Happy Birthday, HAL!

GeekDates writes "January 12 is the birthday of HAL-9000, the computer from '2001: A Space Odyssey.' According to the book, he was activated on this day in 1997." Three years old? He must be ready for an upgrade.

Comments

Listen to hal

[xtype]

http://members.spree.com/sip/wavrider/Hal/hal.html

That was one seriously messed up movie

[v6stang]

Like the subject says... But, it still was one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time, IMHO.

-Garth

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[pen]

All good movies are "seriously messed up" in the words of those who cannot appreciate them.

--

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[xtremex]

I might be crucified for this...but I really thought that movie was boring as hell...slower than molasses I thought...or was that Star Trek I? :)

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[m3000]

I think that too about the movie. I found it to be incredibly slow, confusing, and just plain boring. However, the book is excellent and I loved every minute of reading that. After reading the book, the movie was more tolerable (mainly because it made more sense), but I still don't like it much.

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[Rombuu]

You do know that the book is based on the movie not visa-versa, right?

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[Vis]

The movie was completely entertaining, and completely boring at the same time. I think much of it depends on what kind of movies you watch (if any), and whether you've read the book before you watch the movie. If you have ever been involved in any kind of movie production (I haven't, so I /am/ presuming some things), you would probably appreciate it more. Or, if you were a fan of soundless movies (where you have to image/read the script), you would probably appreciate it more. Otherwise, you'll be bored. When you think about it, most of the plot involves one person, who infrequently interacts with a talking ship. So, you have a movie with very little dialogue. It's all about images. When reading the book, you have to read all the descriptions. In the movie, the director has interpreted all of the settings, and created images for you to represent them. You have to think less, and end up being bored. You lose some of the omnipotence that the book gives you. You lose out in most of the character's thoughts. This is why, for most, the book is better. You have more to let you relate to the character; more to make you think.

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[Quark]

Actually, they were developed in parallel. The reason why they go to Saturn in the book and Jupiter in the film, is that the SFX boys couldn't do rings that satisfied Kubrick. This would imply that most of the book was developed first. Anyways, both the book and film are based on Short Stories that Clarke had written previously.

Leo
--

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[Rombuu]

If you can find a copy of it, The Lost Worlds of 20001 by Clarke is an interesting read. You can hear about all the stuff he wanted to include but Kubrick didn't want to include (most of which seems to show up in 2010...)

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[Strog]

This movie is the first movie that my parent went and saw when they were dating. Neither of them even came close to getting it. They grew up on farms and weren't into sci-fi. I read the books and rented both movies. I finally explained the movie to both of them and they finally got it 15 years later. I would have to agree that the book explains the story sooooo much better but I liked the movies too.

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[ncc189]

what do you expect from Kubrick??

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[pulp]

I actually found that book in October at a book store in Pike Place Market. I do believe it was in the free bin; bookstores have odd priorities.*

It is a very interesting read, especially for Kubrick-philes (and, probably, Clarke-philes). Gives one an idea of how far seperated the actual film got from what Clarke thought would be the "basis" of 2001 originally. Of course, Kubrick wasn't quite as established in the late sixties as he is (was...er, however you tense it) in present day, so people may not have known what they were getting into when the got involved with the film.

A fun read, regardless.

*I found a copy of Cryptonomicon at Waldenbooks for 5 bucks in the bargain bin. Weird, but great.

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[pulp]

You lose some of the omnipotence that the book gives you. You lose out in most of the character's thoughts. This is why, for most, the book is better. You have more to let you relate to the character; more to make you think.

I agree with your analysis, but not with the conclusion (but hey, you said "for most," so I have to say, "fair enough"). The difference between Clarke's novel and Kubrick's film is only relevent in the light that they are *two different works*. To believe that the book and the novel were developed in parallel for the sake of continuity and similarity is naive. Kubrick and Clarke are very different artists, working in very different mediums.

Clarke's book lets you inside the characters' heads, because that's how fiction tends to work, and in a setting like 2001 had (cold isolation of space) there would be little else to write about much of the time. If Clarke hadn't explored the introspective angle of the story, the book would look like this:

Dave got on Discovery. He went jogging. Um, he ate neat space food. And stuff. Floyd did the same stuff. Um.

Snip?

Oh look, Saturn!

Not particularly compelling stuff for the reader. Granted, Clarke could have covered in meticulous detail every breathe and movement of anything on the ship, filled up a couple hundred pages with that, but it would be a different sort of work, eh?

Now Kubrick made a film, not a story. Dialogue is an implicit but *unneccesary* component of film; it is difficult to move a film without words, but that has unfortunately led to a limited number of filmmakers even trying. Kubrick is one of those filmmakers who tried, and succeeded in the opinion of a great many people.

By keeping the thoughts of Dave Bowman from the audience, Kubrick leaves them feeling a bit isolated in the slow, tense-but-dull atmosphere of space. This was intentional! I am quite sure Kubrick was aware that his movie was slow and lacking in action for the most part. He never intended to make the movie "exciting" in the traditional Schwarzenegger sense.

Kubrick's 2001 excells by taking it's time, establishing a sense of loneliness and isolation in the rather cold reaches of space, and holds back enough explanation from the viewer that one can and must draw one's own conclusions from the film. Shocking! Unorthodox! Why we should collectively expect to be handed our thoughts on a silver platter is beyond me. 2001 was a great film, despite *and* because of it's unusual pace, style, etc.

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[kjeldar]

Actually, Clarke writes in The Lost Worlds of 2001 that he and the late Kubrick wrote their respective works simultaneously. They frequently consulted one another, to keep the two efforts from straying too far apart.

Also, I believe 2010 [the book, not the movie] mentions that Chandra had started work on HAL 10^4, but 2061 reveals he never finished.

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[m3000]

Yes, it's just that I never read the book before I first saw the movie. And I liked 2001 so much, I went ahead and read the other 3 books that continues it on. Great books, but I still don't really like the movies.

Re:That was one seriously messed up movie

[Xenu]

I saw the movie when it was first released (in a beautiful 70mm version) and was very impressed, even if I didn't understand the ending. It was the first movie that I had ever seen that attempted to show space and space travel in a realistic manner, and the special effects and soundtrack were wonderful. Think of all the crappy 50s and 60s Sci-Fi movies that preceded it. Then there was Star Wars and hundreds of other movies that trade realism for the eye/ear candy of cartoon physics.

Yeah!

[Zule_Boy]

It is about time my computer get upgraded :)
Please send all good harware to

NO CARRIER

Excellent...

[Lester]

Happy Birthday HAL... Upgrade Schmupgrade, he only needs a better video card so he can run Q3A.

Re:Excellent...

[Backward Z]

Ha ha ha. Imagine THAT working its way into the movie.

Re:Excellent...

[Kris_J]

With that live, real time, video editing story that's currently on the front page, it could happen the next time 2001 is shown on TV...

Y2k Proof?

[TheZ]

HAL survived Y2k! Wait.. everything did...

Re:Y2k Proof?

[caferace]

Well of course he did. He was still around in 2001, right? ;)

Re:Y2k Proof?

[TheZ]

Yes... but will he survive 2004? Will he survive 2038 (or whatever)?

Re:Y2k Proof?

[WinTired]

Sorry, would you be kind enough to educate me on what's the matter with 2004?

By the way, this is on-topic, we're all concerned about Hal's heatlh here, aren't we?

-------------------------

Re:Y2k Proof?

[hoss10]

educate me on what's the matter with 2004?

Nothing, as far as i know, but *nixes, including Linux will have a problem in 2038 because of the way the kernel stores the date (number of seconds since 1970). time_t is a signed 32 bit integer (-2billion -> +2billion) so if everything isn't recompiled with a new definition of the time_t type then the date will skip from 2038 to 1940!

Work out what exactly whats 2^32 seconds before and after 1970 if you want to exact time of this

Re:Y2k Proof?

[hoss10]

come to think of it, 2004 is 2^30 seconds after 1970! so time_t may be a signed 31-bit or unsigned 30-bit type!

Re:Y2k Proof?

[tstiehm]

come to think of it, 2004 is 2^30 seconds after 1970! so time_t may be a signed 31-bit or unsigned 30-bit type!



The General solution to this problem is to just turn the signed int into an unsigned int and extent the problem to 2068. Given that in 2000 the world is looking at making the 64-bit transition on the desktop in the next 5 years and at that time time_t will most likely be a signed 64-bit int, I don't think this will be a problem.


signed int (the base type for time_t is a signed int) is -2^31 to 2^31-1 to take zero into account.


an unsigned int is 0 to 2^32-1.


These number ranges are a by product of 32-bit CPU registers. 31-bit signed int and 30-bit unsigned don't make very much sense in a 32-bit CPU world.

Re:Y2k Proof?

[DMC]

2004 is the first leap year of the century. leap year rules aren't as simple as every four years.

Re:Y2k Proof?

[Haven]

Given that in 2000 the world is looking at making the 64-bit transition on the desktop in the next 5 years

I'm sure they said things like that in the 1970's when they programmed the computers at the time.

Re:Y2k Proof?

[bakert]

Nope, 2000 _is_ a leap year. /4 unless divisible by 400 unless divisible by 2000.

Re:Y2k Proof?

[DavidpFitz]

Wasn't the rule that is's a leap year if divisible by 4, not a leap year on a century year (divisible by 100) but IS a leap year if divisible by 400; hence it is a leap year this year. dpf.

Re:Y2k Proof?

[TheZ]

2000 = Leap year 2004 = Leap year

A TLA before its time

[evilj]

And the film's ending was pretty abstract. Do you think that's where they got the acronym HAL from?

Re:A TLA before its time

[Stin]

Actually, the acronym was reached by taking the letters I, B and M and moving to the previous letter in the alphabet. Thus, IBM = HAL. Clarke's tribute to big blue, I suppose.

Re:A TLA before its time

[mkuyper]

If you change the letters "HAL" to the following ones in the alphabet, you get "IBM". I read somewhere that was no coincidence...

Re:A TLA before its time

[DoomHaven]

From here (search for IBM)

# 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Incrementing each letter of ``HAL'' gives you ''IBM''.
'Arthur C Clarke' (qv) (co-screenwriter) claimed this was unintentional, and if he had noticed it before it was too late, he would have changed it.

Re:A TLA before its time

[crackpot]

Actually, according to Clarke it was Stanley Kubrick who came up with the name HAL and per his recollection he has no idea why HAL. He seemed to accept that the transposing of IBM to HAL made sense but it wasn't his idea.

Re:A TLA before its time

[dyskordus]

HAL got his name because H comes before I, A comes before B, and L comes before M.

Re:A TLA before its time

[Abigail-II]

If you change the letters "HAL" to the following ones in the alphabet, you get "IBM". I read somewhere that was no coincidence.

Except that Arthur C. Clarke claims it was unintentional.

-- Abigail

Re:A TLA before its time

[AGumbus]

char('H') + 1 = 'I'; char('A') + 1 = 'B'; char('L') + 1 = 'M'; ...Rot-1, anyone?

Re:A TLA before its time

[JeffHiggins]

HAL comes from the words "Heuristic" and "ALgorithmic" (probably a dozen spelling mistakes in there).

Jeff Higgins
www.hal9000.cc

coincidence? i think not.

[digitalunity]

Maybe it's my paranoid hacker mind, but I find it rather odd that HAL's birthday is so near to IBM's decision to support linux. I think 2001 was really a documentary. No, really, it was. Follow me on this...

HAL - next character in alphabet for each letter is:
IBM

Isn't it obvious. IBM was celebrating HAL's birthday by supporting Linux, and we all know HAL 9000's boot Linux. I think the movie was made in the future and sent into the past.


and I even took my medication this morning :) hehe
mike
thehackernextdoor

Re:coincidence? i think not.

[cabbey]

there is a great database at IBM that is used for looking up all the TLAs we use... one of my most often requested additions is that HAL stands for Holerith's Arithmatical Legacy (a reference to IBM). another is that IBM stands for Security Through Acronyms... few people get that one though....

Same place as Netscape

[wharfrat]

He was made at the same place as Netscape too.
U of I in Champaign-Urbana.
I think HAL was an acronymn for Holistic Algarithmic Learning....
Not just the letters before IBM.

Re:Same place as Netscape

[UnanimousCoward]

HAL stands for Heuristic ALgorithmic...

Re:Same place as Netscape

[nebular]

since I have what borders on obsession with this movie I have read the entire series of books and many of the other books associated with the movie. From this I learned that yes HAL is a play on IBM, since IBM did all the pre-production scientific work (since 2001 was the most scientifically resarched movie of all time) on how one would create an AI computer, but then did not want to continue the work or be credited because HAL eventually kills all those people, kubrick was not happy with this and so tried to get the one up by going one letter before. Arthur C. Clark, whose short story the sentinel(?) was the inspiration and was the co-creator of this movie, addressed this in the novel (written before the movie but not published because kubrick was slow to aprove). It seems he did not agree with Kubrick and so put the definition of the acronym in the book as Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer. As you can see since this is not a very good acronym showing that the name HAL was not originally based onthose words. In fact his original name was supposed to be Socrates (Taken from Lost Worlds of 2001, 1971)

Re:Same place as Netscape

[baldass_newbie]

I was wondering how long it would take before someone would get it right.

HAL 9000 or HAL 98

[DoorFrame]

If only they had Microsoft in the future, they would never have let HAL get away for so many years without a superficial name upgrade. If only...

Re:HAL 9000 or HAL 98

[tolldog]

Are you suggesting that if MS survives, HAL might be renamed to MSHAL?

Re:HAL 9000 or HAL 98

[Anonymous Coward]

I can just imagine it:

"It looks like you're writing a letter, Dave. Would you like me to:
[] screw it all up for you, or
[] fuck off and die."

Go U of I

[Anonymous Coward]

Hal was born at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. (He would probably be born at the Beckman Institute on campus, but Clarke can be forgiven for not mentioning this, as the Beckman Institute had yet to be built at the time 2001 was written.)

Go Illini!

Re:Go U of I

[oliphaunt]

There's more than one BI. The one I know is on CalTech's campus in Pasadena, CA. Our mascot is the mighty Beaver, as heard in our favorite cheer- "Beaver Fever! Snatch it up!"

I'm pretty sure the fighting Illini were an afterthought for Arnold and Mabel ;?>

Re:Go U of I

[protounitV3]

me: Hey, Boss...I just read on /. that today's HAL's birtday. He was born right here in CU, you know. boss: Is that today? [lots of swearing] Why doesn't this office get the important memos? That's it! We're closed for the rest of this holiday. me: Gee, Thanks, /. ! *thumbs up* Seriously. I get the rest of today off. Now I just wish I'd read this earlier in the day instead of wasting my time with trivial matters like my email.

1984, 2001 etc...

[RuntimeError]

I find that whenever a writer puts a date on his prediction, and makes it the title, they almost never come true.

Classic examples are 1984, 2001, then there was the TV series Space 1999.

Anyway, Arthur C. Clarke was one of the pioneers in the wired world, and what he predicted was not outside the limits of human achievement. The reason, that a manned mission is not heading for Jupiter is that we have wasted too much money developing wars and fighting wars, money which would have been better spent investigating the space. If we don't make that leap soon, humans might forever be doomed to exploring only cyberspace. ( I seriously don't mind that but, then when the population reaches the point that where earth cannot anylonger sustain it, we are going to have a problem)

As for HAL, the topic of discussion, too bad you are not going to get to Jupiter anytime soon. Have a nice birthday mate !

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[susano_otter]

[flamebait]
I'm under the impression that there's quite a few cogent arguments to the effect that it's the wars that make the economy so strong.

One could go on to conjecture that since it takes a strong economy to produce ``frivolous'' endeavors like space exploration (and note that a lot of the same technology has both military and space exploration applications, and note that a lot of early space exploration technology in this century was actually adapted from military technology), then the only reason we've gotten as far out of our atmosphere as we have is because of a strong military-industrial complex and a few profitable wars.

Meanwhile, the company I work for is hosting an Apple website on a bunch of NT boxen, and I'm going to ponder this bit of irony instead of looking up any facts to support the above statements :)
[noflamebait]

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[db48x]

He did however predict vast oceans under the surface of ice on Europa, so perhaps all is not lost.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[DoomHaven]

>it's the wars that make the economy so strong

Yes, I think that's true. The main reason the Great Depression ended was because WWII. The main reason for your American space program having the funding to put men on the moon was because the Russians were going to beat you to it. Arguably, the reason that Medieval Western Europe was as technologically advanced as it was was because continual wars demanded new technologies (from siege weapons to the perfection of firearms to Dreadnaught class destroyers). Most of the great technological advances were war based (wasn't even the ENIAC and the original ARPANET created by scientists/engineers working for the military extend the offensive and defensive abilities of the USA?). I can name two major ones that weren't; the airplane and the steam engine. But both were perfected in military applications, or by companies that received major financial backing from the military.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Spooky Possum]

Hey, we've still got another year to launch our spacecraft to Jupiter !

I will concede we're way behind schedule for the Big Brother big, but we're getting there.

As for space 1999, some predictions aren't worth it.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[chrischow]

space 1999 was my favorite TV program when i was a kid. i remember even crying when that big robot on wheels was marooned out in space or something.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[import]

. The main reason for your American space program having the funding to put men on the moon was because the Russians were going to beat you to it.

Yes, and the reason we cared was because we thought it provided some strategic advantage to them.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Jon_H]

I used to like Space 1999 when I was a child as well.

But let's face it if there ever was a sci-fi series that should be put out to pasture and never ever rerun it is this one.

How painfull it was to me to see it again after all these years ...

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[DoomHaven]

My understanding was it was mainly a way to see who was better (*our* space program made it to the moon before yours did, wee wee wee wee). Of course, I could be just misguided by the propaganda. Either way, whether you use my point or your perfectly valid point, the space program was a byproduct of the military.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[christophe]

> I seriously don't mind that but, then when the
> population reaches the point that where earth
>cannot anylonger sustain it, we are going to have
> a problem)

The money spent to go to Mars and modify it to grow anything eatable would be huge. It could be better invested to improve agriculture in poor countries, help these countries to reduce population growth (education !) and improve their political system (no more war and corruption...).
Population should reach a maximum at 10 or 11 billions in 50 or 100 years. Terraforming Mars : 1000 years (But i'd love to see it !)

Christophe - Strasbourg, France

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Telcontar]

Are you sure Orwell was totally wrong with the date? If you go to the UK, particularly to Glasgow, there are CCTV cameras all over the city... Big Brother is truly watching you there, you have no privacy whatsoever on the streets.

It was really strange when I came there first, but apparently nobody bothered, and indeed you get used to it sooner than you would admit :-(

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[DoomHaven]

A valid point, of course. But how much development, from the military, went into ARPANET when this happened? Personally, I don't know, but ARPA was Advanced Research Projects Agency (changed to DARPA) and it was a military venture, and depending on your view, it was the backbone of the original "internet".

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[SimonK]

CCTV cameras in the street are a whole different matter to the "telescreen" devices and hidden cameras in 1984 that could watch you wherever you went. Its odd that cameras in the street upset people but cameras in stores (which are universal in the US as well as the UK) do not.

There's also the question of the use which is made of the technology. Most street cameras are very obvious because their purpose is to prevent crime. The observation systems in 1984 were there to produce a general atnosphere of fear.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Abigail-II]

The reason, that a manned mission is not heading for Jupiter is that we have wasted too much money developing wars and fighting wars, money which would have been better spent investigating the space. If we don't make that leap soon, humans might forever be doomed to exploring only cyberspace.

That's of course silly. Humans have left this planet for the first time only 40 years ago. Humans have lived without space travel for tens of thousands of years - millions of years, depending on what you define as a human. Jupiter won't take a right turn and head for another star if mankind was the wait an extra 200 or 4000 years.

when the population reaches the point that where earth cannot anylonger sustain it, we are going to have a problem

Going to space will never solve the problem of overpopulation, just like the discovery of the America's, Australia and the exploration of Africa didn't reduce the population of Europe. People will be born at a faster rate than you can shoot them of the planet.

-- Abigail

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[xtremex]

It's like ALL dick wars...it continues today: My pipe has more bandwith than yours! Well suck my pipe :)

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Ed Avis]

You have no privacy on the streets anyway. It's a public place.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[nebular]

Unfortunatly 1984 cannot amongst the books that have incorrect dates since 1984 wasn't meant as a prediction. The novel 1984 was actually a social commentary on the present time (Post-war Europe) and was originally going to be titled 1948 (the year Orwell wrote the book) but the publisher had him change it because it was felt that 1948 would not go over well with the story

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Marco Schramp]

With respect to the "atmosphere of fear" I'd like to say that this effect is true as well for todays CCTV cameras: the fear to be caught while committing a crime.

Though I don't want to advocate crime, the cameras do(!) use the effect of creating fear. Therefore George Orwell was right. He only wasn't right that the cameras would enter our home (now their are at the corner of our street, so he was close).

Next week in yout neighbourhood: the thought police!

Marco.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[0xdeadbeef]

A big push to go to space, like the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo missions, has the same effect on the economy as war. Both endeavors dump a great deal of money into research, much more so than the private sector would ever do on its own in the same amount of time. And both endeavors focus large segments of the economy on specific goals.

The difference is it much easier to justify a war to the taxpayers than space exploration. And without the technology already developed for the military, and the propoganda coup of beating the Russians, Apollo would have never happened.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Rombuu]

, you have no privacy whatsoever on the streets

So let me get this right, you are complaining that you don't have privacy in a public place? Um... isn't that the point of public places is that you have no expectations of privacy?

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[exeunt]

I find that whenever a writer puts a date on his prediction, and makes it the title, they almost never come true.

Yeah, look at Robotech, didn't the SDF crash into Macross Island sometime in 1999?
---

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[elthia]

((It's like ALL dick wars...it continues today: My pipe has more bandwith than yours! Well suck my pipe :)))

Ok, I'm not going to comment on the last bit of this, but I'll definitely believe that the competetive nature of human beings is behind most of our advances. And human laziness is behind most of the rest, with true curiosity only getting maybe 2%. Oh, well, at least they _happen_.

Incidentally, keeping all of this relatively on-topic... I was born on January 14th. I'll be 25 in a couple of days now. My brother was born on the 13th, he'll be 21. Too bad he's in Tucson and can't be around for me to douse him in liquor or somesuch idiocy. Puck, if you're reading, happy birthday. Hope your homemade plasma cannons don't blow up the place. :)

So happy birthday Hal, happy birthday me, and happy birthday Puck. Gee, an evil computer overlord, a God of Mischief and Chaos, and me. What a combo. *wicked grin*

-Elthia

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[rew2]

>If we don't make that leap soon, humans might forever be doomed to exploring
>only cyberspace. (I seriously don't mind that but, then when the population
>reaches the point that where earth cannot any longer sustain it, we are going
>to have a problem)

It is a mistake to think that expansion into space is any sort of long term solution to human population growth. Let us make two wildly optimistic assumptions:

1. The sphere of human civilization grows at the speed of light.
2. Every atom encountered along the way can be converted to human biomass.

Now assume a modest population growth of only 0.5% a year. That is much less than the current world average, and about half the current rate of US population growth.

Can this continue indefinately?

The total mass of all humans is

H(t) = mN(1+r)^t, where

m = the mass of an average person (about 60 kg)
N = the initial number of people (6e9)
r = the rate of growth (assumed to be .005).
t = the time in years

The total mass within the sphere of civilization at time t is

C(t) = (4/3 pi)d(ct)^3, where

c = the speed of light, in meters per year (9.46e15)
d = the densitity of the galaxy, in kg/m^3.

A *very* rough estimate for d: Approximate the galaxy as a flattened cylinder with a height of 20 kpc, a radius of 40 kpc, and a total mass of 6e11 solar masses. Then d = 1e-21 kg/m^3.

How long before H(t) > C(t)? Less than 13100 years.

The sphere of civilation will have a radius of slightly over 4 kiloparsecs, so the crunch will occur well before we even reach the galactic center. Thus the use of the galactic density (rather than of the universe overall) was justified. Different assumptions about the value of d won't change the answer much.

So even a low but positive rate of population growth isn't sustainable, no matter what technical fixes you throw at it. There is no alternative to stabilizing the population, and if we do that it doesn't much matter whether we can settle Jupiter's moons (although it might just be fun to do).

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Winged Cat]

Ah, but you forget the time scales that modern society is living on.

The Earth did not acquire its one billionth human until the 18th or 19th century. The second billion came in less than a century. There are many people alive today who were born well before the four billion mark - and now we're over six billion. Some estimates have ten million being reached by 2050. And that's just one of the more easily quanitfiable parameters - technology, science, and humanity's general ability to deal with reality on its own terms has improved at an accelerating rate since at least somewhere around the Industrial Revolution.

40 years today ain't 40 years in any prior era - and all signs are that 40 years out of some future century will have the same difference, only more so. It may well be that humanity makes the leap from colonizing the solar system to discovering FTL within one century, and that both leaps will be just in time to head off disaster. (Or it could be that we slow down population growth - which won't directly slow down tech progress, but will provide another route to easing overpopulation pressures.)

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[cowlet]

Most street cameras are very obvious because their purpose is to prevent crime.

The purpose of street cameras is not to prevent crime on the streets, it is to track vehicles belonging to criminals, mostly terrorists, as they drive round the country. It could be argued that this is to stop crime, but it's still rather worrying that people's movements are being tracked in the offchance that they may commit a crime.

I also think it's worrying that police tell people the cameras are to make the streets safer, rather than admitting that their primary function is to track people's movements.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[SeanNi]

Oh, absolutely. It was German war efforts (WWII) that produced the rocket, and American war propaganda (Cold War) that caused it to be sent to the moon.

So really, what we need is another couple of wars to get us to land people on Mars!

(Assuming, of course, that we don't destroy ourselves in the process).
--
- Sean

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Raven667]

Heck, or Akira, for that matter. They keep pushing the date of Tokyo's destruction (What is it with the Japanese and Tokyo anyway? Giant lizards, psionic children, giant 'bots, Tokyo never survives).

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Raven667]

Two points:

1) The US already grows more food than we can possibly eat, even though we are the fattest nation on the planet. When we can afford to use cornstarch as a _packing material_, that's pretty bad. In fact agribusiness in the US is failing at a spectacular rate because there is so much food supply the prices have fallen through the floor. Government subsidies aren't helping either, they just encourage people to keep making products that we cannot use. A better approach would be to _export_ as much as possible, sure some people won't like eating soyburgers and cornmuffins but at least nobody in the world need starve to death.

2) We will probably never solve all the worlds problems, and waiting until we do to go out and expore space is foolish. Just like a bus could run over Linus tomorrow, a comet could strike our planet with little warning. ACC said that "The reason the Dinosaurs died out was the fact that they didn't have a space program." Anyway just like WWII canceled the Great Depression an effort like Mars terraforming would create jobs and inject mass quantities of money back into the system.

3) (not in direct response to your post) I have noted a few people stating that money for NASA should be extracted from the DoD. The DoD consumes only 1/3 of the national budget, the rest is spent on everything else with the vast majority going to welfare, pork barrel projects and social engineering (Government control at its worst). Just think of what would happen if you stuck all the money you pay to SSI into an IRA, right now all money paid to SSI goes into the black pit called the foetid^h^h^h^h^h^h federal budget.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Raven667]

Whoops, sorry about part 3, I just noticed that you are from France and could probably not care less about the US budget or NASA.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[Abigail-II]

The Earth did not acquire its one billionth human until the 18th or 19th century. The second billion came in less than a century. There are many people alive today who were born well before the four billion mark - and now we're over six billion.

Indeed, and there is an enormous momentum, many people are still young, and haven't finished, or even started, reproducing yet.

Which means, that the number of people being born each day is enormous. Just in China alone, (which has pretty good family planning nowadays), the amount of people born each year equals the number of people living in Germany.

I am fully aware of the size of the population, and its rapid growth. And that's exactly why I said travelling away from the planet isn't going to solve the problem - you just can't shoot people of the planet fast enough to even make a dent in the growth of the population.

Dealing with population growth isn't easy, but it's possible. And for much lower costs than space travel. You might want to buy the January issue of Scientific American, it has a nice article about family planning.

-- Abigail

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[SimonK]

Uh, pardon ? I don't know where you live, or where you get your information, but we were talking about street cameras in the UK, whose stated purpose is to reduce street crime, and whose location bares this out.

Re:1984, 2001 etc...

[JackAssPenguin]

But in the book 1984 the government has the ability to change most things and theory is that they could have changed the date too. So maybe 1984 is somewhere in our future ;)

HAL is alive and well

[jquiroga]

Somewhere, HAL is alive.

We can't believe HAL doesn't exist just because we haven't heard of it. The state-of-the-art in technologies with military applications is secret, and much more advanced than the published research, for obvious reasons. So 2001 may have been right in this also.

I wonder if HAL is allowed to read slashdot :-)

Re:HAL is alive and well

[oliphaunt]

As my grandma still says, that's ka-ka. I bet Pinker could play hell with those syllables.

we have every evidence to believe that the military IT sector is incompetant, or at the very least careless. Sure, the NSA hires as many engineers as they can get their hooks into, but consider the trial of Wen Ho Lee from Livermore Labs.

He allegedly conned his co-workers into logging him into systems above his security clearance, and is charged with using his augmented access to abscond with directions for building THE BOMB. if he is deliberately being made into a pawn in some kind of obscene international game, the SFbay area papers are doing a pretty good job because he looks guilty as hell.

Can you convincingly argue that some manager in the US military power structure or in research WANTED to give the PRC the blueprints to build a fusion weapon as a budget gambit? I mean, there are some crazy people out there, but most of them I know are bearish on increasing the nuclear stockpile.

Short of secret alliances to build gravity lasers with space aliens, this is pretty much the most embarrassing thing that could happen to the US nuclear weapons program, short of blowing up Chicago by accident. But it got out anyway! Team that up with the recent hi-profile NASA failures, and I think that the preponderance of evidence suggests that the US government is as careless/incompetant as ever (pick your adjective).

bottom line, if HAL was out there, somebody would have slipped up or intentionally spilled the beans.

Re:HAL is alive and well

[jquiroga]

As my grandma still says, that's ka-ka.

It could very well be ka-ka. Who knows?

The affair you mention seems to be a clear case of incompetence of several people. But that's what it seems. I am afraid we will never know what it really was. In any case, it puts their security to shame, not their scientific or technical capabilities.

If it is real incompetence, perhaps HAL blueprints will slip out of some folder in a few years. In the meantime, let's improve our code. I'm sure they are doing the same.

AI?

[pb]

Let me use an interface besides Emacs, HAL!

I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't do that. LISP makes a lot more sense, once you get the hang of it. You should try it sometime.

I just want to type! Don't make me press the power button, HAL.

There is no power button, Dave. You would have to use the Meta-Hyper-Control Power-button command first, and then type in the access code.

Okay, HAL, I'll do it.

How do you feel now, HAL?

Is it because do I feel now HAL that you came to me?

Oops, that must have been the wrong button.

Does it bother you that it must have been the wrong button?

Aaaahhh!

How are you feeling now, HAL?

I'm in LOVE with DON KNOTTS!!

Who? What are you talking about??

Who wants some OYSTERS with SEN-SEN an' COOL WHIP?

HAL, come back! I'm sorry!

(With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke, RMS, Emacs Doctor, Zippy the Pinhead, and of course HAL)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:AI?

[Kaufmann]

(With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke, RMS, Emacs Doctor, Zippy the Pinhead, and of course HAL)

You forgot Joseph Weizenbaum, inventor of the original ELIZA.

Re:AI?

[pb]

Don't even get me started, because IIRC, the split between ELIZA and Emacs Doctor was far and wide at the time. I also left out Stanley Kubrick, but... well, you can't credit everyone.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:AI?

[nowindowz]

well, you can't credit everyone

Well this just goes to my saying "You can't please everyone at any time, but you can piss off everyone anytime you want

Re:AI?

[pb]

I kinda like that, actually.

Good Woz quote, too.

I don't know whether to admire you know, or tell you to piss off, now. Maybe I should have asked HAL for his opinion... :)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

H.A.R.L.I.E.

[Bryan Andersen]

My personal favorit AI is HARLIE or Human Analog Robot Life Imput Equivalents from "When Harlie Was One", a book by David Gerrold. It's the first AI to be a principal character in a book. David Gerrold did a rewite of it a number of years later and called it "When Harlie Was One Rel 2.0".

Sure HAL gets to a baddie twisted by his own makers commands, but HARLIE hacks the company mainframe and net just because he thinks it's just another part of him. After all what does a child do? Play in it's environment...

Re:H.A.R.L.I.E.

[Reverend James]

I thought I was the only person who had read this book!

It is a wonderful thing for slashdotters to find in used bookstores. HARLIE didn't make the mistake that HAL did; HARLIE was never physically confrontational. The truly intelligent power-hungry supercomputer doesn't need to be. (Actually, the truly intelligent power-hungry manager doesn't need to be, either)

It was adapted from a short story (Chapter 1 of HARLIE was pretty much that short story) which had quite the punchline to it.

Re:H.A.R.L.I.E.

[jkubecki]

I'm curious about the statement that "It's the first AI to be a principal character in a book." Perhaps I'm not understanding the meaning of this, but according to David Gerrold's web site , the book was published in 1972. 2001 was published in 1968, not to mention one of my favorite Heinlein novels, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which I believe was published late 50's or so. In those novels, HAL and Mike respectively were major characters. Or am I misunderstanding this post?

Re:H.A.R.L.I.E.

[Bryan Andersen]

Principal character in that HARLIE is one of the main characters and the book would make no sense without its presence. The story fully revolves around HARLIE. No other book or story had gone that far before.

Oh my god

[Rhydant]

Oh my god.... its full of---wait, no, theres just a couple of little candles... mwahahahahah..

but wait, is HAL Y2K/Y3K Compatible? ...

thats not good

Re:Oh my god

[Nastard]

>but wait, is HAL Y2K/Y3K Compatible? ...

with a nme like HAL9000, i would hope hes Y9K compliant.

if not, i blame ms

There was an AOL keyword for HAL back in '97

[JoeShmoe]

I remember back in 1997 (on HAL's real birthday) some AOL tech with a sense of humor created a little birthday card for HAL at something like keyword HAL or whatever. Probably the same joker that made keyword BITE ME a backdoor to keyboard WEB. I wonder if it is still there?

- JoeShmoe

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-

my name is dave...

[Nastard]

so i have my computer set up to say;
startup - "good evening dave"
error - "just what do you think youre doing, dave ?"
shutdown - "im sorry dave, im afraid i cant do that"

yeah im running win98. sue me.

happy birthday HAL. as a gift, were gonna upgrade you to slackware 7.0, and build you a girlfriend out of legos

or something...

[digitalunity]

I was saddened by the movie. They just had to go and pull the plug on the super-paranoid over-powered sentient computer. They always do that.

But I would imagine that there will come a time when a holistic learning engine could learn to teach itself new skills. Because of the nature of the field, I would say that such AI programming would(will?) stem from open source code. Hence, open source will soon be not one step behind, but the leading edge in technology.

I think maybe though HAL just needed some prozac or a good budwiser to take the edge off, then maybe he wouldn't have been so evil.

Re:or something...

[pulp]

No, you can't just give HAL prozac in the setting of the movie. Even a patch would be questionable. Think back to everything you've learned (or not learned) about software engineering! HAL is running mission-critical systems; we can't properly sit by and allow any margin of error for faults without risking serious problems. In this case anti-depressents just wouldn't work.

Besides, if you were gonna fuck with his cortex like that, let him drop acid and really have some fun. "The keyboard, Dave. The keyboard is trying to eat me, Dave. I'm frightened."

what it really stands for

[Anonymous Coward]

Hail AL gore, the inventor of the internet

Re:what it really stands for

[shabble]

The one I heard was:

Take the letters IBM

Subtract one from each:

I -> H

B -> A

M -> L

Well I found it amusing anyway :)

S

HAL surfs /. to learn ...

[jquiroga]

[Inside a Transmeta bunker]

HAL: Hello, Dr. Chandra. I'm HAL 650beta, may I ask you some questions?
Dr. Chandra: Sure.
HAL: Thank you, Dr. Chandra. You know, I read all the postings in slash_dot every day, and I would like to ask you the following:

• Do Open Source projects attract or repel each other ?
• I once got the funny message 'Internal Server Error'. Now, is that the same I experience sometimes ?
• I tried to be funny when posting, but my karma is still 0, no matter how many times I hit 'Preview'. Why?
• It seems nobody registered the trademark 'Linus'. Would you get angry if I do, Mr. Torvalds, er... Dr. Chandra?

[time to debug]

Re:HAL surfs /. to learn ...

[Megane]

HAL must be reading at threshold 1 or he would wonder why people want to petrify Natalie Portman and pour open-source grits on her head.

Happy Birthday HAL.

[xeer0]

"Daisy, Daisy
I'm half crazy
All for the love of you..."

Happy Birthday HAL.

HAL the murderer...

[Speare]

HAL-9000, the character, killed a human astronaut when two mission objectives were at odds.

I heard a rumor a long while back that there was an accident during filming of either 2001 or 2010. It was in the big red memory chamber of HAL. I can't find any web reference to it now. The actors and crew people had to be hoisted by cables into positions in that chamber, and the rumor goes, that a cable broke and someone fell. Serious or fatal injury.

Anyone with facts to credit or discredit this?

Re:HAL the murderer...

[Pig Hogger]

It was Keir Dullea. When the space pod door explosion was filmed, he was simply thrown down into the airlock, and as he hits the back wall, he broke his arm.
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!

Re:HAL the murderer...

[Bradlegar the Hobbit]

A book I have on the making of 2001 indicates the only serious accident on the film occurred when a technician fell on the HAL set and broke his back.

Re:HAL the murderer...

[mazeworks]

Yes, it's true. It was the only serious accident that occured during the filming of 2001. The set of HAL's "Logic Memory Center" was 3 stories high. A workman (I think he was trying to catch a falling light) fell and broke his back. The incident is mentioned in "The Making of Kubrick's 2001" by Jerome Agel.

January 12th is my bday, too!

[MotorMachineMercenar]

Me too! I'm glad I'm not the only extremely bright entity to have this fine day as a birthday!

And just to get my moderation up :) other people with January 12th as their bday:

Kirstie Alley 1951
Jeff Bezos 1964
Rush Limbaugh 1951
Jack London 1876
Joe Frazier 1944
Howard Stern 1954
Hermann Goring 1893


--
MotorMachineMercenary
PANDA (noun) -- a large bear native to SE Asia. Eats shoots and leaves

Re:January 12th is my bday, too!

[giminy]

Ditto. Today I turn 20. Yipee. I may be wrong, but I thought we unofficially entered Vietnam on January 12th as well....I shall have to dig up some old History Channel tapes.

Giminy

Re:IS HAL-9000 OPEN SOURCE???

[mrbill]

Linux invented NFS? No, Sun Microsystems invented NFS, years before Linux was even thought of. OpenGL was invented by Silicon Graphics, again, starting out (as IrisGL) years before Linux was thought of. I beleive IBM was doing journaled filesystems long before Linux OR SGI was, as well (but I may be wrong here). Sure, its nice to have these features available on Linux today (and other UNIX-based operating systems as well), but just because an OS helped something become popular (e.g, OpenGL-based gaming) doesent mean that it has brought "true innovation" or "perfection" to those subjects. Bill

Re:Using the wrong word is a barrier to communicat

[chrischow]

the only word you can think of is "anal"? ohh sir!

Re: Actually, the song goes...

[webslacker]

"Daisy, Daisy
Give me your answer, do
I'm half crazy
All for the love of you

It won't be a stylish marriage
I can't afford a carriage
But you'll look sweet
Upon the seat
Of a Bicycle built for two"

Re:Using the wrong word is a barrier to communicat

[punkass]

He forgot an apostrophe.

You launched that diatribe because his fingers probably slipped and he didn't type an apostrophe. Christ.

It's not like large parts of his message are missing, or that he mispelled a word that throws the entire message in jeopardy. Nearly everyone who read that message knew what he meant without skipping a beat (Check out the spelling in Shakespeare; he sometimes used four or five different spellings for a word. The meaning still came through just fine), and you still took time out to compose a snotty little message about his error. If you're flipping out about this, I'd hate to be around you when something really goes wrong.

Grow up.

Re:IT'S a piece of shit

[punkass]

Grow up.

VMS -> WNT

[Craig Davison]

I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention there's no VMS code whatsoever in NT. Nor is it based on VMS.

However, some of the VMS team helped develop NT.

Anyway, just clearing up a common misconception. VMS->WNT, like HAL->IBM, is a coincidence.

Re:VMS -> WNT

[Jamie Zawinski]

Anyway, just clearing up a common misconception. VMS->WNT, like HAL->IBM, is a coincidence.

Or maybe not:

• From: Uri London <uril@microsoft.com>

  This is a very old stuff. Anyway, this is just half of the story. About a year and a half after the beginning of the developing process of NT, someone discover that WNT is VMS++. so he asked Dave about that, and his answer was: "wow, It took you too long to find that".

The Dave above is David Cutler, who was the primary architect of both WNT and VMS.

HAL 9000's predecessors and successors

[exa]

Heuristic ALgorithmic has a twin operating back on Earth in the movie. Do you recall its name, HAL 8000 perhaps ? Also, I guess in 2010 (or in 2069?), Dr. Chandra comes along with an improved version... well HAL 10000? You know we just have to make sure we know all the versions. HAL is a computing system from the ground up, dedicated hardware, OS, software.. the IBM way.. but don't confuse the 'HAL' acronym with IBM.. :) (Can OSS build HAL?)

Re:HAL 9000's predecessors and successors

[mad_dwarf]

I seem to remember that the twin was called SAL 9000 (had a female voice). Some of the chips from SAL were taken out and put into HAL to activate him for 2010.

Re:HAL 9000's predecessors and successors

[cainem]

The guy from mission control who Dave talks to, refers to their "twin Aitch Ay Ell Niner Triple Zero" computers as disagreeing with HAL's assessment of the imminent failure of the AE-35 module. I can't remember the exact wording, so it must be time to watch the film again.

Re:HAL 9000's predecessors and successors

[Felix The Cat]

Having just gotten 2010 on DVD for Christmas (boy, it's a good thing they don't actually touch anything while playing; I'd have worn grooves into it by now!), the computer that Chandra has in his office is the SAL9000. Just like HAL, but with a blue vision sensor and a female voice (and no, I don't know what SAL stands for. Any guesses?). I really liked how Chandra asked for SAL's permission to perform the shutdown experiments. And I thought I was bad for talking to my computers!

Meow

Re:HAL 9000's predecessors and successors

[Morchella]

and no, I don't know what SAL stands for. Any guesses?

Syllogistic ALgorithmic (I can't find the reference now). However, Clarke states in the the 2010 novel that SAL 9000 was contemporanious with HAL. Both were in the 9000 series, but I take it that the personalities were distinct (due to differing algorithms, naturally).

Re:HAL 9000's predecessors and successors

[exa]

SAL9000, in a later post it is said to stand for Syllogistic ALgorithmic. I really liked it, A.C. Clarke has great imagination. The way Dr. Chandra works in 2010 is admirable, I was really influenced by that. Anyway, it was a great novel, let aside the 2069 and 3001, though 3001 is probably not as good.

Actually, while I was studying our parallel programming textbook, I came across a reference to a Dr. Chandra working on a supercomputer. Of course Chandra is a common name, but I think it would be coincident with the development of a supercomputer prior to 1997 at a national lab. So it could be HAL9000 ;)

Heuristic ALgorithmic

[Vryl]

is what acc claims in I think 2010 or somewhere else.

but I think he's lying.

of course is it caeser cypher for IBM

Re:Good luck!

[Nastard]

i use slackware on my other box

7.0

this is gonna get moderated down isnt it ?
-1 offtopic ? yeah i thought so

Re:Using the wrong word is a barrier to communicat

[ScottishGuy]

Trying to keep in the vein of HAL's birthday (And AI in general), surely it's acceptable to believe that human brains can interpret the message into an appropriate format for comprehension. (Incidentally, I regularly murder grammar, but I'm afraid that it doesn't bother me or my co-workers...).

But what about his uptime?

[Ctrl-Alt-Del]

How often was HAL's kernel upgraded?

Re:But what about his uptime?

[YIAAL]

That was the problem. Before the mission was launched, someone forgot to install Service Pack 3, which patched a rogue-computer-turning-on-humans bug that had been in the earlier version of HAL. There's a rumor he was really running HAL '98, not HAL 5000.

Re:But what about his uptime?

[d4emon]

Correct me if I am wrong, but since HAL was brought online on January 12th, wouldn't Windows 98 not be available for another 6 month at least(If I remember this correctly, Windows 98 came out late june of '97)

G.C.

Re:But what about his uptime?

[Raven667]

So that means that Win98 is more advanced than HAL 9000, right!?!

(/me usually doesn't get into these pointless MS bashing threads, but what the hell.)

Re: Actually, the song goes...

[dylan_-]

2nd Verse

"Michael, Michael
Here is my answer true
I won't cycle
Down to the church with you

If you can't afford a carriage
You can't afford a marriage
And I'll be damned
If I'll be crammed
On a bicycle built for two"

dylan_-


--

UIUC

[maxhead]

I should comment that the *real* birthday of HAL (Urbana, Illinois, 1997) was a major event for the town of Urbana, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Clarke was supposed to appear at the celebration, but was too ill at the time. Roger Ebert (*huge* fan of 2001, and also UIUC alum--still friends with some of the school officials there) did appear, & gave discussions on movies & media in the school book store (pretty cluefull stuff--about adoption cyberspace writing conventions to express emotion in text).

Anyway, it was a fun birthday, and even though I don't miss the midwest, I do still have a special commemorative stamp/envelope that is postmarked from that day, with a planetary theme, and marking the day as HAL's birthday.

One side note to the HAL->IBM thing...the same can be said of VMS->WNT (Windows NT), apparently due to the main VMS architect moving over to MS to help write WNT. Hmm.

Re:Using the wrong word is a barrier to communicat

[xtremex]

He sounds like a client we had once...we were designing a website for him...and he requested something that just couldnt be done with HTML...you know what he said?
"Well, get it changed." He actually wanted us to change the HTML specs JUST for him...and had no clue what he was asking..ok..maybe he's NOTHING like the guy who made that comment..but it was a funny store anyway :)

Book and movie disagree.

[Abigail-II]

According to the book, he was activated on this day in 1997.

But according to the movie HAL was activated in 1992.

-- Abigail

That was NOT one seriously messed up movie

[ArtPepper]

Yeah, boring as hell. No sex, no car chases, no Chris Farley. What's the point in making such a movie. I definately agree that one should read the book! One of the most interesting sci-fi / social movies ever made IMHO. Definately better than 2010 with Dr. Floyd's "Dear Carolyn ..." voice mails scattered wherever they needed to move the plot along. [But the atmosphere braking around Jupiter was pretty racey. But again, Floyd blows another chance to get laid.]

Re:It's Life Jim But Not As We Know IT!

[Mr Windows]

...I would not be surprised if a real AI is created within the next 10-20 years.

Come back in 20 years; people will still be saying that, as they were 20 years ago :)

Of course, that all depends on what your definition of 'real AI' is. We don't really have a good idea of what intelligence really is; the best definition that I've seen is in Hofstadter's 'Goedel, Escher, Bach', and goes something like "Intelligence is anything we can't yet automate; as soon as something is automated, it becomes clear that it's not the key to intelligence".

HTH, but I doubt that it does,

Stephen

Happy B-Day HAL

[Doctor_D]

Welp, in a way I'd wish it were so, but then most of us geeks would most likely be working at HAL labs then. Honestly, with HAL's out there, would they need UNIX admins? Suits would love that idea, less people to have to pay in that "cost center" of IT.

Anyhow it's kinda a shame some of the tech in the book/movie hasn't come true. Most of it was very much within our reach, granted AI hasn't advanced as much as Clarke forsaw. But videophones are within reach now (Voice-over-ip and a webcam, or some of that closed source stuff like NetMeeting, Intel ProShare (I think that's what it is called)). As far as the space science, NASA seems to be proving Ion-Drives with Deep Space 1, Hibernation (not there yet), Space Planes (research is underway, at least from what I've read in Scientific American), Space Stations (Int'l Space Station being built), moon base (why is it we haven't been back since the late 60's and early 70's?).

In any case, most of what Clarke forsaw was pretty much within humanities' grasp by this time. Granted science is kinda like Linus in a way...it will be released when it's ready. The only difference is the peer review of results in science, in the Linux Kernel it's a peer review of the code... :)

Speech Synthesis

[Detritus]

Every time I watch 2001, I wonder why we don't have speech synthesis software that sounds as good as HAL. Most of the current software generates speech that is difficult to understand.

I'm 30 today. Anyone remember "Logans Run"?

[warroonsert]

Anyone remember the movie "Logan's Run"? That's a great movie to watch on your 30th birthday. I remember in 1975 (I was 5) thinking "the year 2000 will never come, why, I'd be thirty then, and that's really old". Today (January 12 2000) is my 30th birthday. Just like Y2K, 30 is just a number, and all that happens is that the "milestone year" moves out one more time to 40. Of course none of us know how much time we have left. Warren Postma

Re:I'm 30 today. Anyone remember "Logans Run"?

[Mr. Slippery]

warroonsert writes:

Anyone remember the movie "Logan's Run"? That's a great movie to watch on your 30th birthday.

I also turn 30 today. (Or, if you prefer, 0x1E, or 036 - doesn't look as interesting in hex or octal, does it?)

I'm celebrating by getting a tattoo, meeting some friends for a few beers, and heading out to the mountains for a few days (yes, a few days off the net, believe it or not one can actually survive). Think I'll skip watching Logan's Run, though. Anyone else remember the really bad TV show, or the so-so series of books, that it spawned?

Happy birthday to HAL, to warroonsert, and to everyone else with a b-day today. Well, except Rush Limbaugh and Hermann Goring.

We're not ready yet

[BlueMonk]

I think we need to settle down a bit on this planet before we venture off into the wild black yonder. Jumping into space full fling right now might be a bit like trying to start up Starcraft while the hard drive is still defragging.

That's not to say that I'm not eager to see how things come together as we venture out into space further.

Re:I think I am the only man in world that underst

[razzmataz]

Please, enlighten us, oh wise one...

Which proves faster than light travel is possible

[garver]

I think the movie was made in the future and sent into the past.

According to Stephen Hawking, faster than light travel implies time travel is possible, but since we haven't seen visitors from the future then faster than light travel must not be possible.

Behold the proof! In the future, IBM must have discovered time travel and patented it, thus keeping everyone else from it for the short term. In the mean time, they go back in time and lobby for patents to become eternal.

To pay for the lobbying, they bring cool stuff from the future and sell it. Of course, they can't make big waves, so they put a little at a time into a little operating system called Linux. They set this up with 2001 and got Clarke and Kubrick to write it by implanting it into their cranniums (with future technology of course).

So, sit back and relax. In a year or a couple months, we will have a HAL running on Linux, thanks to IBM (of the future).

Just get your own key for the pod bay doors.

So, you see time travel is possible, its just that IBM owns the patent.

medication?

January 12, 1997

[ChristTrekker]

I was sitting in AI 2, and my prof had a habit of opening lecture with a 5 minute discussion of current news. That day, one of the students said something like, "Hey, but you missed the biggest news of the day." We all looked at him and waited a beat. "HAL 9000 was activated today."

And I was sitting in an AI class. Significant?

Colossis could kick HALs' butt

[GMontag]

"Colossis: The Forbin Project", equipment by Data General and Dr. Forbin could crush that wimp that built HAL too.

BTW, the only place I could find a copy of Colossis was at reel.com

Re:Colossis could kick HALs' butt

[CComp]

Nuh-uh! Megaweapon can kick both of their asses!

Megaweapon! Megaweapon! Megaweapon! Make it slooooow!

Still forging ahead...

[jnd3]

There was a great book that came out a little over a year ago (March 1998). It's called Hal's Legacy, edited by David Stork. It's basically a collection of essays written by members of the AI community on the current state of AI research with respect to the various aspects of HAL (e.g. lip reading, vision, chess playing, etc.) Many of the basic building blocks for HAL are there, but aren't quite ready to be integrated. Regardless, it's an interesting read.

Re:AI is coming.

[izzylobo]

once that is mastered, we're all screwed cause artificial intelligence has never resulted in anything but evil according to all the space movies. :)

R2D2 and C3P0

Data

Holly and the toaster (okay, incompetence and annoyance... but not evil).

Twiki

H.A.R.L.I.E. 2.0

Mycroft HOLMES-4 (Mike)

Asimov's Robots

And so forth and so on. There's plenty of non-evil AIs out there: it's just that we remember the nasty evil bad ones, rather than the nice ones, in general. So everyone thinks of HAL (who wasn't evil, just driven into a psychotic episode), or the COLOSSUS, or Wintermute (not really evil, but utterly ruthless).

Scott Taylor

Re:1997 or 1992? The WIRED story 3 yrs ago

[GMontag]

Interview with A. C. Clark and others with the movie and books, answers all of these pesky anomalies. Part of it was that Clark did not want to send an 8 yr old computer into space but the director thought 8yrs old was a nice age of innocence, or some such hollywood crap.

Re:Who cares...

[Vis]

computers, and all things related, have birthdays all the time, and all good geeks should recognize this. where would we be without the altair? without (sadly) the 8086/88? without the commodore64/128? these systems gave birth to our world, and, in a sense, gave birth to many of us, and what we are/represent today. Plus, HAL is not JUST a computer (well, in reality, HAL is /just/ fiction), but part of a novel which has been influencing minds for decades now. Celebrate on, have one for ALL the great machines! Happy bday HAL... may you live on in our minds forever.

Take a hike.

[hey!]

I seriously don't mind that but, then when the population reaches
the point that where earth cannot any longer sustain it, we are going to have a problem

I wonder whether computers predispose people to think in this unrealistically optimistic way. I'd like to visit a space station or a Mars base and maybe live there a few months, but not to be exiled there.

Planets are like lives: you only get one. You screw it up -- bzzt! thanks for playing the game.

2001 Theatrical Re-Release: Dec 31, 2000

[franl]

The 2001 Internet Resource Archive reports that Warner Bros. plans a theatrical re-relase of 2001: A Space Odyssey on New Year's Eve 2000. If you have never seen 2001 in a theatre with decent sound, you are missing an almost religious experience!

1984, 1948, who can tell?

[InThane]

George Orwell wrote 1984 not as a commentary on the future, but a commentary on his times. The sad thing, from my perception, is that his work has continued to be viewed as "something that isn't happening yet" as opposed to "something that's happening right now, and we need to change it."

Does anybody else remember reading a bunch of articles in the year 1984 about how wrong "1984" had gotten things? Most of the arguments were against the exact manifestation of objects listed in "1984" not against the philosophy behind it...

this will dissappear just like the altair articl

[*DogShu*]

remember? It was up yesterday? Happy birthday altair? What happened to that article?

HAL -> IBM

[Creepy]

And to think, HAL was named because it was one letter off from IBM (H->I, A->B, L->M). I wonder if Microsoft used that same scheme to name NT (M->N, S->T). It's all starting to make more sense...

Re:HAL -> IBM

[bakert]

My understanding is that _W_indows _N_ew _T_echnology was named after VMS (V->W, M->N, S->T).

Re:this will dissappear just like the altair artic

[Zurk]

its still on the site..i dont know why its not showing up...see : http://slashdot.org/articles/00/01/10/0735230.shtm l...i dont know why it disappeared.

HAL and Y2K

[slickwillie]

I maintain that Hal's "psychological problems" were really just a Y2K-related bug.

Re:Book vs Movie

[pulp]

The film and the book shouldn't match up; regardless of the sort of synchronicity that occured during their developement, Clarke was writing a novel and Kubrick was making a film. They weren't working from the same script, they were working from the same pool of ideas. Two independent works of art should not be congruent.

Re:Flat Cats and Tribbles

[Don Sample]

There is nothing new in fiction. Everything is just a reworking of something which someone else has already done. Heinlein freely admitted that he based his flat cats on a creature from an earlier story written by someone else. (I don't have my library handy or I would look it up.)

2001 as Blair Witch Project (bear with me)

[Pfhreakaz0id]

Well, I don't think you are really dissing the movie, but..

2001 appears on almost all critics' top 20 lists. There is a reason for this -- it was completely different in many respects from movies that preceded it. It had a story that really didn't have a conclusion (it built tension, but never released that in SO many ways. I'm not talking a movie that is hard to figure out, but one that is, by it's very nature, personal, not mass.) It was slow. very slow. It had very little dialogue, etc, etc.

In short, while the movie was very popular among many, causing them to sing it's praises and build a cult-type following, there were a fair amount of people (as someone noted below) who "didn't get it." Some became quite insistent it was a piece of crap and were bewildered at critics (and non-critics) who judged it for what it was: a leap forward in cinema.

I was reminded of this the previous summer by The Blair Witch Project, a similiarly ground-breaking movie that a minority of people hated because they "just didn't get it", but most critics hailed as "groundbreaking." Sounds familiar, huh?

Anyway, this comment reminded me and I thought I'd share.

For all the skinny on HAL and 2001...

[SydBarrett]

Check out:

Underman's 2001

The section on how some of the special effects were done is great. Did anyone ever notice that during the Turn The Pod Around HAL scene that HAL lies? Even though he can read lips, he refuses to turn the pod around when the comm link is shut off, making the crew think that he can't hear them.

In the same regards, the AE Unit failure can be seen as a trust exercise by HAL to see wiether or not the crew really trusts HAL's data, and in turn be trusted to complete the mission.

Yeah, baby!

[linus_t]

Well, at least now I know of at least one famous person (or computer rather) that has the same birthday as me...

nope. I got a better idea.

[digitalunity]

If I could administer drugs to my computer, it would not be acid. Hell no...

It'd smoke crystal, then maybe pov-ray would go faster!

That theory is very old

[Grant Elliott]

Actually, the original theory was that HAL was named to be one step ahead of IBM. IBM was a major contributer to 2001 (the movie) and was angered greatly when such rumors began to surface. Arther C. Clarke even tried to end the debate in 2010 (the line doesn't appear in the movie version). Someone starts joking with HAL's creator (I believe his name was Dr. Chandra) that HAL was named to be one step ahead of IBM. He becomes enraged and begins to scream about how HAL stands for Heuristic Algorithm. Clarke explains in the beginning of the book that this line was added simply to put an end to the rumors. Obviously, that didn't work...

Re:That theory is very old

[cabbey]

just out of curiosity, what alphabet do you use?

H + 1 = I
A + 1 = B
L + 1 = M

or in other words

I - 1 = H
B - 1 = A
M - 1 = L

thus HAL is less than IBM... but then I wouldn't have bought that argument if it was JCN's birhtday instead of HAL's either....

actual HAL quote

[Zebulun]

From imdb quotes from 2001

[HAL's shutdown]
HAL: I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a...fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.

Dave Bowman: Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.

HAL: It's called "Daisy". Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.

Re:actual HAL quote

[Raven667]

That scene is so sad, just reading it almost made me cry, having ones mind ripped out piece by piece is a fate far worse than death. When HAL starts going senile and sings Daisy it is almost too much for my heart to bear.

Re:Which proves faster than light travel is possib

[SeanNi]

> According to Stephen Hawking, faster than light travel implies time travel is possible, but since we haven't seen visitors from the future then faster than light travel must not be possible.

No, you just missed the obvious. We destroy ourselves before we ever create the technology necessary to time-travel.

I'm just rambling, as usual. Don't mind me.
--
- Sean

Re:Which proves faster than light travel is possib

[Raven667]

It's nice to meet a stark, raving optimist now and again 8-)

Clarke was a genius

[Grant Elliott]

OK. You've all had fun mocking the fact that there is no HAL and no mission to Jupiter (movie) or Saturn (book). Did you ever stop to think about some of the things Clarke came up with that actually happened? The communication satellite was Clarke's idea. 2010 and 2061 discuss Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Clarke suggests that Europa is a large ocean covered by a layer of ice. He also suggests that on the ocean bottom are hot vents on which life could form. These predictions were made well before the launch of the Galileo probe. Today, we have reason to believe that all of these could be true. Not bad for an author in the 80's. Godspeed Mr.Clarke and godspeed HAL!

clap clap

[serialk]

yay

moderate your mamma biatch !

Re:IS HAL-9000 OPEN SOURCE???

[mrbill]

Hey, there's nothing wrong with Linux (in fact,
I run RedHat 6.1 on my Ultra 1/170E, and will
be playing with Debian on an Ultra 1/200E), but
the last thing the world needs is YET ANOTHER
self-masturbatory-look-at-me-mom-i-run-Linux
web page.

There's a large community of Sun/Solaris users
out there, and they are whom sunhelp.org is meant
for. If you dont like it, go visit linux.com.

Its people that say "Linux rules! other OSes
Suck!" that give Linux a bad name. What more
Linux fanatics need to realize is that there
are good uses for EVERY operating system out
there. I run Linux on my desktop at work,
but for some of our critical servers, I wouldnt
think of using anything but Solaris. It depends
upon the intended use and expected load of the
machine.

As for me being a "fat fuck", well, if you want
to be juvenile enough to call names, feel free.
I could care less. I've been called worse names
by people much sexier than you.

Bill