizing the movement against this and other content related intrusions, please join the DigitalContent listserv at:

http://www.egroups.com/group/DigitalCon tent
--
Chaosnetwork

I'm not sure how much these two tools will overlap, but you might try checking out the IB Designer mailing list. They're currently debating what license to use, leaning heavily toward an MPL variant.
--

While all the big media outlets hype online voting, my feeling is that they (and the masses who follow them) are obfuscating the true future of online citizen participation.

In the near future, citizens won't simply be voting, they will be building and deliberating initiatives, in other words, legislating! With citizen-sponsored initiatives already legal in 24 U.S. states and hundreds of municipalities, it's only a matter of time (and a few technical steps) before we see not-for-profit online sites dedicated to ordinary citizenry posting initiative ideas and asking other citizens to "sign their petition," followed by the constructing of the legislation, deliberating on that, then finally, voting.

There are already cases of individual initiative sponsors putting up web sites to promote their initiatives and to get individuals to snail-mail them their petition signature. And with digital signatures becoming legally binding, it thus becomes easier to gather signatures online.

The bottom line is that the citizenry inevitably won't just settle for voting on their representatives every two years. They will want to decide individual issues and implement them in real-time. Direct, digital, deliberative democracy is the next big thing.

For great discussion about direct democracy, I recommend taking a look at cicdd.

Steve Magruder

I've been maintaining the NICfit site, and one of the concepts I've been toying with has been to create "personality discs" for the NIC. I'm thinking the NIC is going to catch on, once they're ready to meet demand, and their current OS catches up with the others (it looks like they were planning on Mozilla, but Mozilla fell short, so they hacked in Navigator 4.73...), but I can see a whole lot of uses for a machine like this that are as easy as flipping a new disc in the drive. I don't think the hardware is ready for games, per se, but certainly there's more than one group out there who'd like to make their configuration management a little easier by burning a copy of a Linux install that can't be hacked...

The other project we've got designs on is a kernel with NFS and SMB, mpg123, busybox, and so on, to run in flash and free up the CD-ROM for MP3s as well. There's room for more, certainly, such as support for any cheap, USB-based wireless options that show up with Linux support.

The thinknic-tech and thinknic lists on eGroups are dreaming up new NIC projects, and I'm keeping track of them on the NICfit projects page...

"Comparisons between the Insight and Prius are inevitable. While they do have a lot in common, there are also some significant differences: in format, technology, amount of fossil fuel consumed, smog-causing emissions levels (as measured by California LEV, ULEV, SULEV standards), greenhouse gas emissions and performance..."

I'm an Insight owner, in Northern Virginia. I purchased the car in April.

It is the best car I have ever owned, out of 5 cars total.

My current miles per gallon is 50, I drive primarly in Surburbia, with a little on the highway, and even less in D.C. The car has a 10.8 gallon tank, so I fill-up about every 2 weeks. Other owners have gotten over 72 MPG, depending on traffic, driving conditions, speed, etc.

The car has great pickup, I can peel-out with no problem. I can even get it to peel-out in second sometimes. My max speed is about 95, though others report the car's max speed is 133.

I am about 6 feet tall, the car is comfortable, I think it would be comfortable for taller people also.

I paid about $23k for mine, 9.5% interest financed through the dealer (I will be changing to a credit union soon).

My Insight is #453, I'm hoping to sell it as a collectable in 5 years, after my warrenty is up :)

More info:
Honda Insight eGroups
insightman
Insight Central
Honda

--

The answer:
http://www.egroups.com/message/fr eedows-chat/237?


-Davidu

if you like spam, try... http://www.egroups.com/group/dunno-com
This is where emails to xxx@dunno.com all end up.

It never got off the ground.

The question I have is for timothy and the other slashdot operators. Why did you pick McKinstry to answer questions about telescopes? I gather that he happens to work at an observatory as a night assistant. Perhaps he has a good deal of knowledge about giant telescopes, but none of the supplied links demonstrate that.

As for hacking consciousness, his idea of minimal intelligence appears to be anything that responds in a non-random fashion. I propose the sequence "11111111111111..."

And we're supposed to ask him serious quesitons? Might as well ask Lars.

I guess I do have a question for Chris. He says that he entered a program in Loebner's Turing Test but withdrew because "Hugh Loebner stated that to win, a program must respond to audio/visual input and not just text." But that is only to win the $100,000 grand prize. Why wouldn't Chris leave his program to compete for the $2,000 (text-only interface) prize?

Steve Robbins

It never got off the ground.

The question I have is for timothy and the other slashdot operators. Why did you pick McKinstry to answer questions about telescopes? I gather that he happens to work at an observatory as a night assistant. Perhaps he has a good deal of knowledge about giant telescopes, but none of the supplied links demonstrate that.

As for hacking consciousness, his idea of minimal intelligence appears to be anything that responds in a non-random fashion. I propose the sequence "11111111111111..."

And we're supposed to ask him serious quesitons? Might as well ask Lars.

I guess I do have a question for Chris. He says that he entered a program in Loebner's Turing Test but withdrew because "Hugh Loebner stated that to win, a program must respond to audio/visual input and not just text." But that is only to win the $100,000 grand prize. Why wouldn't Chris leave his program to compete for the $2,000 (text-only interface) prize?

Steve Robbins

I have three similar questions:

Will the MindPixel Digital Mind Modeling Project be open source? Will GAC be an open consciousness? Will your database of MIST stimuli be freely available for the use of other artificial consciousness researchers?

I've discerned some of your intent from the arcondev archives and from Jeff Elman's Finding Structure in Time. You seem to believe that the amount of effort required to carry out your experiment mandates some kind of economic incentive structure to get people to participate; as I understand it, you intend to issue participants stock in MindPixel Corp proportional to their contribution, and then share the profits from any commercial exploitation of the result.

I have two problems/arguments with this:
1) Economic reward as the sole means to incent participation ("production") is an unprovable axiom underlying most economic theory. It totally disregards the human needs to create, communicate, and form communities. The success of the open source software movement has proven this assumption wrong. People can and will participate for other reasons; in fact, the commercial character of your project may disincent some people, especially the audience here. Have you considered other incentives? (I'm not taking issue with the incentive, but rather that it seems to be based in part on keeping the results private.)
2) You yourself have emphasized Elman's point about the "importance of starting small." I think this statement and his initial failures also indicate the importance of starting multiple times. If your project is closed, it will prevent (to borrow a software development term) "forking" the consciousness. A single GAC will tell you less than many GACs.