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His criticisms of Microsoft's deliberate lack of interoperability, ever-changing file-format, and attempts to establish market dominance by force aren't new, but of course it's always good to hear them publicized and repeated. About ten years ago I wrote a similar article, Please Don't Send Me Microsoft Word Documents, which includes links to even earlier essays by others.

I read this a while ago.

This is pretty similar.

There is a post on a topic dated Dec 1999: Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend

Dunno if it has already been posted but I would like to draw your attention to work done in the late 90s by a dude named Tristan Miller on the subject: http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/Why_I_Will_Never_Have_a_Girlfriend

...article Why I Will Never Have a Girlfriend written in 1999? I thougth that was written with a sprinkle more humor than this one.

From here.

I guess it's not exactly the same, as the previous one didn't use the Drake Equation...but close enough for me to raise an eyebrow.

Don't take my word for it, here's others:

http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/Please_don't_send_me_Microsoft_Word_documents

"Contrary to what you might expect from Word's supposedly WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") interface, a document produced with Word on one computer may, in fact, end up with radically different formatting and pagination even when viewed with the same version of Word on another computer! The reason for this is that Microsoft Word will silently reformat a document based on the user's printer settings. This is bad news for certain kinds of documents, such as forms, which rely on elements precisely positioned on a page."

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=87&boardid=40&threadid=51415

"My pet Word hate is when you transfer a large document to a computer that has a different default printer from the one the document was created on and Word decides to reformat the entire document to suit the new printer's default settings. This invariably means fucking up all the margins and pagination and occasionally inserting random styles that never existed in the first place."

and so on...

The primary reason sending Word docs is irresponsible (as opposed to PDF or RTF) is security. There are so many things wrong with many versions of Word in the field, like the ability to plaster you with viruses or revealing lots of stuff you never intended to show. Bad enough even some recent versions of Word simply grab an image of the RAM surrounding your document and write it to disk - along with whatever else is in RAM nearby. This is how the original [Xerox] Bravo (the origins of Word) saved documents and Microsoft didn't feel the need to improve that for decades. Add to that what the other A/C said - you assume everyone has an expensive copy of Office or Word in a [proprietary] format compatible with what you're sending.

We use Cent where I work. There's a special "Server" CD that strips out pretty much everything that's not a major requirement. I think they're taking the same path that Microsoft has with Windows: you put one version on the server, and another version on the client, and it's all tested to work very well together. In that respect, Compiz on the client might be considered a feature.

I think that "Server" CD is something your company created. RedHat split RHEL5 into "Server" and "Client" repositories, but CentOS 5 combined them into a single repository, as CentOS 4 did before. So "Server" or "Client" is just a choice of which packages you install.

Where I work, we've created kickstarts for several configurations - development workstations for a couple different teams, basic server, server with RAID. They're minor differences, and in fact I'm switching our configs to be all generated from one file through gpp. As of last night, you can get a CentOS 5 machine by booting our CD, typing workstation-x86_64 name=foo, and waiting half an hour. At some places, you don't even need to put in a CD - you can use pxelinux to boot off the network.

Mentifex, is that you?

Sending Microsoft Word files can violate your privacy.
http://www.nothingisreal.com/dfki/no-word

... trying to win a crackpot award ...

Googling the cited posting on the very Tiimely Mentifex AI Breakthrough readily yeilds the 2002 Arthur T. Murray/Mentifex FAQ regarding the author:

. . . For nearly twenty years now, Arthur T. Murray has been posting messages to Usenet and the World Wide Web. Every so often, someone new stumbles upon his writings and posts a message asking what it's all about ...

Arthur T. Murray, a.k.a. Mentifex, is a notorious kook who makes heavy use of the Internet to promote his theory of artificial intelligence (AI). His writing is characterized by illeism, name-dropping, frequent use of foreign expressions, crude ASCII diagrams, and what has been termed "obfuscatory technobabble". Murray is the author of software which he claims has produced an "artificial mind" and has "solved AI". He has also produced a vanity-published book which he touts as a textbook for teaching AI.

What are Arthur T. Murray's AI credentials?
None of which to speak.

Murray claims to have received a Bachelor's degree in Greek and Latin from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1968 [24]. He has no formal training in computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, linguistics, nor any other field of study even tangentially related to AI or cognition. He works as a night auditor at a small Seattle ...

The Singularity Timeline appears to be by Arthur T. Murray/Mentifex

I'll believe it, Arthur, when Mind.Forth gets an FP here.

Ah, good old Mentifex, back again. For those of you who are unaware of the history of one of the Internet's greatest kooks, here is a nice faq.

http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html

Please note this anonymous poster is likely Mentifex himself.

Regarding the ACM Sigplan Notices, please read this note: (taken from http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html


2.3.2 What about the SIGPLAN review?

Another document Murray often uses to bolster the credibility of his project is a review of Mind.Forth which appeared in the Association for Computing Machinerys SIGPLAN Notices [3]. Murray is either unaware or unwilling to admit that the SIGPLAN Notices is an informal, unrefereed, and largely unedited publication of the ACMs special interest group on programming languages (of which Murrays project is not one). The newsletter is written neither by nor for AI specialists, and in any case the reviews appearing therein do not represent the official opinions of ACM or SIGPLAN. The author of the article in question, Paul Frenger, is not a computer scientist, but rather a practising medical doctor who writes a monthly column for enthusiasts of the Forth programming language.


As for the Powerpoint presentation and the book, they're both written by Mentifex himself, so it does little to provide support to his arguments.

Which leaves just the SL4 posting, but alas, the poster himself has clarified his position (again taken from http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html


2.3.1 What about the Ben Goertzel endorsement?

Murray often includes in his signature a link to an archived e-mail from scholar Ben Goertzel [4]. This letter, posted to the SL4 mailing list, contains an informal review of the documents posted on Murrays website. The tone is generally neutral, except for the last paragraph, where Goertzel remarks that Murrays ideas are significantly better than most of what passes for cognitive science and AI.

What Murray neglects to mention is a subsequent retraction of sorts by Goertzel. After another list participant pointed out that Murrays theory and writing was at best highly derivative and at worst fundamentally flawed, Goertzel conceded these points [6]. In another post, Goertzel says he does not dispute that Mentifex is a crackpot project, and remarks that the claims that its creator makes for it are far out of proportion to its actual achievements. [5]

On 31 March 2004, Goertzel wrote the author of this FAQ to clarify his current stance on Murrays work. His full opinion is as follows:

At the present time, I have not studied Mentifexs theories on AI carefully enough to have a definite opinion on them. I have spent only a few hours reading through his writings, which is not enough to absorb such a mass of ideas, particularly since Mentifexs communication style is confusing at times (though very clear and crisp at times as well). I like some of his ideas and dont like others. I dont like his way of advertising himself and his ideas, which admittedly becomes annoying, and seems absurd at times. I like quite a few of his philosophical ideas. And I really dont like the assumption that just because someone lacks official credentials, and presents or promotes their ideas in socially unusual ways, their ideas are not worth investigating or evaluating. My prior statement that Mentifexs work is more interesting than most work in the AI field was not intended as an instance of extreme praise: rather, my opinion is that most work in the AI field is embarrassingly unambitious and boring. Even if a lot of Mentifexs ideas are wrong (which may or may not be the case), at least Mentifex appears to be making a genuine effort to understand the mind as a whole, rather than (like many AI researchers) shying away from the big questions and retreating into the pursuit of minor technical questions of no possible practical or theoretical utility. I admit that Mentifex has many aspects in common with well-known crackpots, but I also think that the line between crackpots and maverick scientists is not as clearly drawn as

Please note this anonymous poster is likely Mentifex himself.

Regarding the ACM Sigplan Notices, please read this note: (taken from http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html


2.3.2 What about the SIGPLAN review?

Another document Murray often uses to bolster the credibility of his project is a review of Mind.Forth which appeared in the Association for Computing Machinerys SIGPLAN Notices [3]. Murray is either unaware or unwilling to admit that the SIGPLAN Notices is an informal, unrefereed, and largely unedited publication of the ACMs special interest group on programming languages (of which Murrays project is not one). The newsletter is written neither by nor for AI specialists, and in any case the reviews appearing therein do not represent the official opinions of ACM or SIGPLAN. The author of the article in question, Paul Frenger, is not a computer scientist, but rather a practising medical doctor who writes a monthly column for enthusiasts of the Forth programming language.


As for the Powerpoint presentation and the book, they're both written by Mentifex himself, so it does little to provide support to his arguments.

Which leaves just the SL4 posting, but alas, the poster himself has clarified his position (again taken from http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html


2.3.1 What about the Ben Goertzel endorsement?

Murray often includes in his signature a link to an archived e-mail from scholar Ben Goertzel [4]. This letter, posted to the SL4 mailing list, contains an informal review of the documents posted on Murrays website. The tone is generally neutral, except for the last paragraph, where Goertzel remarks that Murrays ideas are significantly better than most of what passes for cognitive science and AI.

What Murray neglects to mention is a subsequent retraction of sorts by Goertzel. After another list participant pointed out that Murrays theory and writing was at best highly derivative and at worst fundamentally flawed, Goertzel conceded these points [6]. In another post, Goertzel says he does not dispute that Mentifex is a crackpot project, and remarks that the claims that its creator makes for it are far out of proportion to its actual achievements. [5]

On 31 March 2004, Goertzel wrote the author of this FAQ to clarify his current stance on Murrays work. His full opinion is as follows:

At the present time, I have not studied Mentifexs theories on AI carefully enough to have a definite opinion on them. I have spent only a few hours reading through his writings, which is not enough to absorb such a mass of ideas, particularly since Mentifexs communication style is confusing at times (though very clear and crisp at times as well). I like some of his ideas and dont like others. I dont like his way of advertising himself and his ideas, which admittedly becomes annoying, and seems absurd at times. I like quite a few of his philosophical ideas. And I really dont like the assumption that just because someone lacks official credentials, and presents or promotes their ideas in socially unusual ways, their ideas are not worth investigating or evaluating. My prior statement that Mentifexs work is more interesting than most work in the AI field was not intended as an instance of extreme praise: rather, my opinion is that most work in the AI field is embarrassingly unambitious and boring. Even if a lot of Mentifexs ideas are wrong (which may or may not be the case), at least Mentifex appears to be making a genuine effort to understand the mind as a whole, rather than (like many AI researchers) shying away from the big questions and retreating into the pursuit of minor technical questions of no possible practical or theoretical utility. I admit that Mentifex has many aspects in common with well-known crackpots, but I also think that the line between crackpots and maverick scientists is not as clearly drawn as

Ignore the links to "True Artificial Intelligence" and "Stumbling upon" which link to Mentifex's web site.
He is a troll of the AI community. Before you assign him informative mod points for links to his own useless work, please read the following page http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html

This guy is a nut: http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html

who even has his own FAQ written by the real AI community to stop the nonsense he spouts from giving AI research a bad name

keep flipping burgers Murray, you will get further in life

and you are a nutjob

try getting a proper job and then you wouldnt need to spam your crappy project here

Wow, did you really just link to Mentifex's page? For those not familiar with him, he's an infamous kook from the early days of Usenet who spammed newsgroups claiming (and still claims to this day) that he's "solved AI" and implemented it in Forth and JavaScript. More recently, he's expanded onto places like slashdot.

There's a fairly extensive FAQ on him here:

http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html

Please don't mod up this well-known fraud. He has no formal education or experience in AI and his "theories" have long been debunked by those that do.

Please, please, please mod Mentifex's postings as either Troll or Funny. If people think his stuff is informative, there will be a lot of messed up AI implemented over the next couple of years. This guy is nothing but a troll, and should be treated as such.

Now *this* is informative:

http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html

Yeah, I'm quite surprised that the editors managed to get rid of all the links Mentifex undoubtedly made to his AI4U project, or whatever it is.

For those unfamiliar with him, check out the The Arthur T. Murray/Mentifex FAQ. This guy is one of the kook legends.

From the FAQ:

1.2 Who is Arthur T. Murray and who or what is "Mentifex"?

Arthur T. Murray, a.k.a. Mentifex, is a notorious kook who makes heavy use of the Internet to promote his theory of artificial intelligence (AI). His writing is characterized by illeism, name-dropping, frequent use of foreign expressions, crude ASCII diagrams, and what has been termed "obfuscatory technobabble".

Murray is the author of software which he claims has produced an "artificial mind" and has "solved AI". He has also produced a vanity-published book which he touts as a textbook for teaching AI.

1.3 What are Arthur T. Murray's AI credentials?

None of which to speak.

Murray claims to have received a Bachelor's degree in Greek and Latin from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1968 [24]. He has no formal training in computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, linguistics, nor any other field of study even tangentially related to AI or cognition. He works as a night auditor at a small Seattle hotel [3, p. 25] and is not affiliated with any university or recognized research institution; he therefore styles himself an "independent scholar". Murray claims that his knowledge of AI comes from reading science fiction novels [39].

1.4 What does Arthur T. Murray do?

Murray is notorious for posting thousands of messages to Usenet promoting his AI software, book, websites, and theory. Most of these messages are massively cross-posted to off-topic newsgroups. Murray takes the mere mention of anything vaguely AI-related as an invitation to post a follow-up directing readers to his own work (e. g., [45]). He claims that people are "crying out" for repetition of his message [46].

Murray also heavily promotes himself on public forums on the web. Message boards, private guestbooks, and collaborative encyclopedias are all considered fair game for the showcasing of Murray's ideas. Murray terms this activity "meme insertion"; most everyone else considers it to be spamming.

Before he had regular access to the Internet, Murray used the US postal system to spread his ideas by mass-mailing prominent AI researchers, computing authors, and sometimes even entire university departments. He boasts that he mailed seven thousand letters in 1989 alone [14].

Murray has also been known to cause disruptions in person. In one notable example, he picketed the 2001 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence [34, 35].

From the article:

Then a well-known crackpot wrote a Wikipedia page about himself, only to have it, er, rendered more objective by other contributors. This drove him wild. Again the page was locked (in what seemed to me to be an admirably detached state) to prevent further vandalism.

Does anyone know who this is referring to?

On a side note, some time ago I tried to create an article on the infamous AI crank Mentifex, but Mentifex himself (who also frequents slashdot) ended up vandalizing the article repeatedly. It got so bad and was so difficult to maintain that in the end the article was simply deleted.

This reminds me of this clever essay someone wrote, where he determines through demographics and statistical calculus why he will never have a girlfriend.

Hilariously geeky stuff.

Whoever moderated this "interesting" should have a look at the Arthur T. Murray/Mentifex FAQ...

Artificial Intelligence -- not just the Cable Industry -- is another battleground where innovation at the Edge threatens the entire Industry Establishment, yessiree Bob Frankston right-on bro'.

Artificial intelligence has been solved at the edges and fringes of the field and not by the dinosaurs of the AI Establishment.

The Edge is bypassing the AI Establishment -- just like in the collapsing free-for-all of the Cable Industry.

With accusations of kookery at the Edge, the AI Establishment (DFKI etc.) is fighting back and trying to discredit the Edge of AI, mais la verite est en marche, et rien ne l'arretera!

Artificil intelligence is evolving and multiplying in 'Net-wide Diaspora from the Edge back into the foundations of the AI Industry. Join in, or watch from the Edges?

Has anyone else seen surges this big (from 30/min to 250/min) from other sources other that /.?

Yeah, Cruel Site of the Day. My Saga of Roter Hutmann, which relates the story of a computer science nerd who falls in love with a Turing Test program, was nominated back in May. The resulting surge in hits nearly downed my ISP's server. To this day, including May in my domain's graphical statistics program introduces a spike so large that the rest of the months bottom out near 0.

Regards,

One particular episode that comes to mind is The Saga of Roter Hutmann , available at http://www.nothingisreal.com/saga/. This is the story of a computer science major who spent hours every day talking with Julia, a Turing test program, even going so far as to ask it out on a date, before he finally voiced to me his suspicions that she was "not human". Ironically, he then proceeded to call her a poorly-written program... Julia used to be accessible via telnet (fuzine.mt.cs.cm.edu, user "julia") but, alas, is there no more...

Anyway, check out the Saga if you've got a few minutes to spare as people keep telling me it's the funniest thing they've read for a long time...

Regards,