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Robot: Is it true they bite your neck, suck your transmission fluid and then you become a human?
Bender: Sure, why not?

http://www.geocities.com/zoidberg_fan/episodes/bot _planet.html

...Here, here is our best hope for Microsoft. They are combining the strengths of Windows CE from their impressive mobile line, Windows ME, and of course, the reliability of the Windows NT kernel...

GIF Product Brochure

The guitune project seems to do everything your second program does. Linux only at the mo' (but in gtk or qt flavours)

There's loads of metronome free software around too.

Nope, you've got that wrong. It is actually my favorite song, so I'm going to upgrade right away!

I am working on a small (around 40,000 lines) 2D platform-style game in C using the Allegro library. I started the development last year in MSVC 6, because that was all I knew (before switching to Linux). Now that I use Linux, I learned vim, and enjoy it immensely for smaller projects, Makefiles, etc. Even though I found vim's taglist plugin, which allowed me to navigate between functions quickly like I had been used to, I found it insufficient for my needs. Eclipse CDK sounds nice, but I stopped trying to use it after about a half hour because it was far too bloated for my Dell laptop with a Celeron processor. I eventually settled on Anjuta, which I find amazing. I like how you can have it list every function in your project (distributed across multiple source files even) listed alphabetically on the left side. Autocompletion is nice, saving me typing time, and one key build + one key execution = saved time as well. I discovered Code::Blocks from this thread, though, and will investigate.

In the end, if I'm developing in C, I use: vim for smaller files, because it is better at moving text around, Anjuta for larger projects, because it is better at navigating through all the files/functions, and MSVC if I HAVE to because I'm on a Windows Only environment where I can't install anything else (like work!). The End.

don't play well with common home automation systems

You can modify X10 light switches (which are normally incandescent-only) so they'll work with fluorescent lights. As long as you don't try to dim fluorescents, they'll work OK...some of mine are six years old now and still working OK. (This isn't the best writeup I've seen on the subject, but it's a start.)

I couldn't find active links for one or two of them myself, but here's an updated list -- in some cases these aren't the original sites, which have disappeared, so obviously it's worth being extra careful with antivirus software... apologies for the mess of links; the filter doesn't like short lines...

1by1 (play MP3s), AriskKey (recover passwords), AutoRuns (enumerate startup tasks), BurnCDCC (burn ISO images), CD (basic CD player), CDex (rip CDs + convert MP3/WAV), Copier [0X Copy Machine] (scan + print), CWShredder (clean spyware), DComBob (tame DCOM), DirLister (make quick file lists), Discover (force windows onscreen), DupeLocater (find and clean), FileRecovery [PC Inspector] (undelete), Folder2ISO (use with BurnCDCC), FoxitReader (read PDFs), GUIPDFTK (split/join PDFs), HijackThis (find spyware), HJSplit (split/join files), Identify_Boards (identify hardware), KatMouse installer (due to MS drivers), LCISOCreator (make ISO image from CD), Leaktest (test firewall), Microsoft keygen (people lose things), MultiRes (change res + force refresh), Multi Timer (stopwatch), NoteTab Light (text editor), NTest (test monitor setup), OnTop (pin windows to foreground), Process Explorer (task manager), ProduKey (recover passwords), Registry Commander (virus cleanup), ResHacker (examine executables), Rootkit Revealer (just in case) ShootTheMessenger (turn service off), Shred by AnalogX (simple filer shredder), TedNPad (unicode text editor), TFT (dead pixel locator), UNPnP (tame SSDP), UPX (compress executables), UnitConverter (what it says), utorrent (basic torrent app), VCdControlTool (mount ISO images),

I couldn't find active links for one or two of them myself, but here's an updated list -- in some cases these aren't the original sites, which have disappeared, so obviously it's worth being extra careful with antivirus software... apologies for the mess of links; the filter doesn't like short lines...

1by1 (play MP3s), AriskKey (recover passwords), AutoRuns (enumerate startup tasks), BurnCDCC (burn ISO images), CD (basic CD player), CDex (rip CDs + convert MP3/WAV), Copier [0X Copy Machine] (scan + print), CWShredder (clean spyware), DComBob (tame DCOM), DirLister (make quick file lists), Discover (force windows onscreen), DupeLocater (find and clean), FileRecovery [PC Inspector] (undelete), Folder2ISO (use with BurnCDCC), FoxitReader (read PDFs), GUIPDFTK (split/join PDFs), HijackThis (find spyware), HJSplit (split/join files), Identify_Boards (identify hardware), KatMouse installer (due to MS drivers), LCISOCreator (make ISO image from CD), Leaktest (test firewall), Microsoft keygen (people lose things), MultiRes (change res + force refresh), Multi Timer (stopwatch), NoteTab Light (text editor), NTest (test monitor setup), OnTop (pin windows to foreground), Process Explorer (task manager), ProduKey (recover passwords), Registry Commander (virus cleanup), ResHacker (examine executables), Rootkit Revealer (just in case) ShootTheMessenger (turn service off), Shred by AnalogX (simple filer shredder), TedNPad (unicode text editor), TFT (dead pixel locator), UNPnP (tame SSDP), UPX (compress executables), UnitConverter (what it says), utorrent (basic torrent app), VCdControlTool (mount ISO images),

This might be the Discover he has. I found that on virtualdebris which seems to have some of the other software he is using.

I haven't used any of it, so I don't know if it will melt your USB drive.

These e-textbooks are not books in the customary sense. Sandi Kirshner, chief marketing officer for Pearson's higher-education group, says the e-textbook is offered only on a "subscription basis," which means that a student buys access for a defined period, like a semester, and cannot resell access to the book to others.

Hello, I am making a motion capture system with NaturalPoint's OptiTrack cameras: http://geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/ Here is a sample video: http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/mocap34.wmv It can output BVH which can be loaded by other apps like Poser: http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/Poser.wmv

Hello, I am making a motion capture system with NaturalPoint's OptiTrack cameras: http://geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/ Here is a sample video: http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/mocap34.wmv It can output BVH which can be loaded by other apps like Poser: http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/Poser.wmv

Hello, I am making a motion capture system with NaturalPoint's OptiTrack cameras: http://geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/ Here is a sample video: http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/mocap34.wmv It can output BVH which can be loaded by other apps like Poser: http://www.geocities.com/mocap_is_fun/Poser.wmv

"The Barnes/Humphreys hypothesis does not stand up to analysis. Barnes is correct that the dipole element of the magnetic field has indeed decreased in strength since the 19th century. However, as geologist Brent Dalrymple points out, "Barnes completely neglects the nondipole field. The same observatory measurements that show that the dipole moment has decreased since the early 1800's also show that this decrease has almost been completely balanced by an increase in the strength of the total observed field which has remained almost constant." (Dalrymple, "Can Earth Be Dated from its Magnetic Field?", Menlo Park, CA, 1992)

Barnes also presents no evidence whatever to support his assertion that the magnetic field has been decaying exponentially, or that it becomes progressively stronger in the past. And, in fact, there is no need to speculate on what the strength of the earth's magnetic field was in the past, since we have a way to directly measure it. Metallic particles such as iron are partially magnetized by the earth's magnetic field and will line themselves up with the magnetic poles. By examining these particles, we can determine the strength of the magnetic field. And such examination shows that the earth's magnetic field has not been decaying steadily. Clay pottery and other archeological finds which date to about 6,500 years ago indicate a magnetic field that was about 20% weaker than today, while artifacts from just 3,000 years ago show magnetic fields that are 45% higher than today. Thus, rather than decreasing steadily since the time of creation, the earth's magnetic field has fluctuated, weaker at some times and stronger at others. "

- http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437 /magnetic.htm

I do have the CD "installed" in hdd7, a 7200 rpm 160 GB hard drive.
That is done only one time, and that's it. Takes only a few extra minutes. You do nothing but watch, or go fix a cup of coffee.
Once you are up and running, the system does not write to it, like a real linux hard drive installation, such as RHL 9.
I would imagine that eventually, a lot more people will be using a "livecd linux", when
security problems overwhelm Windows.

I have an unusual approach to security in a livecd linux, running web browsers.
(I put three in the CD, Firefox, Opera and Flock.)
Check out my Getting Started Guide for details. This approach makes encryption unnecessary.
And, yes, I do have the Guarddog Firewall, preconfigured, started automatically during bootup.

--Rapidweather

The first time I was able to try that out was on an ADAM computer.

I didn't think it was slow at the time. I had one financial problem that I had ADAM work on, and expected it to take almost all night, so I had it ring the bell when done.
I went to bed, and 10 minutes later, it went "ding", and was done with the calculations.

I don't mean to imply that it could draw graphs, but it could give you lots of points in a calculation that could be used in a graph. I usually printed the results out to the screen, so I could see what was going on at any time.
The ADAM printer was not fast enough to keep up with that if you had to have a printed copy.
You wouldn't want one anyway, too many points (perhaps 10's of thousands) in these calculations. You could do all sorts of stuff, finance, geometric shapes calculations, tables of all sorts. Have the program show you the result when it finished. Start it over with another input variable.

Never got tired of entering various variables and seeing the results.
The ADAM was a real computer in that sense.

--Rapidweather

http://airlinesafety.com/faq/faq8.htm

A history of aviation-related fire fatalities. One other interesting note is at least some planes used to have CO2 systems built-in. They would depressurize the plane and release CO2. Some early systems left out the depressurization step and as a result asphyxiated the crew when the plane began its descent (CO2 is heavier than air). It seems like a bit of a risky strategy with everyone breathing through oxygen hoses, but at that point I guess you just hope the ceiling isn't on fire. At least then the pilots can see.

As another (not verified) note: Standard airline BCF cabin-stowed extinguishers discharge for 13 secs. The statutory number carried on a 200-300 seat jet is five.

Doesn't sound like very good fire coverage to me.

When I first looked over the title story, I thought "why not use a livecd linux with a usb key for personal settings, etc."
I have one, see the screenshots link below.
It depends on what the user has to do with his/her workstation. I have set up my knoppix remaster to do very specific things, mainly surf the internet, get email, and edit web pages and upload them. I have GIMP in there. But, other applications can be placed in the CD, as I have a fully automatic remastering script, that will prepare an .iso after everything is placed in the master filesystem to suit everyone. Also, I have a fully automatic "master copy" script, that will set up a "master" of the existing CD in a hard drive partition that you select, ready to work on, and receive new additions. You can chroot into the filesystem, but you don't have to in many cases just to add applications. I update Mozilla Firefox all the time without chrooting. This involves the use of EmelFM, the file manager, and of course one can write new scripts to go in there with SciTE. I do that all the time.
With Knoppix, and a Knoppix remaster such as mine, one can set up a "persistent home directory" on a USB memory stick, but it is easier to just use a restoration tarball, on the stick, to get the portability desired.
My remaster is based on Knoppix 3.4, and will run very well on 400 mhz machines with only 128 mb of ram.
An example of that is my HP Pavilion 6330, that been fitted with a 400 mhz AMD K6-2 processor.

With anything like this, it is best to keep it simple, to keep costs of maintaining the system low.
Once one gets everything in the CD, then lots of copies can be made, and the work can be done on a variety of machines.

My Getting Started Guide is online.

I have a blog here.

--Rapidweather

After much research I bought an IBM Model M (from the silver logo era) from http://www.clickykeyboards.com/. I liked it so much I bought a second one for the office. The only problem I had was when I upgraded to a modern USB KVM. I even performed a simple mod on the PCB to allow it to work with the KVM and I've been cruising ever since. The info for the mod is at http://www.geocities.com/jszybowski/keyboard/.

I have not used Notepad since I started using various linux distros to do work on my websites.
For a while, I used Gnotepad, then discovered SciTE, which I now include in Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux. No problems whatsoever with SciTE. I include Opera 9.01, build 400, and it is configured to show page source in SciTE. Provides super-fast editing of pages.
Check the screenshots page in signature, below.

I do use Blogger, mine is here. Right off the bat I had problems with Blogger handling images, so I have to put them off-site if I want to show one. They do provide a reliable and reasonably easy-to-use service, however.

You should talk to this guy:

http://www.geocities.com/patchnpuki/other/compress ion.htm

The Getting Started Guide for my Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux has sections on how the three web browsers in the remaster handle the ~/.mozilla, ~/.opera or ~/.flock that are created while the browsers are running.
All three browsers are set by default to delete the cookies and browser history, cache when they exit, but two of the browsers take an extra step, they delete the entire ~/.opera and/or ~/.flock.
Firefox retains it, giving the user a choice to restore ~/.mozilla for use next time, even though it will not have cookies, history or cache.
Firefox will have saved bookmarks, such as RSS feeds added by the user.

Currently, the remaster has Opera 9.01, Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6, and Flock 0.7.4.1

All three browsers start with a default ~/.opera, ~/.mozilla, ~/.flock that is only loaded into /ramdisk when the user starts the browser. That way, if they do not want to use anything but Opera, then there is no ~/.mozilla or ~/.flock at all.

Using dialup will also mean a new IP address each time, further complicating a record of the user's web history.

--Rapidweather

Most damning is the fact that more than 1 million Taiwanese have voluntarily emigrated to mainland China.

"'What vitality!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything and destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won't submit.' And I remembered a Caucasian episode of years ago, which I had partly seen myself, partly heard of from eye-witnesses, and in part imagined."

An excerpt from a bit longer essay I wrote:

In August 1980, Byte magazine published its issue on the Forth programming language

At that time, I was working with Control Data Corporation's PLATO project, pursuing a mass market version of that system using the Intelligent Student Terminal (IST). The IST's were Z80 processor terminals sporting 512*512 bit mapped displays with touch sensitive screens and 1200bps modems that went for about $1500. We were shooting for, and actually successfully tested, a system that could support almost 8,000 simultaneous users on 7600-derived Cybers (the last machine designed by Seymour Cray to be marketed by CDC --with 60 bits per word, 6 bits per character, no virtual memory, but very big and very fast) with under 1/4 second response time (all keys and touch inputs went straight to the central processor) for $40/month flat rate including terminal rental. Ray Ozzie had been working at the University of Illinois on offloading the PLATO central system to the Z80 terminal through downloaded assembly language programming, doing exotic things like "local key echo" and such functions.

I was interested in extending Ray's work to offload the mass-market version of the PLATO central system. In particular I was looking at a UCSD Pascal-based approach to download p-code versions of terminal functions -- and even more in particular the advanced scalable vector graphics commands of TUTOR (the "relative/rotatable" commands like rdraw, rat, rcircle, rcircleb, etc.) if not entire programs, to be executed offline. Pascal was an attractive choice for us at the time because CDC's new series of computers, the Cyber 180 (aka Cyber 800) was to have virtual memory, 64 bit words, 8 bit characters and be programmed in a version of the University of Minnesota Pascal called CYBIL (which stood for Cyber Implementation Language). Although this was a radically different architecture than that upon which PLATO was then running, I thought it worthwhile to investigate an architecture in which a reasonable language (you should have seen what we were used to!) could be made to operate on both the server and the terminal so that load could be dynamically redistributed. This idea of dynamic load balancing would, later, contribute to the genesis of Postscript.

Over one weekend a group of us junior programmers managed to implement a good portion of TUTOR's (PLATO's authoring language) advanced graphics commands in CYBIL. Our little hunting pack at CDC 's Arden Hills Operations was in a race against the impending visit of Dave Anderson of the University of Illinois' PLATO project who was promoting what he called "MicroTUTOR". Anderson was going to take the TUTOR programming language and implement a modified version of it for execution in the terminal -- possibly in a stand-alone mode. Many of us didn't like TUTOR, itself, much. Indeed, I had to pull teeth to get the authorization to put local variables into TUTOR -- and we were determined to select a better board from our quiver with which to surf Moore's Shockwave into the Network Revolution. CDC management wasn't convinced that such a radical departure from TUTOR would be wise, and we hoped to demonstrate that a p-code Pascal approach could accomplish what microTUTOR purported to -- and more. We quickly ported a TUTOR central sy

His support was crucial for the passage of the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 which, although largely resisted by NASA at the time became a bellweather for future launch service policy.

PS: I do regret not having mentioned Dr. Van Allen's support during my Congressional testimony.

Cyc is only words and descriptors. If you attach them to 3d shapes and actions in the 3d world, the program can imagine what you're saying. It can even obey and do tasks if hooked up into a robotic body and scan the room. It requires the technology of being able to scan its environment then run something like the program they run to find text inside of images. Instead of finding text inside of images, its finding objects inside an environment. Pretty simple once you understand the basics, but it will take a lot of work. A longer descriptor of this can be found at: AI page Cyc isn't a waste, but you need to do something harder to make it into AI, you need to attach 3d objects to every noun, and apply 3d actions to every verb, etc. I'd say that'd be on the realm of next to impossible, so yeah what they've done really doesn't advance AI at all.

I've placed RSS feeds in Opera 9.01 (Build 400) and in Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 in my knoppix remaster. Since this is a livecd linux, I wonder how these feeds, enabled by default to download the feed stories when the browsers start up, might be a security risk.
I'm only using feeds like FoxNews, Google News, Yahoo News, CNN News, and of course, Slashdot. There are 13 in Opera, and 9 in Firefox.
The user can quickly set up additional feeds, I am sure. These may link to sites that are not trusted, I suppose.

Here's my Blog.
I have more details there on RSS for the browsers in a livecd linux.

-- Rapidweather

Now, an anonymous coward claims that the "New York Times" is lying.

Does the anonymous coward have proof that the "New York Times" is lying? Well, does he?

PUT UP OR SHUT UP!

Its frustrating to see how frivolously we - as a society - spend our existing resources. Here we are, burning through our fossil oil - which will never be replaced - at a rate of 85 million barrels per day. Investment bankers, IP lawyers, executives, etc are "earning" more money than I will see in a lifetime, yet my dreams - as an engineer/scientist - will never see the light of day due to my lack of "people skills" which are required by the executive corporate hiring manager... and I have no idea how to get one of those "grants".

Or, as Bennett Bauer would say:

I'm not "camera friendly". I don't "wear clothes that fit me". I'm not a "heartbreaker". I haven't "had sex with a woman"; I don't know "how that works". I guess I don't "fall in line". I'm not "hygenic". I don't "wipe properly". I lack "style". I don't have "charisma" or "self esteem". I don't "own a toothbrush" or "let my scabs heal". I can't "reach all the parts of my body". When I sleep, I "sweat profusely".

The real Taiwan is, indeed, an independent state, but its people support most of the geopolitical objectives of Beijing. The weapons that we Americans have sold to Taiwan will find their way into the hands of Beijing.

I'm not a kid anymore...
I happen to be writing my PhD right now, and as you may guess I shouldn't be writing this message! I can't help but think ubiquitous Internet access is not _always_ a good thing, and I think having no computer in my childhood helped me save time for studies.
With the multiplication of portable devices, I think it should be better to have no wireless in classrooms (but in the cafeteria).
There are (old, replace netscape with firefox) guidelines: http://us.geocities.com/andrewbroad/cs/cs710/advic e.html


netscape.pl

#!/bin/perl

use Time::Local;

$day= (localtime)[6];
$hour= (localtime)[2];

if ((($day < 5) && ($hour < 17)) || (($day == 5) && ($hour < 15))) {
print ("GET TO WORK!!!\n");
} else {
exec("/usr/local/bin/netscape");
}

I'm running Firefox 1.5.0.6 now, but since I use a livecd linux, I'll have to put it in there when I can. (automatic updates won't work on livecd linux)

Right now, I just set it up in /ramdisk, and change the preferences as I want, for my ~./mozilla

I run it from a user shell (knoppix) and here I am.

My latest CD has Firefox 1.5.0.5, and I checked Mozillazine and found that the upgrade is mostly because of a flaw affecting Windows Media Player. Probably something else, too, but I guess they automatically make a Linux version anyway, just so the version numbers don't start forking off..

I have 9 RSS feeds, so I copied my bookmarks.html file over to it's place in ~/.mozilla, and restarted Firefox, and my feeds are up and running.

Yes, everyone is running us ragged with these constant updates, probably needed for Windows for sure, but less so for Linux, and even less for livecd with Guarddog firewall. Not going to be left behind, however, so I'll put it in my next build of Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux.

I started this evening out to test Opera 9.01, build 400, got that done, next I'll work with Flock, it is a little behind Firefox right now. I also have Flock in my CD, but I remove myspace as a bookmark, too much bad press, etc.

-- Rapidweather

-FL

-FL

Here's a list of all the virtual tabletops I know of
http://gametable.galactanet.com/
http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=maptool:intro
http://trisrpg.bronzeforge.com/index.htm
http://users3.ev1.net/~mem5000/
http://www.battlegroundsgames.com/index.html
http://www.codemonkeypublishing.com/index.php?modu le=htmlpages&func=display&pid=21
http://www.enworld.org/RolePlayingMaster/
http://www.fantasygrounds.com/
http://www.geocities.com/trainz_ca/ID/
http://www.ghostorb.com/
http://www.kloogeinc.com/
http://www.nbos.com/products/screenmonkey/screenmo nkey.htm
http://www.openrpg.com/
http://www.opnpw.com/
http://www.tabletopmapper.hpg.ig.com.br/
http://www.travellerrpg.com/Catalog/software.html
http://www.triaxe.co.uk/dnd/index.php?page=Online% 20Chat
http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/viewingdale/index.htm
http://www.webrpg.com/gamesystem/

"From the pic, you can tell that it was powered by linux."

Here's a shot from the pic (motion picture) that proves the Linux involvement with Mary Poppins: http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/cinema/4756/pop pins3.jpg

• What happens if someone sues a soap company for a life time of itchy skin because they used some bad chemical...
• What happens if someone sues a chemical company for manfacturing or dumping harmful chemicals...
• What happens if someone who has a brian tumor sues a govenment body for letting nutrasweet onto the market...
• the list goes on...

You're right, sort of. Hizbollah and Hamas just launch 20 or 30 rockets into Israel on any given day from Lebanon and "Palestine". Funded and supplied by Syria and Iran. Usually fired while surrounded by children in the middle of villages and civilian populations.

The amount these terrorists surround themselves with children is amazing. The pictures are hard to find, since they're mostly taken by terrorist friendly AP stringers, but they're out there.

Here are a couple examples.

G.R.O.S.S.

see http://www.geocities.com/lsyuen.geo/gross.html
I think the knock sensor would be cool for security, have a secret knock, just like in the pillow forts and tree house clubs of yore.
also...for the kid in you...
http://www.knock-knock-joke.com/

-FL

Star Wars Technical Commentaries - teh roxxorz
http://theforce.net/swtc/

Babylon 5 Tech-Manual
http://www.b5tech.com/index.htm

Uplift Universe Galactic Library
http://www.geocities.com/allianceforprogress/encyc lopedia/frontmatter/entergl.html

Agna (Benta, I. (2002, 2003). Agna Project. Retrieved April 16, 2004, from http://www.geocities.com/imbenta/agna/index.htm). This is a free product and is excellent.

NetMiner This is available from Cyram software (Korea). It costs, but is well worth it.

Reference:

Degenne, A., & Forsé, M. (1999). Introducing Social Networks (A. Borges, Trans.). London: SAGE Publications. This is about social networks, but the basic method of analysis is similar for all networks.

> Typically, the Anonymous Coward's contentless sarcasm betrays his shallow grasp of reality. The relevance is clear: When you design your service suite and do not minimize complexity, you aren't just asking for trouble, you are, by definition, producing a low quality suite. You can, in fact, produce a compression of a natural language knowledge base without even using a compression program and have that be an important human accomplishment. Epistemology is virtually defined by such advances. So the fact that the problem is computationally hard is neither here nor there to first order. The important thing is quality of knowledge.

Ignoring the fact that your post was merely a bit of self-aggrandizement unrelated to to the Ask Slashdot question, you're chasing a will-o-the-wisp. There is no universal compression algorithm.

It should be immediately obvious that, when using the same symbol set for plaintext strings and their compressed form, any compression algorithm that makes some strings shorter must make some other strings longer.[*]

Thus the design goal of any useful compression algorithm is to bias it toward the expected properties of the input strings. The algorithm that compresses English text the best probably doesn't compress Latin text the best. The algorithm that compresses Slashdot best probably doesn't compress the New American Standard Bible best. The algorithm that compresses Slashdot stories on astronomy best probably doesn't compress Slashdot stories on biotech best. The algorithm that compresses your post best probably doesn't compress my post best.

What do you expect to accomplish with a prize for best compression of some pre-specified corpus, other than finding out who can do the best job of tuning their algorithm to that corpus?

You certainly won't learn anything about artificial intelligence. Hor help thesandbender with his IT question.

[*] You can get ahead by using different symbol sets for the strings and their compressions, but if you are going to process them with a binary computer and/or store them on binary media, you're stuck with {0,1} under the hood, regardless of what superficial symbol sets you specify.

Odd. Make that http://www.geocities.com/redoregon/crunch - for whatever reason, Geocities doesn't like the standard "/" ending for a URL. Whatever!

Been there, done that. Bad tibia/fibula break in a Harley accident; bones didn't heal due to an infection. Cleaned the mess out, bone/skin/muscle graft, and the little zapper box. The box sat on my belt, with two wires that went to sticky pads (like EKG connectors) that were situated on either side of the break.

Healed that sucker up in about four weeks (quicker than the six weeks anticipated, if memory serves). Only had to swap out the 9v battery once a day.

Full details of the accident at http://www.geocities.com/redoregon/crunch/. Also a link to the blog about followups, etc., at the end of the page.

OK, "Crazy Jim", you hear voices in your head and go for a drive, though you're unable to drive normally, so I don't expect seeing mere words on your screen will change your mind about anything, unless they're signed "Love, god". But in the interest of sanity, I'll point out that the snake symbol for medicine predated Moses, as I've already mentioned twice in this thread, plus links to Wikipedia which mention many such antecedents. "It's just how god did it" doesn't do anything for those of us attached more to reality than to our fantasy visions. Especially when your visions morph a mere staff, never said to be a cross in the Old Testament, into a cross that could prefigure your pet symbols. Or when a snakebite for the 2000 years since Jesus has continued to kill people. Or when sin's power not only continues to affect people, but Christians continue to blame "the snake".

There are many things in my old relatives' narcisisstic ramblings that are predictions of my coming to save the world. Especially if you ask them now about their hazy recollections of the past. There are many things that I have fulfilled that were not even predicted. But I don't believe any of that makes me the messiah. Because I'm not crazy.

A while back, I made a surface-plot generator for POV-Ray. A bit of overkill, perhaps, but effective.

Simple solution - immediately before you upgrade a major component, run:
sysprep -nosidgen

You have the choice of running with existing settings or running mini-setup if you're running XP SP2. The only thing I can't recall is what effect that'll have on activation...

Otherwise the only other thing you'll have problems with is changing the underlying HAL from ACPI to non-ACPI.

See: MS sysprep kb article and more usefully Killian's sysprep guide

The C-Prize is the path to superhuman AI.

And as for the "threat" of superhuman AI:

Even assuming AI were to develop the equivalent of genetic self-interest, (something that would take a long time even if humans turned them lose to reproduce without us selecting them appropriately) I'd much rather be in competition with a species that had the potential of being symbiotic due to having a different ecological nich. If it gets to the point that the solar output (forget the sun falling on Earth here -- that's too insignificant to consider important to a silicon based life form) is the limited resource, I suspect that the nich humans will fill will be orders of magnitude larger than they now fill on earth.

The best hope humans have of the transhumanist wishful thinking is to develop superhuman AIs that find utilizing the gas giants to their advantage given the limited supply of silicon. Humans, as the highest form of organic intelligence, would be the natural species to transit to higher intelligence.

Maybe the super AI's could get around this by using a straight carbon semiconductor form of intelligence or something but there is more going on in our brains than we understand. For example, I suspect there is a lot more quantum logic going on within our brains than currently thought by cognitive scientists and neurologists. It only makes sense evolution would have exploited every angle of the physics of the universe to create intelligence. My point in bringing in the possibility of quantum logic is that there are really many things we don't know about natural systems of high complexity and I suspect the same will apply even to super AI's. The fact that we might have the laws down cold at the quantum level doesn't mean we know how things operate in the higher complexity systems.

Human brains are very valuable repositories of ancient wisdom about the universe and the most optimal thing for the super AIs to do -- at least for a while -- would be to transhumanize our brains for us.

Moreover, if it is ok to pass laws to prevent the creation of intelligences greater than our own, why isn't it ok to pass laws dumbing down the smartest among us?

The self-determination argument applied to humanity as a whole -- striving to maintain control of its own destiny by preventing the creation of higher non-human intelligences -- applies also to people who want to maintain control of their own destiny against those smarter than themselves.

Personally I'm much more frightened of unenlightened self-interest than I am enlightened self-interest.

I really wish it were possible to make some of the "smart" people who are really good at grabbing control of resources intelligent enough to understand that they are using those resources in very stupid, self-destructive ways.

Indeed, it is this abysmal stupidity among the shrewdest among us that is my main motivation for promoting super AI.