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Its creation is an achievement because gliders were previously thought to exist only in regular cellular automata, such as the most famous one, the Game of Life

On wikipedia that would get flagged as weasel words (or the whole article deleted for non-notoriety). Who thinks gliders should only exist in regular automata? If anything my opinion is that modern automata thought was the other way around, expecting them to exist.

Note that gliders are not rare or unusual in automata. Some of the first original researchers thought that only gliders/spaceships that exist lived only in Conways GoL but further research a long time ago showed they're ridiculously commonplace in other rulesets. As seen below. So the tone of this discovery is more accurately described as "much as we suspected, but never bothered to prove, until now" rather than the stereotypical serendipitous discovery tone of "that result looks weird, WTF, who ever would have guessed"

This is separate from the penrose tile thing, which I don't follow. It might, or might not, be the case that a glider in the very specific ruleset of penrose tiles is a hard problem. But in the wide universe of all rulesets, gliders/spaceships and stuff seem very widespread. As a general rule if a ruleset is terminally boring then it definitely does not have gliders, but if its not terminally boring then almost all of them have either chaotic and/or glider-like behavior.

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/ca/

".... I have investigated whether gliders exist in many semitotalistic rules similar to Life, where the behavior of a cell depends only on its own state and the number of live neighbors. The results show that the existence of gliders is commonplace ....."

http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/genaro/rule54/glidersRule54.html

".... We displayed all gliders of Rule 54 including two new glider guns (also extensible) ... "

Rule 54 has nothing to do with the famous rule 34. Well I guess there are self replicating patterns in CA rule 54 which could be interpreted as pr0n by another one dimensional cellular automata, I guess.

who says they need prisoner of war status? All I said was that they either are prisoners of war, or they are civilian protected persons. There is no "lets just do what we want" status.

"on the Fourth Geneva Convention: Every person in enemy hands must be either a prisoner of war and, as such, be covered by the Third Convention; or a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention. Furthermore, There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law," relevant judgement on this can be found here.The fourth geneva convention was specifically made to stop the kind of bullshit the US government is doing.

If you really want more info I could sort through the actual convention, but I think that's probably enough.

In the end what the US has done to people are war crimes, but nobody would ever hold the US responsible, why stand up to a bully when he can pound your ass into the ground just as easily?

Let's be honest, Russia's claims of georgian 'genocide' were about as accurate as western europe's claims of serbian ethnic cleansing in kosovo...

So you mean they were accurate ?
Idiot.

Illegal under the Geneva and Hague conventions, but not German law as given in the commando order. Disobedience on the part of a German soldier would have lead to his summary execution.

I've read the translation of this order, http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/commando1.htm, there is only a vague threat of being "held responsible" and it applies only to "commanders and officers". A bluff, again, a court martial would require documenting the order being refused. Hitler went to great lengths to assure the secrecy of this order.

The Nazi's (politicians) did not have the iron grip on the military that the movies suggest. The military had to be co-opted and appeased to a degree. The Gestapo could not just shoot a soldier. Many German officers and soldiers had a traditional martial spirit rooted in duty and honor, illusions about the war had to be maintained in order to keep their loyalty. Various admiral and generals moderated Hitler at times by pointing out the disastrous effect an immoral order would have upon morale. Summary executions of German soldiers would have been even more disastrous, court martials were necessary. Which is why atrocities were generally committed by segments of the SS, troops that had a more cult like attitude in contrast to the traditional attitude. The SS evolved from the Nazi party not the German army. Although to be honest, some SS troops behaved as elite troops and acted honorably. I believe some of those who refused to commit murder in the concentration camps were SS.

I'm not saying it was easy for a German soldier of the time to defy an order, hell, it is hard for a soldier in the modern US army. Just that it was possible, and in fact the commando order was defied, famously by Rommel.

"Walter Benjamin wrote that photographs could not be considered art, because they were reproductions of the work, and no longer had the "aura" that true art contained."

"The nineteenth-century dispute as to the artistic value of painting versus photography today seems devious and confused. This does not diminish its importance, however; if anything, it underlines it. The dispute was in fact the symptom of a historical transformation the universal impact of which was not realized by either of the rivals. When the age of mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult, the semblance of its autonomy disappeared forever. The resulting change in the function of art transcended the perspective of the century; for a long time it even escaped that of the twentieth century, which experienced the development of the film. Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question - whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art - was not raised. Soon the film theoreticians asked the same ill-considered question with regard to the film. But the difficulties which photography caused traditional aesthetics were mere child's play as compared to those raised by the film."

"Walter Benjamin wrote that photographs could not be considered art, because they were reproductions of the work, and no longer had the "aura" that true art contained."

"The nineteenth-century dispute as to the artistic value of painting versus photography today seems devious and confused. This does not diminish its importance, however; if anything, it underlines it. The dispute was in fact the symptom of a historical transformation the universal impact of which was not realized by either of the rivals. When the age of mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult, the semblance of its autonomy disappeared forever. The resulting change in the function of art transcended the perspective of the century; for a long time it even escaped that of the twentieth century, which experienced the development of the film. Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question - whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art - was not raised. Soon the film theoreticians asked the same ill-considered question with regard to the film. But the difficulties which photography caused traditional aesthetics were mere child's play as compared to those raised by the film."

> > If her brain tissue was truly this grade, Terri would be long DEAD!

> That is exactly my point. Terri was long dead.

No, she wasn't dead. She was alive. The judge thought she was alive too. Your attempt at redefining life and death for others, according to your private philosophy is laughable.

> > The cortical neurons, the organ that "thinks" and
> > contains the mind, the neurons that make you you,
> > were completely gone.

(a) you don't know (b) no one has the right to judge someone else worthy of death because x% of 'y' neurons are missing (or worse, like you, judge them already dead) --- when they obviously are NOT brain dead, and respond to the environment about them.

By your logic, mentally handicapped children born in the same state as Terry (say, x% of 'y' neurons) can be killed. Your thinking on this is similar to the Nazi "life unworthy of life" philosophy.
During the Third Reich a minority of medical practitioners and public health officials in positions of authority, following an authorization decreed by Adolf Hitler in August 1939,directly implemented a policy of extermination respecting segments of the population who were diagnosed as suffering from severe mental and/or physical dysfunction.

Without God you are directionless.

Having a personal vendetta against cane toads as they almost killed our dachshund when I was 5, I roped in my family to submit an invention for Australia's Northern Territory Government's competition last year (sadly, we didn't win, though it was still genius, of course - http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2005/s1356797.htm )

In any case, the NT Government competition had way too many controls around the invention with the organisers wanting it to be a physical trap, when, in my opinion, they'd be best served by a bot similar to Ian Kelly's Slugbot (http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/People%20Pages/i-kelly/t ta.htm) as the Cane Toad's spawn are quite distinct from those of native toads - which are beautiful, and we don't want to kill, obviously.

Since when do Japanese care so much about anti-semites?

Based on what Jews have written, I figured Japan has many "anti-semites": http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewas6.htm

Yes, look at the lab website. http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/

This is being developed at my university (uwe) although we didn't get a mention in the article! :-( Anyway, yeh, they've been working on it for a while. Not sure about 7 but at least around 5 years ago. The original was a slugbot. An article in the guardian in 2000 makes reference to it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4 101493,00.html Or you could go straight to the lab ;-) http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/ And for the guy complaining that solar is better. They do solar too :-)

-Lucas

Here you go: link. Even has a photo.

See Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory for more information.

Slugbot, Ecobot... oddly enough I don't see a link to Ecobot II on there.

I would probably say that the Jewish holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s or King Leopold II's decimation of the Congo in the 1880s is a much larger hate crime than the 9/11 attacks.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to trivialize our losses due to the 9/11 attacks, I'm just saying that there have been worse crimes commited out of sheer hate.

It makes me wonder what would have happened differently if communication was where it is today during the time of Leopold and Hitler.

The irony of this famously humble statement of Newtons was that he was probably actually taking the piss out of Hooke, who was a bit of a short arse. Quoting from a good article on the subject:

The quotation about giants' shoulders is a product of the feud with Hooke, originating in a letter which Newton wrote to him in 1676. Although the letter is couched in outwardly courteous terms, the reference to giants has been seen by many as a direct insult to Hooke. According to his contemporaries John Aubrey and Samuel Pepys, Hooke was short and somewhat unprepossessing in appearance. Newton's reference to 'giants' alludes, perhaps, to Hooke's lack of physical stature and implied that he was similarly lacking in intellectual stature.

A more practical alternative is energy scavenging--the use of alternative energy sources available in the node's environment.

One example is the use of piezoelectric techniques to recover energy from vibration (the famous shoe generator). (Electromechanical and magnetomechanical conversion means may also be used.) Others have already suggested photoelectrics. Other possibilities include changes in air temperature and pressure (which powers the Atmos clock) and even consumption of sugar.

A book on energy scavenging, authored by three Berkeley wireless sensor network researchers, will soon be published.

Oh, my mistake. It was only 5.5 Million. I don't know why I used such a gross exagguration to prove a point.

The Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab at the University of the West of England has demonstrated a robot doing phototaxis, powered entirely by a microbial fuel cell.

The Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab at the University of the West of England has demonstrated a robot doing phototaxis, powered entirely by a microbial fuel cell.

This still misses the mark, though. All of these technologies would be far more efficient if used directly, say, with thermocouples picking up the geothermal energy, than by somehow being used in some sort of modified photosynthetic process to power people who then power machines.

And anyway, machines can themselves currently do limited metabolic processes similar to those that humans do: slugbot.

But-- if you didn't have running water or electricity or food at the moment, these would be more important (See Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs) than being able to create albums of the songs in different albums you bought. More than likely, you would not realize what was happening until it was too late.

My own theory on Iraq is that we had to find someone after the USSR fell (and find them fast) in order to justify continued military spending and undercut the peace dividend so Bush Sr. conspired with the Kuwaiti gov't to lure Saddam into invading Kuwait ("The Fire This Time" by former Atty. General Ramsey Clark gives a good account of this) and then mobilizing world opinion while politically preventing an Iraqi withdrawal. Remember the words of April Glaspie of the US State Department when asked by Saddam about the US position regarding Iraq's claim to Kuwait's territory-- "The US takes no position on Arab-Arab matters."

Until the first Gulf War, Saddam was our ally (even after the USS Stark incident and gassing the Iranian soldiers and Kurds). Personally I think that Reagan and Bush Sr. should be tried along side Saddam at the International War Crimes Tribunal. Wait-- Bush was! Maybe that is why the US is pulling out of its involvement with the war crimes tribunal!

As an interesting musing, the US opposition to the ICC may have very little real practical value. If US allies are tried at the Hague for war crimes in operations where they were fighting along side us Americans, it seems that would have a chilling effect in terms for support for US foreign policy. Just another way that the illusion of power is an intoxicating influence...

The first "behavior-based robots" along those lines go back to 1948, with the work of W. Grey Walters. Those little wheeled robots did much of what Braitenberg talks about with his earlier models. And, since Walters actually built them, he discovered behaviors that weren't obvious just thinking about it. If you're into this at all, read everything you can find about Walters "Turtles". They were shown, working, in a museum for a year in the 1940s, and modern replicas have been built. Walters was decades ahead of his time.

There was considerable thinking along those lines in the 1950s, most of which didn't go anywhere. I have some old AI books that contain similar speculations, although they're far less readable than "Vehicles".

The basic problem with model-less behavior-based robotics, as Brooks and his followers have discovered, is that the ceiling is low. You can can get some simple insect-like behaviors without much trouble, but then progress stalls. That's why Brooks' best work was back in the 1980s. The robot insects were great; the humanoid torso Cog is an embarassment. This is typical of AI; somebody has a good idea and then thinks that strong AI is right around the corner.

If you have a Lego Mindstorms set, you can build many of the "Vehicles". They're kind of cute, but don't do much.

The next step is to combine this with an ability to filter feed on plankton and technology from slugbot for a machine with infinite endurance.

http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/goto.html?c-melhui

There's a Lego Mindstorms implementation of Walter's turtles.

People tend to read more into the behavior of purely reactive behavior-based robots than is actually there. That's why they get good press and make fun toys, but don't do anything useful.

Nazis make great villains in games, novels, movies, etc. because well, in reality they were such great villains.

Hmm. The Slugbot page has not been updated since February 2000. Must not be slug season.

Rod Brooks picked up on this idea, and did some good insect robot work. But then he got hubris, started doing TV interviews, the "Rod Brooks World Tour", T-shirts, and Cog.

When Brooks first gave a talk at Stanford on his plans for Cog, the general idea was to try for human-level AI by building a seated robot body and throwing about 30 MIT PhD theses at the problem. It hasn't worked. I asked Brooks "Why don't you build a robot lizard or mouse?", that being the next step up from the insect work. He said that "he didn't want to go down in history as the guy who built the world's best robot mouse".

This is a classic problem with AI researchers. They get a halfway decent idea, and they start thinking human-level AI is just around the corner. AI goes through one of these enthusiasms every five years or so, some of the main ones having been search, rules, theorem proving, neural nets, and genetic algorithms. All of these are useful, and all have hit a ceiling beyond which further work doesn't produce much improvement.

I tell people we're probably going to have to claw our way up the evolutionary ladder, and the next step is the lizard brain level of intelligence. This is happening, amusingly, in the game world, where opponent control AI has to solve the basic problems of life: not falling down, not bumping into stuff, and back-seat driving the machinery that controls those tasks into getting something done.