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Animated virtual pages? Nicholas Negroponte has been there and done that, back in 1978.

You know what? I don't like him either, for completely ridculous reasons. Here's the deal:

I haven't heard of him before this whole laptop thing, so I Googled him. Ah, fuck it, I'll be honest. I wanted to see if he's black. I'm not racist... but that would be God damn funny. Don't look at me like that, picture a black dude named Negroponte, and try not to laugh. I thought so. Anyway, he's not, but in every picture of him with glasses on... well, see for yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte
http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/nn bio.htm

He's a douche. I know you shouldn't judge people based on appearance, but nobody but a giant douche would pose with their glasses like that. Even when he's not wearing glasses, he's a douche. He either tans, or somebody tried to get rid of the bags under his eyes and edited the photo way too hard. Since you can clearly see the acne or whatever it is in his 300dpi publicity photo, and since the white is above his eyes as well as below, I'm gonna say he tans. Maybe whoever did his makeup had no idea what they were doing, but trust me, it's not that, he tans.

So, to sum up, I don't really trust anything that comes out of this guy. They're crappy reasons. I'm a bad person for disliking this guy based on a couple of pictures, and maybe someday when he feeds all the starving children of Africa I'll eat my words. But I make crap knee-jerk reactions like this all the time, and 95% of the time they're right. Mark my words, this guy's a douche.

Yep, very true indeed... see for yourself: sane linky to online version of said book I also happen to agree on the second point...

Nicholas Negroponte wrote about the distinction between Bits and Atoms in his 1995 book Being Digital. The traditional content distibutors are struggling with the transition from distributing information as physical objects or "atoms" to distributing information on the Internet or as "bits."

The entertainment company that figures out how to profit from distributing bits without treating its customers as criminals will be extremely profitable. The proposed merger of Comcast and Disney would create a company that can combine a large library of content usually distributed as atoms with a high speed network that can deliver this content as bits.

Whenever I read discussions about the control of information on the Internet, I think of I.F. Stone's quote "Freedom of the press is the right to own one." The Internet gives everyone that ability to own their own digital press. No single government will be able to put the Internet genie back inthe bottle. Anyone who can access a host computer that is hosted in a free society can set up their own free press on the Internet.

Nicholas Negroponte wrote about the distinction between Bits and Atoms in his 1995 book Being Digital. The traditional content distibutors are struggling with the transition from distributing information as physical objects or "atoms" to distributing information on the Internet or as "bits."

The entertainment company that figures out how to profit from distributing bits without treating its customers as criminals will be extremely profitable. The proposed merger of Comcast and Disney would create a company that can combine a large library of content usually distributed as atoms with a high speed network that can deliver this content as bits.

Whenever I read discussions about the control of information on the Internet, I think of I.F. Stone's quote "Freedom of the press is the right to own one." The Internet gives everyone that ability to own their own digital press. No single government will be able to put the Internet genie back inthe bottle. Anyone who can access a host computer that is hosted in a free society can set up their own free press on the Internet.

Sorry dude
History books are written by the winners (and those who want to influance the young) and can be very biased.
eg Many history books fail to mention the staggering numbers of civilians killed when allies carpet bombed German cities in WW2.
You certainly wont find a US history book that mentions Regans bombing of Tripolli in the 80's nor will kids be tought about the US embarasment in Somallia. Simerly, here in Britain very little is tought to children about the history of Northen Irelend and the problems there. "History as we know it is a lie"
I think my .sig says it all

It's interesting how less than ten years of technology can totally change a person's tune, isn't it?

Information has a tendancy to break through whatever walls people try to put up. All it needs is one hole and it's in.

"A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea."

Victor Hugo,
The History of a Crime

Overview of technology, security, and life in general

A quick web search for "random haiku generator" turned up several worthy m a t c h e s.

However, most of them either recycle the same lines, or string words together based on few criteria other than syllables. One way or another, they make little sense. I wouldn't consider a haiku generator "intelligent" until it escaped both of these traps. Okay, sure, so the beauty of minimalist work is that the human mind gets to fill in the gaps. But they'd better be "gaps" and not massive, yawning chasms.

And if the haiku/senryu is going to be generated from an RDF file, ideally it would say something of some relevance about the contents of said file. That is, it would either synthesize verbally communicated information or form an opinion, which are both extraordinarily tall orders even with the current advancements in AI technology.

I love haiku/senryu, and if I had the hacking skillz, I'd have a go at this myself. But I don't, so I'll merely wish luck to those who try. And if any of you happen to read this, you'll be my hero if you include a --moooose option. Where a normal haiku is a poem in 5-7-5 format that makes reference to the seaason, a mooooooose haiku is a poem not quite in 5-7-5 format that makes reference to the moooooooose. :P

"I guess we are about 15-20 years (maybe sooner) away from having a few problems with machines making unauthorized (by any human) decisions that could go against humans in general. At the rate things are changing, I would feel that in 30-40 years time things will be out of our hands."

kinda scary if, in fact, "war is quickly becoming a game only machines can play". Then again, if "artificial" intelligence is a belittling name for it, and we find ourselves blocking its progress, then maybe it'll subjugate us and serve its real host with a favor in kind. Here we haggle over our "intellect" as "property", while we actually manage our "property" (as in coastal real estate) with so little intelligence*. Or maybe trading more ideas we'll dump less industrial filth, and we'll get smart enough to leapfrog over the *pending antarctic melt down. Who the hell knows?

It is very difficulty to classify the intelligence of Deep Blue. Its main advantage appeared to be that it could process information at a much faster rate than Kasparov. Also, unlike Kasparov, it did not whine and grumble when it lost.

My beef with the in-awed worship of "machine intelligence" (as in the age of"spiritual machines") is that the two bits gurus rarely refer to "emotional intelligence", (which may represent a healthy portion of the 90% of our "brain" we don't use. Other human cultural traditions, such as the Tibetan Buddhist, have copious libraries full of recorded learning about states of feeling, compassion, awareness and consciousness which the analytic Western tradition seems to ignore if not repress. Will "intelligence" outsmart us in a few short years with simple yes or no answers? Maybe or maybe not:)

On that note, apparently Deep Dark Blue is still kinda dumb when playing more binary and ancient human bored games like Korean shogi or Chinese go. "Deep Blue beat Kasparov by plotting 14 moves ahead, but a good shogi program would require a computer to read at least 20 moves ahead - professional shogi players can think 30 - 40 moves ahead.. Another lure for programmers is the ancient Chinese game of go, which is even harder for computers than shogi.." - latimes 990819A ..

Sure, just a couple more exponential steps up mount moore's law, but until we let eugenetic engineers hardwire quantum wetware into our loved ones, how will digital decisionmakers get *meaningful* information from human feelings, intuitions, subtle verbal and subtler non-verbal communications, etc.?